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WTO to issue first ever ruling in ‘national security’ dispute on Friday

FILE PHOTO: The World Trade Organization (WTO) headquarters are pictured in Geneva
FILE PHOTO: The World Trade Organization (WTO) headquarters are pictured in Geneva, Switzerland, July 26, 2018. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo

April 5, 2019

GENEVA (Reuters) – The World Trade Organization will publish its first ever ruling on a “national security” dispute later on Friday, it said in a statement emailed to journalists.

The ruling in a Russian-Ukrainian dispute over rail transit may have consequences for U.S. tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos, which U.S. President Donald Trump says are based on national security concerns, and therefore immune to a legal challenge.

Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have also cited national security in a trade dispute against Qatar.

Friday’s ruling, which will be issued around 1330 GMT, can be appealed by Ukraine and Russia.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Source: OANN

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Rep. Woodall: Dems Trying to ‘Weaponize’ Tax Code Against Trump

Rep. Rob Woodall, R-Ga., said Democrats' request for President Donald Trump’s tax returns is an attempt “to weaponize” the tax code.

Woodall made his comments during a Thursday interview for Hill-TV.

“We’re politicizing the tax system,” Woodall said. “Presidents have never been forced to release it, they volunteered to release those tax returns.

“To see what the Ways and Means Committee is doing, now to use its Article 1 power to weaponize the tax code is really disturbing.”

Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, has asked the Internal Revenue Service for six years of Trump’s personal and business tax returns.

But Woodall said he hoped the push for the president’s tax return will subside.

“I hope it’s just a sign of this first quarter outrage and that we’ll quickly move past that and get into the things the Ways and Means Committee needs to be working on like trade, like tax policies, like healthcare,” he said.

Source: NewsMax Politics

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Russian central bank meeting Vostochny Bank minority investors

FILE PHOTO: A view shows the Russia's Central Bank headquarters in Moscow
FILE PHOTO: A view shows the Russia's Central Bank headquarters in Moscow, Russia February 22, 2018. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin/File Photo

February 20, 2019

By Tatiana Voronova and Darya Korsunskaya

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s central bank is meeting Vostochny Bank minority shareholders following the detention on fraud charges last week of its majority U.S. investor, a banking source and a senior Russian official told Reuters on Wednesday.

Russia’s 35th biggest lender by assets, which is majority owned by private equity fund Baring Vostok Capital Partners, declined to comment, as did the central bank, citing a policy of not discussing the activities of banks that are going concerns.

Baring Vostok’s founder, U.S. citizen Michael Calvey, and several other senior executives were detained on suspicion of defrauding Vostochny Bank shareholders. They deny the allegations, and say the case is being used to apply pressure in a business dispute.

Prosecutors said the case was initiated when one of the minority shareholders at Vostochny Bank went to law enforcement officials alleging fraud by Baring Vostok.

The banking source said the central bank would meet the minority shareholders to discuss how to handle financial issues at the lender, especially in light of Calvey’s detention.

A coalition of lobby groups for European businesses active in Russia said in a joint statement on Wednesday it was extremely concerned about the detentions.

“The detention of Baring Vostok top-management has sent shockwaves through the country’s business community, and can potentially seriously damage the investment climate and attractiveness of Russia for foreign direct investments.”

Senior figures in the pro-business wing of Russia’s ruling establishment have vouched for Calvey as an upstanding investor.

Former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, now head of the State Audit Chamber, called the detention an “emergency” for the Russian economy.

(Additional reporting by Elena Fabrichnaya and Andrey Ostroukh; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Alexander Smith)

Source: OANN

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US cardinals hope new accountability stops abusers in future

Two U.S. cardinals attending the Vatican's sex abuse prevention summit said Friday that the downfall of their former colleague, Theodore McCarrick, was sad for the Catholic church but they hoped a new spirit of accountability would prevent future cover-ups of bishop misconduct.

Cardinals Sean O'Malley of Boston and Blase Cupich of Chicago addressed the McCarrick scandal at a press conference on the second day of Pope Francis' summit, which was dedicated Friday to holding the Catholic hierarchy accountable for preventing sexual abuse.

Francis defrocked McCarrick, 88, last week after a Vatican investigation found him guilty of sexually abusing minors and adults, including during confession. His downfall has sparked a crisis in credibility in the Catholic hierarchy, since it was apparently an open secret in some U.S. and Vatican circles that he slept with seminarians.

"The situation of Theodore McCarrick is a very, very sad moment in history. It's a shameful moment," Cupich told reporters. "And yet, at the same time, it causes each one of us to make sure we live our lives authentically before the people of God that we serve."

O'Malley said he expected the Vatican and the four U.S. dioceses investigating McCarrick would soon release the results of their investigations. The Holy See refused a request from the U.S. bishops conference to conduct a full-scale Vatican investigation into who knew what and when about McCarrick's rise through the church's ranks, agreeing instead to a limited review of the Holy See's own archives.

The Vatican has said it would release the results, though no timeframe has been given. Separately, the four U.S. dioceses where McCarrick worked — New York City; Metuchen, New Jersey; Newark, New Jersey and Washington — are conducting their own reviews.

O'Malley said he hoped the discussions at the sex abuse summit about how bishops are responsible for the universal church would prevent another such cover-up.

"I would hope that any bishop who is aware of this kind of misbehavior would certainly make that known to the Holy See, and not feel that they in any way should try to cover up or turn a blind eye to this," he said. "Transparency is what the way forward is about.

"We have to be able to confront our sinfulness and deal with the conflict and not sweep it under the carpet," said O'Malley.

The Vatican starting in 2000 was aware of rumors of McCarrick's penchant for seminarians. A New York priest wrote a letter at the urging of the Vatican's ambassador to the U.S. after his seminarians complained about his behavior. And yet McCarrick was made a cardinal in 2001 and served as a frontman for the U.S. bishops when they adopted a get-tough policy against sexually abusive priests in 2002.

Bishops, however, were exempt from that policy. The Vatican is still struggling to articulate firm protocols on how to handle accusations of misconduct against them.

___

More AP coverage of clergy sex abuse at https://www.apnews.com/Sexualabusebyclergy

Source: Fox News World

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Shell CEO’s pay more than doubles to $22.8 million in 2018

FILE PHOTO: CEO of Royal Dutch Shell van Beurden meets with Russian President Putin in Moscow
FILE PHOTO: Ben van Beurden, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell company, speaks during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia June 21, 2017. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin/File Photo

March 14, 2019

LONDON (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell Chief Executive Ben van Beurden saw his pay package more than double to 20.1 million euros ($22.8 million) in 2018, mainly thanks to a bonus and an incentive plan for delivering on targets, the oil company said on Thursday.

It was the second highest pay on record for van Beurden since he became CEO in 2014 and received 24.2 million euros that year – mainly because of changes in pension payments and tax calculations as a result of his promotion.

As the oil prices plunged, his pay fell to 5.6 million euros in 2015, before recovering to 8.6 million in 2016 and 8.9 million in 2017.

Shell said van Beurden’s role was critical in successfully integrating rival BG, delivering on a $30 billion divestment plan and “leading the sector in framing a methodology for aligning with the Paris (climate change) agreement”.

“We reviewed Shell’s CEO pay ratio externally against the ratios that we see in other FTSE 30 companies, which we calculated based on their disclosed employee numbers and employee costs,” Shell’s remuneration committee said.

“We believe our ratio is consistent with those seen in other FTSE 30 companies, although it is challenging to draw a meaningful comparison given the different markets and industries in which they operate,” it added.

Shell said its remuneration committee would include a new performance condition linked to the transition to lower-carbon energy for the long-term incentive plan grant starting in 2019, one year earlier than planned.

(Reporting by Dmitry Zhdannikov; Editing by Mark Potter)

Source: OANN

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Warren Buffett says Berkshire overpaid for Kraft Heinz

FILE PHOTO: Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc, pauses while playing bridge as part of the company annual meeting weekend in Omaha
FILE PHOTO: Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway Inc, pauses while playing bridge as part of the company annual meeting weekend in Omaha, Nebraska U.S. May 6, 2018. REUTERS/Rick Wilking/File Photo

February 25, 2019

By Jonathan Stempel and Jennifer Ablan

(Reuters) – Warren Buffett said on Monday his Berkshire Hathaway Inc overpaid in the 2015 merger that created Kraft Heinz Co, but he had no plans to flee the struggling packaged foods company.

Buffett spoke four days after Kraft Heinz took a $15.4 billion writedown for its Kraft and Oscar Mayer brands and other assets, slashed its dividend, and said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was probing its accounting.

Kraft Heinz’s share price sank 27.5 percent on Friday, wiping out more than $16 billion of market value, and causing Berkshire to lose $4.3 billion on its stake. Berkshire owns 26.7 percent of Kraft Heinz.

“I was wrong in a couple of ways on Kraft Heinz,” Buffett said on CNBC television. “We overpaid for Kraft.”

Buffett did not say by how much Berkshire overpaid, but said the market reacted “probably quite properly” to the news.

He also said he has “absolutely no intention” of adding to or subtracting from Berkshire’s stake in Kraft Heinz, saying the company had “very, very strong” brands and that he would be happy to own it a decade from now.

The comments were a rare admission of error by the 88-year-old billionaire on a major investment at his Omaha, Nebraska-based conglomerate.

Berkshire and Brazilian private equity firm 3G Capital combined the former Kraft Foods with H.J. Heinz, which they bought in 2013, and own about half of the merged company.

Buffett said he may have learned about the SEC probe seven to 10 days before it was announced.

Greg Abel, a Berkshire vice chairman widely considered a candidate to succeed Buffett as Berkshire’s chief executive officer, is a Kraft Heinz director.

Buffett also said he would continue to do business with 3G and its co-founder Jorge Paulo Lemann, calling him “an absolutely outstanding human being.”

‘TOE TO TOE’

Kraft Heinz’s disclosure raised questions about 3G’s financial strategy for the company, whose brands include Jell-O, Kool-Aid and Philadelphia cream cheese, and whether it is out of step with consumers seeking healthier, fresher alternatives to processed food.

Buffett acknowledged the changes, but said greater pressure is coming from retailers such as Amazon.com Inc, Walmart Inc and Costco Wholesale Corp, saying the latter’s Kirkland brand outsells all Kraft Heinz products.

Stronger brands can “go toe to toe with Walmart or Costco” but weaker brands “tend to lose out,” Buffett said. “The ability to price has changed, and that’s huge.”

Still, Buffett added: “If I had to bet one way or another, I think people will eat more of our products this year than last year.”

Berkshire’s own $3 billion writedown related to Kraft Heinz contributed to a $25.39 billion fourth-quarter net loss for Berkshire.

“He monumentally overpaid for Kraft,” said Doug Kass, founder of the hedge fund Seabreeze Partners Management Inc. “Increasingly, the moats he initially saw in his investments have been damaged.”

The bad news also called into question 3G’s signature business model of zero-based budgeting, which requires managers to justify their expenses annually from scratch, rather than use last year as a guide or pursue cost savings on an ongoing basis.

Kraft Heinz’s belt-tightening resulted in more than $1.7 billion in annual savings, including the loss of thousands of jobs, mirroring 3G’s similar efforts at such companies as Anheuser-Busch InBev and Tim Hortons.

The strategy has resulted in leaner companies, but could backfire if the companies lacked products that people wanted, or failed to spend enough to develop and market those products.

Buffett said he did not believe 3G underinvested in Kraft Heinz, but it was hard for him to tell. Berkshire is not involved in day-to-day operations.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel and Jennifer Ablan in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Tom Brown)

Source: OANN

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Man Yells “Allahu Akbar” at Funeral of German Woman Murdered by Muslim Boyfriend

Panicked churchgoers fled in terror after a man yelled “Allahu Akbar” during the funeral of a German woman who was brutally murdered by her Muslim migrant boyfriend.

More than 500 people participated in the funeral march which took place in the city of Worms following the murder of 21-year-old Cynthia R.

Cynthia was killed by her boyfriend Ahmed T. having previously agreed to wear a hijab and learn Arabic to please the 22-year-old asylum seeker who already knew that he was about to be deported.

After Cynthia refused to go to Tunisia with Ahmed, who had been abusing the system by claiming welfare under three different names while in Germany, “He stabbed the young woman by ramming a kitchen knife through her neck, her lungs, her hands and her back more than ten times,” reports VladTepes.

Despite the somber nature of the funeral march, the funeral itself was ruined when a man rushed to the front of the church before standing in front of the altar, holding his arms outstretched and shouting “Allahu Akbar!”

The refrain means “God is great” in Arabic but it is also routinely shouted by Islamic terrorists before they carry out violent attacks.

This prompted around 20 attendees to run out of the church “distraught” and “crying” over the incident.

Police later arrested the culprit before a news report about the incident blamed it on a “bad joke” or a “confused man”.

“She meant so much to me and I miss her a lot,” said Cynthia’s cousin Patrick Schopp. “I will keep her in my memory as this fun-loving person who never had anything bad to say about anyone and who was very helpful with everyone.”

null

According to figures from the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), migrant crime targeting German citizens has soared by over 23 per cent in a single year.

As Reuters acknowledged last year, Germany has suffered a “two-year increase in violent crime,” rising 10 per cent in 2015 and 2016. 90 per cent of that increase was attributed to “young male refugees”.

As we document in the video below (which is banned in Germany), rather than directly address the multitude of problems that importing around 2 million “refugees” has caused the country, German authorities appear more intent on brainwashing and coercing their population into accepting the new reality with passive compliance.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor at large of Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com.

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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