The German share price index DAX graph is pictured at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, March 11, 2019. REUTERS/Staff
March 21, 2019
By Huw Jones
LONDON (Reuters) – Stock exchanges in Europe are not harming markets or gouging customers with the fees they charge for data, an industry-commissioned report said on Thursday.
The report from consultants Oxera for the Federation of European Securities Exchanges (FESE) wants to counter accusations from investment funds that “monopoly” bourses were continually hiking fees for market data to lift profits.
Investment firms have called on the EU’s markets watchdog ESMA to review market data fees charged by exchanges, saying they keep on rising despite falling costs of computing and data storage.
Oxera’s report concludes that “economic analysis suggest that the current charging structures for market data are unlikely to have detrimental effects on market outcomes for investors.”
FESE said that while fees have been “challenged by some”, the report showed that aggregate market data revenues have risen by only 1 percent a year, from 230 million euros ($261.2 million) in 2012 to 245 million euros in 2018.
“Costs have remained stable over the last five years,” said Rainer Riess, FESE director general.
Policymakers should be very mindful that any changes do not harm how prices of shares are formed, Riess added.
TRANSATLANTIC
Investment funds face scrutiny over their own fees charged customers and want to cut costs.
They have to buy data to help show regulators that they are obtaining the best share prices on behalf of investors in a region where many platforms trade the same stocks.
The Alternative Investment Management Association, Managed Funds Association, Britain’s Investment Association and two German funds bodies BVI and BAI, asked ESMA in December to enforce an EU securities law that requires market data to be sold on a “reasonable commercial basis”.
The bloc’s competition officials are also facing pressure to intervene.
In the United States the Securities and Exchange Commission repealed two data price changes last May for public feeds for Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange listed securities for the first time after complaints from asset managers.
The battle across the Atlantic has led to market participants like Fidelity Investments and hedge fund Citadel to back a new, low cost Members Exchange bourse to compete with NYSE.
FESE said the real issue was not prices but the “often very low quality” of data from off-exchange or “dark” trading platforms.
There has been talk for many years of a “consolidated tape” or a single pipe for gathering share prices from different platforms, like in the United States.
FESE said data intermediaries or vendors were already offering a de facto tape for prices on the bulk of so-called “lit” exchanges, where prices and trades are instantly visible.
(Reporting by Huw Jones, Editing by William Maclean)
Police are still looking for the woman who left the scene after the attack. (Fox News)
A woman allegedly smashed the windows of a St. Louis restaurant with an aluminum bat last month after she was told they were out of chocolate ice cream, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported this week.
The woman also spit on and threatened workers at a Rally’s restaurant during the March 27 incident, according to the newspaper.
She left the eatery on Vandeventer Avenue in St. Louis’ Central West End in her vehicle before police arrived after 2 a.m., according to The Smoking Gun.
Police are still searching for the woman who is described as between 25 to 35 years old.
An anti-Trump TV series is facing backlash after releasing a promo on social media inciting violence against “alt-right Nazis,” ie anybody right of Karl Marx.
The promo by anti-Trump CBS drama “The Good Fight” shows a character explaining against a backdrop of racially-charged rioting why violence is justified against others with a different political viewpoint, asserting that “it’s time to punch a few Nazis.”
Is it alright to hit a Nazi unprovoked? I was always taught never to throw the first punch, never to instigate. Defend, but don’t attack. But then I saw a video of the white nationalist Richard Spencer being punched in the face during an interview,” said actor Nyambi Nyambi as investigator “Jay.”
“I realized Spencer was in a pressed suit, wearing a tie, being interviewed like his opinion mattered — like it should be considered part of the conversation, like neo-Nazism is just one political point of view. And then I realized there’s no better way to show some speech is not equal.”
Nyambi then says that some speech must be met with violence.
“Some speech requires a more visceral response. It’s like Overton’s window — that’s the term for which ideas are tolerated in public discourse. Well, Overton’s window doesn’t mean shit unless it comes with some enforcement. So yeah, this is enforcement. It’s time to punch a few Nazis.”
Many on social media were quick to call out the show’s blatant incitement of violence, with some even speculating that Twitter would do nothing about it.
Well seeing as Everyone who disagrees with the fascist left is labeled a white nationalist now….CBS has now reached Goebbells brown shirt level propaganda
Problem is this…who gets to decide who the Nazi's are when these days it seems that everyone who doesnt go off the Leftward CLIFF is a fucking Nazi to the Left. Get fucking bent @CBS This is despicable&you are looking to make bank from keeping ppl divided? #SaturdayThoughts
Some users evoked the Clown World meme to highlight the irony of a supposed “anti-fascist” employing fascist tactics like violence to shut down free speech.
As we’ve reported, the rhetoric from the Left is compelling its base to commit more violent attacks against Trump supporters on an almost daily basis, which receives zero coverage from the mainstream media.
A masked criminal shot bleach at Michael Knowles while he delivered a speech called “Men Are Not Women“. Paul Jospeh Watson joins Alex to expose the increasing insanity on the left.
A maritime museum in Scotland has been forced to change the pronouns of its ships to reflect ‘gender neutral’ codes of political correctness after offended SJWs vandalized signs for the second year in a row.
Yes, really.
Despite vessels being traditionally called female names, David Mann, director of the maritime museum, in Irvine, Scotland, said they would now have to be “gender neutral” because vandals targeted their “very expensive” signs once again.
The signs were attacked in places where they used the words “she” and “her”. Perhaps the vandals were upset that the ships had not been asked what gender they identified as beforehand.
Admiral Lord Alan West slammed the entire farce as “absolutely stupid,” noting that ships had been referred to as “she” for decades.
“It’s stark staring bonkers and political correctness gone mad….an insult to a generation of sailors, the ships are seen almost as a mother to preserve us from the dangers of the sea and also from the violence of the enemy,” said West.
The Admiral also criticized the museum for caving in to a tiny pressure group, warning it was a “very dangerous road we are going down”.
The Royal Navy subsequently issued a statement saying the tradition would not be changed, with a spokesperson saying, “The Royal Navy has a long tradition of referring to its ships as ‘she’ and will continue to do so”.
Imagine being offended by a ship being referred to as “she”.
Imagine risking prosecution simply to vandalize signs that proclaimed this.
These kind of deranged lunatics are being given power in society.
FILE PHOTO: Muslim pilgrims visit Mount Al-Noor, in the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia August 28, 2017. Picture taken August 28, 2017. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem
March 26, 2019
RIYADH (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s largest travel company, Al Tayyar Travel Group, aims to double its online booking sales to 4 billion riyals ($1.1 billion) by 2020, capitalizing on a rapidly growing tourism market, its chief executive told Reuters.
It also plans to invest heavily in technology to reap the benefits of Saudi government plans to develop domestic tourism and to attract non-Muslim tourists to the kingdom.
Al Tayyar was among the first investors in Careem, the Middle East rival of global ride-hailing firm Uber Technologies Inc, with a 14.7 percent stake.
Following Tuesday’s announcement that Uber will spend $3.1 billion to acquire Careem, Al Tayyar said it would receive a gross profit of 1.78 billion riyals from the deal, of which it will record at least 1.34 billion riyals in 2019.
“We grew our online travel agency business from almost zero in 2015 to over 2 billion riyals of gross booking volume in 2018 and we aim to double that number by the end of 2020,” said chief executive Abdullah Aldawood
“This market is growing at double digit in the Middle East, we are uniquely positioned to capitalize on this benefit and grow our current 50 percent market share,” he added.
Aldawood said Haj and Umra – pilgrimages by Muslims to Saudi Arabia – were other focus areas for his company, in light of forecasts that the market for such trips will grow to 200 billion riyals over next decade from about 75 billion now.
The kingdom has set a goal of boosting religious tourism as part of its long-term plan to diversify the economy beyond oil and announced a target to increase the number of umra pilgrims coming from abroad to 30 million a year by 2030 from 6 million.
“We are deploying investment in order to be dominant player in that market too, we will invest heavily in technology, sourcing and data distribution, securing inventory and market share acquisition to achieve our goals,” Aldawood said.
The company’s founder and board member Nasser bin Aqeel al-Tayyar, who owns a 11.05 percent stake, was detained in the late 2017 anti-corruption probe led by the kingdom’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He was released in early 2018.
(Reporting by Marwa Rashad; Editing by Mark Potter)
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Michelle Kenney, second from left, the mother of Antwon Rose II, leaves the Allegheny County Courthouse with her lawyer S. Lee Merritt, center, after day two of the trial for Michael Rosfeld, a former police officer in East Pittsburgh, Pa., Wednesday, March 20, 2019. Rosfeld is charged with homicide in the fatal shooting of Antwon Rose II as he fled during a traffic stop on June 19, 2018.(AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
PITTSBURGH – The Latest on the homicide trial of a white Pennsylvania police officer in the shooting of an unarmed black 17-year-old (all times local):
10 a.m.
Prosecutors are expected to wrap up their case against a white former East Pittsburgh police officer charged in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager.
Michael Rosfeld's trial continues Thursday for a third day in a Pittsburgh courtroom.
Rosfeld fired three bullets into 17-year-old Antwon Rose II in June after pulling over an unlicensed taxicab suspected to have been used in a drive-by shooting minutes earlier. Rose was a front-seat passenger in the cab and was shot as he fled.
After prosecutors rest their case, the defense is expected to call an expert witness on the use of deadly force.
In his opening statement earlier this week, defense attorney Patrick Thomassey said the area where the shooting happened is a high-crime area. He told jurors Rosfeld was "a policeman who did his duty."
___
3 a.m.
Prosecutors will call more witnesses to the stand in the trial of a white former East Pittsburgh police officer charged in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager.
Michael Rosfeld's trial continues Thursday into its third day in a Pittsburgh courtroom.
The first two days of testimony included compelling statements from witnesses and neighbors, one of whom said he heard Rosfeld panicking, repeatedly saying "I don't know why I shot him. I don't know why I fired."
Rosfeld fired three bullets into 17-year-old Antwon Rose II after pulling over an unlicensed taxicab suspected to have been used in a drive-by shooting minutes earlier. Rose was a front-seat passenger in the cab and was shot as he fled.
LinkSpace’s reusable rocket RLV-T5, also known as NewLine Baby, is carried to a vacant plot of land for a test launch in Longkou, Shandong province, China, April 19, 2019. REUTERS/Jason Lee
April 26, 2019
By Ryan Woo
LONGKOU, China (Reuters) – During initial tests of their 8.1-metre (27-foot) tall reusable rocket, Chinese engineers from LinkSpace, a start-up led by China’s youngest space entrepreneur, used a Kevlar tether to ensure its safe return. Just in case.
But when the Beijing-based company’s prototype, called NewLine Baby, successfully took off and landed last week for the second time in two months, no tether was needed.
The 1.5-tonne rocket hovered 40 meters above the ground before descending back to its concrete launch pad after 30 seconds, to the relief of 26-year-old chief executive Hu Zhenyu and his engineers – one of whom cartwheeled his way to the launch pad in delight.
LinkSpace, one of China’s 15-plus private rocket manufacturers, sees these short hops as the first steps towards a new business model: sending tiny, inexpensive satellites into orbit at affordable prices.
Demand for these so-called nanosatellites – which weigh less than 10 kilograms (22 pounds) and are in some cases as small as a shoebox – is expected to explode in the next few years. And China’s rocket entrepreneurs reckon there is no better place to develop inexpensive launch vehicles than their home country.
“For suborbital clients, their focus will be on scientific research and some commercial uses. After entering orbit, the near-term focus (of clients) will certainly be on satellites,” Hu said.
In the near term, China envisions massive constellations of commercial satellites that can offer services ranging from high-speed internet for aircraft to tracking coal shipments. Universities conducting experiments and companies looking to offer remote-sensing and communication services are among the potential domestic customers for nanosatellites.
A handful of U.S. small-rocket companies are also developing launchers ahead of the expected boom. One of the biggest, Rocket Lab, has already put 25 satellites in orbit.
No private company in China has done that yet. Since October, two – LandSpace and OneSpace – have tried but failed, illustrating the difficulties facing space start-ups everywhere.
The Chinese companies are approaching inexpensive launches in different ways. Some, like OneSpace, are designing cheap, disposable boosters. LinkSpace’s Hu aspires to build reusable rockets that return to Earth after delivering their payload, much like the Falcon 9 rockets of Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
“If you’re a small company and you can only build a very, very small rocket because that’s all you have money for, then your profit margins are going to be narrower,” said Macro Caceres, analyst at U.S. aerospace consultancy Teal Group.
“But if you can take that small rocket and make it reusable, and you can launch it once a week, four times a month, 50 times a year, then with more volume, your profit increases,” Caceres added.
Eventually LinkSpace hopes to charge no more than 30 million yuan ($4.48 million) per launch, Hu told Reuters.
That is a fraction of the $25 million to $30 million needed for a launch on a Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems Pegasus, a commonly used small rocket. The Pegasus is launched from a high-flying aircraft and is not reusable.
(Click https://reut.rs/2UVBjKs to see a picture package of China’s rocket start-ups. Click https://tmsnrt.rs/2GIy9Bc for an interactive look at the nascent industry.)
NEED FOR CASH
LinkSpace plans to conduct suborbital launch tests using a bigger recoverable rocket in the first half of 2020, reaching altitudes of at least 100 kilometers, then an orbital launch in 2021, Hu told Reuters.
The company is in its third round of fundraising and wants to raise up to 100 million yuan, Hu said. It had secured tens of millions of yuan in previous rounds.
After a surge in fresh funding in 2018, firms like LinkSpace are pushing out prototypes, planning more tests and even proposing operational launches this year.
Last year, equity investment in China’s space start-ups reached 3.57 billion yuan ($533 million), a report by Beijing-based investor FutureAerospace shows, with a burst of financing in late 2018.
That accounted for about 18 percent of global space start-up investments in 2018, a historic high, according to Reuters calculations based on a global estimate by Space Angels. The New York-based venture capital firm said global space start-up investments totaled $2.97 billion last year.
“Costs for rocket companies are relatively high, but as to how much funding they need, be it in the hundreds of millions, or tens of millions, or even just a few million yuan, depends on the company’s stage of development,” said Niu Min, founder of FutureAerospace.
FutureAerospace has invested tens of millions of yuan in LandSpace, based in Beijing.
Like space-launch startups elsewhere in the world, the immediate challenge for Chinese entrepreneurs is developing a safe and reliable rocket.
Proven talent to develop such hardware can be found in China’s state research institutes or the military; the government directly supports private firms by allowing them to launch from military-controlled facilities.
But it’s still a high-risk business, and one unsuccessful launch might kill a company.
“The biggest problem facing all commercial space companies, especially early-stage entrepreneurs, is failure” of an attempted flight, Liang Jianjun, chief executive of rocket company Space Trek, told Reuters. That can affect financing, research, manufacturing and the team’s morale, he added.
Space Trek is planning its first suborbital launch by the end of June and an orbital launch next year, said Liang, who founded the company in late 2017 with three other former military technical officers.
Despite LandSpace’s failed Zhuque-1 orbital launch in October, the Beijing-based firm secured 300 million yuan in additional funding for the development of its Zhuque-2 rocket a month later.
In December, the company started operating China’s first private rocket production facility in Zhejiang province, in anticipation of large-scale manufacturing of its Zhuque-2, which it expects to unveil next year.
STATE COMPETITION
China’s state defense contractors are also trying to get into the low-cost market.
In December, the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp (CASIC) successfully launched a low-orbit communication satellite, the first of 156 that CASIC aims to deploy by 2022 to provide more stable broadband connectivity to rural China and eventually developing countries.
The satellite, Hongyun-1, was launched on a rocket supplied by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp (CASC), the nation’s main space contractor.
In early April, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALVT), a subsidiary of CASC, completed engine tests for its Dragon, China’s first rocket meant solely for commercial use, clearing the path for a maiden flight before July.
The Dragon, much bigger than the rockets being developed by private firms, is designed to carry multiple commercial satellites.
At least 35 private Chinese companies are working to produce more satellites.
Spacety, a satellite maker based in southern Hunan province, plans to put 20 satellites in orbit this year, including its first for a foreign client, chief executive Yang Feng told Reuters.
The company has only launched 12 on state-produced rockets since the company started operating in early 2016.
“When it comes to rocket launches, what we care about would be cost, reliability and time,” Yang said.
(Reporting by Ryan Woo; Additional reporting by Beijing newsroom; Editing by Gerry Doyle)
Werner Baumann, CEO of German pharmaceutical and chemical maker Bayer AG, attends the annual general shareholders meeting in Bonn, Germany, April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay
April 26, 2019
By Patricia Weiss and Ludwig Burger
BONN (Reuters) – Bayer shareholders vented their anger over its stock price slump on Friday as litigation risks mount from the German drugmaker’s $63 billion takeover of seed maker Monsanto.
Several large investors said they will not support aspirin investor Bayer’s management in a key vote scheduled for the end of its annual general meeting.
Bayer’s management, led by chief executive Werner Baumann, could see an embarrassing plunge in approval ratings, down from 97 percent at last year’s AGM, which was held shortly before the Monsanto takeover closed in June.
A vote to ratify the board’s actions features prominently at every German AGM. Although it has no bearing on management’s liability, it is seen as a key gauge of shareholder sentiment.
“Due to the continued negative development at Bayer, high legal risks and a massive share price slump, we refuse to ratify the management board and supervisory board’s actions during the business year,” Janne Werning, representing Germany’s Union Investment, a top-20 shareholder, said in prepared remarks.
About 30 billion euros ($34 billion) have been wiped off Bayer’s market value since August, when a U.S. jury found the pesticide and drugs group liable because Monsanto had not warned of alleged cancer risks linked to its weedkiller Roundup.
Bayer suffered a similar defeat last month and more than 13,000 plaintiffs are claiming damages.
Bayer is appealing or plans to appeal the verdicts.
Deutsche Bank’s asset managing arm DWS said shareholders should have been consulted before the takeover, which was agreed in 2016 and closed in June last year.
“You are pointing out that the lawsuits have not been lost yet. We and our customers, however, have already lost something – money and trust,” Nicolas Huber, head of corporate governance at DWS, said in prepared remarks for the AGM.
He said DWS would abstain from the shareholder vote of confidence in the executive and non-executive boards.
Two people familiar with the situation told Reuters this week that Bayer’s largest shareholder, BlackRock, plans to either abstain from or vote against ratifying the management board’s actions.
Asset management firm Deka, among Bayer’s largest German investors, has also said it would cast a no vote.
Baumann said Bayer’s true value was not reflected in the current share price.
“There’s no way to make this look good. The lawsuits and the first verdicts weigh heavily on our company and it’s a concern for many people,” he said, adding it was the right decision to buy Monsanto and that Bayer was vigorously defending itself.
This month, shareholder advisory firms Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis recommended investors not to give the executive board their seal of approval.
(Reporting by Patricia Weiss and Ludwig Burger; Editing by Alexander Smith)
KHARTOUM, Sudan – Sudan’s military, which ousted President Omar al-Bashir after months of protests against his 30-year rule, says it intends to keep the upper hand during the country’s transitional period to civilian rule.
The announcement is expected to raise tensions with the protesters, who demand immediate handover of power.
The Sudanese Professionals Association, which is spearheading the protests, said Friday the crowds will stay in the streets until all their demands are met.
Shams al-Deen al-Kabashi, the spokesman for the military council, said late Thursday that the military will “maintain sovereign powers” while the Cabinet would be in the hands of civilians.
The protesters insist the country should be led by a “civilian sovereign” council with “limited military representation” during the transitional period.
The army toppled and arrested al-Bashir on April 11.
FILE PHOTO: Small toy figures are seen in front of a displayed Huawei and 5G network logo in this illustration picture, March 30, 2019. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic
April 26, 2019
By Charlotte Greenfield
WELLINGTON (Reuters) – China’s Huawei Technologies said Britain’s decision to allow the firm a restricted role in building parts of its next-generation telecoms network was the kind of solution it was hoping for in New Zealand, where it has been blocked from 5G plans.
Britain will ban Huawei from all core parts of 5G network but give it some access to non-core parts, sources have told Reuters, as it seeks a middle way in a bitter U.S.-China dispute stemming from American allegations that Huawei’s equipment could be used by Beijing for espionage.
Washington has also urged its allies to ban Huawei from building 5G networks, even as the Chinese company, the world’s top producer of telecoms equipment, has repeatedly said the spying concerns are unfounded.
In New Zealand, a member of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network that includes the United States, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) in November turned down an initial request from local telecommunication firm Spark to include Huawei equipment in its 5G network, but later gave the operator options to mitigate national security concerns.
“The proposed solution in the UK to restrict Huawei from bidding for the core is exactly the type of solution we have been looking at in New Zealand,” Andrew Bowater, deputy CEO of Huawei’s New Zealand arm, said in an emailed statement.
Spark said it has noted the developments in Britain and would raise it with the GCSB.
The reports “suggest the UK is following other European jurisdictions in taking a considered and balanced approach to managing supplier-related security risks in 5G”, Andrew Pirie, Spark’s corporate relations lead, said in an email.
“Our discussions with the GCSB are ongoing and we expect that the UK developments will be a further item of discussion between us,” Pirie added.
New Zealand’s minister for intelligence services, Andrew Little, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
British culture minister Jeremy Wright said on Thursday that he would report to parliament the conclusions of a government review of the 5G supply chain once they had been taken.
He added that the disclosure of confidential discussions on the role of Huawei was “unacceptable” and that he could not rule out a criminal investigation into the leak.
The decisions by Britain and Germany to use Huawei gear in non-core parts of 5G network makes it harder to prove Huawei should be kept out of New Zealand telecommunication networks, said Syed Faraz Hasan, an expert in communication engineering and networks at New Zealand’s Massey University
He pointed out Huawei gear was already part of the non-core 4G networks that 5G infrastructure would be built on.
“Unless there is a convincing argument against the Huawei devices … it is difficult to keep them away,” Hasan said.
(Reporting by Charlotte Greenfield; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
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
April 26, 2019
(Reuters) – Glencore shares plunged the most in nearly four months on Friday after news overnight that U.S. regulators were investigating whether the miner broke some rules through “corrupt practices”.
Shares of the FTSE 100 company fell as much as 4.2 percent in early deals, and were down 3.5 percent at 310.25 pence by 0728 GMT.
On Thursday, Glencore said the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating whether the company and its units have violated some provisions of the Commodity ExchangeAct and/or CFTC Regulations.
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