FILE PHOTO: Shoppers walk past a window display at the Debenhams department store on Oxford Street in London, Britain December 17, 2018. REUTERS/Simon Dawson/File Photo
March 25, 2019
LONDON (Reuters) – British sportswear group Sports Direct said any restructuring option pursued by Debenhams that could result in no equity value for the department store group’s shareholders “is not a workable solution”.
Debenhams said on Friday it was seeking 200 million pounds ($264 million) of additional funds from lenders, allowing it to pursue restructuring options to secure its future. It said some options would wipe out shareholders.
Sports Direct, controlled by founder and Chief Executive Mike Ashley, is Debenhams’ largest shareholder with a near 30 percent stake.
“If guidance as to what might represent a workable solution for Debenhams could result in no equity value for Debenhams’ current shareholders, from Sports Direct’s perspective and that of Debenhams’ wider stakeholders, that is not a workable solution,” Sports Direct said.
Sports Direct called on Debenhams to reconsider the offers of assistance it had made to the group, which included a 150 million pound loan and the purchase of Debenhams’ Danish business Magasin Du Nord for 100 million pounds.
($1 = 0.7590 pounds)
(Reporting by James Davey; Editing by Edmund Blair)
President Donald Trump will be making a significant request for border wall funds and seeking money to stand up Space Force as a new branch of the military in the White House budget being released next week, an administration official said Friday.
For the first time, Trump plans to stick with the strict spending caps imposed years ago, even though lawmakers have largely avoided them with new budget deals. That will likely trigger a showdown with Congress.
The official said the president's plan promises to balance the budget in 15 years.
Trump will seek $750 billion for defense, while cutting non-defense discretionary spending by 5 percent, said the official, who was unauthorized to discuss the document ahead of its release and spoke on condition of anonymity
Budgets are mainly seen as blueprints for White House priorities. But they are often panned on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers craft the appropriation bills that eventually fund the government, if the president signs them into law.
Trump's budget for the 2020 fiscal year will increase requests for some agencies while reducing others to reflect those priorities. Reductions are proposed, for example, for the Environmental Protection Agency.
The official said Congress has ignored the president's spending cuts for too long. The federal budget is bloated with wasteful spending, the official said, and the administration remains committed to balancing the budget.
By proposing spending levels that adhere to budget caps, the president is courting a debate with Congress. Lawmakers from both parties have routinely agreed to raise spending caps established by a previous deal years ago to fund the government.
Trump, though, has tried to resist those deals. He threatened to veto the last one reached in 2017 to prevent a shutdown. Late last year, a fight over border wall funds sparked the 35-day shutdown that spilled into this year and became the longest in history.
NEW YORK – A second federal judge has blocked the Department of Homeland Security from forcing tens of thousands of Haitians to return to their native country.
U.S. District Judge William F. Kuntz in Brooklyn issued a nationwide injunction Thursday preventing the department from terminating Temporary Protected Status for Haitians.
A federal judge in California had already temporarily blocked the decision to end the status for Haiti, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Sudan. Thursday's ruling applies only to Haiti.
Kuntz ruled on a lawsuit filed by Haitians in Florida and New York that challenged the Trump administration's decision to end the status granted to Haiti after its 2010 earthquake.
Kuntz said evidence showed the policy change was motivated by "a discriminatory purpose of removing non-white immigrants to the country."
A Muslim sociologist uploaded an instructional video to YouTube on how to properly beat your wife by demonstrating the different techniques on a young boy.
The clip shows Abd Al-Aziz Al-Khazraj Al-Ansari showing how to beat your wife in an Islamically permissible fashion.
According to Al-Ansari, a man must sometimes beat his wife “out of love” so that “life can move on.”
Although emphasizing that the beating should be light and painless, Al-Ansari said it was necessary so the wife could feel her husband’s “masculinity and strength” as well as her own “femininity”.
While demonstrating the procedure by grabbing, shaking and slapping a boy who appeared to be his son, Al-Ansari said, “I told you not to leave the house! How many times do I have to tell you?”
Justifying the act, Al-Ansari said, “Some wives like domineering and authoritative husbands, by nature they like violent and powerful husbands.”
Although the original video appears to have been deleted, the YouTube channel that hosted it is still active.
Presumably, YouTube is fine with demonstrations of wife beating performed on children, but Alex Jones had to be completely terminated because ‘reasons’.
Meanwhile, Muslim country Brunei just passed a new law that allows gay people to be stoned to death. Progressives across the west took to the streets to denounce such vile homophobia.
Oh no, wait, they’re still whining about Mike Pence’s gay conversion therapy.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Citing health challenges, Vanderbilt University Chancellor Nicholas Zeppos has announced plans to resign on Aug. 15 after more than a decade in the role.
Zeppos announced Tuesday he plans to take a yearlong sabbatical before he returns to Vanderbilt as a law professor.
Zeppos replaced former chancellor Gordon Gee as the private Nashville university's interim leader in 2007 and was appointed chancellor in 2008.
Zeppos, a legal scholar from Milwaukee, had served as the university's chief academic officer since 2002. He joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 1987 as an assistant law professor.
Provost Susan Wente will begin serving as interim chancellor on Aug. 15. Vanderbilt Board of Trust Chairman Bruce Evans will lead a search for Zeppos' permanent successor.
FILE PHOTO: A man walks in front of the Brazil's state-run Petrobras oil company headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil December 5, 2018. REUTERS/Sergio Moraes/File photo
April 12, 2019
By Tatiana Bautzer and Carolina Mandl
SAO PAULO (Reuters) – CVC Capital Partners and Brazilian investment firm Itausa Investimentos Itau SA are among the groups interested in an LPG distribution unit put on the block by Brazil’s Petrobras, two sources with knowledge of the matter said.
Petroleo Brasileiro SA, as the state-controlled oil company is formally known, expects interested parties to sign confidentiality agreements, the first step to participate in the sale process of Liquigas Distribuidora SA, by April 19.
Petrobras had agreed in 2016 to sell Liquigas Distribuidora to local rival Ultrapar Participacoes SA in a 2.8 billion-real ($720 million) deal, that was blocked by Brazil’s antitrust watchdog Cade in February 2018.
Financial investors are now the main target of the new process, since a sale to one of them would avoid new antitrust hurdles.
Ultrapar is again interested in participating in the sale, Brazilian newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo reported on Friday. But this time, Ultrapar would have to join a consortium according to new rules designed by Petrobras and its adviser, Banco Santander Brasil SA, to avoid new antitrust problems.
Petrobras, CVC, Itausa and Ultrapar did not immediately comment on the matter.
The rules, revised earlier this week, demand from rivals with more than 10 percent of market share in the Brazilian LPG distribution market cannot have a stake in the consortium that is higher than 30 percent of Liquigas’ revenue.
Liquigas is Brazil’s largest LPG distribution unit, operating in the whole country with 4,800 authorized re-sellers.
FILE PHOTO: The Toyota logo is seen on the bonnet of a newly launched Camry Hybrid electric vehicle at a hotel in New Delhi, India, January 18, 2019. REUTERS/Anushree Fadnavis
March 26, 2019
SAO BERNARDO DO CAMPO, Brazil (Reuters) – Toyota Motor Co expects its sales in South America and the Caribbean to rise 0.9 percent in 2019 compared with last year, Celso Simomura, vice president of Toyota’s Brazil operation, said on Tuesday.
He said Toyota expected to sell 445,000 vehicles across the region in 2019, up from 441,000 in 2018. Simomura added that growth had been higher in recent years, with 5.2 percent sales growth in 2018, and 6.9 percent growth in 2017, but did not give a reason for the slowdown.
(Reporting by Marcelo Rochabrun; Editing by Leslie Adler)
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia – Cambodian authorities have ordered a one-hour reduction in the length of school days because of concerns that students and teachers may fall ill from a prolonged heat wave.
Education Minister Hang Chuon Naron said in an announcement seen Friday that the shortened hours will remain in effect until the rainy season starts, which usually occurs in May. The current heat wave, in which temperatures are regularly reaching as high as 41 Celsius (106 Fahrenheit), is one of the longest in memory.
Most schools in Cambodia lack air conditioning, prompting concern that temperatures inside classrooms could rise to unhealthy levels.
School authorities were instructed to watch for symptoms of heat stroke and urge pupils to drink more water.
The new hours cut 30 minutes off the beginning of the school day and 30 minutes off the end.
School authorities instituted a similar measure in 2016.
LONDON – Explosions have rocked Britain’s largest steel plant, injuring two people and shaking nearby homes.
South Wales Police say the incident at the Tata Steel plant in Port Talbot was reported at about 3:35 a.m. Friday (22:35 EDT Thursday). The explosions touched off small fires, which are under control. Two workers suffered minor injuries and all staff members have been accounted for.
Police say early indications are that the explosions were caused by a train used to carry molten metal into the plant. Tata Steel says its personnel are working with emergency services at the scene.
Local lawmaker Stephen Kinnock says the incident raises concerns about safety.
He tweeted: “It could have been a lot worse … @TataSteelEurope must conduct a full review, to improve safety.”
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)
JOHANNESBURG – At least one person is reported dead and homes have been destroyed by a powerful cyclone that struck northern Mozambique and continues to dump rain on the region, with the United Nations warning of “massive flooding.”
Cyclone Kenneth arrived just six weeks after Cyclone Idai tore into central Mozambique, killing more than 600 people and displacing scores of thousands. The U.N. says this is the first time in known history that the southern African nation has been hit by two cyclones in one season.
Forecasters say the new cyclone made landfall Thursday night in a part of Mozambique that has not seen such a storm in at least 60 years.
Mozambique’s local emergency operations center says a woman in the city of Pemba was killed by a falling tree.
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)
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