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Samsung Electronics quarter one earnings under pressure as chip prices fall

FILE PHOTO: The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at its office building in Seoul
FILE PHOTO: The logo of Samsung Electronics is seen at its office building in Seoul, South Korea January 7, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

April 3, 2019

By Ju-min Park

SEOUL (Reuters) – The odds are stacked against Samsung Electronics Co Ltd ahead of the release of its first-quarter earnings guidance on Friday, with memory chip prices falling and its pricey premium smartphones struggling to be profitable.

The South Korean tech giant took the exceptional step last week of issuing a pre-guidance warning that the quarter would likely miss market expectations due to falls in chip prices and slowing demand for display panels.

Samsung Electronics was forecast to post a 6.9 trillion won ($6.1 billion) operating profit for the January-March period, according to Refinitiv SmartEstimate, more than 50 percent below the 15.6 trillion won recorded in the same period a year ago.

“After Samsung’s rare statement about missing market expectations, I am waiting if there’s an earnings shock for the first quarter and expecting difficult times for Samsung to continue into the second quarter until the fall in chip prices slows,” said Kwon Sung-ryul, an analyst at DB Financial Investment.

Chipmakers in particular have been hit hard by a glut in the global semiconductor industry triggered by weakening smartphone sales and falling investment from data center companies.

On top of this, China’s slowing economic growth, the Sino-U.S. trade war and Brexit are combining to drag down profits for makers of consumer electronics around the world.

Shares in Samsung Electronics – the world’s biggest maker of memory chips, smartphones and display panels – have lost 6 percent in the past 12 months, while its South Korean chipmaking rival, SK Hynix Inc, has fallen 6 percent in the same period.

Although Samsung’s DRAM chip business remains its earnings engine-room with strong margins, its NAND flash memory chips are forecast to post losses as prices slump, analysts say.

NAND flash chip prices dropped 20 percent in the first quarter, their steepest fall since early 2018, and continued to slide albeit at a slower pace in the second quarter, according to DRAMeXchange, a division of tech research firm TrendForce.

Samsung is due to publish its detailed earnings later this month.

NEW SMARTPHONE BOUNCE?

Profits in Samsung’s another key component business, display panels, have been hit by falling sales to large customers like Apple Inc, whose troubles in China have rippled through its global supply chain.

Apple reported a revenue drop of 26 percent in the greater China region during the quarter ending in December, as it weathers a contracting smartphone market, increasing pressure from Chinese rivals, and slowing upgrade cycles.

With its Chinese market share in the doldrums, Samsung unveiled a new line-up of smartphones earlier this year including a foldable phone, hoping to persuade consumers to upgrade from devices which already meet most of their needs.

It has said its new Galaxy flagship smartphones are selling well in China and it is confident it can reverse the recent slump in its fortunes in the world’s biggest smartphone market.

But its latest flagship phone is expensive to make, weighing on profitability even as its sells faster than its predecessor, analysts say.

“Sales are not bad, but its Galaxy smartphone’s profit structure isn’t better because of high costs,” Kwon of DB Financial Investment said.

The Galaxy is also facing stiffer competition with the unveiling in Paris last week of Chinese rival Huawei’s new flagship phone, the P30 Pro.

(Reporting by Ju-min Park; Editing by Stephen Coates)

Source: OANN

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Guns and tourists: Aboard the unlikely India-Pakistan ‘friendship bus’

BSF soldier checks the passport of an Indian passenger from the 'friendship bus' between Indian and Pakistan at the Wagah-Attari border crossing
A Border Security Force (BSF) soldier checks the passport of an Indian passenger from the 'friendship bus' between Indian and Pakistan at the Wagah-Attari border crossing, India, March 15, 2019. REUTERS/Alasdair Pal

March 22, 2019

By Alasdair Pal

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – One Friday morning before dawn, a half-empty Volvo coach slipped out of New Delhi’s Ambedkar bus terminal under armed guard, the sirens of a police convoy wailing.

Carrying a mixture of Indian and Pakistani tourists, the bus, emblazoned with the flags of both countries and the phrase ‘Sada-e-Sarhad’ (Call of the Frontier), is one of the few remaining transport links between the nuclear-armed neighbors, who clashed last month over the disputed Kashmir region in a conflict that alarmed world powers.

But as Reuters found on a return trip on what is also known as the ‘dosti (friendship) bus’, that runs daily except Sundays between Delhi and the Pakistani city of Lahore, it is a powerful symbol of hope for better relations between the rivals, who despite their political differences share strong linguistic, cultural and family ties.

After breakfast at a government-run restaurant on the highway where police seal off the grounds, passengers from both countries watch a Bollywood film on board, starring one of India’s many Muslim actors.

“Salman Khan is a Muslim, he is one of us,” said Hilal Ahmad Mir, 36, a Kashmiri apple farmer and father of four.

The journey from his home in the south Kashmir valley to Pakistan’s capital Islamabad to visit his brother Hamid, should be less than 300 km (200 miles) by the most direct route, across the contested border known as the Line of Control.

But with the ongoing conflict making that route effectively impossible, he is forced to take a lengthy detour via Delhi and Lahore, before eventually reaching Islamabad two days later.

Still, he is upbeat.

“Pakistan makes it easy for Kashmiris to get a visa,” he said. “In some ways, Pakistan and India have a very good relationship. We have had a lot of damage. We want friendship, not guns.”

SEPARATED AT BIRTH

India and Pakistan have thousands of years of shared history. Delhi and Lahore’s sandstone forts and grand mosques were all constructed by the Mughal empire, and both countries were later part of British colonial India.

When Britain gave up control of the Indian subcontinent in 1947, it hastily partitioned it into Hindu-majority India and Islamic Pakistan. Hundreds of thousands died in ethnic bloodshed and millions more became refugees.

Relations between the two countries have been strained ever since. They have fought three wars, two of them over the Muslim-majority Kashmir region that both claim in full but rule in part. Last month, they clashed over a suicide attack on an Indian paramilitary convoy in Kashmir by Pakistani militants.

In an attempt to maintain close links to Indian-administered Kashmir, Pakistan often approves visas for the Muslim-majority population on the same day.

    For the vast majority of people in both countries, however, arranging a visa to visit to the other side is a bureaucratic process that often takes as long as three months, according to half a dozen of the bus’s passengers.

“My family is divided: my wife’s side is in India, my side in Pakistan,” said Shoaib Mohammed, a banker from Karachi returning after a month in Delhi. “The visa process takes at least 45 days and is often extended.”

Though the bus, inaugurated in 1999 by India’s then-prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has been briefly suspended over the years, it ran uninterrupted through the last major clash between the two countries that erupted weeks after the launch.

Neither has it been canceled over the tensions of the last month, although passenger numbers dropped into the single digits, officials said, a testimony to the huge police operation to protect it.

Several armed police are always on board – one of whom on this trip snores on the back seat, rifle on his lap. Dozens more block off roads in Delhi and other major towns, while a convoy ahead clears traffic.

But even without policing costs, the bus loses money, according to a senior Pakistani diplomat based in New Delhi familiar with the bus’s operations.

“Commercially, the bus is a failure,” he said. “But relations between the two countries are so bad at the moment neither side can afford to cancel it.”

INTO THE SUNSET

After lunch in another deserted and heavily guarded highway restaurant, the bus passes through Wagah-Attari, one of the few active border crossings between India and Pakistan. It is best known for an elaborate dusk ceremony where high-kicking guards from both countries perform a choreographed routine at a purpose-built stadium that straddles the border.

Most days, just 100 people cross in either direction, Indian and Pakistani border officials said. Both times Reuters crossed the border, the process took close to three hours, and the terminal was deserted with no other travelers in sight apart from those on the bus.

Mir, from Kashmir, is held by Indian border officials for 40 minutes for questioning.

“Kashmiris are dangerous,” he laughed, as he returned to the bus.

Shortly before the dusk ceremony begins, the bus drives across the border through the stadium, where hundreds of spectators from both countries roar their approval.

Passengers then pass through near-identical Pakistani immigration checks.

On board, spirits are high as the bus begins its last lap to the center of Lahore, about 20 km (12 miles) away.

“We have been visiting for the last 40 years and this time there were no problems for me as a normal visitor,” Mohammed said, of his visit to Delhi when tensions were at their peak. “I didn’t feel any anger against Pakistanis. Nothing.”

(Reporting by Alasdair Pal; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Source: OANN

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Wall Street extends losing streak after weak jobs report

Traders work on the floor of the NYSE in New York
FILE PHOTO: Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., March 7, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

March 8, 2019

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wall Street’s main stock indexes fell for a fifth straight session on Friday and posted their biggest weekly declines since the market tumbled at the end of 2018, as a weak U.S. jobs report ignited more concerns about the global economy.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 23.12 points, or 0.09 percent, to 25,450.11, the S&P 500 lost 5.89 points, or 0.21 percent, to 2,743.04 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 13.32 points, or 0.18 percent, to 7,408.14.

(Reporting by Lewis Krauskopf; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Source: OANN

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Mavs rookie Doncic out for Sunday’s game

NBA: Dallas Mavericks at Miami Heat
Mar 28, 2019; Miami, FL, USA; Dallas Mavericks forward Luka Doncic (77) dribbles the ball around Miami Heat forward Derrick Jones Jr. (5) during the second half at American Airlines Arena. Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports

March 30, 2019

Dallas Mavericks wing Luka Doncic, competing to be the NBA’s Rookie of the Year, will sit out Sunday’s game at the Oklahoma City Thunder due a right thigh contusion, coach Rick Carlisle told reporters Saturday.

“We’re going to be very prudent with this and make sure that he’s a hundred percent before even thinking about him getting back out there,” Carlisle was quoted as saying in the Dallas Morning News.

Given that, Doncic might also be available when Dallas plays Monday night at home against the Philadelphia 76ers.

Doncic suffered the injury early in Thursday night’s game against Miami during a collision with the Heat’s Derrick Jones Jr. Doncic limped off the court but returned to finish the game, playing 31 minutes while not at full strength.

Dallas, out of the playoff contention, has seven games remaining.

Doncic, the third pick in the 2018 NBA Draft, is averaging 21.1 points, 7.6 rebounds and 5.9 assists, having played in 70 of 75 games. He and Atlanta Hawks guard Trae Young (19.0 points, 7.9 assists per game) are the leading candidates for Rookie of the Year.

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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Cardinals sign veteran CB Brock

FILE PHOTO: NFL: Cleveland Browns at Denver Broncos
FILE PHOTO: Dec 15, 2018; Denver, CO, USA; Denver Broncos cornerback Tramaine Brock (22) catches the ball on a punt return in the first quarter against the Denver Broncos at Broncos Stadium at Mile High. Mandatory Credit: Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports

April 2, 2019

Veteran cornerback Tramaine Brock has signed a one-year deal with the Arizona Cardinals, the team announced Tuesday.

Brock, 30, is entering his 10th season and adds depth and experience to the secondary behind starting corners Patrick Peterson and Robert Alford.

Brock played 12 games with the Denver Broncos in 2018 and 11 games with the Minnesota Vikings in 2017 after spending his first seven seasons with the San Francisco 49ers.

He has appeared in 103 games (45 starts) and has registered 11 interceptions and 209 tackles.

Brock will be reunited with Cardinals defensive coordinator Vance Joseph, who was his head coach last year in Denver. Joseph also coached the defensive backs for San Francisco when Brock was a rookie in 2010.

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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Booker says Democrats will put ‘a woman on the ticket’ in 2020 White House race

Democratic 2020 U.S. presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) gives the keynote speech at Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma
Democratic 2020 U.S. presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) gives the keynote speech at Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma, Alabama, U.S. March 3, 2019. REUTERS/Chris Aluka Berry

March 15, 2019

By Joseph Ax

LEBANON, N.H. (Reuters) – Democratic U.S. Senator Cory Booker all but guaranteed at a campaign event on Friday that he will pick a woman as his running mate if he wins his party’s nomination for president next year.

“I am very confident that this election, we will make history, because no matter what – I’m looking you in the eye when I say this – there will be a woman on the ticket,” he told a voter at a pub in Lebanon, New Hampshire, after she noted there has never been a female U.S. president or vice president.

“I don’t know if it’s the vice president’s position or the president’s position,” he continued. “If I have my way, there will be a woman on the ticket.”

The crowded Democratic field includes several prominent women, including four sitting U.S. senators: Kamala Harris of California, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.

When asked after the event whether he was promising his vice presidential candidate would be a woman, the New Jersey senator said, “Should I be a nominee, you can be sure that I’ll look to have gender diversity on my ticket.”

In 1984, Walter Mondale chose New York Representative Geraldine Ferraro as the first woman vice presidential candidate on a major party ticket.

Booker emphasized that he campaigned for Hillary Clinton in 2016, when she lost the presidency to Republican Donald Trump, and noted most of his senior staff positions, including his chief of staff and legislative director, are occupied by women.

Booker’s remarks on Friday appeared to go further than his comments last month, when he told MSNBC he would “be looking to women first” but said he did not want to “box himself in” so early in the election cycle.

Women voters and candidates helped power the Democratic wave that recaptured the U.S. House of Representatives in last fall’s elections, fueled in part by anger over Trump’s 2016 election despite multiple sexual misconduct allegations, which he denies.

If elected in November 2020, Booker would be the second black man to serve as president, after Barack Obama.

After the event, Booker also confirmed for the first time his relationship with actress Rosario Dawson, a day after Dawson told TMZ that their rumored romance was the real deal.

“I am dating Rosario Dawson, and I’m very happy about it,” said Booker.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Dan Grebler)

Source: OANN

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Video: Proof Modern Liberals Have Aligned With The KKK

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Source: InfoWars

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FILE PHOTO: Sri Lankan Special Task Force soldiers stand guard in front of a mosque as a Muslim man walks past him during the Friday prayers at a mosque, days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on Easter Sunday, in Colombo
FILE PHOTO: Sri Lankan Special Task Force soldiers stand guard in front of a mosque as a Muslim man walks past him during the Friday prayers at a mosque, five days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on Catholic churches and luxury hotels across the island on Easter Sunday, in Colombo, Sri Lanka April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam

KATTANKUDY, Sri Lanka (Reuters) – Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran was 12 years old when he began his studies at the Jamiathul Falah Arabic College. He was a nobody, with no claim to scholarship other than ambition.

Zahran and his four brothers and sisters squeezed into a two-room house with their parents in a small seaside town in eastern Sri Lanka; their father was a poor man who sold packets of food on the street and had a reputation for being a petty thief.

“His father didn’t do much,” recalled the school’s vice principal, S.M. Aliyar, laughing out loud.

The boy surprised the school with his sharp mind. For three years, Zahran practiced memorizing the Koran. Next came his studies in Islamic law. But the more he learned, the more Zahran argued that his teachers were too liberal in their reading of the holy book.

“He was against our teaching and the way we interpreted the Koran – he wanted his radical Islam,” said Aliyar. “So we kicked him out.”

Aliyar, now 73 with a long white beard, remembers the day Zahran left in 2005. “His father came and asked, ‘Where can he go?’.”

The school would hear again of Mohamed Zahran. And the world now knows his name. The Sri Lankan government has identified him as the ringleader of a group that carried out a series of Easter Sunday suicide bombings in the country on April 21.

The blasts killed more than 250 people in churches and luxury hotels, one of the deadliest-ever such attacks in South Asia. There were nine suicide bombers who blew apart men, women and children as they sat to pray or ate breakfast.

Most of the attackers were well-educated and from wealthy families, with some having been abroad to study, according to Sri Lankan officials.

That description does not, however, fit their alleged leader, a man said to be in his early 30s, who authorities say died in the slaughter. Zahran was different.

INTELLIGENCE FAILINGS

Sri Lanka’s national leadership has come under heavy criticism for failing to heed warnings from Indian intelligence services – at least three in April alone – that an attack was pending. But Zahran’s path from provincial troublemaker to alleged jihadist mastermind was marked by years of missed or ignored signals that the man with a thick beard and paunch was dangerous.

His increasingly militant brand of Islam was allowed to grow inside a marginalized minority community – barely 10 percent of the country’s roughly 20 million people are Muslim – against a backdrop of a dysfunctional developing nation.

The top official at the nation’s defense ministry resigned on Thursday, saying that some institutions under his charge had failed.

For much of his adult life, Zahran, 33, courted controversy inside the Muslim community itself.

In the internet age, that problem did not stay local. Zahran released online videos calling for jihad and threatening bloodshed.

After the blasts, Islamic State claimed credit and posted a video of Zahran, clutching an assault rifle, standing before the group’s black flag and pledging allegiance to its leader.

The precise relationship between Zahran and Islamic State is not yet known. An official with India’s security services, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that during a raid on a suspected Islamic State cell by the National Investigation Agency earlier this year officers found copies of Zahran’s videos. The operation was in the state of Tamil Nadu, just across a thin strait of ocean from Sri Lanka.

“LIKE A SPOILED CHILD”

Back in 2005, Zahran was looking to make his way in the world. His hometown of Kattankudy is some seven hours’ drive from Colombo on the other side of the island nation, past the countless palm trees, roadside Buddha statues, cashew hawkers and an occasional lumbering elephant in the bush. It is a town of about 40,000 people, a dot on the eastern coast with no clear future for an impoverished young man who’d just been expelled.

Zahran joined a mosque in 2006, the Dharul Athar, and gained a place on its management committee. But within three years they’d had a falling out.

“He wanted to speak more independently, without taking advice from elders,” said the mosque’s imam, or spiritual leader, M.T.M. Fawaz.

Also, the young man was more conservative, Fawaz said, objecting, for instance, to women wearing bangles or earrings.

“The rest of us come together as community leaders but Zahran wanted to speak for himself,” said Fawaz, a man with broad shoulders lounging with a group of friends in a back office of the mosque after evening prayers. “He was a black sheep who broke free.”

Mohamed Yusuf Mohamed Thaufeek, a friend who met Zahran at school and later became an adherent of his, said the problems revolved around Zahran’s habit of misquoting Islamic scriptures.

The mosque’s committee banned him from preaching for three months in 2009. Zahran stormed off.

“We treated him like a spoiled child, a very narrow-minded person who was always causing some trouble,” said the head of the committee, Mohamed Ismail Mohamed Naushad, a timber supplier who shook his head at the memory.

Now on his own, Zahran began to collect a group of followers who met in what Fawaz described as “a hut”.

At about that time, Zahran, then 23, married a young girl from a small town outside the capital of Colombo and brought his bride back to Kattankudy, according to his sister, Mathaniya.

“I didn’t have much of a connection with her – she was 14,” she said.

Despite being “a bit rough-edged”, Zahran was a skilled speaker and others his age were drawn to his speeches and Koranic lessons, said Thaufeek. He traveled the countryside at times, giving his version of religious instruction as he went.

Also, Zahran had found a popular target: the town’s Sufi population, who practice a form of Islam often described a mystical, but which to conservatives is heresy.

Tensions in the area went back some years. In 2004, there was a grenade attack on a Sufi mosque and in 2006 several homes of Sufis were set afire. Announcements boomed from surrounding mosques at the time calling for a Sufi spiritual leader to be killed, said Sahlan Khalil Rahman, secretary of a trust that oversees a group of Sufi mosques.

He blamed followers of the fundamentalist Wahhabi strain of Islam that some locals say became more popular after funding from Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Wahhabism, flowed to mosques in Kattankudy.

It was, Rahman said, an effort “to convert Sufis into Wahhabis through this terrorism”. Rahman handed over a photograph album showing charred homes, bullet holes sprayed across an office wall and a shrine’s casket upended.

ONLINE RADICAL

It was an ideal backdrop for Zahran’s bellicose delivery and apparent sense of religious destiny.

He began holding rallies, bellowing insults through loudspeakers that reverberated inside the Sufis’ house of worship as they tried to pray.

In 2012, Zahran started a mosque of his own. The Sufis were alarmed and, Rahman said, passed on complaints to both local law enforcement and eventually national government offices. No action was taken.

The then-officer in charge of Kattankudy police, Ariyabandhu Wedagedara, said in a telephone interview that he couldn’t arrest people simply because of theological differences.

     “The problem at the time was between followers of different Islamic sects – Zahran was not a major troublemaker, but he and followers of other sects, including the Sufis, were at loggerheads,” Wedagedara said.

Zahran found another megaphone: the internet. His Facebook page was taken down after the bombings, but Muslims in the area said his video clips had previously achieved notoriety.

His speeches went from denouncing Sufis to “kafirs”, or non-believers, in general. Zahran’s sister, Mathaniya, said in an interview that she thought “his ideas became more radical from listening to Islamic State views on the Internet”.

In one undated video, Zahran, in a white tunic and standing in front of an image of flames, boomed in a loud voice: “You will not have time to pick up the remains of blown-up bodies. We’ll keep sending those insulting Allah to hell.”

“HARD TO TAKE”

Zahran spoke in Tamil, making his words available to young Muslims clicking on their cellphones in Kattankudy and other towns like it during a period when, in both 2014 and 2018, reports and images spread of Sinhalese Buddhists rioting against Muslims in Sri Lanka.

In 2017, Zahran’s confrontations boiled over. At a rally near a Sufi community, his followers came wielding swords. At least one man was hacked and hospitalized. The police arrested several people connected to Zahran, including his father and one of his brothers. Zahran slipped away from public view.

That December, the mosque Zahran founded released a public notice disowning him. Thaufeek, his friend from school, is now the head. He counted the places that Zahran had been driven away from – his school, the Dharul Athar mosque and then, “we ourselves kicked him out, which would have been hard for him to take”.

The next year, a group of Buddha statues was vandalized in the town of Mawanella, about five hours drive from Kattankudy. There, in the lush mountains of Sri Lanka’s interior, Zahran had taken up temporary residence.

“He was preaching to kill people,” said A.G.M. Anees, who has served as an imam at a small mosque in the area for a decade. “This is not Islam, this is violence.”

Zahran went into hiding once more.

On the Thursday morning before the Easter Sunday bombings, Zahran’s sister-in-law knocked on the door of a neighbor who did seamstress work near Kattankudy. She handed over a parcel of fabric and asked for it to be sewn into a tunic by the end of the day.

“She said she was going on a family trip,” said the neighbor, M.H. Sithi Nazlya.

Zahran’s sister says that her parents turned off their cellphones on the Friday. On Sunday, when she visited their home, they were gone.

She does not know if Zahran arranged for them to be taken somewhere safe. Or why he would have carried out the bombing.

But now in Kattankudy, and in many other places, people are talking about Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran.

(Reporting by Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam; Additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani, Shihar Aneez and Alasdair Pal; Editing by John Chalmers and Alex Richardson)

Source: OANN

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A Wells Fargo logo is seen in New York City
FILE PHOTO: A Wells Fargo logo is seen in New York City, U.S. January 10, 2017. REUTERS/Stephanie Keith

April 26, 2019

By Jessica DiNapoli and Imani Moise

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wells Fargo & Co’s board has retained executive search firm Spencer Stuart to hunt for a new chief executive, ideally a woman who can tackle its regulatory and public perception issues, two people familiar with the matter said.

Wells Fargo’s ambition to become the only major U.S. bank with a female CEO underscores the need to restore its image with a wide range of constituents, including customers, shareholders, regulators and politicians, after it became mired in a scandal in 2016 for opening potentially millions of unauthorized accounts.

Former CEO Tim Sloan left abruptly last month, becoming the second CEO to leave the bank in the scandal’s fallout.

The board plans to approach Citigroup Inc’s Latin America chief Jane Fraser, one of the sources said. During Fraser’s 15-year tenure at Citigroup, she has gained experience running consumer and commercial businesses as well as its private bank.

Fraser could not be immediately reached for comment.

The board also discussed approaching JPMorgan Chase & Co’s Marianne Lake, but after the bank named her to run JPMorgan’s consumer lending business last week, that option became less viable, the source added. The board wants someone who can convince regulators, employees, investors and customers that the bank has fixed problems underpinning the sales scandal, the sources said.

The bank’s board feels that choosing a woman might please lawmakers in Washington who have been critical not only of Wells Fargo’s misbehavior, but of the broader banking industry for a lack of diversity and gender equality, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

It also believes that such a move could bolster Wells Fargo’s image with the households of customers where women play a leading role in managing finances, one of the sources added.

The new CEO will also have to resolve litigation and regulatory matters. There are 14 outstanding consent orders with government entities, as well as probes by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Labor and the Department of Justice.

To be sure, Spencer Stuart will approach and consider several male candidates for the CEO job as well, one of the sources said. The top priority is to find an external candidate who can navigate the bank’s regulatory issues, the source added.

Finding an outsider who meets all those qualifications and wants the job will be difficult, the sources said. There are few people with the necessary experience, even fewer of those who are women, and it is not clear if any of the obvious candidates would be open to taking the role.

The sources asked not to be identified because Wells Fargo’s board deliberations are confidential.

Spokespeople for Wells Fargo and Spencer Stuart declined to comment.

Wells Fargo’s board has not made any public statements about its requirements for a new CEO, beyond Chair Betsy Duke saying the job should attract the “top talent in banking.”

The board wants to complete the search within the next three to six months, one of the sources said.

STALLED SHARES

After Sloan’s ouster, Wells Fargo’s board appointed Allen Parker, who had been general counsel, as interim CEO. The board has said it is looking for an external candidate as a permanent replacement. It is not clear whether Parker will stay at the bank.

Others whose names have been mentioned by analysts, recruiters and industry sources as perspective CEO candidates include Alphabet Inc finance chief Ruth Porat and Bank of America Corp’s chief technology officer Cathy Bessant.

Wells Fargo shares have stalled since Sloan’s departure on March 29th, while the KBW Bank index has rallied more than 7 percent.

Wells Fargo would be “the best stock on earth to buy” if it had the right CEO, said Greg Donaldson, chairman of Donaldson Capital Management in Indiana.

Donaldson held about 50,000 Wells Fargo shares, but sold the stake last year as problems mounted. The CEO change could convince him to re-invest, depending on who it is, he told Reuters.

“It would be very smart for them to get a woman,” he said.

(Reporting by Jessica DiNapoli and Imani Moise in New York; Editing by Lauren Tara LaCapra, Greg Roumeliotis and Susan Thomas)

Source: OANN

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A worker walks on the roof of a new home under construction in Carlsbad
FILE PHOTO: A worker walks on the roof of a new home under construction in Carlsbad, California September 22, 2014. REUTERS/Mike Blake

April 26, 2019

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. economy is growing at a 2.08% annualized pace in the second quarter based on upbeat data on durable goods orders and new home sales in March, the New York Federal Reserve’s Nowcast model showed on Friday.

This was faster than the 1.92% growth rate calculated by the N.Y. Fed model the week before.

(Reporting by Richard Leong; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: OANN

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Extraordinary European Union leaders summit in Brussels
FILE PHOTO: Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte arrives at an extraordinary European Union leaders summit to discuss Brexit, in Brussels, Belgium April 10, 2019. REUTERS/Yves Herman

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Friday he had assured China’s Huawei Technologies that it would not face discrimination in the rollout of Italy’s 5G telecoms network.

Conte was speaking on a visit to China where he said he met Huawei’s chief executive, Ren Zhengfei. The prime minister’s comments were carried in Italy by TV broadcaster Sky Italia.

“I told him that we have adopted some precautions, some measures to protect our interests that demand very high levels of security … not only from Huawei but any company entering into the 5G arena,” he said.

Huawei, the world’s biggest producer of telecoms equipment, is under intense scrutiny after the United States told allies not to use its technology because of fears it could be a vehicle for Chinese spying. Huawei has categorically denied this.

(Writing by by Mark Bendeich; Editing by Angelo Amante)

Source: OANN

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U.S. President Trump departs for travel to Indianapolis from the White House in Washington
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he departs for travel to Indianapolis, Indiana from the White House in Washington, U.S., April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

April 26, 2019

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Friday was expected to announce his intention to revoke the United States’ status as a signatory of the Arms Trade Treaty, which was signed in 2013 by then-President Barack Obama but never ratified by Congress, two U.S. officials said.

Trump was expected to announce the decision in a speech in Indianapolis, to the National Rifle Association, the officials said. The NRA, a powerful gun lobby group, has long been opposed to the treaty, which was negotiated at the United Nations.

(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Bill Trott)

Source: OANN

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