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Saudi signals OPEC may need to extend oil cuts until end-2019

FILE PHOTO: The logo of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is seen outside their headquarters in Vienna
FILE PHOTO: The logo of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is seen outside their headquarters in Vienna, Austria December 7, 2018. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File Photo

March 17, 2019

By Rania El Gamal, Vladimir Soldatkin and Nailia Bagirova

BAKU (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia said on Sunday OPEC’s job in rebalancing the oil market was far from done as global inventories were still rising despite harsh U.S. sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, signaling it may need to expand output cuts into the second half of 2019.

Russia, which is cutting oil output in tandem with OPEC, also said production cuts would stay in place at least until June, when Washington’s next steps on reducing Iran’s and Venezuela’s oil exports become clearer.

The United States has been increasing its own oil exports steeply in recent months while imposing sanctions on Venezuela and Iran to reduce their shipments to global markets.

Washington’s policies have introduced a new level of uncertainty for OPEC as it struggles to predict the balance of global supply and demand.

“My assessment is that the job still remains ahead of us… We are still seeing inventory builds… We need to stay the course certainly until June,” Saudi energy minister Khalid al Falih said on Sunday.

“We like to remain ready to continue monitoring supply and demand and do what we have to do in the second half,” said Falih as some OPEC ministers met in the Azeri capital of Baku for the monitoring committee of OPEC and its allies like Russia.

U.S. SANCTIONS

OPEC and its allies have cut output by 1.2 million barrels per day – or 1.2 percent of global demand – since January to help rebalance the global oil market and prop up prices.

OPEC is due to meet in April and then again in June to decide its output policies.

The United States has imposed stiff sanctions on OPEC’s third largest oil producer, Iran, but has given some waivers to buyers of its crude until May.

Washington is also trying to oust Venezuela’s current president, Nicolas Maduro, and has imposed sanctions on that country’s oil.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said it was hard for Moscow and OPEC to plan due to the U.S. sanctions. He said they would have little additional information by their next meeting in April, given that Washington will not yet have announced its new waivers on Iran and that more talks would be needed in May.

“Those sanctions are creating negative trends in the market and are completely distorting the supply and demand picture… They are imposed to help sell goods of the country that is imposing the sanctions, and they create uncertainty,” he said.

Russia has been slow to cut its oil output in line with January targets, saying it is difficult to do so in winter.

Saudi Arabia has therefore cut its own oil output to well below its targets to compensate for other producers but Falih said this would not “continue indefinitely”.

Novak said Russia was now approaching full compliance and was close to cutting 140,000 bpd. Falih said Saudi exports would remain below 7 million bpd in April and March.

(Writing by Dmitry Zhdannikov; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Source: OANN

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Tyler Perry steps in to help 4 children of slain single mom

Less than a day after the family of a slain single mother of four launched a fundraising appeal, actor and filmmaker Tyler Perry has lent his support.

News outlets report Perry offered to take care of the family's rent to stave off eviction, arrange for 45-year-old Tynesha Evans' body to be flown to Wisconsin for burial and cover her 18-year-old daughter's tuition at Spelman College so she doesn't have to drop out.

Evans was killed Saturday morning outside a bank near Atlanta. Her boyfriend, 58-year-old Othniel Inniss, was arrested at the scene.

Evans was an author and a full-time health care worker. According to the family's GoFundMe, two of her four children are still minors.

One of them, 14-year-old Shakemia Turner, called Perry "an angel on Earth."

Source: Fox News National

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Tradeweb Markets plans to raise up to $709 million in IPO

FILE PHOTO - Lee Olesky, co-founder and CEO of Tradeweb Markets LLC., speaks at the Sandler O'Neill + Partners Global Exchange and Brokerage Conference in New York
FILE PHOTO - Lee Olesky, co-founder and CEO of Tradeweb Markets LLC., speaks at the Sandler O'Neill + Partners Global Exchange and Brokerage Conference in New York, U.S., June 6, 2018. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

March 25, 2019

(Reuters) – Tradeweb Markets Inc, an electronic trading platform for bonds and derivative instruments, said on Monday it is planning to raise up to $709 million in an initial public offering.

The filing comes a few days after jeans maker Levi Strauss & Co’s blockbuster debut, while ride-hailing service providers Lyft Inc and Uber are set to pursue their much-anticipated listings. Investors anticipate this year as one of the most active years ever for share offers by technology companies.

The New York-based company, which has 222.2 million shares outstanding, said it expects to offer 27.3 million shares at a price of $24-$26 per share, the company said in a regulatory filing on Monday. [https://bit.ly/2JzuFEf]

The higher end of the indicative price range gives the company, which intends to list under the symbol “TW” on the Nasdaq, a market value of $5.78 billion.

Tradeweb Markets is 54 percent owned by Refinitiv, while the rest being held by a consortium of banks. Thomson Reuters, the parent company of Reuters News, owns 45 percent of Refinitiv, with private equity firm Blackstone owning the remainder.

J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are leading a 12-member underwriting team for the IPO.

(Reporting by Bharath Manjesh in Bengaluru; Editing by James Emmanuel)

Source: OANN

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‘I’m going to die’: Survivor recounts Mali ethnic massacre

The sun had yet to rise and Ada Diallo was preparing for morning prayers when gunfire rang out in her village in central Mali. The 55-year-old ran through the darkness to the home of the local spiritual leader.

Inside, some 50 women cowered in a single room, praying for their lives.

They had been caught in the deadliest attack yet of a new conflict in the West African nation, one driven by fear and suspicion over alleged ties to extremist groups that have moved in from the vast, arid north. The insecurity crisis has become so serious that Mali's prime minister on Thursday resigned.

The attack late last month killed 154 people in Diallo's village, which is dominated by the Muslim Peuhl ethnic group. The ethnic Dogon militia suspected in the massacre accuses Peuhls of collaborating with extremists, a charge they deny. The militia leader in turn denies that his fighters, suspected by some Peuhls of collaborating with Mali's military, carried out the attack.

As both sides urge Mali's government to restore peace to the increasingly troubled region after hundreds of deaths last year alone, Diallo's description of the attack, told to The Associated Press, brought the horror to life.

Five minutes after she took shelter with other women that morning, the attackers arrived on their doorstep.

"They opened the windows and started firing indiscriminately while others tried to make holes in the walls of the house so that they could shoot us too," Diallo recalled. "Then the men who had been firing on us from the window threw a bottle filled with petrol and it landed 3 meters (yards) from me."

Amid the terror, she found the strength to make her way to the door. Moments later there was an explosion and the house caught fire.

Running past bodies strewn on the dirt path, she reached another hiding spot.

"I told myself: 'If I stay here, I'm going to die.' So I gathered my courage and I decided to run again. I started to hear more gunshots and so I hid again, this time among two dead men. One had been decapitated by a knife and one had been killed by gunfire."

She eventually found another spot where about 20 wounded women had gathered. They made their way into the countryside, many still barefoot.

From their hiding place in the forest, they watched their village burn for more than three hours.

Around 9 a.m., the women saw several Malian military vehicles arriving and they headed back to the village. As Diallo got closer to her home she started to run, fearing for her husband, Moussa, whom she had not seen in hours.

"When I got there, I found the body of my husband and that of our neighbor," she said. "I cried with all my might: 'This is an innocent man, an elderly man who has never harmed others.'"

Other survivors had found her husband's national identity card, now covered in blood. They handed it to her along with a 5,000 CFA bill ($9) found in his pocket as she wailed in grief.

"We had done nothing wrong and look what happened to us," said Diallo, who is among more than 200 village residents who now live elsewhere with the support of aid groups.

"My husband, 65 years old, an old man, was just slaughtered with all these other people like a chicken. I am disappointed that our government did nothing to protect us."

During the day-long long wait to be evacuated to the regional city of Mopti, there was no way to prepare meals because all the homes had been destroyed.

The survivors could not even gather water to drink.

The wells were contaminated by blood from the victims whose bodies had been dumped there.

___

Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa

Source: Fox News World

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Man threw old toilet through window of school board building, authorities say

A 36-year-old man was arrested and charged with criminal damage this week after allegedly throwing an old toilet through a window of a school board building.

The alleged crime happened last Friday at a Board of Education building in East St. Louis, Mo.

LITTLE BOY GETS HEAD STUCK IN TOILET SEAT, NEEDS HELP FROM FIRE DEPARTMENT TO GET OUT

Police say Dave J. Toliver, a Florida resident, was apprehended in connection with the incident, FOX 2 of St. Louis reported. The incident happened at the offices of District 189, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

His connection to East St. Louis was unclear and police did not disclose a possible motive for the act.

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Toliver ran from the scene, but was found nearby, sitting on another toilet, police said. He was jailed on a $10,000 bond, FOX 2 reported.

Source: Fox News National

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Novartis generics boss quits amid conjecture over business’s future

FILE PHOTO: Richard Francis talks during an interview with Reuters in Basel
FILE PHOTO: Richard Francis talks during an interview with Reuters in Basel, Switzerland January 25, 2017. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann

March 14, 2019

ZURICH (Reuters) – Novartis’s generics chief is quitting after the Swiss drugmaker sold parts of the business and initiated an 18-month revamp, fueling speculation about an eventual spin-off or sale.

Richard Francis, Sandoz’s boss since 2014, is stepping down, Novartis Chief Executive Vas Narasimhan said on Thursday, adding “Richard has decided that for personal reasons he cannot commit to stay with Sandoz until the transformation is completed”.

Francesco Balestrieri, head of Sandoz’s Europe region, will become interim CEO to oversee what Narasimhan called “a multi-year transformation program” in which Sandoz re-focuses on biosimilars — copies of patent-expired biological drugs made by rivals — and hard-to-make generics like insulin.

Balestrieri, at Novartis for 25 years, assumes control over a division with nearly $10 billion in annual sales.

Sandoz last year sold a U.S. pills and dermatology portfolio to India’s Aurobindo and embarked on a “de-integration” of Francis’s division from the rest of Novartis, a process Narasimhan said will stretch into 2020 and clear the way for talks about the business’s future.

Narasimhan has been remaking Novartis by buying speciality treatments like nuclear medicine for cancer and gene therapy, while jettisoning an over-the-counter drugs business and eye surgery-and-contact lens division Alcon, due to be spun off as early as next month.

The departure of Francis, a British citizen, does nothing to quiet conjecture about Sandoz’s future within Novartis, analysts said.

“We see our assumption confirmed that in the next 12 to 18 months a definitive decision may come about whether the generic unit will remain within Novartis,” said Zuercher Kantonalbank analyst Michael Nawrath.

“Even though the Novartis chairman said recently Sandoz isn’t for sale for now, a spin-off like they’re doing with Alcon would align with the strategy of becoming a focused, pure-play drugmaker.”

(Reporting by John Miller,; Editing by Michael Shields)

Source: OANN

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Fearing austerity, Lebanese protest ahead of budget

Retired army officers hold Lebanese flags as they block a highway during a protest in Naameh, south of Beirut
Retired army officers hold Lebanese flags as they block a highway during a protest in Naameh, south of Beirut, Lebanon April 16, 2019. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

April 16, 2019

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Lebanese government has yet to disclose its budget for 2019 but protesters are already in the streets fearing the “difficult and painful” reforms it is expected to announce as it tries to get spending in control and rein in public debt.

Retired army officers blocked several highways with burning tires on Tuesday, a preemptive warning to the government against any cuts to their pensions that might be part of its effort to reduce one of the world’s heaviest public debt burdens.

Though small, the protests offered a glimpse of the political minefield facing the government.

The budget is seen as a critical test of its will to enact long-stalled reforms that economists say are more pressing than ever for an economy that has suffered years of low growth. State finances are strained by a bloated public sector, high debt servicing costs and hefty subsidizes spent on the power sector.

“We went out today to tell them that our pensions are a red line,” said Khaled Ammar, one of a number of retired officers blocking the highway south of Beirut.

The budget has yet to be finalized but speculation it will include cuts to the massive public wage bill has grown since Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil hinted at such steps on Saturday.

“There are those who should be making people aware today that if a temporary reduction doesn’t happen, then there will be no salaries for anyone,” he wrote on Twitter, adding that “if we must start with the ministers and MPs, so be it”.

Protesters said tackling corruption should be the priority.

“If the economic condition of the country has reached this difficult level … we are not responsible for it, the politicians are,” said Ammar, a father of three who served in the military for three decades.

BLOATED PUBLIC SECTOR

Lebanese leaders have been warning of economic crisis for some time. In a February policy statement, the new government committed itself to launching fast and effective reforms that could be “difficult and painful” to avoid a worsening of economic, financial and social conditions.

Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said last week he was concerned about a Greek-style crisis in Lebanon while saying that government measures would prevent “economic problems”.

At a Paris conference last year, Lebanon promised to cut its budget deficit by 1 percent of gross domestic product a year over five years. Economists are now looking for a bigger cut because last year’s deficit was bigger than expected at between 10-1/2 to 11 percent of GDP instead of a projected 8.2 percent.

Serious reforms would help Lebanon unlock some $11 billion in financing pledged in Paris.

The government last week approved a plan to overhaul the power sector – a major drain on state finances for years. Critics say the government must deliver this time, pointing to previous such plans that were never implemented.

The public sector wage bill is the state’s biggest outgoing, followed by servicing the public debt equal to around 150 percent of GDP. The wage bill went up in 2017 after increases were agreed ahead of a parliamentary election.

Nassib Ghobril, chief economist at Lebanon’s Byblos Bank, hopes to see the deficit brought down by 2 percent of GDP and says reforms should include shutting down the many obsolete government agencies.

“They have to freeze hiring, freeze future salary increases, and increases in benefits, and they have to cut the number of public sector employees and restructure the way companies restructure when they are in financial difficulties,” he said.

“The public sector has recruited 31,000 people over the last four years – more than the entire financial sector.”

(Reporting by Tom Perry, Amina Ismail, Laila Bassam; Editing by Frances Kerry)

Source: OANN

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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.

Source: Fox News World

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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.”

Source: Fox News World

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The Wider Image: China's start-ups go small in age of 'shoebox' satellites
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)

Source: OANN

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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.

Source: Fox News World

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German drug and crop chemical maker Bayer holds annual general meeting
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)

Source: OANN

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