April, 2022

• 29 April

  Shell agrees to buy India’s Sprng Energy for $1.55b

  

    Bloomberg Shell Plc agreed to buy Indian renewable power supplier Sprng Energy Pvt for $1.55 billion, accelerating the oil giant’s transition to low-carbon energy. The deal will triple Shell’s operational renewables capacity and help it achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, the company said in a statement. The transaction was first reported by Bloomberg. “This deal positions Shell as ...

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• 29 April

  China slashes coal import tariffs to zero

  

    Bloomberg China will cut import tariffs for coal to zero from May to the end of March to help guarantee energy supplies, the Ministry of Finance said in a statement. Current tariffs range from 3% to 6% depending on the type of coal, the ministry said in a statement and posted to its website. China’s coal imports are down ...

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• 29 April

  Chevron reaps biggest profit in almost 10 years

    Bloomberg Chevron Corp posted the highest quarterly earnings in almost a decade as soaring energy demand and Russia’s war on Ukraine strained global supplies, ratcheting up prices for everything from natural gas to diesel. Net income adjusted for one-time items was $6.5 billion, the highest since the second quarter of 2012, while free cash flow touched a level not ...

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• 29 April

  Apple earnings a big step back for transparency

  

  It’s been more than two years since Apple Inc issued revenue guidance. The iPhone maker initially blamed the Covid-19 pandemic, and later added chip shortages, for its inability to forecast the future. Yet the move is part of a worrying trend toward decreasing transparency at the world’s largest company. On January 28, 2020, just as lockdown measures were shutting parts ...

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• 29 April

  Should Sri Lanka cancel central bank?

  

  What was good for Sri Lanka under British colonial rule 75 years ago may be worth a try again. Or at least that’s what Mark Mobius, the former emerging markets guru at Franklin Templeton Investments, seems to be suggesting. To regain the confidence of investors, the bankrupt Indian Ocean island could consider swapping its central bank with a currency board, ...

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• 29 April

  Inflation is soaring. So where’s my pay raise?

    When consumer prices began soaring last year, a trade union representing staff at the European Central Bank (ECB) demanded their wages increase in lockstep with inflation. This grassroots effort to index pay to price increases was ultimately unsuccessful, but it was incendiary stuff coming from the supposed guardians of euro-area price stability. Indexation, after all, can determine who is ...

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• 29 April

  Putin’s gas plan gives Germany bad choices

    In 2018, German government officials war-gamed a massive natural-gas shortage. With the real thing looming, the lessons are sobering. Some hospitals, nursing homes and jails were forced to close; companies shut; livestock was left to die; hundreds of thousands of jobs vanished; rationing for households was imposed, according to the official account of the crisis-management exercise. In just a ...

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• 29 April

  Pop in business travel to help fuel 2022 profit: Southwest

  

    Bloomberg Southwest Airlines Co expects a rebound in domestic travel to carry into the summer, joining rivals predicting that consumers will shrug off worries about coronavirus variants, fork over higher fares and fill planes in the coming months. Southwest maintained a plan to restore 93% of its pre-pandemic flight capacity this quarter as robust leisure demand is joined by ...

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• 29 April

  Wizz Air extends halt to Ukraine, Russia flights

  

    Bloomberg Wizz Air Holdings Plc extended its cancellation of flights to Ukraine and Russia through the end of October as the war started by Vladimir Putin in February shows no sign of abating. The move means Eastern Europe’s biggest discount carrier will have scrapped operations to the two countries for the whole of the summer timetable, which this year ...

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• 29 April

  In sanctions hitch, EasyJet exits leases on Russia-owned jets

  

  Bloomberg EasyJet Plc terminated rental contracts on six Airbus SE jets owned by a Russian state leasing company in a rare example of sanctions depriving a European carrier of aircraft. EasyJet cancelled the leases on the A319 narrowbodies owned by a unit of state-controlled GTLK shortly after the UK and European Union acted to punish Vladimir Putin over the invasion ...

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