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FILE PHOTO: The logo of Swiss bank UBS is seen in Zurich, Switzerland October 25, 2018. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann/File Photo
April 9, 2019
ZURICH (Reuters) – Shareholders of Swiss bank UBS Group should oppose its compensation report for 2018, proxy adviser Glass Lewis said, citing “pay-for-performance concern”.
Shareholders get a non-binding vote on top executives’ compensation at the bank’s annual meeting on May 2.
Glass Lewis said that while UBS had improved earnings last year, some financial indicators including earnings per share and return on equity lagged those of its Swiss and European peers.
“We are currently troubled by the significant fines the company is facing in Europe, particularly in France, as a result of money laundering litigations,” it added.
It also suggested shareholders abstain from approving the actions of the bank’s board and top management in 2018, especially in light of a French tax case that has prompted UBS to boost litigation provisions.
“Taking into account the considerable uncertainty surrounding ongoing investigations and proceedings, which
appears to have increased in recent months with the 4.5 billion euro penalty related to the French tax evasion case, we believe that shareholders are unable to confidently determine whether it is in their best interests to ratify the acts of the members of the board and management for the past fiscal year at this time,” it said.
(Reporting by Oliver Hirt and Michael Shields; Editing by Jan Harvey and David Evans)
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FILE PHOTO: Bottles of Ricard’s aniseed-flavoured beverage are pictured at the Ricard manufacturing unit in Lormont, near Bordeaux, France February 15, 2019. REUTERS/Regis Duvignau/File Photo
April 9, 2019
By Arno Schuetze
FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Buyout group Apollo is preparing French glass bottle maker Verallia for a stock market listing later this year, in what could become one of the largest French initial public offerings of the year, people close to the matter said.
The private equity firm, which is working with Lazard as its IPO advisor, has asked banks to pitch in coming days for roles in organizing the flotation, which could value Verallia at more than 4 billion euros ($4.5 billion), they said.
Verallia, which traces its roots back to the Vauxrot glassworks founded in 1827, counts Pernod Ricard, champagne house Dom Perignon and chocolate spreads maker Nutella among its clients.
So-called global coordinators are expected to be mandated later this month or in May for the IPO of Saint-Gobain’s former glass bottle unit, in which Apollo bought a controlling stake in 2015. The listing may happen in September or later, they said.
Apollo and Lazard declined to comment.
France has seen few IPOs recently and some deals, such as that of logistics firm Gefco, have been pulled due to wobbly market conditions. Tourism group Club Med’s parent chose Hong Kong for its listing.
Among the few other large French companies which may seek a stock market listing this year is state-owned lottery firm Francaise des Jeux, a stake in which could be sold under a law published last year.
Verallia is expected to post core earnings (EBITDA) of roughly 550 million euros this year and could be valued at between 7 and 8 times that in a potential IPO, the sources said.
Peers such as Vetropack, Owens-Illinois or Vidrala trade in a wide range of 2.7 to 9.4 times EBITDA.
Apollo bought the majority of Verallia in a 2015 deal valuing the business at 2.95 billion euros. It made 16 billion glass bottles and jars last year and is the main supplier of bottles for France’s champagne and cognac industries.
In 2018, the company – which employs nearly 10,000 people – generated 544 million euros in adjusted EBITDA on sales of 2.4 billion.
Earlier this month, Verallia announced the early repayment of some of its debt, citing solid cash flow generation, pushing its net debt down to 1.7 billion euros.
(Reporting by Arno Schuetze; Editing by David Holmes)
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Dangerous airborne viruses are rendered harmless on-the-fly when exposed to energetic, charged fragments of air molecules, University of Michigan researchers have shown.
They hope to one day harness this capability to replace a century-old device: the surgical mask.
The U-M engineers have measured the virus-killing speed and effectiveness of nonthermal plasmas–the ionized, or charged, particles that form around electrical discharges such as sparks. A nonthermal plasma reactor was able to inactivate or remove from the airstream 99.9% of a test virus, with the vast majority due to inactivation.
Achieving these results in a fraction of a second within a stream of air holds promise for many applications where sterile air supplies are needed.
“The most difficult disease transmission route to guard against is airborne because we have relatively little to protect us when we breathe,” said Herek Clack, U-M research associate professor of civil and environmental engineering.
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To gauge nonthermal plasmas’ effectiveness, researchers pumped a model virus–harmless to humans–into flowing air as it entered a reactor. Inside the reactor, borosilicate glass beads are packed into a cylindrical shape, or bed. The viruses in the air flow through the spaces between the beads, and that’s where they are inactivated.
“In those void spaces, you’re initiating sparks,” Clack said. “By passing through the packed bed, pathogens in the air stream are oxidized by unstable atoms called radicals. What’s left is a virus that has diminished ability to infect cells.”
The experiment and its results are published in the Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics.
Notably, during these tests researchers also tracked the amount of viral genome that was present in the air. In this way, Clack and his team were able to determine that more than 99% of the air sterilizing effect was due to inactivating the virus that was present, with the remainder of the effect due to filtering the virus from the air stream.
“The results tell us that nonthermal plasma treatment is very effective at inactivating airborne viruses,” said Krista Wigginton, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering. “There are limited technologies for air disinfection, so this is an important finding.”
This parallel approach–combining filtration and inactivation of airborne pathogens–could provide a more efficient way of providing sterile air than technologies used today, such as filtration and ultraviolet light. Traditional masks operate using only filtration for protection.
Ultraviolet irradiation can’t sterilize as quickly, as throughly or as compactly has nonthermal plasma.
Clack and his research team have begun testing their reactor on ventilation air streams at a livestock farm near Ann Arbor. Animal agriculture and its vulnerability to contagious livestock diseases such as avian influenza has a demonstrated near-term need for such technologies.
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The logo of Barclays bank is seen on glass lamps outside of a branch of the bank in the City of London financial district in London September 4, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville
April 8, 2019
LONDON (Reuters) – Activist Sherborne Investors on Monday wrote another letter to shareholders of Barclays seeking to drum up support for the election of its founder Edward Bramson to the board of the British bank.
Bramson has so far failed in attempts to get the lender to scale back its investment banking activities, which he says have weighed on shareholder returns and run the risk of the bank needing to raise fresh capital.
While Barclays has said it remains committed to its strategy, Chief Executive Jes Staley last month ousted the head of its investment banking division and instead took direct control of the unit, a move referenced in Sherborne’s latest letter.
“In view of Barclays’ most recent announcements of sudden management realignments and departures, we believe that Mr. Bramson’s experience and temperament would be a strongly stabilizing influence on the board,” the letter said.
Barclays is due to hold its annual general meeting of shareholders on May 2. Sherborne has a stake of around 5.5 percent in the bank.
(Reporting by Simon Jessop; Editing by Keith Weir)
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CEO Tidjane Thiam of Swiss bank Credit Suisse awaits the company’s annual news conference in Zurich, Switzerland February 14, 2019. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann
April 8, 2019
ZURICH (Reuters) – Credit Suisse’s shareholders should vote against the bank’s compensation report at the April 26 annual general meeting, proxy advisor Glass Lewis said, citing an “unjustified CEO bonus increase” for Chief Executive Tidjane Thiam.
Thiam was awarded 12.65 million Swiss francs ($12.66 million) in total compensation in 2018, with short term incentive awards (STI) of 4.94 million francs. That is up from 9.7 million francs total compensation and 3.98 million francs in STI in 2017.
“We are once again troubled by the board’s immediate exercise of upward discretion in increasing the CEO’s short-term incentive opportunity for the past fiscal year, which appears as an unnecessary anticipation of a reward for potential future results,” Glass Lewis wrote in a report received by Reuters on Monday.
(Reporting by John Miller; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
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Britain’s Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall talks to Kyle Soller, winner of the best actor award, after attending the Olivier Awards at the Royal Albert Hall in London, Britain April 7, 2019. John Stillwell/Pool via REUTERS
April 7, 2019
By Jayson Mansaray
LONDON (Reuters) – Productions about gay men in New York City, friendship after the Sept. 11 attacks and love in Mississippi dominated Britain’s prestigious Olivier Awards for best theater on Sunday.
In a distinctly American-themed night, “The Inheritance”, a play about the generation after the peak of the AIDS crisis, was joint overall winner with four awards: best new play, best director (Stephen Daldry), best actor (Kyle Soller) and best lighting.
Written by Matthew Lopez, the two-part play transposes E.M. Forster’s classic 1910 novel “Howards End” to modern New York, where a group of young, ambitious men ponder their existence and the previous generation’s legacy.
“I don’t have the proper vocabulary … It feels like an out-of-body experience … a bit crazy,” Soller told Reuters after winning the award over other nominees like Ian McKellen and David Suchet.
“To be speaking for a community where there’s so much pain, so much healing to be done, it is just really incredible, very emotional,” he added.
In his acceptance speech, Soller paid tribute to the victims of AIDS and lamented that in some nations people can still be stoned to death for being gay.
“Come From Away”, a musical about the power of kindness among air passengers grounded in Canada after the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, also won four awards including best new musical.
“Company”, a reworking of U.S. composer Stephen Sondheim’s comedy with a woman instead of a man in the lead role, took three prizes including best musical revival.
“Summer And Smoke”, a rarely-staged Tennessee Williams’ drama about love, loneliness and self-destruction set in small-town Mississippi, took two honors for best actress (Patsy Ferran) and best revival.
“I wasn’t expecting it … Nobody knows who I am,” Ferran told Reuters afterwards, clutching a glass of champagne. “I might be slightly hung over tomorrow, don’t tell anyone!”
Prince Charles’ wife Camilla joined stars of British theater for the glitzy ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
(Additional reporting by Andrew Cawthorne and Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Sonya Hepinstall)
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Apr 6, 2019; Minneapolis, MN, USA; Texas Tech Red Raiders guard Matt Mooney (13) shoots the ball against Michigan State Spartans guard Cassius Winston (5) during the first half in the semifinals of the 2019 men’s Final Four at US Bank Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports
April 7, 2019
MINNEAPOLIS – Texas Tech extended its first-ever trip to the Final Four with a 61-51 victory over Michigan State on Saturday in a national semifinal game at U.S. Bank Stadium.
The Red Raiders advance to the final game of the NCAA Tournament, Monday’s national championship game against Virginia.
On the back of fifth-year senior graduate transfer guard Matt Mooney’s 22 points, Texas Tech came out firing in the second half and held off a Spartans’ rally.
Cassius Winston led Michigan State with 16 points but shot just 4 of 16 from the floor while being tracked most of the game by Mooney, who made 8 of 16 shots and 4 of 8 from 3-point range.
Texas Tech’s Jarrett Culver, the Big 12 Player of the Year, was quiet until a raindrop right-handed runner gave Texas Tech its first field goal in five minutes and a 54-51 edge with 2:28 left.
He finished with 10 points.
Senior Matt McQuaid’s bid to tie with a long 3-point attempt at the other end rattled in and out, and Culver made the first of two free throws. Texas Tech got the ball back with its fourth steal of the game on Michigan State’s next possession, and Culver hit an uncontested trey from the top of the key, putting the Red Raiders up 58-51.
Senior Norense Odiase made two free throws to seal it with 39.7 seconds left after the Spartans’ Kenny Goins clanked a 3-point try.
The Spartans stayed in the game at the free-throw line. Sophomore Xavier Tillman rattled in two after Winston connected on four consecutive shots from the stripe, and Michigan State whittled a 12-point deficit to five (52-47) with 5:38 remaining.
The Spartans cut it to three with just over three minutes to play on freshman Aaron Henry’s two makes, then made it 52-51 when Henry’s slashing layup went in with 2:44 left.
Texas Tech roared out of the halftime locker room with buckets on four of five possessions and took an eight-point lead — 39-31 — on a three-point play by freshman Kyler Edwards. Edwards drove hard from the left baseline and moved the ball from his right to left hand, putting it off the glass as he was fouled.
On the next possession, Mooney connected on a 3-ball from the wing and after a Michigan State turnover, the senior transfer drilled another to stake Texas Tech to a 45-33 advantage, prompting a red-faced Tom Izzo to call timeout.
Most of the damage was done while Culver watched from the bench with three fouls.
Suffocating defense won the first half on either end and neither team could find its legs. Only 15 of 49 field-goal attempts went through, and Texas Tech led 23-21 at the break.
–By Jeff Reynolds, Field Level Media
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A volunteer of a team managing social media pages of Ukrainian comic actor and presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy works on the candidate’s Instagram page at the election campaign office in Kiev, Ukraine April 3, 2019. Picture taken April 3, 2019. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko
April 5, 2019
By Matthias Williams and Margaryta Chornokondratenko
KIEV (Reuters) – As a comedian, TV host and actor, Volodymyr Zelenskiy knows how to start a show with a bang. He proved that by beating all comers in the first round of Ukraine’s presidential election.
As he plans for the grand finale, a runoff against President Petro Poroshenko on April 21, aides say he is sticking to an unorthodox campaign routine that has torn up the play book.
Appearing to turn the tables on Poroshenko, Zelenskiy on Wednesday evening accepted his challenge to take part in a policy debate. In a slick video with pumping music, he set his own conditions and gave his rival 24 hours to respond.
Poroshenko’s campaign team had hinted Zelenskiy would duck out because the comedian, who plays a fictional president in a popular TV series, would risk showing himself up.
Within 45 minutes of Zelenskiy’s video being posted on Facebook, it had been seen 141,000 times, shared more than 22,000 times and attracted 3,300 comments. It left a live countdown for Poroshenko to respond.
“You called me for a debate, dreaming that I would run away, duck out, hide. No. I’m not you in 2014,” said Zelenskiy, in a reference to Poroshenko not holding a debate during the previous election five years ago.
Poroshenko responded with a much more sober video in which he accepted Zelenskiy’s condition of holding the debate in a huge soccer stadium. But he cautioned: “Debate is not a show … This is no time to joke around. Being a president and commander in chief is not a game.”
Zelenskiy’s response to Poroshenko offered a snapshot of how he has upstaged his more experienced rivals, winning nearly twice as many votes as Poroshenko in the first round of the election on March 31.
Shunning traditional campaign tactics such as mass rallies or erecting tents in the street to distribute leaflets, he has relied heavily on social media and comedy gigs where he pokes fun at rivals, presenting himself as an everyman who stands up to corrupt elites — a man to whom Ukrainians can relate.
At stake is the leadership of a country on the frontline of the West’s standoff with Russia following the 2014 annexation of the Crimea peninsula and war in eastern Ukraine against Russia-backed separatists in which 13,000 people have been killed.
“NOT AFRAID TO BE CREATIVE”
Part of Zelenskiy’s campaign team works in a large house in an upscale area of the capital, Kiev. Inside, the offices have glass walls with messages scrawled on them and are filled with volunteers in their twenties bent over laptops.
“All that we do is to not be like everyone else,” said 28-year-old Michael Fedorov, whose team manages various Facebook, YouTube and Instagram pages. “We do not want to write typical posts. We do not want to speak the words that all politicians use. We want to get away from this as much as possible.”
He said Zelenskiy had from the start opposed traditional ways of doing things. “As a result, we have one platform only – that’s the internet,” he said.
Zelenskiy invites suggestions from Facebook followers on tackling problems such as high utility bills or their choice of prime minister.
Dmytro Razumkov, Zelenskiy’s political adviser, said the comedian would not hold mass rallies before the second vote because the focus was on ensuring he comes across as authentic and transparent.
“This is a person who is not a weather vane and does not change his position depending on whether it is more comfortable for a voter or less comfortable. You have to run for president, honestly stating your position and what will you do,” he said.
One challenge is attracting voters who are not internet-savvy — bridging the gap between online and offline.
Oleksandr Korniyenko, another senior member of Zelenskiy’s team, said one technique to get around this was emailing voters with campaign messages and encouraging them to print out the email and distribute it.
Another was encouraging Zelenskiy’s many young supporters to show his social media videos to older voters such as parents, he said.
Hoping a high turnout will favor Zelenskiy, his team is trying to ensure younger voters cast their ballots in email messages with headlines likely to make them click and read.
“Our emails are not the typical ‘You joined such and such a political party’. Instead we might have a crazy headline,” Fedorov said.
In the first round, an email was sent out by Zelenskiy’s team with the subject line “You’ve been left out”. The message itself said “everyone has already voted except you” and urged those who had voted to encourage others to vote, Fedorov said.
“We are not afraid to be creative,” he said.
“NOT A JOKE”
Zelenskiy has 3.3 million followers on Instagram, more than French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Theresa May and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte combined. Poroshenko has 234,000.
The comedian’s posts offer snapshots of his life such as working out in the gym or going for a run, and allow him to poke fun at his rivals’ expense.
When former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who was eliminated in the first round of voting, posted a video of herself eating a hot dog at a popular gas station chain to show her common touch, Zelenskiy posted a picture of himself and his team eating a hotdog at the same chain.
“In order to not be considered as just a joke, we decided to be serious like everyone else,” he wrote underneath.
Zelenskiy is likely to come under more scrutiny over policy before the runoff, including in the debate. He is wealthy and the image of the fictional president he plays, humble and scrupulously honest, is likely to be challenged by Poroshenko.
Zelenskiy has been accused during the campaign of being the puppet of a rich businessman whose TV channel airs his shows. Zelenskiy and the oligarch deny this, and both say their relationship is purely professional.
Razumkov says the campaign has shown Zelenskiy is his own man.
“In the Zelenskiy campaign, everything is completely different. When he launched his campaign, he said: ‘I want to show how you can become president, but remain a human being.’”
(Editing by Timothy Heritage)
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An anti-Brexit protester demonstrates outside the Houses of Parliament in London, Britain, April 3, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
April 4, 2019
LONDON (Reuters) – The United Kingdom has lost 6.6 billion pounds ($8.7 billion) in economic activity every quarter since it voted to leave the European Union, according to S&P Global Ratings, the latest company to estimate the damage from Brexit.
In a report published on Thursday, the ratings agency’s senior economist, Boris Glass, said the world’s fifth-biggest economy would have been about 3 percent larger by the end of 2018 if the country had not voted in a June 2016 referendum to leave the EU.
Quarterly growth rates would have averaged about 0.7 percent, rather than 0.43 percent, he said.
“Immediately after the referendum, the pound fell by about 18 percent. This was the single most pertinent indicator of the impact of the vote and the drag it created, via inflation, has been spreading through the economy,” he said.
As imports became more expensive, inflation started to rise, curbing household spending. S&P estimated inflation was 1.8 percent higher than it would otherwise have been by the third quarter 2017.
The estimate is slightly lower than an assessment by Goldman Sachs earlier this week, which pegged the cost to the economy at about 600 million pounds per week. That equates to 7.8 billion pounds a quarter, according to Reuters calculations.
The S&P report was based on the Doppelganger approach, an econometric technique that used a synthetic UK economy based on the performance of other economies to estimate how the UK would have performed had it not decided to leave the EU.
The other countries included the United States, Canada, Japan, Ireland, Denmark, Portugal and Hungary.
(Reporting by Josephine Mason; editing by Gareth Jones, Larry King)
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FILE PHOTO: A robot prepares to install the windshield to a 2019 Jeep Wrangler at the Chrysler Jeep Assembly plant in Toledo, Ohio, U.S., November 16, 2018. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook/File Photo
April 3, 2019
By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said on Wednesday it was dropping a 2012 proposal to harmonize U.S. vehicle window safety standards with international rules.
Under the Obama administration, the auto safety agency known as NHTSA proposed adopting international rules on glazing materials agreed to by a world forum in 2004.
But NHTSA said it was now withdrawing the proposal because it could not conclude that harmonizing the rules “would increase safety.”
The agency cited crash data that suggests “current glazing materials are performing acceptably.” The rules were previously adopted by the European Union.
The United States already has performance requirements in place for car windows to reduce injuries resulting from impact, ensure transparency for driver visibility, and to minimize the possibility of occupants being thrown through windows in collisions.
NHTSA said safety issues around glazing had been substantially reduced since the 1960s, adding that it still planned to conduct additional glazing research.
In 2012, NHTSA said adopting the international rules would modernize U.S. testing to account for “tempered glass, laminated glass, and glass-plastic glazing used in front and rear windshields and side windows” and would “better reflect real world conditions and eliminate redundant and unnecessary testing.”
The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group that represents major automakers including General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co, Toyota Motor Corp and Volkswagen AG, said in August 2012 it supported NHTSA’s efforts to harmonize regulations.
“Differences, even small ones, in functionally equivalent regulations cause redundancy that adds cost to the product without benefit for the consumer,” the group wrote.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Tom Brown)
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