March, 2018

• 12 March

  Consumer staples giants ‘to be valued like risky bonds’

  Bloomberg Consumer staples companies such as Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc and Procter & Gamble Co. should be paying higher dividends to compensate investors for increasing levels of risk, according to the head of a fund that’s beaten 99 percent of peers in 2018. Reckitt’s dividend yield of 2.8 percent and P&G’s of 3.4 percent is similar to the 2.9 percent ...

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• 12 March

  Low-cost international flights coming to Brazil from Norwegian Air

  

  Bloomberg Low-cost international flying is coming to Brazil. Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA plans to fly to Brazil from Argentina and London to boost its month-old operations in South America, Chief Executive Officer Bjorn Kjos said in an interview in Buenos Aires. The Scandinavian company has already received authorisation from the Argentine government to operate flights to 13 Brazilian cities. Norwegian ...

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• 12 March

  US oil export surge may doom OPEC’s production cut deal

  

  Bloomberg Oil risks sliding back under $60 a barrel as a surge in US shipments to Asia threatens to undermine a deal between OPEC and its allies, according to ING Groep NV. While the producer group complied with a pledge to curb output and ease a glut in 2017, US flows that are gaining a bigger slice of the prized ...

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• 12 March

  China slows down on spending on Belt and Road energy projects

  

  Bloomberg China’s thirst for overseas energy investments is slaking, at least by one tally. The nation’s financing for so-called Belt and Road Initiative energy projects dropped 28 percent to $14.3 billion last year from $19.9 billion, according to data released on Monday by Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center. Spending last year included investments in gas pipelines in Malaysia, coal ...

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• 12 March

  Egypt plans to award high-speed rail tender in H2 2018

  DUBAI / Reuters Egypt plans to award the tender for a high-speed railway between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean in the second half of 2018, transport minister Hisham Arafat said on Monday. The project will connect the eastern resort of Ain al-Sokhna to El Alamein, a town west of Alexandria that was scene of a battle in World War ...

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• 12 March

  Nigeria state oil company hasn’t explained missing billions

  

  Bloomberg An agency tasked with cleaning up Nigeria’s murky oil industry says even though financial accountability has improved the state oil company still hasn’t explained billions of dollars of missing revenue. While energy producers have cooperated and complied with requirements to publish payments, the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative has struggled with the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corp., Waziri Adio, ...

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• 12 March

  Iraq to cut oil products imports by 25 percent

  BAGHDAD / Reuters Iraq’s oil ministry on Monday said the nation would reduce its petroleum products imports by 25 percent as crude oil refiner­ies are being rehabilitated following fighting with IS militants. Iraq is also producing more oil products by processing natural gas liquids, Oil Minister Jabar al-Luaibi said in a statement, without indicating a specific timeframe for the import ...

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• 12 March

  Saudi WEC invites bids for Jubail water, power project

  DUBAI / Reuters Saudi’s Water & Electricity Co (WEC) invited proposals to develop Jubail Phase 3, an integrated water desalination and power plant in the country’s Eastern Province, according to a tender posted on its website. The project, which an industry source estimated to be worth about $5bn, is expected to generate 1.17mn cubic metres of water per day and ...

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• 12 March

  Grab to buy Uber’s S East Asia business

  

  Bloomberg Grab, the dominant ride-hailing service in Southeast Asia, is close to finalising a deal to acquire Uber Technologies Inc.’s business in the region and may sign a deal this week or next, according to people familiar with the matter. Under terms of the proposed agreement, Grab would buy out Uber’s operations in certain markets in Southeast Asia and Uber ...

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• 12 March

  Singapore bourse to ease rules to woo tech firms

  

  Bloomberg Singapore Exchange Ltd. is stepping up efforts to bring technology companies to its market. The bourse last year proposed allowing dual-class shares, a structure favored by tech founders because it lets them keep control after going public. Now SGX wants to loosen some of the recommended restrictions it planned to impose on dual-class listings, such as a minimum market ...

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