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FILE PHOTO: Spain’s Socialist leader and current Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez looks on as he delivers his speech during a PSOE party meeting before he kicks off his political campaign ahead of the April 28 general election in Dos Hermanas, near Seville, Spain April 11, 2019. REUTERS/Jon Nazca/File Photo
April 23, 2019
By Isla Binnie
MADRID (Reuters) – As they prepare to vote in the most uncertain national election in decades, Spaniards can safely predict one thing regardless of political persuasion – that their next prime minister will be young, cosmopolitan, white and male.
The main contenders in Sunday’s ballot offer a lack of diversity that has left parts of the electorate at risk of feeling unrepresented, political commentators say. Surveys show up to four in ten voters are still undecided and no single party is close to winning a majority.
Conspicuously missing from the field are women, as well as anyone who identifies directly with the rapidly aging communities of rural Spain, a constituency that is fast emptying out as working-age people abandon farms and villages for cities.
“We have ended up with something like a Corte Ingles catalogue,” said political communication consultant Luis Arroyo, referring to a famous Spanish chain of department stores.
A televised pre-election debate on Monday night did little to dispel that impression.
No clear winner emerged, and images of the top three candidates – Socialist Pedro Sanchez and rightists Pablo Casado and Albert Rivera – appearing in virtually identical dark blue suits circulated widely in domestic and international media.
Far-right Vox’s Santiago Abascal, excluded from the debate because his party holds no parliamentary seats yet, tweeted a picture shortly after it ended of a row of blue and yellow macaws with the caption: “Spot the difference”.
‘PEDRO EL GUAPO’
Sanchez, outgoing Prime Minister and poll leader with around 30 percent of votes, earned the nickname “Pedro El Guapo”, or “Handsome Pedro” earlier in his career for his rarity value as a young newcomer to the Socialist hierarchy among a crowd of older politicians.
But as it has gradually fractured over the past five years, Spain’s political landscape has been increasingly populated by young, contemporary males.
At 47, Sanchez is now the oldest candidate. The last time he stood for office, in 2016, he lost out to conservative Mariano Rajoy, then 61.
His clean-cut conservative opponent this time is 38-year-old Casado, while Rivera – leader of centre-right Ciudadanos and equally chiselled in features and in his choice of suits – is one year older.
Even far-right Vox’s Abascal, 43, is university-educated, keeps his beard neatly trimmed and often wears a tie.
Only the pony-tailed Pablo Iglesias, whose far-left Podemos party rode a wave of anti-austerity fury into parliament in 2015, dresses more casually but, as a television regular, he keeps his appearance smart. On Monday evening he did not wear a suit.
While younger, city-dwelling, professionals may see familiar characters in the shiny line-up, people in less technologically advanced, under-populated parts of the country may struggle.
“They reflect this generation of people, many of whom studied in public universities and did masters (degrees),” said Arroyos.
“The other Spain, which is more rural, and famously emptying out, does not see itself reflected in any way.”
Residents of the depopulating regions marched through Madrid last month in what they called a “peaceful revolt”, underlining the concerns of a demographic that feels it has been forgotten.
GENDER BIAS?
Despite the visible generational shift, few Spanish women have made it to the political front line.
“In terms of gender balance there is definitely still lots of room for improvement,” said Eurasia analyst Federico Santi.
Sanchez describes his government, in which a majority of ministers are female, as feminist, and Podemos changed the name of its parliamentary grouping to the feminine Unidas Podemos for this campaign, to reflect its commitment to women’s rights.
Two parties have high-profile spokeswomen: Ines Arrimadas of the center-right Ciudadanos has led her party’s crusade against Catalan regional independence, while Irene Montero is a prominent Podemos deputy.
But neither are party leader and, across the parties, women tend mostly to be assigned supporting roles, Santi said.
The lack of racial diversity among the candidates has raised few eyebrows, however, due to Spain’s relative ethnic homogeneity – only just over 10 percent of the resident population has foreign nationality.
(Reporting by Isla Binnie; Editing by Ingrid Melander and John Stonestreet)
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FILE PHOTO: Daniele Schillaci, executive vice president global marketing and sales for Nissan, speaks during the media preview of the 2016 New York International Auto Show in Manhattan, New York March 23, 2016. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
April 23, 2019
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s Nissan Motor Co on Tuesday said the executive responsible for its Nissan, Datsun and Infiniti brands was leaving, as it announced a management reshuffle to strengthen governance following the ouster of former boss Carlos Ghosn.
Nissan said Daniele Schillaci, an executive vice- president who had been responsible for the three brands and for all operations in the Japan, Asia and Oceania regions, had chosen to leave the company to pursue an opportunity closer to his native home in Europe.
Nissan also said it had named executive Yasuhiro Yamauchi as chief operating officer to strengthen daily operations.
It appointed an executive dedicated to performance recovery efforts and added executives overseeing major markets such as Japan, North America and China to the its executive committee.
Such changes, it said, were based on recommendations from an outside governance panel that it received last month. The external committee last month concluded a three-month audit of Nissan’s governance and put blame squarely on what it called Ghosn’s concentration of power.
Ghosn, who has been arrested on charges of financial misconduct, has denied all the allegations against him and said he is the victim of a boardroom coup by those who opposed his drive for a closer alliance with top shareholder Renault SA.
A representative for Ghosn has previously said the committee’s findings were “part of an unsubstantiated smear campaign against Carlos Ghosn to prevent the integration of the alliance and conceal Nissan’s deteriorating performance”.
(Reporting by David Dolan; editing by David Evans)
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People, including passengers of a flight from the Turkmen capital Ashgabat, gather in the baggage claim area upon their arrival at Almaty International Airport, Kazakhstan April 5, 2019. REUTERS/Mariya Gordeyeva
April 23, 2019
By Mariya Gordeyeva
ALMATY (Reuters) – Beset by economic hardship, enterprising Turkmens have found a way to supplement their incomes – smuggling towels and bed linen into neighboring Kazakhstan.
Moving hundreds of items every trip in trademark Chinese plaid bags which at times have clogged airport luggage belts, informal traders – mostly women in their late forties and fifties – hand them over to relatives or local partners to be resold for up to five times the purchase price.
Dressed in traditional Central Asian garb such as headscarves and long skirts, these women arrive on almost every flight from Ashgabat to Almaty, Kazakhstan’s biggest city.
Textiles are among the few items manufactured domestically from local feedstock and prices for items produced by state-owned companies have remained stable for years even as the Turkmen manat lost four-fifths of its value on the black market due to Turkmenistan’s falling gas export revenue.
A deal to resume gas exports to Russia this month brought hope, but turned out to be small and short-term.
Turkmenistan, where president Kurbanguly Berdimukhamedov rules with an elaborate personality cult, is one of the world’s most closed countries.
There are no opposition parties or media critical of the government and Berdymukhamedov, often referred to as Arkadag (Protector), wields sweeping powers.
Turkmenistan rarely allows visits by foreign journalists and the textile trade offers a glimpse into the depth of its economic problems.
INDUSTRIAL SCALE
The trade attracted the attention of Almaty airport officials this year when luggage from Turkmenistan started clogging its belts. The planes, it turned out, were stuffed with textiles.
“My daughter trades at a bazaar (in Kazakhstan) and I bring her goods little by little… which I buy from our (Turkmen) stores,” said a Turkmen woman picking up bags from the luggage belt in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s commercial hub.
Like all other people involved in this informal textiles trading, the woman spoke on the condition of anonymity because traders like her dodge customs duties by claiming their goods are personal belongings not meant for resale.
These de facto smuggling operations reached industrial scale in early 2019, prompting the Almaty airport to lodge an official complaint with the Turkmen flag carrier.
“There were parcels weighing over 50-60 kilograms (110-130 pounds) each,” said Marina Zabara, a complaints inspector at the airport.
Oversized parcels have since disappeared but the flow of textiles continues. A Reuters reporter saw Turkmen travelers pick up parcels of textiles upon arrival in Almaty this month.
“A woman from Turkmenistan moved to our village last year and offered us to sell their textiles,” said a Kazakh trader working at a market on the outskirts of Almaty. “Her mother brings the goods as luggage, as many items as she can.”
At Almaty’s biggest market, traders display Turkmen bedding – often with traditional patterns based on deer and sheep horns or abstract human figures – from fully-packed cargo containers.
“The demand is good, with the most expensive bedding set priced at 10,000 tenge ($26),” said one trader.
Some hotels have also become wholesale buyers, Turkmens say.
The official exchange rate of the manat is 3.5 per dollar, but on the black market a dollar fetches 18.6 manat.
A Kazakh citizen who used to live in Turkmenistan told Reuters that by buying out luggage allowances from other travelers and bribing airline officials, a “shuttle trader” can move up to 200 kilograms (441 pounds) in one trip.
(Additional reporting by Olzhas Auyezov in Almaty and Marat Gurt in Ashgabat,; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov, editing by Ed Osmond)
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Democrats are trying to spin the Mueller Report as welcome news. Good luck with that. Legally, they’ve got no case left. Politically, they are making a serious mistake.
They do have some material to work with, especially the report’s second volume, which portrays a vulgar, deceitful president. The details are new, but the portrait itself is not. What’s new are some cases where the president came close to obstructing justice, according to the special counsel’s investigators. Even so, they did not say he crossed the line.
The most important news, of course, is the report’s basic findings. It clearly demonstrates Russia tried to influence the 2016 election and favored Trump, but it kills the assertion that Trump or his campaign cooperated with them. For two years, Democrats and the mainstream media said the opposite about Trump — repeatedly, loudly, insistently. To continue that attack now is ludicrous. That doesn’t mean they will retract, apologize, or return their Pulitzer Prizes. They prefer to change the subject.
Their new focus is obstruction, where the evidence is more ambiguous. The Mueller team presents 10 possible instances and made no final decision. But that, in itself, is a decision since prosecutors must ultimately choose to indict or drop the matter. There is no third choice, and they didn’t indict. Significantly, their refusal was based on the evidence, not on the Department of Justice’s long-standing legal opinion that sitting presidents cannot be indicted.
Escaping criminal charges is not exactly high praise for a president. Still, the Mueller team’s refusal to indict carries special weight because the prosecution team was stacked with Democratic donors and close allies of Hillary Clinton. That provenance shows throughout the report, which reads like opposition research, equipped with subpoena powers.
After the report was finished, the DoJ made a clear-cut decision on obstruction: no indictment. Democrats immediately slimed Attorney General Bill Barr as a political hack, doing Trump’s bidding. It is important to note, however, that Rod Rosenstein reached the same conclusion. Democrats have spent the last two years defending Rosenstein, the department’s second-ranking official and the man who appointed Mueller and supervised his team. Now, they are stuck with his decision.
The White House, naturally, claimed complete victory, despite all the damaging evidence. They make two key points about obstruction, including the troubling instance when President Trump told White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller. The president, famous for firing people, never followed through. He was furious with AG Jeff Sessions’ recusal and furious with the investigation, but he did not fire Mueller and allowed McGahn to speak at length with the special counsel’s team. “Where’s the obstruction there?” the White House asks. Second, the White House provided Mueller’s team with unprecedented information, excepting only in-person testimony by the president himself. Trump handed over more than a million documents, allowed all White House appointees to testify, and never claimed “executive privilege” to withhold documents, prevent testimony, or redact the final report. Any White House trying to obstruct would have fought the investigation at every turn, as Presidents Nixon and Clinton did. Instead, Trump cooperated.
Not good enough, say powerful Democrats and their faithful media allies. After all, the Great Orange Whale is still out there, swimming and spouting. His adversaries, still fighting the last election and ready for the next one, have their harpoons sharpened and ready.
Their single-minded pursuit carries real risks for Democrats in swing districts and their 2020 presidential nominee. The general electorate wants to move on and focus on health care, immigration, inequality, opioids, and education.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knows that. But she cannot control the party’s activist, left-wing base, its presidential hopefuls, or its powerful House chairmen, Jerry Nadler, Elijah Cummings, and Adam Schiff. Those zealots are steering the good ship Pequod into dangerous waters.
What they are doing now is pure showmanship: smearing Barr as a partisan lackey and demanding unredacted copies of the Mueller Report. Neither will succeed. Barr is a lawyer’s lawyer. His stature and integrity tower above his critics. Remember, too, that Rosenstein signed on to the obstruction decision.
As for the report itself, the public has seen a reasonably complete version. It will see more when several current investigations end. Some parts were redacted because they reveal “sources and methods,” but Barr has indicted he is willing to show them to a small group of congressional leaders and their aides. It is unclear if Democrats will accept Barr’s offer.
Democrats are also demanding to see grand jury testimony. Only a court can order that, and then only under very limited conditions. Democrats will litigate and lose.
The debate over the Mueller Report now becomes a purely political one, and the advantage shifts to the Republicans. Yes, the Democrats and media will use the disclosures to damage the president. They have plenty to work with. But they cannot overcome the bottom-line conclusions, and they will pay a price for their obsession. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice will move on to meatier investigations of its own, implicating the highest levels of the Obama DoJ, FBI, and national security team. Senior officials there have real legal problems.
Mueller himself will have to answer hard questions about why his report ignored those failures, glossed over FBI abuses, and included a gratuitous statement that he “could not exonerate” Trump of obstruction. That statement upends a thousand years of Anglo-Saxon and Roman civil law, where prosecutors are never asked to exonerate, only whether to prosecute or decline. They should never use evidence to harm someone who is not charged. James Comey made those grievous mistakes in his July 5, 2016, press conference, damaging Hillary Clinton and perhaps costing her the election. It is stunning to see Mueller repeat them.
The report hands Democrats another harpoon, but it is not a lethal one. The Great Orange Whale still swims free. It is the frenzied sailors — the ones who began this hunt and want to continue it — who now face real peril.
FILE PHOTO: Ukrainian presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy reacts following the announcement of the first exit poll in a presidential election at his campaign headquarters in Kiev, Ukraine April 21, 2019./File Photo
April 23, 2019
By Matthias Williams and Pavel Polityuk
KIEV (Reuters) – Before Ukraine’s new president Volodymyr Zelenskiy was even elected, an opposition leader was plotting to curb his powers and make it easier for him to be impeached.
Andriy Sadovyi, head of the Samopomich party, the second largest opposition group in parliament, announced two days before the vote he was garnering support for a parliamentary bill to weaken the presidency.
The opening salvo is a measure of the hostility that may be in store for Zelenskiy, a 41-year-old comedian who beat incumbent president, Petro Poroshenko, in Sunday’s election despite having no prior political experience or representation in parliament.
Zelenskiy is expected to take office next month. His ability to work with parliament, known as the Rada, will be crucial to meeting the expectations of his voters and passing reforms to keep foreign aid flowing.
Lawmakers from Samopomich and other parties feel the president has too many powers.
“Let him have responsibility like other political players, he cannot stand above the law,” Oksana Syroyid, a Samopomich lawmaker and deputy speaker in parliament told Reuters.
Zelenskiy’s powers will include appointing the head of the state security service, the head of the military, the general prosecutor, the central bank governor and the foreign and defense ministers.
But parliament must confirm each appointment and although Zelenskiy beat the incumbent decisively in the presidential vote and his party could win the largest number of seats in parliamentary elections in October it is unlikely to win an outright majority, opinion polls show.
This means he would need to ally with at least one other party if he is to get his election pledges enacted and his appointments approved. He has not indicated which parties he would be prepared to work with.
Adding to the hostility is his election promise for a bill to strip lawmakers, and himself, of immunity from prosecution.
Volodymyr Ariev, a lawmaker from Poroshenko’s faction, told Reuters it was unlikely that parliament would back that move because lawmakers fret about being prosecuted in political vendettas.
Zelenskiy also needs lawmakers to pass legislation that matters to the International Monetary Fund, Ukraine’s most important foreign backer, such as a bill to criminalize illegal enrichment by officials.
Stuart Culverhouse, Head of Sovereign and Fixed Income Research at Tellimer, said lawmakers might not back that bill until after October. This could lead to delays in IMF tranche disbursements under the $3.9 billion assistance program. The next one is due in May.
“This could be enough to burst the pre-election Zelenskiy market bubble,” he said.
Yields have fallen as investors became more comfortable with Zelenskiy and also because another presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko — who was hostile to some major reforms — was knocked out of the running.
POLITICAL PARALYSIS
Samopomich’s Syroyid said her party wants to strip the president of some powers, including the right to appoint the chairman of the National Energy and Utilities Regulatory Commission (NEURC) who sets energy tariffs with the government.
“What do the tariffs have to do with the president? Today he (the president) has influence – he appoints the chairman of the NEURC.”
Tymoshenko, another opposition leader who ran in the election against Zelenskiy, has previously also called for the president’s powers to be curbed.
“It may be necessary to… more clearly define what the president can and cannot do,” Oleksiy Riabchyn, a lawmaker in Tymoshenko’s party told Reuters.
The government is led by Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, who was appointed by Poroshenko. He is expected to stay in power until the October election. If Zelenskiy wins enough seats in parliament, he is expected to form a new government.
This means that until those elections, he may struggle to make any significant changes.
“Until the October parliamentary election Mr Zelenskiy’s team will need to secure the support of various factions in the current legislature in order to pass policies,” said Agnese Ortolani, an analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit.
“This might prove difficult, as part of the political elite is likely to attempt to paralyse Mr Zelenskiy’s presidency.”
Zelenskiy could try and bring forward the parliamentary election now while his popularity may be at a peak. But he would only be able to do that with parliament’s blessing.
“If parliament does not support the president’s initiatives it will be very hard to explain to Ukraine’s voters why not,” Dmytro Razumkov, an adviser to Zelenskiy’s campaign, told Reuters.
“It’s up to lawmakers. I hope their political survival instincts will dominate.”
(Additional reporting by Polina Ivanova; editing by Anna Willard)
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FILE PHOTO: A gas flare on an oil production platform in the Soroush oil fields is seen alongside an Iranian flag in the Persian Gulf, Iran, July 25, 2005. REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi
April 23, 2019
BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday it has lodged representations with the United States over Washington’s plan to end waivers for Iranian oil imports.
“The decision from the U.S. will contribute to volatility in the Middle East and in the international energy market,” ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a news briefing.
Washington has announced that all Iran sanction waivers will end by May, sending crude oil prices higher and pressuring importers to stop buying from Tehran.
(Reporting by Michael Pollard and Beijing Monitoring Desk; editing by Darren Schuettler)
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A security personnel observes three minutes of silence as a tribute to victims, two days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on churches and luxury hotels across the island on Easter Sunday, near St Anthony Shrine in Colombo, Sri Lanka April 23, 2019. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte
April 23, 2019
By Marius Zaharia and Vidya Ranganathan
HONG KONG/SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Sri Lanka faces a likely collapse in tourism following Easter Sunday bomb attacks on churches and hotels, which would deal a severe blow to the island’s economy and financial markets, and potentially force it to seek further IMF assistance.
The International Monetary Fund extended last month a $1.5 billion loan for an extra year into 2020, a key step in keeping foreign investors involved in what so far this year has been a top-performing frontier debt market.
But with growth, and therefore state revenues, now likely to slow significantly, the budget targets agreed with the IMF may have to be reviewed, and the government is expected to resist pressure for any spending cuts before elections expected later this year.
There is even a possibility that more IMF money may be needed if foreign investment falls, adding to the hard currency gap left by plunging tourism receipts.
“If growth slows a lot more and the budget deficit assumptions need to be reassessed, then they’ll have to sit down and negotiate something more feasible,” said Alex Holmes, Asia economist at Capital Economics.
The Sri Lankan stock index dived 2.6 percent on Tuesday in its first day of trading after the attacks that killed more than 300 people, while the heavily-managed rupee held steady.
Tourism is Sri Lanka’s third-largest and fastest growing source of foreign currency, after remittances and garment exports, accounting for almost $4.4 billion or 4.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2018.
A fall in tourism receipts is bound to weaken the rupee over time. The central bank, whose coffers are too light to defend the currency through interventions, is likely to have to raise interest rates.
This, in turn, would choke lending, hurting consumers and the investment plans of local businesses, while also making it more costly for the government to seek funding from foreign investors via bond markets.
“The central bank may be forced to hike rates again this year,” said Win Thin, global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH).
“With foreign reserves very low right now, the central bank cannot actively support the rupee.”
After falling 16 percent against the U.S. dollar last year to record lows, the rupee had gained 4.6 percent this year as of last week.
Sri Lankan bonds have been among the best performing globally, only bettered by Argentina and Chile. But the main stock index has lost about 10 percent.
WEAK FINANCES
Sri Lanka’s external position was already precarious.
To help fund a record $5.9 billion in foreign loans this year, the country successfully sold $2.4 billion in five-year and 10-year U.S. dollar bonds last month, but that was right after the IMF extension and amid bets of looser monetary policy.
(GRAPHIC: Sri Lanka’s precarious balance of payments – https://tmsnrt.rs/2IAqHKj)
In January, Sri Lanka used its reserves to repay debt worth $1 billion. It had about $5 billion left in February, the least since April 2017, and only enough to cover two months of imports and about two-thirds of its short-term external debt, according to BBH calculations.
Colombo also needs to finance a current account deficit of about 3 percent of GDP.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is already facing heavy criticism domestically for higher taxes, and tight monetary and fiscal policies that have crimped growth to a 17-year low.
Having emerged from a 51-day political crisis in which President Maithripala Sirisena sacked and replaced him with pro-China former president Mahinda Rajapaksa – a decision which was later reversed – Wickremesinghe set an ambitious fiscal deficit goal of 4.4 percent of GDP, compared with 5.3 percent in 2018.
But he also boosted spending on state employees, pensioners and the armed forces and promised more funds for rural infrastructure, leading economists to doubt the targets. A presidential vote is expected later this year followed by a general election in 2020.
“Given the fact they have repayments coming up for sovereign bonds, it could lead to more pressure on foreign currency reserves. So, it’s a near term negative for the tourism sector and also market sentiment as well,” said Ruchir Desai, fund manager at Asia Frontier Capital, who co-manages the $16 million AFC Asia Frontier Fund.
“Valuations are cheap, no doubt… but until they get some kind of political unity which can result in stable policy-making, we will probably remain underweight (equities) until the elections.”
(Reporting by Marius Zaharia in HONG KONG, Vidya Ranganathan in SINGAPORE and Daniel Leussink in TOKYO; Writing by Marius Zaharia; Editing by Kim Coghill)
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FILE PHOTO: A girl broadcasts live from a phone as she holds a selfie stick with a sign of the live-streaming platform DouYu during an event celebrating the new year in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, December 31, 2018. Picture taken December 31, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer
April 23, 2019
By Julia Fioretti
HONG KONG (Reuters) – China’s largest live-streaming platform DouYu International Holdings Limited, backed by social media and gaming giant Tencent Holdings Ltd, has filed for a U.S. initial public offering (IPO) of up to $500 million.
DouYu, which primarily focuses on the live-streaming of games, is one of several Chinese start-ups in the growing market for live-streaming in China, along with U.S.-listed rival Huya Inc and Huajiao.
The rapid growth of the live-streaming sector has seen China’s tech heavyweights – Tencent, Alibaba Group Holding and Baidu Inc – open their wallets to back a slew of firms in the hope it can boost existing services in e-commerce, social networking and gaming.
DouYu has exclusive streaming rights to 29 major tournaments in China, including League of Legends, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and DOTA2, according to the draft prospectus which was uploaded to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission website overnight on Monday.
DouYu was the largest game-streaming platform by average total monthly active users (MAUs) on both mobile and PC during the fourth quarter of 2018, according to the prospectus. The company had 159.2 million MAUs in the first quarter of 2019, representing year-on-year growth of 25.7 percent.
It set a placeholder sum of $500 million for the IPO, which is used to calculate registration fees. The final IPO size could be different, though sources have previously told Reuters DouYu was looking to raise around $500 million.
DouYu’s IPO could be one of the largest this year by a Chinese company in the United States, together with that of Starbucks challenger Luckin Coffee which also filed overnight.
Chinese companies have raised $271 million through U.S. IPOs so far this year, with the biggest deal being that of Ruhnn Holding Limited which raised $125 million, Refinitiv data showed.
LOSS MAKING
China is the world’s largest game streaming market, with approximately 4.9 times the monthly active users of the U.S. market in 2018, the prospectus said.
DouYu’s active users spent an average of 54 minutes per day on the platform in the fourth quarter of 2018.
DouYu is still loss-making and reported a net loss of $127.4 million in 2018, up from $91.33 million in 2017. Revenues jumped 94 percent to $531.5 million last year.
The company significantly increased its sales and marketing expenses – which jumped 73 percent in 2018 – as well as its research and development expenses which increased 55 percent.
Most of DouYu’s revenues come from live-streaming through the sale of virtual gifts, accounting for 86.1 percent of its revenues, with the rest coming from advertisements and some revenue sharing with game developers and publishers, the prospectus showed.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley are the underwriters for DouYu’s IPO.
(Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
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FILE PHOTO: Luxembourg’s Grand Duke Jean waves from his car during a visit to the Belgian northern city of Ghent, Belgium November 19, 1999. REUTERS/Benoit Doppagne/File Photo
April 23, 2019
BRUSSELS – Luxembourg’s Grand Duke Jean, who oversaw the transformation of the Grand Duchy into an international financial center before abdicating and handing over to his son, has died at the age of 98.
He was born on Jan. 5, 1921 to Grand Duchess Charlotte and Prince Felix of Bourbon-Parma.
His early life was overshadowed by World War Two – his family had to flee invading Nazi troops and seek refuge in the United States and Canada.
Jean returned to Europe in 1942 to receive military training at Sandhurst in Britain. He briefly served as a guard at Buckingham Palace before joining Allied forces in Normandy in 1944, taking part in the battle of Caen.
After the war, Jean married Belgian princess Josephine Charlotte and had five children. He became the country’s sixth Grand Duke when his mother Charlotte abdicated in 1964.
During his 36 years as the head of state, his country of half a million inhabitants wedged in between Belgium, Germany and France, turned from an industrial backwater into an international financial hub.
Jean had groomed his oldest son Henri to become his successor when he transferred most of his duties to him in 1998. He stepped down as Grand Duke in 2000.
Luxembourg is a constitutional monarchy in which the Grand Duke holds executive power and bills only become law with his signature.
(Reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
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FILE PHOTO: An aerial view of the Valero Houston Refinery is seen in Houston, Texas, U.S. August 31, 2017. REUTERS/Adrees Latif
April 23, 2019
By Stephanie Kelly and Jarrett Renshaw
NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. independent refiners are expected to roll out lower than expected first-quarter profits after a spate of outages, weak gasoline margins and a surge in the price of Canadian oil, according to analysts.
Major independent refiners cut production dramatically during the quarter, with some electing to undergo maintenance rather than produce barrels at a time when gasoline margins slumped.
Several major U.S. refiners, including Valero Energy Corp, HollyFrontier Corp, and Marathon Petroleum Corp, are all expected to fall short of consensus estimates when they report results, according to Refinitiv Eikon’s SmartEstimate model, which values more recent revisions from higher-ranked analysts.
However, reduced refining output in the early part of the year sets up the industry for a potential rebound as the critical summer months approach. With gasoline stockpiles at a four-year low on a seasonal basis, margins have rebounded in anticipation of driving season.
U.S. refinery utilization dropped to 87.5 percent in early April, the lowest seasonally since 2014. Refiners had been running full-tilt for much of 2018, encouraged by strong demand for distillates. But in the process, they overproduced gasoline, tanking margins for the fuel along the way.
Those margins fell to $3.64 a gallon in January, the lowest since 2009. They have since recovered, and were at about $23.00 a gallon on Monday, as inventories have fallen to about 228 million barrels from almost 260 million barrels in mid-January.
(GRAPHIC: Gasoline stocks fall as refinery runs drop https://tmsnrt.rs/2Iafyjp.)
Refiner earnings kick off this week with Valero on Friday. Since the beginning of April, analysts, on average, have revised projections for refiners lower by more than 5 percent, according to Refinitiv data.
Analysts have sharply lowered estimates for Valero, Marathon and HollyFrontier, along with PBF Energy and Phillips 66, in the past month, putting them in the bottom quartile among U.S. companies in terms of revisions, according to Refinitiv data.
On top of heavy maintenance, fires broke out at facilities over the last few months, including at Valero’s Port Arthur, Texas, refinery, Exxon Mobil Corp’s Baytown, Texas, refinery and HollyFrontier’s El Dorado, Kansas, refinery.
HollyFrontier lowered the amount of crude it expected to process in the first quarter by 5,000 bpd. Analysts at Goldman Sachs downgraded the company’s outlook last week on concerns that profits would take a hit after Canadian crude differentials collapsed.
Sandy Fielden, director of commodities and energy research at Morningstar, said PBF also lost out because of “the Canadian crude discount just disappearing.”
Canadian crude oil had been heavily discounted due to oversupply and lack of pipelines, but that discount eroded after the province of Alberta instituted production cuts. Western Canada Select (WCS) recently has traded around $9.25 a barrel under U.S. crude, compared with $15.65 at the beginning of the quarter. [CRU/CA]
BUMPER BUNKER PROFITS?
Some refiners decided to undergo heavier planned maintenance during the quarter to ready facilities for new low-sulfur marine fuel requirements. The new regulations required by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) are due to come into effect on Jan. 1, 2020 and could produce bumper profits.
The rules outlaw high-sulfur fuels traditionally used for shipping – a boon for complex refineries that can break down products used by marine vessels into lower-sulfur products with higher margins.
Refiners could now run their plants at higher rates to take advantage of the higher margins, and analysts expect gasoline inventories to climb through the remainder of the year as a result.
(Reporting by Stephanie Kelly and Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Susan Thomas)
Source: OANN
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