BUSINESSMonday 5 March 2018

PAGE | 22

Ooredoo poised for next stage

of growth

QBA hosts visiting French Railway Company CEO

Industries Qatar to expand operations MOHAMMAD SHOEB

THE PENINSULA

DOHA: Industries Qatar (IQ) is working to expand its operations and production capacities aiming to maintain and improve the competitiveness of its products in the local, regional and global markets, Saad Sherida Al Kaabi, Chairman and Managing Director of the Board of IQ noted yesterday.

The group, which is one of the region’s industrial giants with interests in the production of a wide range of petrochemical, fertiliser and steel products, is currently evaluating a wide spec-trum of potential investment and

capital expenditure opportuni-ties in the areas of capacity expansion, reliability, efficiency, and improvement in the field of health, environment and safety (HSE). “We believe such invest-ments are essential to maintain our competitive position and add value to our shareholders,” Al Kaabi said in his addressing to the shareholders at the compa-ny’s Annual General Assembly held yesterday.

He added: “The group will evaluate each opportunity on its merits, and ensure the invest-ment is in line with the group’s long-term strategic goals. We will keep our shareholders informed of any such capital

investments as and when a deci-sion is made.”

Meanwhile, the shareholders of IQ approved all the items on the agenda of the AGM.

→ Continued on page 22

Saad Sherida Al Kaabi (second right), Chairman and Managing Director of Industries Qatar (IQ); with Mohammed Nasser Al Hajri (third left), IQ Vice-Chairman; and other members of Board of Directors, during the AGM of the company at La Cigale Hotel, yesterday. PIC: SALIM MATRAMKOT/THE PENINSULA

The group reported a net profit of QR3.3bn and earnings per share of QR5.48 for the last financial year ended December 31, 2017.

8,730.66 +76.74 PTS0.89%

QSE FTSE100 DOW BRENT7,069.90 -105.74 PTS1.47%

24,449.52 -159.46 PTS0.65% Dow & Brent before going to press

$61.17 +0.18

PAGE | 23

22 MONDAY 5 MARCH 2018BUSINESS

Digital governance key enabler of future bankingTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The EMEA Finance Middle East Banking Awards 2017 Ceremony was held in Dubai recently. Dr. R. Seethara-man, CEO of Doha Bank received the “CEO of the Year” for bring-ing transformational leadership in Doha Bank with focus on technology and sustainable development at the event.

On receiving the award Dr. R. Seetharaman highlighted the role of CEO in the new millen-nium. He said “The key areas which require attention include realignment of business model in accordance with structural changes in environment, build-ing strong corporate image, sustaining growth, Grooming people for Global environment, leveraging technology, Giving back to society and managing stakeholder expectations. Dig-ital Governance and Sustainable development are the key ena-blers of future Banking.” Dr. R. Seetharaman spoke about the the future trends impacting

digital space and the challenges faced in digital economy. He said “The Fourth Industrial Revolu-tion combines advanced technologies in innovative ways, dramatically reshaping the way people live, work and relate to one another. Various industries are getting redefined, the health sector can be reimagined, the work space is undergoing changes, robotics and artificial intelligence are going to play important roles and the cus-tomer will be more empowered in the digital environment. Fin-tech, internet of things, block chain and artificial intelligence are some of the major techno-logical developments. Robotics, enabled by artificial intelligence and machine learning, is prov-ing to be a game changer that can bring unique operational efficiencies to the financial serv-ices industry. Accelerating digital ecosystem development could lead to cashless economies. Banks and the financial regula-tors should address the trade-off b e t w e e n c o n v e n i e n c e

and security when it comes to digital banking. From compli-ance perspective banks and the regulators have to deal with questions arising from digital banking. To protect customers, thwart organised criminals, and e n s u r e f i n a n c i a l

stability, prudential and conduct regulators, and legislators, need to ensure that regulation is future-proofed for the digital age.” Dr. R. Seetharaman also highlighted the measures of Doha Bank on sustainable development.

Dr. R. Seetharaman (left), CEO of Doha Bank receiving ‘ CEO of the Year’ award during the EMEA Finance Middle East Banking Awards 2017 ceremony, recently.

QC-Indonesia trade delegation discuss fostering mutual cooperationTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Qatar Chamber Vice-Chairman Mohamed bin Ahmed bin Towar Al Kuwari has met with a visiting Indonesian busi-ness team led by consultant of Qatari-Indonesian Business Council Dedi Saif El Hadi.

The meeting reviewed ways of strengthening bilateral eco-nomic and trade cooperation between both countries, possi-bilities of establishing joint

ventures between Qatari and Indonesian businessmen and available investment opportu-nities in both sides.

The Indonesian delegation included representatives of companies specialised in smart solutions, infrastructure projects, transport, rail and medical field.

Al Kuwari said that business sectors are looking forward to fostering cooperation ties with their counterparts in Indonesia,

and added that the Indonesian market is deemed very large which is full of opportunities that might attract Qatari businessmen.

Indonesia is rich in natural resources and there are poten-tial investment opportunities in tourism, real estate, mining, food security, halal and services. He said Qatari businessmen are interested in learning more about the available opportuni-ties in Indonesia.

Robert Willem named Dutch Business Council Qatar ChairmanTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Annual General Members’ Assembly of the Dutch Business Council Qatar (DBCQ) took place recently in Doha at the residence of The Netherlands ambassador, Bahia Tahzib-Lie. During the assembly, a new Executive Board was elected. Henk Jan Hoogendoorn stepped down as chairman, and Robert Willem Cats has been elected as the new chairman. Matthijs Westra, Valérie Pans, Marieke Witkamp, Freek Matheij and Nick Leissner are the new members of the Executive Board.

Emphasis was on the con-tinued collaboration between the DBCQ and the Embassy of the Kingdom of The Netherlands, based on numerous past initia-tives and the upcoming events for this year, such as, for exam-ple, the organisation of the Global Money Week in Qatar.

Ambassador Tahzib-Lie commented: “I am proud that Dutch companies are big inves-tors in Qatar. It’s great to see that

Qatar and the Netherlands con-nect, inspire and complement each other across a wide range of sectors, including food secu-rity, energy, infrastructure, sports, education, and health-care. We are thrilled that DBCQ has selected obesity as a theme for this year. Together with the Dutch businesses, I look for-ward to contributing to the promotion of a healthy lifestyle.”

“The synergies between the two countries emerge in the mutual drive for diversification: both relatively small nations with abundant gas reserves that foster an open economy beyond the finite fossil wealth.We expe-rience an increase in diversity of Dutch companies and affili-ates operating in Qatar, and aspire to support new arrivals, provide a diversity of network-ing opportunities, and share relevant information to keep the Dutch-Qatari business com-munity in Qatar up to speed,” the new DBCQ chairman commented.

Mohamed bin Ahmed bin Towar Al Kuwari (second right), Vice-Chairman, Qatar Chamber; with Dedi Saif El Hadi, consultant of Qatari-Indonesian Business Council and other officials during a meeting with a visiting Indonesian business delegation, at Qatar Chamber headquarters.

→ Continued from page 21This includes the Board’s

recommendation for annual dividend distribution (for 2017) of QR3bn, equivalent to QR5 per share.

The group reported a net profit of QR3.3bn and earn-ings per share of QR5.48 for the last financial year ended December 31, 2017. This com-pares with net profit of QR3bn and earnings per share of QR4.88 for the corresponding period of 2016. The group was also able to exceed the budget expectations for 2017.

Commenting on the oper-ational and financial results of the group, Al Kaabi noted that 2017 was a year full of opportunities and challenges. Crude oil prices, which reached below $30 per bar-rel in early 2016, recovered and stabilised in 2017.

This presented increased opportunities and created renewed optimism for the petrochemical segment within the group, which help the group register growth in revenue and net profit.

“The integration of Qapco and QVC (Qatar Vinyl Com-pany) was completed, and aims to improve the opera-tional and financial performance of QVC, and bring additional benefits to the shareholders of both Qapco and QVC,” he said.

The group’s financial and operational performance for the year is considered cred-ible amidst several challenges including the effect of the blockade, unplanned shut-downs in some of the facilities, a general increase in raw material costs (most specifically the cost of raw materials of steel), higher utility prices and muted d e m a n d i n s o m e geographies.

Despite of all these chal-lenges, the group was able to maintain its production lev-els, and sales volumes, reduce the controllable operating expenditure, and marginally improve its selling prices. As a result, the group was able to outperform last year’s per-formance by 12 percent.

The revenue reported under IFRS 11 for the period ended December 31, 2017 was QR 4.6bn, remained almost flat over the same period of 2016. The slight increase in the prices almost offset a marginal decrease in the sales volumes.

QBA hosts visiting French Railway Company CEOTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: The Qatari Businessmen Association (QBA) has hosted Guillaume Pepy, the visiting CEO of the French Railway Company and Chairman of the Qatari French Committee at MEDEF international.

The event was attended by France’s Ambassador to Qatar Eric Chevallier and Abdallah Al Subaie, Chairman of Qatar Rail. The event was hosted in honour of Pepy’s visit who represents MEDEF as one of the largest trade organizations in France and QBA’s first international partner since its establishment 14 years ago.

On the sidelines of the event, Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim Al Thani, QBA Chairman and Guil-laume Pepy held a meeting in the presence of Eric Chevallier. The two sides discussed ways to enhance cooperation between Qatar and France and promote investment, as well as work together to create new partnerships, especially with Qatar heading towards self-sufficiency.

Addressing the event, QBA member Ibrahim Al Jaidah pointed out that France is one of the largest economic partners of Qatar and Qatar has long been associated with France with close economic and trade ties, as both countries have a consist-ent economic policy in the fields of trade and investment cooperation.

“Qatar, despite the blockade, is one of the fast-growing econ-omies in the region, thanks to the wise leadership of the Emir His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani…..Qatari Busi-nessmen will be happy to explore

the possibility of partnership and cooperation whether these opportunities exist in France or in Qatar as long as It achieves common profit and interest to both countries,” he said.

In his speech, Pepy said that the purpose of his visit to Doha is to set up an action plan that will be implemented by MEDEF International with Qatar over the next months. He said MEDEF wants to build on the very strong political relationship between France and Qatar and take their business relationship to the next level. The new situation

experienced by Qatar opens fields of opportunities for Qatari-French cooperation in key sectors such as agribusiness, logistics along with the usual strong sectors of cooperation such as energy, defense infra-structure and transportation.

He said the French private sector has a longstanding exper-tise and has been developing PPP schemes in France for decades, which makes this experience of great benefit for the Qatari part-ners. “The French companies are more determined than ever to engage with Qatari Counterparts

and contribute to the economic diversification of Qatar and the expansion of its local private sec-tor in line with its vision 2030”, Pepy said.

Abdullah Al Subaie made a presentation on the activities of Qatar Railways Company, including the completion of 77 percent of the metro project, award of the operating Service Provider contract and launch of metro retail leasing units.

Hussein Al Fardan, QBA First Deputy and Sheikh Nawaf bin Nasser Al Thani, QBA Board member received the guests

Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim Al Thani (second left), QBA Chairman; with Guillaume Pepy (right),CEO of the French Railway Company and Chairman of the Qatari French Committee at MEDEF international; Eric Chevallier (second right), French Ambassador to Qatar and Ibrahim Al Jaidah, QBA member during the event.

Industries Qatar to expand operations

Pepy said MEDEF wants to build on the very strong political relationship between France and Qatar and take their business relationship to the next level.

Massive hack to cost Equifax $275mANADOLU

SAN FRANCISCO: Credit score reporting company Equifax said Friday it expects to face $275m in costs related to a devastat-ing hacking of its data last year.

The amount would make the 2017 data breach one of the most expensive hackings in corporate history.

The cost estimates mainly reflect the implementation of new cybersecurity upgrades, lawsuits and free identity theft monitoring for millions of affected users. Approximately $75m of the costs would be cov-ered by insurance.

The breach disclosed last September was notable for the sensitivity of the personal data the hackers were able to steal. Millions of Social Security num-bers, names, addresses, birthdates and credit card num-bers were exposed.

Initially, Equifax said 147 million Americans -- about half of the population -- were affected by the attack. On Thursday, the company said investigations discovered that the data for another 2.4 million people were exposed.

The estimated costs were revealed in an earnings report. Equifax also made a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday that revealed the hack was still under investigation by a series of federal and state agencies.

“A number of US federal, state, local and foreign govern-mental officials and agencies, including Congressional com-mittees…continue to investigate events related to the 2017 cybersecurity incident, includ-ing how it occurred, the consequences thereof and our response thereto,” Equifax said in the filing.

23MONDAY 5 MARCH 2018 BUSINESS

May defends stand on post-Brexit financial servicesREUTERS

LONDON: Prime Minister Theresa May defended her deci-sion to rule out so-called ‘pass-porting’ rights for banks after Brexit, saying Britain could not become a “rule taker” when it came to financial services.

May said her vision for future ties to the EU was a credible one and she was confident of reaching a good Brexit deal, in an interview broadcast yesterday but recorded on Friday after a speech in which she had appealed for more flexibility from the bloc.

Setting out her thinking in more detail, May said the finan-cial services sector was too important to the British economy for Brussels to retain control of it under the existing ‘passporting’ arrangement.

Passporting rules allow EU finance companies to sell their services across the 28-member bloc with a local license, rather than getting a license to operate in each member country where it does business.

“If we were to accept ‘pass-porting’ we’d just be a rule taker, we’d have to abide by the rules that were being set elsewhere,” May said in the interview with the BBC.

“Given the importance of financial stability, of ensuring the City of London, we can’t just take

the same rules without any say in them,” May said.

The Confederation of British Industry lobby group said it was important to make sure alterna-tive arrangements were put in place to prevent firms leaving London.

“Now we do have an opening negotiating position. It needs to be followed through, it needs to be followed through very quickly because financial services firms are moving now,” CBI Director General Carolyn Fairbairn told BBC radio.

May wants financial services to be included in a free trade deal - something she believes it is still possible to achieve despite accu-sations from Brussels that her approach amounts to ‘cherry

picking’ the best bits of the EU “I’ve said before that no deal is better than a bad deal, but I’m confident that we can get a good deal, and get the right deal for the British people,” May told the BBC.

“If we look at our future prosperity and security, in the UK and in the other 27 countries, actually the right deal for us will be the right deal for them too.” IRISH BORDER May’s speech on Friday was broadly well received in Brussels and at home among the rival factions of her Conserv-ative Party.

But, underlining the chal-lenge May faces, Ireland’s for-eign minister Simon Coveney said on Sunday she still needed to spell out her approach to the Irish border - which will become the only land frontier between Britain and the EU after Brexit.

“She hasn’t really gone into any more detail than we’ve already heard in terms of how she is going to solve the problem of maintaining a largely invis-ible border on the island of Ire-land,” Coveney told the BBC.

Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon said she still hoped to build support for staying in the EU’s single market and customs union - which May has ruled out.

Sturgeon said she was also was not ready to give Scotland’s consent to legislation Britain

must pass to formally end its EU membership.

“What she (May) was saying - and to give her some credit she was much more honest about this than we’ve heard from the government before - we’re going to go through this very compli-cated, long, drawn out difficult

process and end up worse off at the end of it,” Scottish First Min-ister Nicola Sturgeon told ITV.

“Why would the first min-ister of Scotland, the first min-ister of Wales or anybody else who’s interested in the long term prosperity of the country just accept that?”

Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May (left) talks to Andrew Marr for the Marr Show on BBC television in London, Britain.

Ukraine says gas shortage fully coveredAFP

KIEV: Ukraine yesterday said it had resolved its gas shortage caused by the refusal of Russia’s Gazprom to restart natural gas deliv-eries.

“We have a sharp increase in gas supplies from the EU, from Poland, Slo-vakia and Hungary,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko posted on Twitter.

“The entire shortage is completely covered.”

Poroshenko underlined that Ukraine had a stable gas supply and has “enough gas in storage facilities, its own gas and imports.”

New tensions between Moscow and Kiev flared Thursday after Russia’s Gazprom said it would not restart gas supplies to Ukraine, leading Ukrainian state provider Naftogaz to accuse it of violating con-tractual agreements.

Record high consump-tion amid days of freezing temperatures had led to a shortage of around 10 mil-lion cubic meters of gas a day. Ukraine on Friday urged schools to close and factories to cut production and asked citizens to chip in by lowering their home ther-mostats to save on gas.

“You are incredible, thank you,” Naftogaz tweeted yesterday. “Briefly: every-thing is ok now,” the state-ment said. “We have gas. Educational institutions are waiting for children on Monday.”

The latest flare-up in tensions between Moscow and Kiev came after an arbi-tration court in Sweden ordered Gazprom to pay $2.56bn (¤2.08bn) to Naf-togaz for “failure to deliver the agreed transit gas volumes”.

On Friday, the European Union warned its own gas supplies could be threatened by the standoff, saying it was ready to broker talks with Russia and Ukraine to find a solution.

“This situation raises concerns not only for the direct supply of natural gas to Ukraine but possibly also for the transit of gas to the EU,” Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission Vice-President in charge of energy, said in a statement.

Tencent CEO urges ID link for Hong Kong & Chinese citizensBLOOMBERG

HONG KONG: Tencent Hold-ings Ltd. Chairman Ma Huateng called on the Chinese govern-ment to introduce an ID system that would link multiple sets of travel documents with a mobile phone as part of a plan to boost regional trade between Hong Kong and Mainland China.

China’s second-richest man said new technology systems and laws could let Hong Kong residents make electronic pay-ments and cross the border more easily. Ma was speaking at a press conference in Beijing, two days before the country’s legislative council convenes in the capital to set the year’s agenda.

“It’s still very complicated and we’d need to make it work with the Customs systems but from a technology point of view we can do it,” Ma said. “We have been talking to the chief execu-tive in Hong Kong for quite some

time about a number of these issues, including the electronic ID.” Tencent, whose company is best known for the social-media phenomenon WeChat, is headquartered in Shenzhen, just over the border from Hong Kong.

While championing greater technology innovation and prosperity, the plan is also a lightning rod in Hong Kong -- now an autonomous self-gov-erning city-- that’s becoming increasingly wary of political meddling from Beijing.

Ma has advocated further integration in the Pearl River Delta region, saying Hong Kong, Macau and Guangdong province can be more like the multi-city San Francisco Bay technology hub in the US if it gets easier to move around. Hong Kong and Macau have retained their own immigration policies since the British and Portuguese hando-vers in 1997 and 1999, respec-tively, and have busy border

crossings with the mainland. Ma suggested in June that

Hong Kong and mainland Chi-nese immigration and customs officials could share locations. Critics responded by saying the idea violated the “one-country, two-systems” framework.

Ma said some Hong Kong citizens fear an excessive flood of talent from mainland China, while other difficulties include standardizing tax benefits. He said a worker swap system, where for example companies could only hire a tech worker if a local tech worker went abroad, could mitigate those concerns. He also proposes tax benefits to attract high-end talent to com-panies in two Pearl River Delta areas -- Qianhai and Hengqin.

“It’s a little bit difficult to solve these problems for the time being,” he said through a trans-lator. “If we were to look at tax incentives, questions would be asked: ‘Why do only Guandong people get this, why not others?’”

Trump’s trade adviser says certain tariff ‘exemptions’ possibleBLOOMBERG

WASHINGTON: Certain exemptions could be made to the tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum announced by Pres-ident Donald Trump but exclu-sions for entire countries aren’t expected, the top White House trade adviser said.

“There’s a difference between exemptions and country exclusions,” Peter Nav-arro, director of the National Trade Council at the White House, said yesterday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“There’ll be an exemption procedure for particular cases where you need to have exemp-tions so that business can move forward, but at this point in time, there’ll be no country exclu-sions.” Navarro didn’t specify under what circumstances exemptions may be considered.

Trump is expected to sign a formal order for the tariffs in the coming week, or the week after that at the latest, after all legal-ities are finalized, Navarro said.

He defended Trump’s deci-sion to set levies of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 per-cent on aluminum, a move that rocked financial markets and which critics say threatens US jobs and ignites the possibility of a global trade war.

US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who blanketed the airwaves on Friday to defend the tariffs, continued to press on Trump’s behalf and to downplay the possible impact of the move on US consumer prices and jobs. The tariffs are part of Trump’s plan to counter what he says are decades of unfair trade practices and ill-advised trade agree-ments that have robbed the US of revenue and jobs.

Passporting rules allow EU finance companies to sell their services across the 28-member bloc with a local license, rather than getting a license to operate in each member country where it does business.

Ooredoo poised for next stage of growthTHE PENINSULA

DOHA: Sheikh Abdulla bin Mohammed Al Thani, Chairman of Ooredoo Group, has stated that the group has delivered positive results across its markets in 2017.

Addressing Ooredoo’s Annual General Meeting here yesterday, Sheikh Abdullah said Ooredoo has built strong net-works and an appealing range of digital products and services that will serve as the foundation for its next stage of growth and digital transformation.

“Our efforts are sustained by a vibrant and successful brand. The Ooredoo brand has rolled-out across all our major markets, and our message about

“Enriching Digital Lives” reso-nates with young people from Tunis through to Jakarta, and of course with the youth of Qatar, Kuwait and Oman,” Sheikh Abdulla told the shareholders in his address at the company’s Annual General Meeting.

The shareholders discussed the company’s Corporate Gov-ernance Report and financial statements for 2017, and approved all the items on the agenda, including the Board’s recommendation to distribute a cash dividend of 35 percent of the nominal share value, equiv-alent to QR3.5 per share.

The Group’s revenue for 2017 increased to QR32.7bn, driven by strong contributions from Indo-nesia, Iraq, Kuwait, Maldives and

Oman. Excluding Foreign Exchange translation impact, revenues increased by 2 percent, compared to the reported 1 per-cent revenue increase. The com-pany’s customer base increased 18 percent to 164 million.

Group EBITDA increased 3 percent to QR13.8bn with a cor-responding increase in EBITDA margin to 42 percent. Group net profit to Ooredoo shareholders was QR2bn.Importantly, data revenue stood at QR15.3bn in

2017, up 16 percent from QR13.1bn in 2016, and Group rev-enue from business services was QR5.5bn.

On the financial perform-ance and business strategy of the Group the Chairman, said: “Our growth in data and busi-ness services underlines the important strategic shift that Ooredoo is making. Years ago, we recognised that data and dig-ital services were the future – we are now reaching the point

where these services will sur-pass the revenue that the Group generates from voice and SMS. To sustain this growth, we will continue to build our global net-work and take a lead in 5G services.”

The following members were appointed as Ooredoo Board of Directors: Sheikh Abdulla bin Mohammed Al Thani (Chairman); H E Ali Shareef Al Emadi; Mohammed bin Eissa Al Mohannadi; Dr Nasser

Mohammed Marafih; Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo. Also, the fol-lowing candidates were elected members of the Ooredoo Board of Directors: Nasser Rashid Al Humaidi, Ibrahim Abdullah Al Mahmoud, General Retirement & Social Insurance Authority- represented by Turki Mohammed Al Khater, Ali Bin Ghanim Al Thani Group- repre-sented by Sheikh Ali bin Ghanim Al Thani; QNB- represented by Ali Ahmed Al Kuwari.

Sheikh Abdulla bin Mohammed Al Thani (left), Ooredoo Chairman during the AGM held yesterday.

The Group’s revenue for 2017 increased to QR32.7bn, driven by strong contributions from Indonesia, Iraq, Kuwait, Maldives and Oman.

Group EBITDA increased 3% to

QR13.8bn

24 MONDAY 5 MARCH 2018BUSINESS

Putin inaugurates thermal power plantsRussian President Vladimir Putin and state energy firm InterRAO’s Chief Executive Boris Kovalchuk attend a ceremony launching Mayakovskaya and Talakhovskaya thermal power plants in Kaliningrad region, Russia.

EU aims to taxInternet giants at ‘2 to 6%’AFP

PARIS: The EU will soon unveil a plan for taxing major Inter-net companies like Amazon and Facebook by imposing a levy of two to six percent on revenues in every country where they operate, French finance minis-ter Bruno Le Maire (pictured) said yesterday.

“The range will be from two to six percent; but closer to two than to six,” Le Maire told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper.

The European Commission has said it will present by end March an overhaul of its tax rules, which currently allow US digital economy giants to report their income from across the bloc in any member state.

That leads them to pick low-tax nations like Ireland, the Netherlands or Luxembourg, depriving other nations of their share of the revenue even though they may account for more of a company’s earnings.

“The heads of these com-panies know themselves that this system can’t continue,” Le Maire said.

Critics say the tax-avoid-ance strategies used by the tech titans known as GAFA-- Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple-- deprive EU governments of billions of euros while giving them an unfair advantage over smaller rivals.

The Organisation for

Economic Cooperation and Development says such strat-egies cost governments around the world as much as $240bn (¤195bn) a year in lost revenue, according to a 2015 estimate.

Asked if the proposed rate might be criticised as too low, Le Maire said: “I would rather have a law that can be imple-mented quickly instead of drawn-out negotiations.”

American tech giants appear to believe the European tax revamp is in the cards, with several already announcing pledges to pay more in each country where they operate as governments step up their fis-cal demands.

Amazon said last month that it had settled a major tax claim in France and that it would start declaring all its earnings in the country.

China plans more economic policy coordination to help curb risksBLOOMBERG

BEIJING: China said that it would increase coordination of monetary policy, macro-prudential monitoring and financial supervision, the strongest signal yet that top leaders gathering in Beijing this week plan to unveil an overhaul of economic authorities.

The financial supervi-sion system will be improved to ensure financial stability and prevent systemic risk, the official Xinhua News Agency reported yesterday, citing a decision by a Com-munist Party committee on deepening government reform.

The statement comes just before the National People’s Congress opens today morn-ing, when Premier Li Keqiang will outline the country’s economic objec-tives for the year.

President Xi Jinping has made financial stability a top job for his deputies, who are working to maintain rapid economic growth while defusing a growing debt bomb. Leaders are consider-ing a merger of the banking and insurance regulators, people familiar with the mat-ter told Bloomberg News last month.

The plans are part of a broader overhaul of the Com-munist Party and government ruling structure, according to Xinhua.

China aims to build an “efficient system that carries the full function of the party and state institutions” and gives the party a bigger role by accelerating creation of “new economic organisations and social organisations” under it.

Authorities also said yes-terday they will step up efforts to ease direct govern-ment intervention in markets, enhance antitrust efforts to prevent unfair competition and monopolies, and loosen entry limits in service sectors. Cloud computing and big data will be used to make economic controls more tar-geted, the statement said, without giving more detail.

VW weighs strategic options in truck division revampBLOOMBERG

FRANKFURT: Volkswagen AG officials are discussing options to prepare the truck division for access to the capital markets, potentially paving the way for an initial public offering of shares or a bond sale by the unit, accord-ing to people familiar with the matter.

Deliberations at a meeting last week included changing

the division’s legal structure to a private limited company under German rules or the European equivalent Societas Europaea, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the talks are confiden-tial. A decision could be made in the next few weeks, but the dis-cussions are complex and might drag on, according to the people.

“Currently we are focusing on implementing our strategy and on driving the transition from a

‘start-up company’ into a mature corporation,” VW’s truck unit said in an emailed statement on Satur-day, adding that “we keep all options open.”

Global automakers have embarked on sweeping organiza-tional changes as the industry faces a seismic shift toward electric vehicles, autonomous cars and new digital services such as ride hailing.

Granting the VW truck

operation more independence within the world’s largest auto-maker would help to build confidence among investors that VW is considering deeper organ-izational changes to become more efficient in the wake of the diesel-emission scandal that erupted in September 2015.

The German company embarked on a push to become less centralized as part of a new strategy, but an asset review

announced almost two years ago to identify non-core operations hasn’t led to a tangible results so far. The push to make the 630,000-employee,group more focused on its main automotive operations appeared mired in internal politics last year when the sale of the Ducati motorcycle brand collapsed. German rival Daimler AG last year firmed up plans to give individual units more independence to make them agile.

German govt hack was part of worldwide campaign: SourcesREUTERS

BERLIN: A powerful cyber attack on Germany’s govern-ment computer network was part of a worldwide campaign likely carried out by a Russian hacker group known as Snake, sources briefed on the incident said on Friday.

Germany’s chief federal prosecutor’s office said it had launched a preliminary inves-tigation into possible espionage related to the incident, which security sources said was first detected in December but may have begun much earlier.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Friday dismissed the suggestion that Russian hack-ers were behind the cyber attack.

Johannes Dimroth, a spokesman for the German inte-rior ministry, said officials had “averted the acute dangers immediately after learning of the cyber attack, but declined to say if the attack was ongoing. He told the regular government news conference the affected IVBB computer network was used to exchange documents labelled “for government use only,” but not highly classified

documents. German media reported that the attackers installed malicious software on 17 computers, including one that belonged to a defence ministry official who was seconded at the time to the foreign ministry.

The report by the Sueddeut-sche Zeitung newspaper and broadcasters NDR and WDR said a small amount of data had been copied, including some related to Russia.

It said the attack was tar-geted at Ukraine and other former Soviet republics, coun-tries in South America, the Baltic states and Scandinavia.

Profits, doubts in equal measure at Geneva Motor ShowAFP

GENEVA: This year’s Geneva Motor Show comes at a curious time for an auto world enjoying record profits yet also gripped by doubt midway through the grand transition from diesel to electric and self-driving vehicles.

“Geneva really ought to have been a lovely salon,” says, with heavy irony, Ferdinand Duden-h o e f f e r , d i r e c t o r o f German-based Center Automo-tive Research of a Europe’s first major car show of the year run-ning from March 8 to 18.

“The luxury car makers con-tinue to present their new models and worldwide sales set new records in 2017.

“But behind the glamour and the finery are plenty of worry wrinkles.”

Number one overriding con-cern is the increasing slide in diesel sales, a blow for European constructors who had essentially sought to bet the house on die-sel as they strove for years to cut CO2 emissions with the support of public authorities.

The emissions cheating scandal, which blew up at Volkswagen in 2015, has heaped discredit on a technology criti-cised for belching out nitrogen oxide and harmful particulates.

Major cities including Paris have announced their intention to ban diesel progressively while

a top German court last month opened the way to banning older diesel cars from the streets on air quality grounds.

Diesel’s fall from grace has pushed constructors to turn their attention to production of more-in-demand models running either on petrol, dubbed “dino-saur juice”, or else make the jump to electric or at least hybrid.

The top global constructors have earmarked investments worth tens of billions of euros (dollars) over the past few years to accelerate their push to elec-tric. Yet the commercial upshot of the strategy remains unclear.

This year’s Show, the 88th edition, will see the unveiling of several new electric models and concepts at Tuesday and Wednesday’s media days, before opening its doors to the general public on Thursday.

Among new potential star turns are Jaguar’s first all-elec-tric model as it shows off the production version of its I-Pace, as well as Hyundai’s Kona, advertised as the world#s first fully electric subcompact SUV.

Constructors also have to contend with the fact that where fuel engines are concerned, their greater emissions of CO2 will render a tough challenge com-pliance with future European norms.

They will have to cut CO2 emissions to an average 95

grams per kilometre across the board by 2021 from 130 grams in 2015, or else face swingeing fines.

Auto makers are bound to continue investing, furthermore, to ensure improved performance of their combustion engines as these still make up the bulk of sales. And yet they will prove progressively less of an earner as volumes inexorably fall off.

Traditional constructors also have a wary eye on sector new-comers, led by those in the electric vanguard such as Tesla, as well as giants from the high-tech such as Apple or Google and would-be Chinese rivals all seek-ing their slice of a “smart car” cake.

The future belongs to those whose vehicles enjoy ever more autonomy through increasing recourse to artificial intelligence and telecommunications.

Such qualities are not the preserve of the traditional auto-mobile constructor.

The last few weeks have seen a slew of carmakers post record profits -- but the ques-tion is the degree to which that will act as a springboard to pay-ing for the switch to a new auto-tech world.

Eric Kirstetter of the Roland Berger consultancy told AFP that, currently, some constructors are doing “very well,” yet their “future is very complicated”.

They must “reduce costs in such as way as to make savings allowing them to achieve their R&D plans,” said Kirstetter, add-ing this will involve surmounting “a problem of squaring the finan-cial circle.”

That, he says, is “an equa-tion extremely difficult to resolve in order to make the necessary investments to develop new gen-erations of vehicles while continuing to invest massively

in improving the combustion engine” in the shorter term.

The task may be more read-ily surmountable for pioneers in the development of alternatives to diesel, including the Renault-Nissan alliance, with both leaders in the move towards electrifica-tion, while Toyota has the early jump on the hybrid market.

However the future of a metamorphosing industry ulti-mately pans out, the 700,000

Salon visitors expected to descend on Geneva’s Palexpo in the coming days will be able to cast their eyes over some 900 vehicles.

Monday will see the car of the year unveiled from seven finalists for the accolade.

The contenders are the Alfa Romeo Stelvio, Audi A8, BMW series 5, Citroen C3 Aircross, Kia Stinger, Seat Ibiza and Volvo XC40.

The visitors seen at the booth of US electric carmaker Tesla Motors, during one of the previous editions of Geneva Car Show.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development says tax-avoidance strategies cost governments around the world as much as $240bn a year in lost revenue, according to a 2015 estimate.

25MONDAY 5 MARCH 2018 BUSINESS

As its wealth fund goes green, Norway’s firms struggle to keep upREUTERS

OSLO: Many Norwegian compa-nies lag high standards for reporting their impact on the environment that the Nordic nation’s $1 trillion wealth fund is championing abroad in 2018.

The world’s biggest sover-eign wealth fund, which is barred by the Norwegian government from investing at home, wants the 9,100 companies in which it holds stakes to submit data on issues such as water use and climate effects to London-based non-profit group CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project.

In Norway, just two firms - DNB bank and property firm Entra - were on a CDP list of 160 “A” rated performers worldwide for disclosure in 2017. That was comparable to other Nordic nations but not exemplary, CDP data show.

Norway’s state-controlled oil

group Statoil got an “F” grade for disclosure of fresh water use - a core focus area for the fund abroad - after it declined to take part in the CDP survey.

On climate change reporting, including tracking greenhouse gas emissions, Statoil got a strong “A-”.

“It’s not our responsibility” to ensure that Norwegian firms comply, central bank governor Oeystein Olsen told Reuters when asked if Oslo was pressing higher standards abroad than at home. The wealth fund is managed by a unit of the central bank.

CDP said there were no Nor-wegian firms, for instance, among almost 100 companies including L’Oreal, Walmart and Toyota rated as leaders in tracking greenhouse gas emissions in their supply chains.

“If Norwegian companies want to take a leadership role on climate change they should be

engaging with their suppliers on these issues,” said Sonya Bhonsle, head of supply chain at CDP.

Norway’s fund, built from the nation’s oil and gas revenues, says global warming is stoking down-pours, droughts and rising sea levels that threaten long-term earnings. It says investors need harmonised data to compare risks. Its policies, such as restricting investments in coal companies, have huge influence for companies and investors because it owns on average 1.4 percent of all listed shares worldwide.

Yngve Slyngstad, the fund’s CEO, said it encouraged compa-nies abroad to “strengthen their reporting in general, directly to the investors, but also indirectly through the CDP”. Few compa-nies are doing enough on climate change, he said.

Statoil spokesman Erik Haa-land said the company did not

take part in the CDP fresh water survey because most of the firm’s operations are offshore, using abundant sea water. Statoil has water-intensive shale oil and gas in the US.

“Also, the questionnaire is quite extensive, and since the issue is less material for our oper-ations we made the decision to not take part,” he said.

Asked if the government had a double standard, Norway’s deputy Finance Minister Geir Olsen wrote in an e-mail that the ministry “welcomes efforts to standardise climate reporting according to internationally agreed principles.”

The finance ministry over-sees the sovereign wealth fund.

Martin Skancke, a consultant on the design of sovereign wealth funds, said “obviously there is a reasonable expectation that when the government promotes these standards through the fund in

foreign markets that it also pro-motes them internally”. He said that, from his own experience on boards of Norwegian companies, the centre-right government does urge companies to disclose envi-ronmental data. He said it was hard to estimate the extra costs of such reporting.

Among other Norwegian companies, state-controlled tel-ecoms group Telenor got an “A-” for climate change reporting in 2017, while aluminium producer Hydro and fertiliser-maker Yara International, in which the state owns just over a third, got “C”s.

Hydro said it had reported to the CDP since 2004 but lost marks on technicalities.

“When filling in the CDP questionnaire, we are more occu-pied about reporting quality information requested by impor-tant stakeholders, than exactly following the CDP format,” it said in an e-mail.

EU & South American bloc extend trade talksAFP

ASUNCION: The European Union and the South Amer-ican trade bloc Mercosur are extending talks on a free trade deal by a couple of weeks to resolve “four or five” outstanding issues, offi-cials from both sides said on Friday.

Paraguay’s Foreign Min-ister, Eladio Loizaga (pic-tured), said the discussions had advanced and “we can be satisfied” with the progress so far.

Even though the current round of face-to-face talks wrapped up in Paraguay’s capital on Friday, the deci-sion was taken to keep the negotiations going through teleconferencing and emails, Loizaga said.

“We can’t close them completely. There are four or five issues in this moment, but I don’t foresee a big problem,” said Edita Hrda, the chief for the Americas for the EU’s foreign policy service. She said she expected the deal could be signed before June, when Paraguay’s term chairing the talks comes to an end. There is a desire among the parties to reach agreement before Brazil -- Latin America’s big-gest economy -- enters cam-paigning for October presi-dential elections.

Discussions between Mercosur and the EU toward a free trade deal began two decades ago. Loizaga iden-tified automobiles and auto parts as one of the biggest sticking points remaining in the talks, specifically tech-nical standards. Agriculture was another.

Any resulting accord with the EU would blaze a path for other free trade pacts with Mercosur. Nego-tiations are to begin next week between the South American bloc and Canada and Singapore, with South Korea discussions due to begin later.

Tata Group marks Founder’s DayRatan Tata (left), former Chairman of the Tata Group, and present Chairman Natarajan Chandrashekharan take part in the 179th Founder’s Day celebrations in Jamshedpur in Jharkhand state, India. The event marked 179 years since the birth of Indian industrialist Jamsetji Tata who founded the Tata Group, which is now India’s largest conglomerate company.

Former Uber CEO Kalanick joins health startup’s boardBLOOMBERG

SAN FRANCISCO: Travis Kalanick has found his first known gig since the former Uber Technologies Inc. chief execu-tive officer was ousted from the company he co-founded. Kalanick is joining the board of his friend’s medical office soft-ware company.

The startup, called Kareo Inc., is based in Irvine,

California, and has raised $125m in venture capital.

Kalanick was an early investor in the company, which was started by Dan Rodrigues. Kalanick and Rodrigues co-founded music search company Scour together in 1997.

News website Axios earlier reported Kalanick’s decision to join Kareo’s board. A spokesman for the company confirmed the appointment. Rob Reid, another

early investor, also joined the board.

Although Kalanick resigned as Uber CEO in June, he remains on the board.

Kalanick has been involved in the search for board mem-bers and helped pick his suc-cessor, Dara Khosrowshahi. In February, he testified in Alphabet Inc.’s self-driving car lawsuit against Uber, which was settled for $245m in equity.

Australia warns of trade war, pushesfor tariffs exemptionAFP

SYDNEY: Australia yesterday warned against tit-for-tat retal-iation and the outbreak of a trade war that could slow global economic growth, as it pushed to be excluded from US Presi-dent Donald Trump’s steel and aluminium tariffs.

Canberra has sought to be exempt from the hefty tariffs, citing an understanding reached with the United States at G20 meetings last year.

There are also local industry concerns that the tar-iffs could see cheap steel des-tined for the US flood the domestic market instead.

“We’ve seen... over the last 48 hours commentary from Canada, from the European Union. We’ve seen the US gov-ernment going back about tar-iffs on cars,” Trade Minister Steve Ciobo told Sky News Aus-tralia Sunday.

“That’s what concerns me, if we continue to see an esca-lation of rhetoric, and, ulti-mately, action around tariffs applying for imports and exports across multiple econo-mies... this will lead to a slow-down in growth.”

Ciobo said he spoke with his US counterpart Wilbur Ross Saturday, but was unable to secure an exemption guarantee, adding that it would “ulti-mately... come down to a deci-sion of the president”.

A US official said Friday no countries will be exempt, but added that possible exemptions

to the measures would be con-sidered on a case-by-case basis.

The minister said Canberra would use existing anti-dumping measures if cheap products flood the Australian marketplace as a result of the Trump tariffs.

But he would not comment on whether his government would retaliate directly against the US if the administration moved forward with its plans, only saying that a trade barrier in principle “doesn’t make good policy sense”.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull spoke out strongly against import barriers Sunday, calling it a “dead end”.

“Protectionism is not a ladder to get you out of the low-growth trap, it is a shovel to dig it a lot deeper,” he told reporters in Sydney.

Ciobo said Friday Aus-tralian steel and aluminium only accounted for a small per-centage of the US import market, but warned the tariffs would distort trade and lead to a loss of jobs.

Fears of a global trade war and counter-measures grew over the weekend, after Trump threatened the European Union’s auto industry if it enacted retaliatory measures to his steel and aluminium sanctions.

The European Commission chief’s Jean-Claude Juncker said Friday that the EU was drawing up measures against leading US brands such as Levi’s and Harley-Davidson.

Markets clear German hurdle, Italy up nextREUTERS

LONDON: The revival of Germa-ny’s grand coalition should aid stability and keep the eurozone’s plans for tighter fiscal union on track, investors and analysts said as months of political uncertainty ended yesterday.

Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD) voted decisively for another tie-up with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, clearing the way for a new gov-ernment in Europe’s largest economy more than five months since the country’s inconclusive election.

Two thirds of the SPD mem-bership voted “yes” to the deal, a party official said, meaning Merkel could be sworn in for a fourth term by mid-March in a repeat of the grand coalition that has governed since 2013.

Initial reaction from inves-tors suggested the German deal

should support the euro, stock and bond markets.

“This is the outcome that markets have been crossing their fingers and hoping for,” said James Athey, a senior investment manager at Standard Life Aber-deen, adding that it was “by far the least disruptive outcome”.

“While it by no means answers all the policy questions

at either the German domestic nor European level, it certainly provides a more stable base from which to address the many issues at hand.”

Traders went into the weekend betting on a higher euro, data from the US Com-modity Futures Trading Commis-sion showed on Friday.

The currency is seen as the

most sensitive gauge to euro zone politics and the value of net long euro positions -- betting on the currency rising -- climbed to its highest in three weeks the fig-ures showed.

“It is probably good news in terms of the capacity for Ger-many to open up to (French Pres-ident) Emmanuel Macron’s pro-posal for the future of Europe,” said Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Chief European econo-mist, Gilles Moec.

Macron’s office in Paris said: “France and Germany will work together on new initiatives in the coming weeks to bring the Euro-pean project forward.”

German business also greeted the result with relief. The wait for a government since Sep-tember was the country’s longest post-election interregnum.

“While the United States is starting a trade war and China is challenging our industrial

leadership, we have been unnecessarily self-absorbed,” said engineering trade union VDMA’s managing director, Thilo Brodtmann.

It wasn’t only Germany that investors were looking at yes-terday though.

Italy was holding an national election under a com-plex new voting system that has made the outcome even trickier than usual to predict.

Pollsters generally expect a hung parliament, with former prime minister Silvio Berlusco-ni’s alliance of centre-right groups emerging as the largest bloc.

The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement looks almost certain to be the biggest single party, potentially complicating matters, with the various party leaders all having ruled out post-election alliances with rivals.

Italy, however, has a long history of finding a way out of apparently intractable political stalemate and markets have shown little concern in recent weeks about the prospect of a confused result.

Italian bond yields, which are a reflection of government’s credit market borrowing costs, fell to a three-week low on Friday. The gap with Germany’s borrowing costs also narrowed to the smallest in two weeks.

“I am surprised how little risk the market is pricing from this,” said Cesar Perez Ruiz, chief investment officer at Pictet Wealth Management.

That gap between Italian and German yields could shrink a little further with an centre-right alliance, though there would be a heavy sell-off in Italian markets if the most anti-European parties were part of any new government, he added.

Italian bond yields, which are a reflection of government’s credit market borrowing costs, fell to a three-week low on Friday. The gap with Germany’s borrowing costs also narrowed to the smallest in two weeks.

German business also greeted the

grand coalition with relief.

BLOOMBERG

MUNICH:SIEMENS AG will press ahead with an initial public offering of its health-care unit, as Chief Executive Officer Joe Kaeser unloads another key business at Europe’s largest engineering company.

The IPO of a 15 percent stake in Siemens Healthineers is planned for March 16, the Munich-based company said in a statement on Sunday. Siemens expects to generate €3.9bn to €4.65bn from the offering. The shares will be priced in a range of €26 and €31each.

The IPO, which may be the largest in Europe this year, val-ues Siemens Healthineers at as much as €31bn. That’s less than an earlier estimate of as much as €40bn, and the offering comes amid market volatility that temporarily dampened investor appetite. A bet by Sie-mens Healthineers on the success of its Atellica portfolio of lab equipment and products, launched in 2017, is also weigh-ing on the sale.

The IPO is part of a broad overhaul of Siemens by Kae-ser, who also merged the wind power unit with Spanish

competitor Gamesa SA in 2017, is combining the com-pany’s train business with that of Alstom SA, and, according to people familiar with the matter, plans to sell the Flender GmbH mechanical drives operation. Kaeser has likened the moves as shifting the company from being an aircraft carrier to a nimble fleet of ships.

Siemens announced in November 2016 that it planned an IPO of a minority stake in the unit, which also sells scanners, X-ray machines and other diag-nostic equipment.

AFP

DOUALA: Talking fast and dreaming big, William Elong shows off the first “made in Cameroon” drone at his sixth-floor workshop in downtown Douala, minutes from the economic capital’s Atlantic seafront.

The 25-year-old, known as a high-flyer after being named one of Forbes’ most promising young Africans under 30, is enthusing about his new unmanned aerial drones and keen to promote his company and Africa as a place where IT and new tech can flourish.

We must “get out of the Afro-centric vision of business”

to “understand that when one has a global vision, worldwide, this includes Africa,” Elong says in a discussion of future technologies.

Elong has no degree in IT or robotics but studied strategy and competitive intelligence in France, becoming the youngest-ever graduate from Paris’ Economic Warfare School.

He founded his startup Will & Brothers in 2015 with a main project called Drone Africa, which aims to provide drones for civil purposes to businesses, the state in Cameroon and elsewhere.

With a top range of up to 20 kilometres (12 miles), the drones can be used for purposes as

different as cartography, media coverage, support for agriculture and detecting gas in mines to reduce the risk of accidents.

“The know-how is here, in Cameroon,” says Elong, who is aware young African talent often seeks employment in Europe and elsewhere. He says at this stage his firm’s capital of $200,000 has come from Western back-ers. Also supported by the government of President Paul Biya, Elong hopes eventually to raise $2 million to expand the business but he regrets that “not many Africans are involved” in the project, which features two airborne types of drone and one terrestrial model.

The commercial market in

Africa is expanding with unmanned aircraft already whiz-zing across the skies delivering items like medicine and food, and even helping farmers sow seeds. In Rwanda, drones get medical supplies such as blood and vaccines to remote areas. Tanzania is launching a similar programme. And drones equipped with night-vision cam-eras help to detect and track poachers in Kenya, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Elong presents the two air-borne prototype models on a table inside his assembly shop. The first “flying wing that we’ve baptised Algo” has the furthest range and could prove an eco-nomical solution to the costly

task of making maps, he suggests.

The second type, known as Logarythm, has four arms form-ing a propeller, can reach an altitude of up to 500 metres and is fitted with high-definition cameras, which would be useful in high-risk zones and for pre-cision work, Elong adds.

Crucially, he argues, manu-facturing costs are lower than those of foreign manufacturers, so the drones produced will be priced competitively across the African marketplace. He envis-ages “selling drones to Vietnam, to Venezuela, to Denmark for example, and becoming one of the biggest global enterprises in this sector.”

BLOOMBERG

LONDON: The UK has “deep concern” about the US plan to slap tariffs on steel and alumi-num imports, and negotiated accords are better, Prime Minis-ter Theresa May (pictured) told President Donald Trump.

The two leaders spoke yes-terday by telephone, with May saying “multilateral action was the only way to resolve the problem of global overcapac-ity in all parties’ interests,” according to a spokesman for the prime minister.

Trump’s vow that trade wars are good and are easy to win also drew a rebuke from one of May’s most senior min-isters, who said the conflicts are bad and hard to win.

“I just think that the US is not taking an advisable course in threatening a trade war,” UK Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington said Sunday on the BBC. “Trade wars don’t do any-body any good.”

The Trump administration could announce the levies of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminum as soon as this week.

The plan rocked financial markets and led critics to say US jobs were at risk and the plan might set off a global trade war.

Trump’s latest action is a particular embarrassment to the prime minister, who spent significant political capital in 2017 getting close to the pres-ident in the hope that she

could secure a post-Brexit trade deal with the US.

Lidington said Britain’s experience over decades was that protectionism wasn’t the war to help domestic industries. “We tried in Britain in the 60s and 70s protecting our car industry from competition,” he said. “It actually didn’t work. It protected inefficiencies, we lost all our export markets because our competitors who were more competitive went out and gobbled those up from us.”

He expressed doubt that Trump’s proposal would go ahead. “There was a lot of con-cern recently about something comparable as regards aviation and the aircraft that were being produced in part by Bombar-dier, at Belfast in Northern Ireland and the American authorities at the end of the day struck that down,” he said.

REUTERS

NEW YORK: There is little doubt on Wall Street that US corporate profits are on track to rise at a healthy rate this year, with an overall estimate for growth of almost 20 percent.

Less certain, however, is how investors should value those profits with price-to-earnings estimates. The struggle to do so could lead to more stock market volatility.

The valuations issue has gained fresh prominence for market strategists amid a rise in interest rates and bond yields, along with concerns about inflation increasing.

Those factors, including a yield on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury note that is approaching 3 percent, has prompted investors to rethink how to price stocks, which have become more expensive as the nearly nine-year bull market has aged.

Indeed, some investors are weighing whether equi-t ies deserve lower valuations.

“It’s a topic that’s got to be in the front of a lot of asset managers’ minds right now: What level is this market a really good buy again?,” said Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at The Leuthold Group in Minneapolis.

“We are going to get good earnings coming through,” Paulsen said. “The problem is we are going to lose the value on those earnings.”

A test for equity valua-tions could come with next Friday’s US employment report for February. Last month’s report revealed sur-prising wage gains that sparked concerns of inflation, in turn setting off a jump in yields and a drop in stocks.

Stocks are commonly valued by comparing their price to their estimated prof-its over the next year, known as the price-to-earnings, or P/E, ratio.

“Interest rates set the dis-count for what you want to value companies at and in gen-eral with higher interest rates you are going to see lower P/Es as fair value,” said Rick Meckler, president of Liberty-View Capital Management in Jersey City, New Jersey.

REUTERS

BEIJING: As Chinese Premier Li Keqiang opens the national parliament’s annual session yesterday with the release of economic targets, the prospect of a trade clash with the US has emerged as a growing risk.

Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui sought to defuse some of that tension Sunday, announc-ing that China would host US officials for a new round of dia-logue on trade issues. Zhang, who’s also spokesman for the National People’s Congress, said lawmakers were preparing measures to promote and pro-tect foreign investment.

Zhang said China doesn’t want a trade war, but wouldn’t allow its interests to be harmed. He gave no details on timing for the talks or who might be included. The rubber-stamp par-liament is expected to enact sweeping changes during its two-week session that would allow President Xi Jinping to rule indefinitely and give him greater control over the levers of money and power.

A trade flare-up with the US is one event that could compli-cate plans by China’s policy makers to tackle domestic pri-orities without disrupting steady economic growth. Li is expected to kick off the legislative session by presenting his annual report, including this year’s expected increase in gross domestic product.

Last year’s 6.9 percent growth beat the target and marked the first acceleration since 2010, but economists have forecast a moderation to 6.5 per-cent in 2018, amid the ongoing deleveraging drive and trade tensions with the US.

On Thursday, President Don-ald Trump said the US would slap tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to protect national secu-rity, drawing threats of retaliation from Asian and Euro-pean countries. China has sharply criticized the US move on tariffs, saying it would hurt the global economy.

The exchanges would follow a trip by Xi’s top economic adviser, Liu He, last week to Washington, where he met with

US business leaders, as well as White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and US Trade Representat ive Robert Lighthizer.

Liu called for a collaborative instead of confrontational approach in dealing with trade frictions, China’s Ministry of For-eign Affairs said in a statement Sunday. Ensuring stable devel-opment of China-US economic and trade ties conforms with the interests of both countries and global economic prosperity, Liu said, according to the statement. The US Embassy in Beijing didn’t respond to a request for comment about the status of trade talks.

During the trip, Liu promised a group of US business leaders in Washington that he’d take on oversight of China’s financial policy as part of a cabinet reshuf-fle this month and that he would take steps to reform China’s economy, according to a person familiar with the situation. Liu said that he had three requests for the Trump administration: Establish a new economic dia-logue, name a point person on

China issues and hand over a specific list of demands, the per-son said.

At yesterday’s briefing, Zhang said Chinese policy mak-ers planned to consolidate three previous laws into new legisla-tion aimed at promoting and

protecting foreign investment. He said China would create a transparent, stable and predict-able environment while widening market entry for for-eign investors.

Trump’s tariffs may yet prompt retaliation from China.

Xi’s government has already launched a probe into US imports of sorghum, and is studying whether to restrict shipments of US soybeans -- targets that could hurt Trump’s support in some politically important farming states.

26 MONDAY 5 MARCH 2018BUSINESS

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (right) and Foreign Minister Wang Yi attend the EU-China Summit in Brussels, Belgium June 2, 2017.

US-China trade spat raises new risk

Visitors try out the multiplayer VR game «Special Force VR Universal War» with �G technology during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.

Special Force VR Universal War

Cameroon startup launches drones for global market

Healthineers IPO valuing at about $31bn

May tells Trump UK has ‘deep concern’ about tariffs on steel

Stocks may lose lustre with rising yields

The European Union may beef up a plan to screen foreign investments as China’s pursuit of acquisitions abroad fosters political unease in the bloc, according to a key EU

lawmaker. Franck Proust, a French member of the European

Parliament, said the assembly and EU governments may reach an agreement by year-end on the first bloc-wide rules meant to prevent foreign direct investments from threatening national security.

Proust is leading the EU Parliament’s deliberations over an investment-screening law proposed in September by the European Commission, the 28-nation bloc’s regulatory arm. The draft legislation needs more teeth to ensure Europe keeps strategic industries in its own hands, he said.

“It is timid,” Proust, who belongs to the Christian Democrats, the EU Parliament’s largest group, said in a March 1 interview in his 13th-floor office in Brussels. “We want to be more ambitious and go very fast in the approval process.”

Concerns are mounting across the western world over national-security risks tied to foreign investment, particularly by China. Last year, US President Donald Trump blocked a Chinese-backed investor from buying Lattice Semiconductor Corp as a result of national-security worries and Germany moved to shield cutting-edge technologies after a bid by China’s Midea Group Co. for robot maker Kuka AG prompted an outcry.

This trans-Atlantic view contrasts with EU displeasure

over Trump’s protectionist stance on trade, including a controversial plan to impose tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum, a position that has aligned Europe with China and highlighted global geopolitical cross currents.

In Europe, the question marks over Beijing’s policy intentions are compounded by its controversial Belt and Road Initiative to upgrade infrastructure worldwide, its Made in China 2025 plan to promote manufacturing prowess and a deadlock in talks on an investment accord to scale back Chinese market barriers for EU-based businesses.

Amid that stalemate, Chinese acquisitions in Europe have remained strong -- with the latest high-profile transaction being the purchase by billionaire Li Shufu of almost 10 percent of Daimler AG -- while European investment in China has fallen.

“The Chinese aren’t advancing anymore in hidden fashion, they are advancing openly,” Proust said. “There are strategic sectors where they want to be masters of the world by 2025. We know that.”

The draft European legislation would stop short of handing the EU the kind of decision-making clout over foreign investments enjoyed by the White House, reflecting the political sensitivity in Europe of encroaching on national sovereignty. Instead, the commission proposal foresees a combination of data collection, information exchange and peer pressure to create a European “cooperation mechanism” in this area.

The proposal would create a centralized database of past foreign investments in Europe and an alert mechanism for future ones without taking the ultimate power of approving deals away from individual EU governments.

Amid China M&A drive, EU plans to screen deals

Trump escalates trade war; threatens European carmakers JONATHAN STEARNS

BLOOMBERG

STEVEN MUFSON & DAMIAN PALETTA

THE WASHINGTON POST

IN his expanding war over global trade, President Donald Trump has aimed his harshest rhetoric at an unlikely target - the closest US

allies.In Twitter posts while at his Mar-a-

Lago resort in Florida on Saturday, Trump vowed to strike back at European leaders who said they would retaliate for his promised tariffs on aluminum and steel.

Bring it on, Trump warned.“If the EU wants to further increase

their already massive tariffs and barriers on US companies doing business there, we will simply apply a Tax on their Cars which freely pour into the US They make it impossible for our cars (and more) to sell there. Big trade imbalance!” he tweeted.

The country that escaped Trump’s tweeting ire was China, the very nation the president has wanted to hit hardest and the one that is largely responsible

for flooding global markets with cheap steel. In return, China, which provides just 2 percent of US steel imports, has been the most muted among leading trading partners in its response to Trump’s tariff threats, calling them misguided but not threatening a response.

Instead, the biggest burden of Trump’s new tariffs - 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum - would be borne by Canada, the largest trading partner with the United States.

Canada is the largest exporter of steel and aluminum to the United States, supplying $7.2bn of aluminum and $4.3bn of steel to the United States last year. Yet in goods and services, the United States runs a trade surplus with Canada, which buys $48bn worth of US automobiles and $40 billion of machinery, in addition to agricultural products. The steel and aluminum tariffs would also hit the United Kingdom, Germany, South Korea, Turkey and Japan, countries with which the United States has extremely close national security ties.

“The president is going to quickly find out that you can’t start a trade war with your allies and expect them to work with you on other issues,” said Jamie Fly, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund. “The administration is squandering the little credibility they had with transatlantic partners at a time when they’re asking them to help fix the Iran deal, fight terrorism and increase defense spending. It will not work.”

And while Trump has promoted his new tariffs as part of an America First plan, any benefit in terms of jobs could

be far outweighed by increased steel costs for US automobiles, wind turbines, shale oil and gas drilling rigs and more - in many cases doing unintended harm to some of his own strongest domestic constituencies.

Trump’s tariffs “are inconsistent with the Administration’s goal of continuing the energy renaissance and building world class infrastructure,” American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard said in a statement. “The US oil and natural gas industry, in particular, relies on specialty steel for many of its projects that most US steelmakers don’t supply.”

Trade experts say the president has exaggerated and oversimplified the trade issues with Europe.

The United States already imposes a 2.5 percent tariff on the import of foreign cars and a 25 percent tariff on the import of foreign trucks and commercial vans. The European Union charges a 10 percent tariff on the import of US cars.

The new tariffs and the president’s truculent rhetoric triggered angry responses among the countries closest to the United States and who are part of the World Trade Organization, which has for years helped reduce global tariffs.

“Allies should not be treated as scape goats, Mr. President,” wrote a German member of European Parliament, Reinhard Bütikofer, on Twitter. “Or is it your goal to make America lonely?”

Trump’s new attack on European automakers is mostly a direct threat at Germany, which exported $23bn in cars to the United States in 2016, according to data aggregated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

But large German automakers also have a sizable presence in the United States, with BMW employing thousands of workers in South Carolina and Volkswagen employing thousands more in Tennessee. Those manufacturers produce hundreds of

thousands of cars in the United States each year, many of which are later exported to buyers in Asia and Europe.

Some European lawmakers appeared frustrated that Trump was targeting automakers that have large US manufacturing operations.

“The EU will be forced to respond to US protectionism, but does not want tradewar!” wrote a Dutch member of the European Parliament, Marietje Schaake, on Twitter. “By the way, German carmakers alone made (845,000) cars in the US in 2016, the bulk (around 2/3) for export. The world is interconnected, not zero-sum.”

Canada’s leaders have said they would retaliate with tariffs on US exports. On Friday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called Trump’s move “absolutely unacceptable,” using the same phrase as Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, who also threatened retaliatory measures if Canada isn’t exempted from the trade actions. Likewise, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said his bloc planned to hit back at the United States by imposing tariffs on targeting US products such as bourbon from Kentucky - Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s home state - and Harley-Davidson motorcycles, which are partly manufactured in House Speaker Paul Ryan’s home state, Wisconsin.

On Friday, Trump wrote in another Twitter post that “trade wars are good, and easy to win.” He also promised to enact what he called “RECIPROCAL TAXES” on any country that has a tariff against any US good or service.

Trump has been cheered on by some union leaders and a few close advisers within the White House. They believe US policy has been too complacent for decades and allowed foreign countries to steal away US jobs through unfair government subsidies and unbalanced tariff rules.

Even if Trump’s approach shatters the status quo, they believe it is necessary.

IN front of the Petroleum Club of Midland, Texas, capital of the booming Permian shale region, an

electronic display flashes two crucial pieces of information: the oil price and the number of drilling rigs.

For the past year, both figures have been climbing as Opec oil production cuts led to higher prices, spurring added drilling activity in the United States. But the rise in the latter inevitably threatens the former. With the number of rigs up almost a third over the last year, US production has surged above 10 million barrels a day, surpassing the all-time high set in 1970. That, in turn, puts downward pressure on crude prices, disrupting Opec’s plans.

And a lot more shale oil is coming, both in 2018 and beyond, executives and traders said.

“At current prices, the market is incentivizing US shale companies to produce more,” said David Garza, a veteran oil executive who runs the Houston office of energy trading house Gunvor Group Ltd.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has been struggling with US shale for almost a decade now. For the first few years, it downplayed the production as a mere blip. Then, in 2014, with the market oversupplied, it decided to fight head-on, opening the spigots and sending oil prices to below $30 a barrel in a war of attrition. After a two-year pump-at-will period, Opec blinked first and cut production in 2016 in an effort to revive prices.

“Shale oil, I don’t know how we are going to live together,” former Opec Secretary General Abdalla Salem El-Badri told US oilmen in 2016.

After downplaying and then attacking, Opec has spent the last year making nice with its US shale adversaries, in an effort to understand the magnitude of the problem and perhaps convince the rival producers to show restraint. But despite dinner invitations and behind-closed-doors conversations, shale continues to increase output and grab market share. Rising global oil demand has so far absorbed the extra US crude barrels, limiting the impact on prices. But for the cartel, shale remains as intractable as in the past.

“Opec is struggling to understand shale,” said Daniel Yergin, the oil historian and vice-chairman of consultant IHS Markit Ltd. In part, Opec created

its own nemesis. After it flooded the market in

2014, oil prices crashed, forcing shale producers to reshape themselves into fitter, leaner and faster versions that can thrive with oil at $50 a barrel. As oil prices recovered, so did drilling.

A year ago, Mohammad Barkindo, the current Opec secretary-general, invited his shale rivals for dinner in Houston during the annual CERAWeek industry conference. It was a first-of-its-kind event and both sides exchanged pleasantries. But if anyone expected that shale would help the cartel, it’s now clear that US oil barons are fine with remaining free riders as Opec seeks to instill market discipline. Since the salad-and-chicken dinner last March, US output has risen roughly 1.1 million barrels a day -- the equivalent of Opec member Libya.

Barkindo plans to meet his shale frenemies again for dinner during CERAWeek, which is set to begin today will gather thousands of oil executives, traders, bankers and investors in Houston. “One of the lessons learned from this oil-price cycle is that as producers we are all in the same boat,” he said in an interview.

Others inside Opec are sounding exasperated as the resurgence in shale output could force the cartel to prolong its output cuts beyond the end of 2018. Suhail Al Mazrouei, the United Arab Emirates oil minister, believes shale producers should show gratitude.

“If you are a shale oil producer, who brought you back? It was Opec,” he said at a recent industry conference in London. “Without Opec there’d be chaos in the market.”

Opec finds United States shale oil an intractable problemKEVIN CROWLEY &

GRANT SMITH BLOOMBERG

Concerns are mounting across the western world over national-security risks tied to foreign investment, particularly by China.

The United States already imposes a 2.5 percent tariff on the import of foreign cars and a 25 percent tariff on the import of foreign trucks and commercial vans.

After a two-year pump-at-will period, Opec blinked first and cut production in 2016 in an effort to revive prices.

27MONDAY 5 MARCH 2018 BUSINESS VIEWS

Protective wrappings cover new Volkswagen AG (VW) German automobile giant, as they sit on the quayside ahead of shipping, in this file picture.

28 MONDAY 5 MARCH 2018

INsightback to BUSINESS

CAPITALCOMMENT

NAME IN THE MARKET: RENEWABLE ENERGY JOBS IN SOUTH EAST ASIA

Relax: Empathetic robots will make your life so much easierDOHA: It’s the year 2030. Arti-ficial Intelligence has become mainstream. It’s cognitively smart, capable of computing complex tasks and even learn-ing on its own. It is also emotionally intelligent, aware of our most nuanced mental, social and emotional states, and intimately familiar with our moods and preferences.

Our devices, our vehicles, our connected home devices and smart wearables all have an embedded emotion chip that senses our moods through our voices and gestures. We now interact with technology the way we interact with one another: through conversation, percep-tion and emotion.

Contrary to what AI skeptics once predicted, all this emotion-enabled AI has increased our humanity and empathy for each other. And no, we’re not all out of jobs. In fact, new industries have sprung up. There’s more work to be done now than ever; more problems to solve.

Take my daughter for exam-ple: Jana has just turned 30, she is a partner at Nemit, a social impact business that leverages the power of empathetic AI to bring equal access to education and healthcare to people around the world. Nemit employs 1,500

people in 58 countries. The com-pany applies Emotion AI, mining people’s emotional data profiles to personalize educational expe-riences and to track people’s mental and emotional well-being, preventing health crises before they happen.

These days, Jana lives in London. In fact, she just landed in Heathrow on a redeye. Going by a variety of visual and vocal cues, her virtual assistant Zee senses she is exhausted. Zee has known Jana since she was a teenager, and today follows Jana everywhere, running across Jana’s various devices with the full context of her daily activi-ties, moods and memories. Zee suggests that Jana’s schedule for the day is too hectic and offers to move some meetings off of her calendar. Zee also checks in with my virtual assistant to let me know my daughter landed just fine.

Zee also knows to keep that appointment with Liam, Jana’s longtime school friend and Head of Global Operations for Nemit. Being on the autism spectrum, Liam didn’t always have it easy. High school was a real struggle as he found social interactions taxing. Smart as he was, he was often lonely, even bullied, due to his lack of social aptitude. But now he wears emotion-aware glasses, which augment his social and emotional literacy, translating people’s facial and vocal expressions to numbers and probability scores.

Empathy is at the heart of Jana’s business. The company applies the latest developments in Emotion AI to measure and drive empathy across her team and partners worldwide.

Beyond ensuring that peo-ple everywhere have access to mental health, virtual digital assistants can act as learning companions, using their insight into what motivates and inspires you, to help you study and learn. In this way, AI could be used to level the playing field in educa-tion and help narrow socio-economic gaps around the world. But where there’s gain, there’s also disruption: AI has automated a lot of tasks, result-ing in the elimination of some

jobs. But there are also new jobs: engineers who train, evaluate and operate these AI systems. Truck drivers, who once feared they’d be put out of a job by the new technology, now each oper-ate 100 self-driving trucks from the comfort of their living rooms. New types of consulting firms now exist, many offering train-ing courses on how to work alongside robots. There are new opportunities for AI ethicists and social justice advocates, in a society that cares whether AI is deployed in ethical ways.

In 2030, artificial emotional intelligence has transformed not only the way we interact with technology, but more impor-tantly how we, as humans, interact with one another. Empathy is back at the centre of how we connect and communi-cate. Indeed, it’s the businesses and individuals who work to build an empathetic layer into their interactions with others, rather than focusing on effi-ciency or the bottom line, who are shaping the future.

(Written by Rana Kaliouby, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Affectiva,this articles is part of the Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils, World Economic Forum.)

Investors chasing stable returns should buy firms run by womenCOPENHAGEN/BLOOMBERG

When it comes to gender diversity, it’s hard to compete with the Nordics. The region is home to the world’s three most gender-equal

nations: Iceland, Norway and Finland, according to the World Economic Forum. (Sweden places 5th out of 144 while the US ranks 49th.) So Nordic findings in how gen-der equality affects areas such as corporate life and investing may offer a glimpse of things to come for other corners of the globe.

With that in mind, the region’s biggest bank, Nor-dea, says a key contribution that women make to the companies they run is stable returns.

Researchers at Nordea looked at the Nordic region’s 100 biggest listed companies, and analysed returns on capital employed and share price perform-

ance over a 12-year period through 2016, based on gender. They discovered that doubling the number of women on boards and in top management led to more stable returns.

“Now that the pace of change has increased, the pres-sure on these management teams and on these boards is greater than before,” Johan Trocmé, director of research insights at Nordea, said in an interview.

“Because the cost of not staying on top of things can be you no longer have a business in two years, five years, 10 years time.”

To be sure, the study didn’t point to any significant overall

benefit to returns associated with having more women in top positions. But women’s ability to navigate volatile times better than men stood out.

The findings coincide with a sudden spike in volatil-ity in the beginning of February that unnerved many investors. The study also comes as corporations are struggling to adapt to rapid shifts in their markets brought by technology, which represents another kind of volatility.

“Business models are being challenged by new con-sumer behavior, by new technological solutions,” Trocmé said. “Having a business which is robust in the face of that change is crucial.”

During the 12 years in the Nordea study, there was a doubling in the number of women on Nordic boards (to one in three) and in the number in group management (to one in five). Norway’s introduction of mandatory quotas helped drive the increase.

Returns were most stable at companies that employed women in top management roles. The Nordea analysts found they had a 40 percent lower median standard deviation in annual returns. They also found the Nordic companies with the most women outper-formed European peers.

“Norway has led the way for the others to actually see this is actually do-able without the world going under,” Trocmé said.

Erlend EkAgriculture and Trade Research

Manager ,

China Policy, Beijing

Trump is in a rush for quick results, and his reckless trade

remedy measures could turn out badly for both sides.

China says it does not want a trade war with US

BEIJING: China does not want a trade war with the United States but will defend its inter-ests, a senior Chinese diplomat said yesterday, after US Presi-dent Donald Trump announced a plan to put tariffs on steel and aluminium imports.

Trump struck a defiant tone on Friday, saying trade wars were good and easy to win, a day after he said he intended to put duties of 25 per-cent on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminium products.

Trade tensions between the world’s two largest econo-mies have risen since Trump took office in 2017, and although China only accounts for a small fraction of US steel imports, its massive industry expansion has helped produce a global glut of steel that has

driven down prices. Negotia-tions and mutual opening of markets were the best ways to resolve trade frictions, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui said at a briefing ahead of China’s annual session of parliament, which opens this week.

“China does not want to fight a trade war with the United States, but we abso-lutely will not sit by and watch as China’s interests are dam-aged,” Zhang, said.

“If policies are made on the basis of mistaken judgements or assumptions, it will damage bilateral relations..,” he said.

Trump believes the tariffs will safeguard American jobs, but many economists say the impact of price increases for users of steel and aluminium, such as the auto and oil indus-tries, will destroy more jobs than curbs on imports create.

REUTERS

Researchers at Nordea looked at the Nordic region’s ��� biggest listed companies, and analysed returns on capital employed and share price performance over a -��year period through ����, based on gender.

We now interact with technology the way we interact with one another: through conversation, perception and emotion.