BUSINESSBUSINESSTuesday 12 December 2017

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Turkey’s economy grows 11.1%

in third quarter

AgroQatar and Gulf Petroleum sign agreement

Dow & Brent before going to press

Qatar’s outward FDI grows by 8% to QR139.9bnThe Peninsula

Qatar’s outward foreign direct investment (FDI) stock touched QR139.9bn at the end of 2016, up 8 percent,

from a year ago.Financial and insurance

activities (36 percent), transpor-tation, storage, information and communication (31 percent) and mining and quarrying (27 per-cent) accounted for most of foreign direct investment during the period. Qatar’s foreign investments are spread across 80 countries. The top four

countries accounted for almost 95 percent of the total invest-ments, the 5th annual foreign

investment survey jointly con-ducted by the Ministry of Development Planning and Sta-tistics (MDPS) and Qatar Central Bank (QCB) has revealed.

According to the survey report, liabilities to non-resi-dents increased by 23 percent or QR144.2bn to QR 774.0bn, at the end of 2016. Other foreign investments, including the out-ward direct investment, accounted for 70 percent or QR541.6bn.

The foreign direct invest-ment in Qatar stood at QR135.4bn or 18 percent and portfolio investments reached QR93.2bn.

At the end of 2016, stock of inward FDI had been reduced by QR5.2bn due to net outflows of FDI and other changes during the year.

Qatar’s assets with non-res-idents increased by QR63.4bn to QR459.6bn. Other foreign invest-ments consisting of long term loans and trade related short term financial instruments accounted for 62 percent or QR286.4bn of the total assets, followed by foreign direct invest-ment abroad at QR139.9bn and portfolio investments (financial securities) at QR33.1bn.

About 90 percent of inward

FDI was accounted for by the oil and gas and associated down-stream manufacturing and other activities such as transportation and marketing. In terms of the book value of investments, man-ufacturing activities accounted for 56 percent of the total value of FDI, followed by mining and quarrying (32 percent) and finan-cial and insurance activities (6 percent) at the end of 2016.

Over 60 countries contrib-uted to the stock of FDI in Qatar at the end of 2016.

The top four group of coun-tries relative share of total FDI continued to grow and amounted

to 93 percent of total at the end of 2016. At the end of Q2 2017, liabilities to non-residents decreased by 5 percent to QR743.2bn. Other foreign invest-ments accounted for 70 percent or QR512.9bn.

Foreign direct investment in Qatar stood at QR135.8bn and portfolio investments at QR89.4bn in Q2, 2017. Stock of inward FDI was reduced by QR1.0bn due to net outflows of FDI and other changes during the quarter. The net outflow of for-eign direct investment stood at QR1.5bn in the second quarter.

Inward FDI

The foreign direct investment in Qatar stood at QR135.4bn or 18% and portfolio investments reached QR93.2bn.

Over 60 countries contributed to the stock of FDI in Qatar at the end of 2016.

→ Continued on page 22

$57.90 $57.90 +0.54+0.54

BRENT

7,453.48+59.52 PTS

0.80%

7,923.07+95.36 PTS

1.22 %

24,375.24+46.08 PTS

0.19%FTSE100QE DOW

22 TUESDAY 12 DECEMBER 2017BUSINESS

Qatar self-sufficiency expo to attract global companiesSatish Kanady The Peninsula

Qatar Self-Sufficiency Exhibition 2018, the first-of-its-kind in Qatar that aims to attract production line

manufacturers and industry pro-fessional, will be held from April 1 to 3 at Doha Exhibition and Convention Center

The event will bring together the most important manufactur-ers who are supplying their materials to many countries worldwide. Local, regional and international exhibitors will be presented with a unique platform to highlight their latest innova-tions, products and services that are shaping and driving Qatar’s economy.

The exhibition aims to attract exhibitors from Kuwait, Oman, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Leb-anon, Russia, UK, Turkey, Spain, USA, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Malaysia, Singa-pore, Iran, China, India, South Africa, Portugal, Bulgaria, Cyprus and Sweden.

The exhibition will offer access for exhibitors to their tar-get audience, opening potential

new investment opportunities and business avenues, the organ-izers said during an ‘informative workshop held on Sunday. The event was attended by 32 Com-mercial Attaches and representatives from various embassies in Qatar.

The workshop provided del-egates with detailed, in-depth information on the exhibition and its objectives. The aim of the session was to equip embassy and trade representatives with the tools to promote the exhibi-tion in their home countries, highlighting the vast range of opportunities available for man-ufacturers, stakeholders, influential entities and key deci-sion makers across production lines to showcase their latest innovations that can contribute towards Qatar’s National Vision 2030 (QNV) plan.

The event is expected to attract more than 120 leading exhibitors from around the world serving a whole gambit of sec-tors, including the food industry, pharmaceutical industry, agri-culture, and other industries, as well as environmental sector such as recycling and sustaina-bility plants. The event will be the

place to be for leading manufac-turing and production lines, and supply chain professionals.

Abdulrahman Saleh Al Obaidly, Chairman of Hisky for Tourism and Exhibitions, organ-isers of the exhibition said “We highly appreciate the participa-tion of the embassies and trade offices representatives and their crucial role in initiating bilateral connection between Qatar and their countries across all sectors. And we appreciate their partici-pation in the exhibition which

will be the foundation stone of Qatar’s socio-economic growth. Through this workshop we were able to clearly outline the oppor-tunities available for entities and organizations from countries far and wide to take part in the exhi-bition and contribute towards shaping the future of Qatar.”

“The workshop represented a dedicated platform to demon-strate the range of benefits in participation, from focused, vital facetime with key decision mak-ers and target partners to a range of potential new business

avenues and many more. It was encouraging to see so many country and trade representa-tives engaging with the workshop content and recognizing the opportunities available to their partner organisations in their respective countries. We look forward to tracking the progress of participation as we build towards the main event in 2018,” said Youssef Ahmed Taher, CEO of Hisky for Tourism and Exhibitions.

Assem Abou Fakher, Exhibi-t ion Manager, added:

“Preparations are already well under way for the inaugural Qatar Self Sufficiency Exhibition and this lively workshop gave us a dedicated platform to showcase how and why countries can be part of the exhibition and con-tribute to the bold ambitions of Qatar moving forward. The level of interest in participating is already encouraging and organ-izations recognise the mutual benefit of being a part of such a ground-breaking event. We look forward to the coming months and welcoming more partners.”

Diplomats from various embassies in Qatar and organisers of ‘Qatar Self-Sufficiency Exhibition 2018’ at the informative workshop.

120 exhibitors

The event is expected to attract more than 120 leading exhibitors from around the world serving a whole gambit of sectors, including the food industry, pharmaceutical industry, agriculture, and other industries, as well as environmental sector such as recycling and sustainability plants.

Innovation strategies key to seize Qatar’s energy sector potentialThe Peninsula

The energy and utilities sec-tor in Qatar must harness innovative strategies to

overcome some of the greatest sustainability challenges in the GCC, Booz Allen Hamilton has said in a report titled ‘The Future is Innovation’.

Combined, the Gulf Cooper-ation Council (GCC) states hold almost a third of proven crude-oil reserves and approximately a fifth of global gas reserves. How-ever, declining reserves and revenues along with increased consumption due to rapid indus-trialization, population growth and rising domestic energy demand, are testing the region’s capacity to its limits. Policy changes and shifting national budgets across the GCC indicate that the region’s governments are responding to these challenges, and the region’s key energy and utilities players will need to adapt to new realities.

According to estimates by the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI), one sq km of land in Qatar’s desert

receives solar energy equivalent to 1.5 million barrels of oil in one year alone. There is increased awareness of the need to diver-sify the energy mix in the MENA region and this has prompted investments in solar projects to grow from $160m in 2010 to $3.5bn in 2015, according to the Oxford Business Group.

The Qatari government has already announced plans for Qatar’s largest Photovoltaics (PV) farm, which will begin operating in 2020 with 200MW of

capacity1. The MENA region presents a strong market for PV products, and especially Qatar, as it looks to achieve the goals laid out in its National Vision 2030 plan and increase the sus-tainability of its energy mix.

However, the potential of solar energy can be impeded by geographical challenges related to dust, heat, and water. In the face of these challenges, innova-tion strategies can be deployed to establish a sustainable, diver-sified economy.

Dr. Adham Sleiman, Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton Mena, said: “The key to sustain-able success lies in innovation, which is a force constantly pro-moted yet all too infrequently embraced. Energy and utilities companies often face concerns over the sharing of intellectual property, stakeholder reluctance to invest in new research, and financing issues – all of which can impact innovation.”

To make sustainability a via-ble alternative, Booz Allen has identified a number of key con-siderations for successful innovation strategies that could enable GCC energy players to fuel the region’s growth, long after the world’s fossil fuels run dry.

One of the key ingredients outlined includes encouraging employees to think outside the box and making innovation a part of the corporate mandate.

Industry concerns over shar-ing intellectual property have often hampered the growth of the energy and utilities sector. Evi-dence suggests that the most effective way to access innova-tive ideas while protecting vital

intellectual property is to com-bine both open and closed techniques.

Engaging stakeholders through innovative R&D is key. As a step to alleviate the concerns of stakeholders in the energy and utilities space and boost invest-ment in research and development, organizations must first make a choice of whether to pursue fundamental research, or pursue applied research.

Fady Kassatly, Senior Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton MENA, said: “Innovation is driv-ing the national agenda of a number of countries in the region. In the energy sector, there is a big opportunity to harness the poten-tial at the grassroots level by empowering human capital. Energy companies must consider fostering an innovative corporate culture that encourages employ-ees to experiment without fear of failure. This will go a long way in ensuring that innovation is not just a buzzword, but a very tan-gible outcome of out-of-the-box thinking that can help address some of the most pressing global issues today.”

Dr Adham Sleiman (left), Vice President and Fady Kassatly, Senior Vice President of Booz Allen Hamilton Mena.

Qatar’s outward FDI grows by 8% to QR139.9bn

The annual foreign invest-ment survey is based on data obtained from about 150 sig-nificant enterprises that had accounted for more than 90 percent of total investments and by various functional, geographical and economic a c t i v i t y ( i n d u s t r i a l ) characteristics.

The objective of the sur-vey was to cover major enterprises (private and pub-lic) operating in the national economy.

However, data could be obtained only from privately owned companies and pub-lic corporations. International financial transactions made by individuals and by the Government were not cov-ered. Users are accordingly cautioned that the survey results are not strictly com-parable with the BOP statement of the QCB.

→Continued from page 21

China’s total social financing rises in NovBeijing Reuters

China’s total social financ-ing (TSF), a broad measure of credit and

liquidity in the economy, rose to 1.6 trillion yuan ($241.82bn) last month from 1.04 trillion yuan in October, data from the central bank showed yesterday.

TSF includes off-balance sheet forms of financing that exist outside the conventional bank lending system, such as initial public offerings, loans from trust companies and bond sales. The economic barome-ter has become a gauge of fundraising trends and can provide hints of activity in Chi-na’s vast and unregulated shadow banking sector. Chi-nese authorities have been trying to clamp down on risky forms of lending as part of a broader campaign to contain systemic financial risks.

WTO losing trade focus, too easy on some developing nations: USBuenos Aires Reuters

US President Donald Trump’s trade chief said yesterday that the World

Trade Organization (WTO) is los-ing its focus on trade negotiations in favor of litigation, and was going too easy on wealthier developing countries such as China.

With Trump’s “America First” trade agenda casting a cloud over the WTO’s 11th min-isterial meeting in Buenos Aires, representatives of other major members criticized protection-ism and advocated a stronger multilateral trading system, while acknowledging the WTO’s shortcomings.

US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, who has said he does not want major agree-ments out of the meeting, voiced concern that the WTO was becoming a litigation-centered organization.

“Too often members seem to believe they can gain conces-sions through lawsuits that they

could never get at the negotiat-ing table,” he said. “We have to ask ourselves whether this is good for the institution and whether the current litigation structure makes sense.”

Too many countries were not following WTO rules, he com-plained, and too many wealthier

members had been given unfair exemptions as developing countries.

“We need to clarify our understanding of development within the WTO. We cannot sus-tain a situation in which new rules can only apply to a few and that others will be given a pass

in the name of self-proclaimed development status,” Lighthizer told the conference’s opening session. He said five of the six richest countries claim develop-ing country status at the WTO, without providing evidence to back up the assertion. Of the countries with the six largest economies by Gross Domestic Product, according to the World Bank, only China claims devel-oping market status.

Ahead of the meeting, the United States blocked efforts to draft a joint statement empha-sizing the “centrality” of the global trade system and the need to aid development. Its opposi-tion has raised concerns that the WTO will not be able to accom-plish even modest goals, such as addressing fishing and agricul-tural subsidies, at the conference.

“We need to have a clear objective in mind,” European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said. “For the Euro-pean Union, this is clear: to preserve and to strengthen the rules-based multilateral trading

system.”Trump has indicated his

preference for bilateral deals over the multilateral system embodied by the WTO. The United States has vetoed new judges for trade disputes, push-ing the organization into a crisis.

In a thinly veiled swipe at China’s trade practices, Light-hizer said the United States was leading negotiations to “correct the sad performance of many members in notification and transparency.”

The United States is backing the EU in its resistance to recog-nizing China as a market economy, arguing the govern-ment unfairly intervenes in the economy. The case, currently before the WTO, could lead to dramatically lower tariffs on imports of Chinese goods.

Chinese Commerce Minister Zhong Shan said yesterday that while trade protection was ris-ing, no country would be able to succeed in isolation and that WTO rules were critical to pro-tecting globalization.

US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer (left) speaks with Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo before the WTO meet in Buenos Aires, Argentina, yesterday.

23TUESDAY 12 DECEMBER 2017 BUSINESS

FROM LEFT: French Employers Association Medef’s President, Pierre Gattaz, French Minister for the Ecological and Inclusive Transition, Nicolas Hulot, President of the Board of Directors of Schneider Electric, Jean-Pascal Tricoire and President of the Executive Board of Solvay, Jean-Pierre Clamadieu during the French Business Climate Pledge event at the Medef headquarters, yesterday, in Paris on the eve of the One Planet Summit. Two years to the day after 195 nations adopted the Paris Agreement, the French President will convene a follow-up climate summit today to jump-start the lagging transition to a greener global economy

French Business Climate Pledge

AgroQatar and Gulf Petroleum sign agreementThe Peninsula

The alliance of Spanish agribusiness compa-nies AgroQatar has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with

Gulf Petroleum Limited for the development of a system of high-tech greenhouse production of fresh fruit and vegetables.

The aim of the MoU is to improve the self-sufficiency of Qatar in fresh food supply, according to the directives of the Emir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

Gulf Petroleum has recently been awarded by the Qatari gov-ernment the right to develop 100 hectares of greenhouse facilities, in the framework of the tender launched by the “Technical Com-mittee for the Promotion of Private Sector Engagement in Economic Development Projects, in coordination with the Minis-try of Municipality and Environment”.

With this MoU, Gulf Petro-leum will be able to supply the Qatari market with high quality fresh vegetables and fruits at competitive prices all year round. The production will be carried out by maintaining the princi-ples of rational use of natural

resources, responsible manage-ment of water resources, and overall environmental sustain-ability. The objective is trifold: to contribute to the growth of the agricultural economy in the State of Qatar and guaranteeing its self-sufficiency, to increase the participation of the non-hydro-carbon sector in the national economy and, finally, to develop the private sector.

AgroQatar was created spe-cifically to facilitate the development of agribusiness adapted to the climatic condi-tions of Qatar. It’s the result of a joint effort of world’s leading agribusiness companies, cover-ing the entire agricultural business process, from produc-tion to distribution. The companies comprising this Alli-ance have been selected because of their excellence, experience and capacity, with more than 60 years’ experience supplying state-of-the-art applied technol-ogy for high-performance agriculture worldwide. The Spanish solution is the most advanced, efficient and adapted integrated system able to pro-duce throughout the year a variety of crops with the highest quality and in the most sustain-able and cost-efficient way in

Qatar. The turnover of the group

exceeds $1bn and its companies are collaborating in the 5 conti-nents with more than 150 countries.

With this MoU, AgroQatar commits to providing to Gulf Petroleum with the possibility of designing and implementing the entire process, including plan-ning, financing, design, manufacturing, construction, project management, technical assistance, training, supplies and

maintenance, operation of the facilities, distribution and mar-keting of the product.

The signing of the MoU by Abdul Aziz Hamad Al Dulaimi

(President of Gulf Petroleum) and Juan Carlos Santiago (GM and COO of AgroQatar) took place in the presence of Ignacio Escobar, Ambassador of Spain to Qatar.

AgroQatar enjoys the support of the Spanish the Spanish Export Promotion Authority (ICEX), including the possibility to finance its projects in Qatar.

Abdul Aziz Hamad Al Dulaimi (sitting right), President of Gulf Petroleum; and Juan Carlos Santiago (sitting left), GM and COO of AgroQatar; exchanging the documents, after the signing ceremony, as Ignacio Escobar (standing left) Ambassador of Spain; Khaled Al Delaimi (centre); and Miguel Angel Fajardo, Trade Attaché, Embassy of Spain; looks on.

Fresh food supply

With this MoU, AgroQatar commits to providing to Gulf Petroleum with the possibility of designing and implementing the entire processes, operation of the facilities, distribution and marketing of the product.

The aim of the MoU is to improve the self-sufficiency of Qatar in fresh food supply.

EU-Mercosur talks hit snags, announcement could be delayedBrasiliaReuters

Free-trade talks between the European Union and South American trade bloc

Mercosur still face hurdles over beef and ethanol, and an expected deal announcement this week might not happen, officials involved in negotiations said yesterday.

Mercosur diplomats involved in the talks on the side-lines of the World Trade Organization minister’s meet-ing in Buenos Aires said EU officials had not presented improved offers on EU tariff-free imports of South American beef and ethanol as promised.

“Basically, they want us to show our cards before they show theirs,” a senior diplomat from a Mercosur country told Reuters, asking not to be named due to the sensitive stage of the negotiations.

Resistance by some EU member states to agricultural imports, such as Ireland and

France, has delayed negotiation of the free trade agreement with Mercosur that seeks to liberal-ize trade and investment, services and access to public procurement.

Brazilian President Michel Temer, speaking to reporters after attending the opening of the WTO meeting on Sunday, said an announcement of the framework political agreement for the EU-Mercosur deal might have to wait until Dec. 21, when the bloc’s presidents meet in Brasilia.

A spokeswoman for the Argentine Foreign Ministry said agreement on the conclusion of the negotiations that have gone on for almost two decades could still be reached by Wednesday in Buenos Aires or, if not, next week in Brazil.

Besides disagreement over the tonnage of beef that EU countries would allow in each year free of tariffs, EU diplomats have said rules of origin still have to be included in the pro-visional political accord.

Brazil has said that can be worked out in the coming months before a final agreement is signed sometime in mid-2018.

Brazil’s foreign ministry played down the hurdles to a deal.

“There is very little left to negotiate and they are not fun-damental issues,” said an official, who requested anonym-ity. “There will be a deal and it will be announced when it is struck, here or in Brasilia.”

Mercosur members Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uru-guay are pushing for an improvement on the EU offer of tariff-free imports for 70,000 tonnes a year of beef and 600,000 tonnes of ethanol a year.

They complain that it is lower than the 100,000-tonne beef offer the EU made in 2004, though EU negotiators say Euro-peans eat less meat today.

The Irish Farmers Associa-tion has called the deal “toxic” and opposes any increase.

Airbus to cut production of A380 to six planes annuallyParis Reuters

Airbus is exploring plans to cut A380 super-jumbo production to as

low as six aircraft per year as it battles to make the world’s largest airliner commercially viable beyond the end of the decade, industry sources said.

Squeezed by smaller but efficient twin-engined jets, Airbus has announced plans to lower A380 output to 12 aircraft in 2018 and eight in 2019, down from an annual peak of 30, as it holds out for what it believes will be a recovery in demand.

But plans to maintain that rate are in doubt as Airbus seeks to finalise an order for 36 new aircraft from Emir-ates. Industry analysts say ongoing negotiations with Emirates will be decisive for the future of the A380 air-craft, which recently marked its 10th anniversary in operation.

Airbus, which has deliv-ered 14 A380s so far this year, has told some suppliers it is studying eventually reducing production to six a year, industry sources said. The timing of the move was not immediately clear.Industry sources say Airbus appears comfortable giving the under-taking, ensuring production remains open until 2028, though there are questions over the support of suppliers. Reducing output to six a year would help to bridge that period and support key sec-ond-hand values while Airbus looks for other buyers, but could keep the programme in the red for at least part of the period.

Airbus shares extended losses and were down 2.16 percent at 1601 GMT. Airbus broke even on the A380 for the first time in 2015, when it delivered 27 aircraft. After a clampdown on costs it has said the A380 can break even at around 20 a year and Chief Operating Officer Fabrice Bregier has said he is push-ing the breakeven level as low as possible to sustain low production.

US manufacturing & services executives see continued growthWashington AFP

US manufacturing and services firms expect to see a stronger economy

and rising revenue into 2018, according to a semi-annual sur-vey released yesterday.

The companies project no let down after 11 months of con-tinuous growth, with the upbeat outlook across nearly all indus-tries, the Institute of Supply Management’s latest economic forecast showed.

“Manufacturing purchasing and supply executives expect to see growth in 2018. They are optimistic about their overall business prospects for the first half of 2018, with business con-tinuing to expand through the second half of 2018,” said Tim-othy R. Fiore, chair of the ISM Manufacturing Business Survey Committee.

Manufacturing revenues

are expected to rise 7.8 percent next year, with 70 percent of firms projecting increased earnings, according to the sur-vey. Only four percent of companies expected business to worsen, while a quarter see no change.

In the dominant services sector, the outlook is slightly less rosy, with the average increase is expected to be six percent, and 59 percent of com-panies expecting business to improve. Just 10 percent of firms expect business to decline, with one-third projecting no change.

However, well over 60 per-cent of the firms in manufacturing and services report difficulty finding work-ers to fill open positions, according to the survey.

As a result 44 percent of manufacturing firms, and 37 percent of services companies reporting raising wages to attract employees.

Senate tax plan would boost revenue by $1.8trnWashington AFP

The US Senate version of the tax overhaul plan would pay for itself over 10 years,

boosting growth and generat-ing $1.8 trillion in additional revenues, the Treasury Depart-ment said yesterday.

The Republican plan is expected to generate GDP growth of about 2.9 percent over the next decade, 0.7 percentage points higher than the current forecast, which will bring in more revenue to the govern-ment’s coffers and offset the deficit increase caused by lower taxes, according to a Treasury analysis.

Republicans in the House and Senate are working to come up with a final unified version of the reform that President Donald Trump can sign before the end of the year. Both ver-sions call for slashing taxes for corporations and business

partnerships while eliminating many deductions for individuals.

“The Administration has been focused on tax reform and broader economic policies to stimulate growth, which will generate significant long-term revenue for the government,” US Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said in a statement.

Many economists doubt large tax cuts can pay for them-selves, especially in an economy with not much more room to grow. Other estimates have forecast significantly smaller increases in economic growth as a result of the tax overhaul.The non-partisan Joint Commit-tee on Taxation estimates the Senate plan could add as much as a $1 trillion to the deficit by 2027.

But according to the Treas-ury’s analysis, the increased revenues from higher growth should exceed those lost to tax cuts by about $300 bn.

24 TUESDAY 12 DECEMBER 2017BUSINESS

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde (left) listens to Benin Minister of Finance Romuald Wadagni upon her arrival in Cotonou, Benin, yesterday.

Lagarde in BeninTurkey’s economy grows 11.1% in third quarterAnkaraAFP

Turkey’s economy grew by an eye-catching 11.1 percent in the third quarter of 2017, official statistics

showed yesterday, with the high reading driven by one-off effects as well as resilient output.

The year-on-year figure, which President of the Repub-lic of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan boasted made Turkey the world’s fastest-growing economy, was even well above the consensus market forecast which had been for 10.0 percent growth.

The economy had grown by 5.3 percent in the first quarter and 5.4 percent year-on-year in the second, according to revised figures.Growth was driven by construction and services, as well as a strong rise in exports, official data published by the Turkish Statistics Institute (TUIK) showed.

Employees’ wages also increased by a third compared with the same quarter of 2016, while imports rose as well.

Erdogan said Turkey was targeting at least 7.0 percent GDP growth for the whole of 2017.

“I believe we have given the most beautiful response to inside and outside agitators try-ing to make Turkey look weak,” he said in a speech in Ankara.

“Turkey is a country which has not disappointed and will not disappoint anyone who trusts, believes and invests in it. Those with us will win, those

against us will lose,” Erdogan added.

But analysts cautioned the strength of the figure was partly due to base effects, as the comparative period in 2016 was especially weak due to the effects of the July 15 failed coup and a long reli-gious holiday.

“The key point... is that these extremely rapid growth rates will be temporary,” said William Jackson, emerging markets economist at London-based Capital Economics. After the coup bid, GDP contracted by 0.8 percent in the third quarter of 2016. Jackson forecast that growth would reach 6.8 percent in 2017, but drop to just 2.5 per-cent in 2018.

Yet underlying growth is still seen as strong, largely due to a boom in construction driven by high government spending and cheap credit.

In the latest data, household spending increased by

11.7 percent, but government spending in the third quarter showed a smaller rise of 2.8 percent.

The economy grew by 1.2 percent in the third quarter from the second quarter on a season-ally-adjusted basis, the TUIK said.

QNB Finansbank Research said the sequential growth proved “less pronounced than we expected”, predicting 6.8 percent growth in 2017 and 5.0 percent for 2018.

Furthermore, Turkish eco-nomic policymakers need to tread carefully in an environ-ment of high inflation and a weakened currency.

Inflation in November hit its highest annual rate in 14 years at 12.98 percent. The Turkish lira has also taken a battering, losing 13.5 percent of its value against the US dollar since September.

The lira hit a record low of 3.97 against the greenback last month, but the currency has rallied slightly since and was trading at 3.83 to the dollar.

Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci insisted during an interview with the TRT Haber broadcaster that inflation would go down in the first quarter of 2018.

Jackson of Capital Econom-ics said Monday’s data and the jump in inflation meant an inter-est rate hike at Thursday’s Central Bank Monetary Policy Commit-tee meeting looked “highly likely”. The economist added: “We have pencilled in a 25 basis-point hike in the late liquidity interest rate, to 12.50 percent.”

Fastest growing economy

YoY figure that made Turkey the world’s fastest-growing economy, was even well above the consensus market forecast which had been for 10% growth.

Economic growth was driven by construction and services, as well as a strong rise in exports.

China’s November auto sales growth flatBeijingAP

China’s auto sales were flat in November compared with a year earlier, leav-

ing total purchases in the world’s biggest market up an anemic 1.9 percent for the first 11 months of 2017, an industry group reported yesterday.

Chinese drivers bought 2.6 million sedans, SUVs and min-ivans, according to the China Association of Automobile Man-ufacturers. Total vehicle sales, including trucks and buses, edged up 0.7 percent to just under 3 million vehicles.

Chinese auto sales have struggled this year after a tem-porary tax cut boosted 2016’s

growth to 15 percent. Sales con-tracted in April and May before growing feebly in recent months.

That weakness is a setback for global automakers that look to China to drive future revenue, though some have grown faster than the market, taking share from Chinese and other rivals.

In November, SUV sales rose 8.9 percent over a year earlier to 11 million, while sedan pur-chases shrank 4.8 percent to 12.2 million. For the first 11 months of the year, sales totaled 22.1 million.

Chinese demand has weak-ened as economic growth slowed and Beijing and other major cities tightened restric-tions on ownership to curb smog

and congestion. Sales by Chinese domestic brands overall rose 5 percent to 1.2 million vehicles, according to CAAM. Their share of the market expanded by 1.6 percentage points to 45.8 percent.

General Motors, said sales by the company and its Chinese manufacturing partners rose 13 percent from a year earlier to 418,225 vehicles. Ford sales fell 8 percent to 117,593 vehicles.

Nissan Motor, said monthly sales rose 21.8 percent to 165,384 vehicles. Sales through November were up 12 percent at 1.3 million.Toyota Motor Co. sales gained 9.9 percent to 109,600. BMW AG said Novem-ber sales rose 12 percent to 55,293 vehicles.

Germany-US yield gap near 8-month high as central bank meetings loomLondon Reuters

The gap between bench-mark German and US 10-year bond yields was

close to its widest since April yesterday as the fiscal and pol-icy paths of two of the world’s most important economies diverge.

Monetary policy-setters for both countries are due to meet this week and though both economies are on the mend, the paths are expected to deviate as US President Donald Trump pushes a tax overhaul that could put the world’s largest economy at risk of overheating. As a

result, investors are starting to price in multiple rate hikes from the US Federal Reserve in 2018, after an almost-certain hike this week.

While pressure from rate hike expectations is most pro-nounced at the short end of the yield curve—the US Treasury curve is close to its flattest in a decade— longer-dated yields are also being impacted, par-ticularly after the risk of a US government shutdown last weekend was averted.

“Political risks are capping US Treasury yields at the long end but ... three rate hikes (are still) expected next year,” said DZ Bank strategist Rene

Albrecht. “The contrary is true for the euro zone. The tendency is for lower rates and I expect government bonds to consoli-date at these levels going into the year end.”

The European Central Bank in October extended its asset purchases until September 2018 and left the door open for keep-ing the taps flowing beyond that date.

Expectations are for the ECB to keep rates at the current low level until well into 2019, pos-sibly until Mario Draghi ends his term at its helm.

The gap between US and German 10-year yields reached 208.5 basis points yesterday,

just off the 209 bps eight-month high hit earlier in December.

Most high-grade euro zone bond yields were flat to a shade lower yesterday, with Tradeweb prices showing 10-year Bund yields, the benchmark for the region, dropping a basis point to 0.29 percent.

Portuguese 10-year govern-ment bond yields hit a fresh 2-1/2 year low of 1.78 percent.

Analysts expect further downward pressure on euro zone yields in the coming weeks, as government bonds become harder to find with recent supply scarce and the ECB continuing to buy debt in large quantities.

“The bond scarcity trade that has been playing out in recent weeks, and caused a slow grind lower of euro zone yields, is set to continue in our view,” Mizuho analysts said in a note.

“A (German two-year) Schatz redemption this week, and the early January Bund redemption coming into view are both factors reinforcing our conviction.”

The Fed is due to meet today and tommorrow, with a press conference scheduled, while the ECB and the Bank of England meet on Thursday.

US inflation numbers are due on Wednesday.

Paris threatens Airbnb with court caseParis AFP

The city of Paris yester-day threatened to take Airbnb to court if it does

not delist hundreds of apart-ments whose owners have failed to register with the French capital’s authorities.

Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s deputy in charge of housing, Ian Brossat, told AFP the city had written to five holiday rental sites -- Airbnb, Home-Away, Paris Attitude, Sejourning and Windu -- to demand they remove proper-ties whose owners have defied the city’s new registration requirements.

If they do not comply the city will take legal action, he added. Paris, the world’s third-most visited city, according to a Mastercard ranking, is one of Airbnb’s top markets, with some 65,000 homes listed. Another 35,000 are available on rival platforms.

Faced with complaints that holiday rentals are increasing property specula-tion and pricing hoteliers out of the market, the city has slapped restrictions on short-term rentals of apartments and rooms. Since December 1, anyone wanting to rent their home on an online platform must register it with the city and display a number on their ad. The system allows French authorities to ensure the prop-erty is not being rented for more than 120 days a year -- the maximum duration for which a person can rent out their main residence.

So far, about 11,000 prop-erties have been registered, representing only about a fifth of the total number of rental properties, Brossat said.

Philippines wins Fitch upgradeManila AFP

The Philippines yesterday was handed a credit rating upgrade from international

agency Fitch which raised the nation’s sovereign rating by one level, citing continued investor confidence despite a deadly drug war.

President Rodrigo Duterte (pictured) has launched an unprecedented crackdown on drugs that has killed thousands and sparked widespread con-demnation of alleged extrajudicial killings from rights groups and Western powers.

However, Fitch raised the rating on the Philippines’ long-term foreign currency denominated debt from BBB- to BBB with a stable outlook, say-ing the nation’s strong macroeconomic performance had continued.

“There is no evidence so far that incidents of violence asso-ciated with the administration’s campaign against the illegal drug

trade have undermined investor confidence,” Fitch said in a statement.

The upgrade puts the Philip-pines on par with Italy and ahead of Indonesia, according to Bloomberg. The Philippines enjoyed strong economic growth during the previous administra-tion of Benigno Aquino.

Fitch, as well as competitors Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s rating agencies, in 2013 raised the Philippines to investment grade level for the first time, indi-cating a lower risk to investors.

Following Duterte’s election 17 months ago, S&P warned his war on crime was threatening

the Philippines’ economy and endangering its democratic institutions.

In September this year, Moody’s also said the drug war and conflict with Islamist mili-tants in the south posed a “rising” risk to the economy.

However Fitch yesterday said economic performance had remained strong, owing to “sound policies that are support-ing high and sustainable growth rates”.

“Investor sentiment has also remained strong, which is evi-dent from solid domestic demand and inflows of foreign direct investment,” it added.

The Philippine economy grew 6.9 percent in the third quarter of 2017, remaining one of the best performing econo-mies in Asia.

Fitch said the Duterte administration’s tax reform bill would boost revenue.

Fitch added the govern-ment’s plans to boost infrastructure spending would support robust growth.

UK gas surges to highest since ‘14London Bloomberg

A weekend of snowfall has brought an early celebra-tion for UK natural gas

bulls.Same-day prices surged to

their highest level in almost four years as demand jumped with a plunge in temperatures after snow covered much of the country over the weekend. The contract soared as much as 13 percent, the most since June, as forecasters predict more snow and colder-than-usual weather while outages curbed supplies to some terminals.

Supplies in the system could plunge 11 percent by the end of the day, according to network manager National Grid Plc.

“Whilst the weather-related heating demand was expected, the reduction in flows via a number of terminals was not,”

Nick Campbell, an energy risk manager at Inspired Energy Plc, said by email. “Therefore this has left the system tight and bat-tling to pull in more gas from the continent.”

Supplies from the Bacton terminal in Norfolk are below the 10-day average after Total SA said exports from the Elgin Franklin field that feed it have been reduced by about 60 per-cent from normal levels, potentially until Wednesday evening. Flows into the St. Fer-gus terminal in Scotland also plunged. Storage supply picked up some of the slack, rising to the highest since December 1.

Within-day prices jumped as high as $8.69 per million Brit-ish thermal units, before trading at 62.25 pence at 10:12 a.m. in London, according to broker data compiled by Bloomberg. The day-ahead contract rose as much as 7.4 percent.

25TUESDAY 12 DECEMBER 2017 BUSINESS

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon (right) and Finance Minister Derek Mckay (centre), stand with Rolls Royce Manufacturing Executive Garry Train during a visit to the Rolls Royce plant at Inchinnan, Scotland, Britain, yesterday. Sturgeon announced a new £65m National Manufacturing Institute for Scotland during the visit.

Indonesia, Malaysia & Thailand to boost local currency settlementJakarta Reuters

The central banks of Indo-nesia, Malaysia and Thailand launched a

framework yesterday aimed at increasing direct settlement of transactions in their local cur-rencies to reduce the current dependence on the US dollar.

The regulatory framework is “part of the continuous effort to promote a wider use of local currencies to facilitate and boost trade and investment in these countries,” the three said in a joint statement issued in Jakarta yesterday.

A number of banks will be allowed to carry out such set-tlements, including three of Indonesia’s state-controlled banks, Malaysia’s CIMB Bank Bhd and Malayan Banking Bhd and their Indonesian and Thai affiliates, as well as Bangkok Bank PCL.

Bank Indonesia (BI) Gover-nor Agus Martowardojo (pictured) said 94 percent of Indonesian exports and 78 per-cent of imports were settled in US dollars, and the new frame-work aimed to diversify to other currencies.

“If this diversification in trade could be more varied, of course it would allow better stability for the Indonesian

financial system,” Martowar-dojo told reporters.

He said direct settlement would mean banks in the three countries could complete trans-actions without using dollars, improving their operational efficiency.

Malaysia and Thailand are among Indonesia’s top three Southeast Asian trade partners, with non-oil and gas exports amounting to a combined $10.3bn in January to October, data from Indonesia’s statistics bureau showed.

In the same period, Indo-nesia imported $11.9bn worth of goods from Malaysia and Thailand.

Martowardojo said BI was looking at applying similar set-tlement policies to other currencies, such as those of Indonesia’s top 10 trading partners.

Bitcoin tops $18,000 in debut on major bourseNew York AFP

Bitcoin surged past $18,000 after making its debut on a major global exchange but was trading lower

early yesterday, highlighting the volatility of the controversial dig-ital currency that has some investors excited but others nervous.

Trading on a futures contract began at 2am Qatar Time (2300 GMT) on the Chicago board options exchange (Cboe) at a price of $15,000. Heavy traffic made the Cboe website inacces-sible in the first 20 minutes, but it said that “trading runs on very separate systems and was totally unaffected by the website issues.”

Around 1000 GMT yesterday, bitcoin was trading at $17,600 per unit for the futures contract expiring on January 17 after reaching a high of $18,850,

according to Cboe’s website, meaning it exceeded the highest value reached on alternative non-regulated internet platforms.

Futures expiring on Febru-ary 14 and March 14 were higher, trading at $19,140 and $19,100 respectively at the same time on Monday.

A futures contract is a finan-cial product that allows investors to bet on whether the currency’s price will rise or fall.

Bob Fitzsimmons, a futures manager at Wedbush Securities, described the opening as “quiet and steady,” as Cboe data showed around a thousand trades were made in the first two hours.

The Cboe debut is expected to be followed a week later by a rival listing on Chicago Mercan-tile Exchange. It marks the first opportunity for professional traders to invest in bitcoin on a traditional platform, even as some steer away because of a

lack of regulations surrounding the currency.

“It gives it legitimacy. It rec-ognizes that it’s an asset you can trade,” said Nick Colas, of Data Trek research.

Among those cheering the launch are the Winklevoss twins, who have been called the first bitcoin billionaires. Critics

include financial commentator Jim Cramer, who warns that prices could tumble once the new trading venues open the door to “short sellers,” who bet on down-ward moves in assets.

The two launches were made possible after a key US regulator, the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), gave the green light to the exchanges on December 1, while warning “of the potentially high level of volatility and risk in trad-ing these contracts.”

Anticipation of the first main-stream listings for the digital currency has been a catalyst for a sharp price increase in recent weeks. Bitcoin opened 2017 at around $1,000, surged past $10,000 for the first time last month and soared as high as $16,777 on Thursday before retreating somewhat.

The actual opening of the Cboe market, an electronic trad-ing venue, was a low-key affair,

lacking the pomp of an initial public offering, which is often marked by the new entrant ring-ing the bell of the New York Stock Exchange.

The embrace by mainstream exchanges of bitcoin futures marks a sea change from the days when the digital currency was associated with drug dealing and other illicit activities.

The Cboe said it has taken precautions to address wild fluc-tuations: trading will be suspended for two minutes if bit-coin prices go up or down 10 percent, for instance.

“We are committed to con-tinue to work closely with the CFTC to monitor trading and fos-ter the growth of a transparent, liquid and fair bitcoin futures market,” the Cboe said.

Still, plenty of key figures in and around markets are taking a cautious approach to bitcoin, which has no central bank back-ing it, and no legal exchange rate.

The Futures Industry Associ-ation, which includes some of the world’s biggest derivatives bro-kerages, criticized the CFTC’s move in a letter to the regulator, saying contracts are being rushed through without properly weigh-ing the risks.

Several leading financial heavyweights are still studying bitcoin and not serving as finan-cial intermediaries. This group includes JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citi-group, Barclays, Morgan Stanley and Societe Generale, said peo-ple close to the matter.

Of the larger banks, only Goldman Sachs and ABN Amro are serving as intermediaries for the trades. The Cboe, for its part, sought to reassure investors.

“We are committed to con-tinue to work closely with the CFTC to monitor trading and fos-ter the growth of a transparent, liquid and fair bitcoin futures market,” it said in a statement.

Going mainstream

Anticipation of the first mainstream listings for the digital currency has been a catalyst for a sharp price increase in recent weeks.

The Cboe debut is expected to be followed a week later by a rival listing on Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

Italy puts on hold sales of stakes in ENI & ENAV Rome Reuters

Italy has suspended a plan to sell stakes in two businesses it controls to holding com-

pany Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP) after European authori-ties questioned whether it should be shifting assets to a state-con-trolled entity, sources said yesterday.

Last month, the Treasury started the process of offloading shares in air traffic controller

ENAV and energy group ENI as part of a programme of privati-sations intended to cut the euro zone’s second-highest public debt proportionate to output.

But European statistics agency Eurostat has raised doubts about such a transaction, Italian government sources said, because CDP is publicly owned, although its assets are not con-sidered part of the public accounts.

Eurostat and the Treasury have been in contact on the

matter informally, and the Bank of Italy has produced a written opinion suggesting the regula-tor may not accept that the deal cleans up public finances, the sources said.

More worryingly for Rome, Eurostat could decide to count all of CDP’s liabilities when cal-culating Italy’s public debt, which already stands at 131.6 percent of gross domestic product.

Under the privatisation plan, the Treasury had hoped to raise

up to ¤3bn ($3.54bn) by selling 50.37 percent of ENAV and most of its 4.34 percent holding in ENI.

Eurostat has already expressed concern about the established practice whereby the Treasury sells state assets to CDP, in which it holds 83 per-cent. Since 2012, CDP has bought thousands of millions of euros worth of state-owned real estate, foreign investment insur-ance firm Sace, holding company Fintecna and service provider Simest.

Sterling stabilises after biggest drop in a monthLondon Reuters

Sterling steadied yester-day after posting its biggest daily drop in

more than a month on Friday as investors cautiously added some long bets in a week when Britain and the Euro-pean Union will sign off on a deal to move to the next stage of Brexit talks.

The British currency was choppy in early trading in a potentially big week with a central bank meeting sched-uled on Thursday and a raft of top tier data including retail sales, inflation and jobs data also due this week.

With latest positioning data showing a growth in long sterling bets for a third con-secutive week after Prime Minister Theresa May man-aged to break the Brexit deadlock last week, investors have become a bit more opti-mistic in the short term.

Some analysts such as Viraj Patel, an FX strategist at ING in London, say the cen-tral bank decision this week will be closely watched to see whether policymakers will acknowledge the develop-ments in the Brexit negotiations. “While we sus-pect the statement will be largely unchanged, it’ll be interesting to see whether the monetary policy committee explicitly acknowledge the recent Brexit progress,” said ING’s Patel.

Sterling was broadly steady against the dollar at $1.3375 after falling 0.7 per-cent on Friday, its biggest daily drop since November 2. Sterling had skidded when cautious investors booked profits after a sharp rally in previous days.

HSBC escapes prosecution as US ends 5-year deferred dealLondon Bloomberg

HSBC Holdings Plc said its five-year-old deferred prosecution agreement

with the Department of Justice has expired, signalling the US is satisfied with the bank’s improvements to its compliance systems after it was ensnared in a money-laundering scandal in Mexico.

The Justice Department will file a motion with a court in the Eastern District of New York seeking the dismissal of charges after HSBC “lived up to all of its commitments” to improve its anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance capabili-ties, the London-based bank said in a statement yesterday. Once dismissed, the bank can no longer be criminally prosecuted for the matter.

“HSBC is able to combat financial crime much more

effectively today as the result of the significant reforms we have implemented over the last five years,” Chief Executive Officer Stuart Gulliver (pictured) said in the statement. The bank is working on “further improve-ment” to its capabilities, he added.

HSBC has been under the supervision of an external mon-itor since 2012 when it paid a then-record $1.9bn settlement for helping Mexican drug cartels launder money and breaching international sanctions by doing business with Iran. The lender pledged to cooperate with Jus-tice Department probes for five years and by doing so was spared the stigma of a criminal record in the US, and the threat that it might lose access to some of its most lucrative institutional banking activities in the world’s largest economy.

The monitor, Michael Cher-kasky, had been considering a

criminal charge against HSBC related to conduct on its foreign-exchange desk after two staff were accused of improper trad-ing, Bloomberg News reported last year. That could have poten-tially voided the DPA deal, but Cherkasky ultimately decided not to act.

Still, the lender was fined $175m by the Federal Reserve after the probe found that trad-ers had been front-running client

orders, sharing confidential cus-tomer details with dealers at other firms and attempting to rig currency benchmarks. Its former chief trader Mark Johnson was found guilty of fraud in Brook-lyn, New York in October.

HSBC has also been shutter-ing accounts associated with South Africa’s powerful Gupta family as it assesses its exposure to the scandal gripping the coun-try. UK regulators have said they are looking into whether HSBC and Standard Chartered Plc facilitated money-laundering as a result of possible ties to the Guptas after a British politician warned illicit funds may have passed through the United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong, where the banks have had large foot-prints. The recent scandals are a reminder of the potential chal-lenges for new Chairman Mark Tucker, who started in October, and John Flint, who is preparing to take over from CEO Gulliver

when he retires in February.HSBC has spent billions of

dollars on new technology and built up its compliance work-force to more than 6,000 people worldwide to comply with the demands of the monitor. The end of the DPA illustrates the progress made by the bank. In a report covering an earlier period of monitorship, Cherkasky said there had been resistance from senior managers at the US investment bank, whom he accused of bullying, foot-drag-ging and the discrediting of his in-house watchdogs.

Standard Chartered Plc, which also signed a DPA with US regulators in 2012, has had its own deal extended twice and now runs until the end of July. The rival emerging-markets focused lender has paid almost $1bn in settlements for engaging in deals with Iran and for failing to improve anti-money launder-ing systems.

The lender was fined $175m by Fed after the probe found that traders had been front-running client orders, sharing confidential customer details and attempting to rig currency benchmarks.

New manufacturing institute

26 TUESDAY 12 DECEMBER 2017BUSINESS

QATAR STOCK EXCHANGE

QE Index 7,923.07 1.22 %

QE Total Return Index 13,286.52 1.22 %

QE Al Rayan Islamic Index 3,112.94 1.38 %

QE All Share Index 2,243.77 1.51 %

QE All Share Banks &

Financial Services 2,536.66 1.65 %

QE All Share Industrials 2,411.85 0.76 %

QE All Share Transportation 1,603.56 1.32 %

QE All Share Real Estate 1,623.91 2.82 %

QE All Share Insurance 3,056.59 0.68 %

QE All Share Telecoms 984.27 0.83 %

QE All Share Consumer

Goods & Services 4,548.65 1.49 %

QE INDICES SUMMARY QE MARKET SUMMARY COMPARISON WORLD STOCK INDICES

GOLD AND SILVER

11-12-2017Index 7,923.07

Change 95.36

% 1.22

YTD% 24.08

Volume 6,814,418

Value (QAR) 172,135,879.37

Trades 3,570

Up 29 | Down 11 | Unchanged 010-12-2017Index 7,827.71

Change 54.12

% 0.70

YTD% 25.00

Volume 5,889,145

Value (QAR) 108,127,849.92

Trades 2,637

EXCHANGE RATE

GOLD QR146.8544 per grammeSILVER QR1.8629 per gramme

Index Day’s Close Pt Chg % Chg Year High Year Low

All Ordinaries 6081.9 4.5 0.07 6092.3 5794.9

Cac 40 Index/D 5398.65 -0.44 -0.01 5536.4 4733.82

Dj Indu Average 24329.16 117.68 0.49 24534.04 19677.94

Hang Seng Inde/D 28965.29 325.44 1.14 30199.69 21883.82

Iseq Overall/D 7064.91 -2.26 -0.03 7157.43 6369.05

Kse 100 Inx/D 38481.7 -598.3 -1.53 53127.24 38431.78

S&P 500 Index/D 2651.5 14.52 0.55063 2665.19 2245.13

Currency Buying SellingUS$ QR 3.6305 QR 3.6500

UK QR 4.8475 QR 4.9156

Euro QR 4.2698 QR 4.3295

CA$ QR 2.8084 QR 2.8866

Swiss Fr QR 3.6555 QR 3.7063

Yen QR 0.03183 QR 0.03245

Aus$ QR 2.7154 QR 2.7685

Ind Re QR 0.0561 QR 0.0572

Pak Re QR 0.0334 QR 0.0340

Peso QR 0.0717 QR 0.0731

SL Re QR 0.0236 QR 0.0241

Taka QR 0.0435 QR 0.0444

Nep Re QR 0.0361 QR 0.0357

SA Rand QR 0.2645 QR 0.2698

INTERNATIONAL MARKETS - A LIST OF SHARES FROM THE WORLD

A C C-A/D 1735.15 -8.45 14957

Aban Offs-A/D 191.3 -1.35 125661

Ador Welding-B/D 491.2 -6.75 3094

Aegis Logis-A/D 273.4 17.9 184318

Alembic-B/D 44.25 0.4 517830

Alok Indus-T/D 3.33 -0.05 878039

Apollo Tyre-A/D 247.45 -0.25 45247

Asahi I Glass-/D 373.05 1.35 7571

Ashok Leyland-/D 118.05 -0.5 478386

Ballarpur In-B/D 14.41 0.36 1664359

Banaras Bead-B/D 64.1 0.7 2250

Bata India-A/D 735.55 -0.6 24021

Beml Ltd-A/D 1587.2 -3.8 28353

Bhansali Eng-B/D 175.45 0.9 815803

Bharat Bijle-B/D 1063.3 -28.3 2346

Bharat Ele-A/D 183.5 -1.35 91414

Bharatgears-B/D 185.9 -2.95 7272

Bhartiya Int-B/D 547.25 -3.3 12485

Bhel-A/D 91.7 -0.55 350046

Bom.Burmah-X/D 1508 -21.1 28380

Bombay Dyeing-/D 237.05 7.45 1383546

Camph.& All-X/D 1166 -29.2 1478

Canfin Homes-A/D 483.95 2.65 79919

Caprihans-X/D 115.6 -1.85 4363

Castrol India-/D 403.65 6.45 149764

Century Enka-B/D 335.25 3.8 13583

Century Text-A/D 1367 46.55 640487

Chambal Fert-B/D 144.9 0.7 132240

Chola Invest-A/D 1298.05 -1.85 5846

Chowgule St-Xt/D 16.3 0.4 5860

Cimmco-T/D 118 -1.15 19350

Cipla-A/D 604.5 0.9 47973

City Union Bk-/D 180.1 1.7 31459

Colgate-A/D 1075 5.3 91095

Container Cor-/D 1304.5 3.5 2230

Dai-X/D 359.35 -4.85 19373

Dcm Shram Ind-/D 331.9 7 44472

Dhampur Sugar-/D 274.9 -3.25 33888

Dr. Reddy-A/D 2193.5 8.35 24604

E I H-B/D 143.35 -0.6 3504

E.I.D Parry-A/D 361.5 -9.6 17068

Eicher Motor-A/D 29242.8 237.75 1502

Electrosteel-B/D 32.15 0 56415

Emco-B/D 20.3 -1.1 68612

Escorts Fin-Xt/D 4.86 -0.25 19403

Escorts-A/D 678.3 -1.45 216672

Eveready Indu-/D 430.15 -7.8 15780

F D C-B/D 210.1 -5.4 1584

Federal Bank-A/D 108.25 -0.7 548181

Ferro Alloys-X/D 13.85 0.6 177096

Fgp Ltd-Xt/D 1.54 0 1041

Finolex-A/D 632.25 8.95 19670

Forbes-B/D 2651 -2.85 2655

Gail-A/D 482 -0.55 161431

Gammon India-T/D 6.04 -0.14 65579

Garden P -B/D 38.1 1.15 49649

Godfrey Phil-A/D 998 5.85 12342

Goodricke-X/D 476 0.6 50678

Goodyear I -B/D 875.4 -3.7 7669

Hcl Infosys-A/D 49.6 -1.15 560603

Him.Fut.Comm-B/D 30.75 -0.6 1845894

Himat Seide-X/D 363 30.2 75560

Hind Motors-B/D 7.81 0.01 96676

Hind Org Chem-/D 25.35 -0.8 187017

Hind Unilever-/D 1320.35 -6.35 50916

Hind.Petrol-A/D 431.9 3.8 148792

Hindalco-A/D 238 -1.7 276939

Hous Dev Fin-A/D 1713.2 35.95 110573

I F C I-A/D 24 -0.3 289829

Idbi-A/D 60.6 1.15 236896

Ifb Ind.Ltd.-B/D 1348.2 -27.3 1575

India Cement-A/D 172.2 -2.1 139288

India Glycol-B/D 425.35 3.55 69465

Indian Hotel-A/D 120 -0.85 63697

Indo-A/D 114.4 -0.65 48773

Indusind-A/D 1672.1 0.55 36265

J.B.Chemical-B/D 299 0.85 5686

Jagson Phar-B/D 37.1 0.1 4165

Jamnaauto-B/D 66.55 -0.25 541729

Jbf Indu-B/D 217.9 -2.05 25390

Jct Ltd-X/D 3.44 -0.05 269673

Jenson&Nich.-T/D 7.22 -0.1 13064

Jindal Drill-B/D 157.35 2 3950

Jktyre&Ind-A/D 138 -0.7 81309

Jmc Projects-B/D 580.1 1.65 1671

Kabra Extr-B/D 123 1.7 12852

Kajaria Cer-A/D 702.9 -1.3 17376

Kakatiya Cem-B/D 388.5 0.05 19065

Kalpat Power-B/D 434 -3.15 2682

Kalyani Stel-B/D 370.5 2.85 17047

Kanoria Chem-B/D 99.95 -1.45 57298

Kg Denim-X/D 63 -0.05 2776

Kilburnengg-X/D 81.5 -1.05 7107

Kinetic Eng-Xt/D 76.85 1.8 18138

Kopran-B/D 64.6 0.3 20274

Lakshmi Elec-X/D 747.05 -3.05 2162

Laxmi Prcisn-B/D 40.6 -3.25 4074

Lloyd Metal-X/D 17.85 -0.1 25056

Lumax Ind-B/D 2189.95 76.7 2310

Lupin-A/D 837.7 17.65 127750

Lyka Labs-B/D 59.65 -0.7 16832

Mah.Seamless-B/D 484 5 6407

Mangalam Cem-B/D 342.15 -2.8 3433

Maral Overs-B/D 41 0.55 2333

Mastek-B/D 395.55 3.1 152585

Max Financial-/D 557.3 4.55 29907

Mrpl-A/D 123.3 0.25 43472

Nagreeka Ex-T/D 49 -1.35 17606

Nagreeka Ex-T/D 49 -1.35 17606

Nahar Spg.-B/D 108 -1.05 10613

Nation Alum -A/D 77.4 -1.1 269580

Navneet Edu-B/D 158.5 0.35 25943

Neuland Lab-B/D 907.1 17.3 11061

Nrb Bearings-B/D 148.8 0.45 12055

O N G C-A/D 178.9 -1.4 201975

Ocl India-B/D 1516.25 50.9 5718

Oil Country-B/D 47.7 -0.9 5854

Onward Tech-B/D 137.05 -3.2 26229

Orchid Pharm-T/D 17.55 -0.6 60191

Orient Hotel-B/D 38.45 -0.6 27369

Orient.Carb.-B/D 1160 -16.05 1239

Orient.Carb.-B/D 1160 -16.05 1239

Patspin India-/D 30 0.55 13825

Punjab Chem.-X/D 455.1 -9.5 7011

Radico Khait-B/D 269.25 -18.25 326247

Rallis India-A/D 235.8 -1.3 23772

Rallis India-A/D 235.8 -1.3 23772

Reliance Indus/D 523.7 -3.25 103658

Ruchi Soya-B/D 19.45 0.05 986312

Salora Inber-T/D 55.1 2.6 5801

Saur.Cem-X/D 83 -1 22655

Sterling Tool-/D 442.05 4.75 16241

Tanfac Indu-Xt/D 135.8 6.45 11142

Tanfac Indu-Xt/D 135.8 6.45 11142

Thirumalai-B/D 2136.7 -24.05 56263

Til Ltd.-B/D 536.6 -1.85 3227

Timexgroup-T/D 44.75 -1.95 35343

Tinplate-B/D 258.15 -1.6 140670

Ucal Fuel-B/D 235.2 39.2 370893

Ucal Fuel-B/D 235.2 39.2 370893

Ultramarine-X/D 292 2.8 15279

Unitech P -A/D 8.06 0.77 27079039

Univcable-B/D 179.7 -0.05 29966

3I Group/D 868.5 0 228606

Assoc.Br.Foods/D 2880 -3 96327

Barclays/D 198.25 1.85 8404668

Bp/D 494.65 1.9 4296325

Brit Am Tobacc/D 5021 82 780702

Bt Group/D 266.8 -1.2 4416418

Centrica/D 141.4 -2.7 6470493

Gkn/D 299.7 1 784103

Hsbc Holdings/D 746.1 12.9 10998053

Kingfisher/D 333.6 -2.6 888737

Land Secs./D 952 -6.5 612276

Legal & Genera/D 265.3 1.5 1939490

Lloyds Bnk Grp/D 67.45 0.65 41148996

Marks & Sp./D 317.8 -1.2 826109

Next/D 4431 -52 61681

Pearson/D 744 3.5 324736

Prudential/D 1845 10 1038677

Rank Group/D 245.6 2.6 31941

Rentokil Initi/D 312.6 -0.2 1222191

Rolls Royce Pl/D 836 -2.5 651309

Rsa Insrance G/D 598 -2.5 242659

Sainsbury(J)/D 243.6 -1.1 996215

Schroders/D 3449 24 54389

Severn Trent/D 2078 -5 155555

Smith&Nephew/D 1311 -13 615447

Smiths Group/D 1475 1 117803

Standrd Chart /D 770.6 10.9 1591591

Tate & Lyle/D 683.5 0.5 212371

Tesco/D 204.7 0.15 3014669

Unilever/D 4183 1.5 350770

United Util Gr/D 810 -7 224149

Vodafone Group/D 228.9 -0.5 12727783

Whitbread/D 3949 -45 146595

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LONDON

For most of the year, trouncing the crowd in equi-ties meant sitting on your technology stocks and waiting for the clock to run out. Over two weeks starting in late November, money managers on Wall Street got a reminder of how tough that

wait can be.While you can’t tell from the Dow Jones Industrial

Average, mutual funds just endured their roughest stretch of 2017, with nerves tested by an industry rotation that punished beloved picks while lifting everything they hate. Managers watched leads over benchmarks evaporate then miraculously recover, as the market’s placid surface finally broke.

It’s not that anyone’s losing money. Average returns for large-cap growth funds are near 30 percent in 2017, among the best of the bull market. It’s that the one thing every manager wants -- a big year versus passive rivals -- suddenly became less secure as invincible stocks like Facebook Inc. and Nvidia Corp. briefly turned mortal.

“Anybody that’s been owning the things that have been doing really well this year at a level greater than what the index held just got beat up a little bit,” said Jason Browne, chief investment officer at FundX Investment Group. The firm owns a stake in iShares Edge MSCI USA Momentum Factor ETF, which is heading for its first monthly loss in a year.

Ground zero for the reversal was Wednesday, Nov. 29, the worst day for managers all year as the Nasdaq 100 Index trailed the S&P 500 by the most in five months. Since then, the year-to-date edge over benchmarks held by the 50 largest large-cap funds narrowed to 1.8 per-centage points from 3.2 percentage points, then bounced back to 2.2 percentage points, according to an analysis by Wells Fargo & Co.

The cushion narrowed as the market turned upside down. A Goldman Sachs index tracking stocks most favored by mutual funds fell 1.3 percent over the week through December 5, while a similar measure of the least favored shares rose 0.4 percent. Prior to that, the most loved had rallied 24 percent this year, more than double the return from the least loved.

“You get confident, you get complacent, you say ‘Oh, I’m the biggest genius in the world.’ Then you get kicked in the butt a little bit,” Donald Selkin, New York-based chief market strategist at Newbridge Securities Corp., said by phone. The firm oversees $2bn.

The churn can be sifted multiple ways. Value stocks gained on growth, Trump trade winners beat the losers, banks over tech. For the more mathematically minded, it was a breakdown in trade piled into by quant funds. The Bloomberg US pure momentum portfolio had its worst week since April 2016 in the five days through December 1. “Stock market investors are nervous right now, it’s almost year-end and most are nervously holding on to sizable year-to-date gains,” said Matthew Litfin, portfolio man-ager of the Columbia Acorn Fund at Columbia Threadneedle Investments. “It’s pretty greedy to com-plain about a stock down 7 percent on the day when it is up 60 percent year-to-date. That is the kind of thing we are seeing.”

Going by history, it’s still a big year for money man-agers, thanks to a break in the lockstep equity moves that had hindered stock picking for most of the bull market. With correlations falling to near record lows, almost half of the large-cap funds are outperforming their bench-marks -- way better than the 30 percent or 40 percent that usually do it.

Still, it was a bout of nerves many in the industry could’ve done without in 2017, a year that ranks among the best ever recorded for risk-adjusted returns.

Virtual currency Bitcoin -- or “dig-ital gold” to its fans -- has enjoyed a gravity-defying rise along with wild price swings, sparking fears it could be the lat-

est financial market “bubble.”Bitcoin was worth just a few US cents

when it began life in 2009 and last week changed hands for a staggering $17,000 despite having no central bank backing and no legal exchange rate.

Here are some of the most wild specu-lative bubbles in history -- ranging from tulips to teddy bears:

- Dutch ‘Tulipmania’ -At the beginning of the 17th century,

exotic tulips became the ultimate luxury accessory and status symbol for rich and poor alike.

People mortgaged houses and sold busi-nesses just to buy a bulb. At one point, a single tulip bulb fetched up to $150,000 at today’s prices.

With prices rising to more than 100 times the average annual income, bulbs were being traded for land, livestock and houses -- a rare bulb was even considered an acceptable dowry for a bride.

During what is commonly viewed as the first speculative bubble, rumours were delib-erately spread to influence prices and there were reports of skullduggery such as train-ing animals to dig up tulip fields.

The bubble burst in 1637 after a disap-pointing turn-out to a tulip auction in Haarlem. Prices plunged, banks failed and people lost their life savings -- all for a pretty flower.

- Japanese asset bubble -In the mid-1980s, the Japanese econ-

omy ruled the world. Its high-quality, technologically advanced products domi-nated export markets and everything

seemed to be “made in Japan.”Fuelled by this success -- and ultra-loose

monetary policy -- Japan’s Nikkei index tri-pled between 1985 and 1989 and Japanese firms were worth nearly half of the entire world’s corporate sector.

With all this money sloshing around and credit cheap and easy to obtain, speculators piled into real estate and prices exploded.

At the height of the boom, it was said the Imperial Palace in central Tokyo was worth the same as the whole of California.

Government policies aimed at deflating the bubble ended up pricking it violently. The stock market plummeted and house prices went through the floor, ruining millions.

The bust ushered in what economists called a “lost decade” of economic stagna-tion and deflation, the effects of which are still being felt today.

- Dot.com madness -The Internet and tech boom of the late

1990s resulted in some “dot.com” compa-nies being valued at billions of dollars despite not having made a cent in profits.

Young Internet tycoons became million-aires overnight as investors piled into any company with a dot.com domain name in the belief the web had upended the rules of business.

At the height of the boom came the AOL-Time Warner merger, at the time the biggest in corporate history.

The boom prompted then Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to warn about “irrational exuberance” in asset prices, widely seen as a warning about the dot.com bubble.

Funding dried up as it became clear many Internet companies held wildly inflated valuation based on pie-in-the-sky profit forecasts. Thousands of Internet com-panies bit the dust and investors lost trillions of dollars as the tech-heavy NASDAQ mar-ket spiralled downwards.

- Subprime crisis -The subprime boom-and-bust of the late

2000s was based on extremely complex financial instruments that “sliced and diced” risky mortgage assets and bundled them together.

Banks and mortgage lenders offered credit to uncreditworthy homeowners in the belief that by packaging these loans together, the risks could be reduced. The financial wizardry fuelled a housing mar-ket boom as speculators snapped up houses they never intended to live in to build up their “collateralised” portfolio. The bust came when investors realised that the flip-side of packaging risk together was that they could not tell where the bad loans were lurking.

The stock market crashed, unemploy-ment ballooned and the US banking system buckled to the point of implosion, with Leh-man Brothers collapsing in 2008.

- Beanie Baby boom -A lesser known tale of boom-and-bust

is the Beanie Baby craze that occurred around the same time as the internet bub-ble. Small stuffed toys worth around $5 became such a hot craze that people bought them for thousands of dollars, convinced their prices would continue to rise.

David Goodman Bloomberg

Wall Street economists are telling investors to brace for the biggest tighten-

ing of monetary policy in more than a decade.

With the world economy heading into its strongest period since 2011, Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. predict average interest rates across advanced economies will climb to at least 1 percent next year in what would be the largest increase since 2006.

As for the quantitative easing

that marks its 10th anniversary in the US next year, Bloomberg Economics predicts net asset purchases by the main central banks will fall to a monthly $18 billion at the end of 2018, from $126 bn in September, and turn negative during the first half of 2019.

That reflects an increasingly synchronized global expansion finally strong enough to spur inflation, albeit modestly. The test for policy makers, including incoming Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, will be whether they can continue pulling back without derailing demand or rocking asset markets.

“2018 is the year when we have true tightening,” said Ebrahim Rahbari, director of global economics at Citigroup in New York. “We will continue on the current path where financial markets can deal quite well with monetary policy but perhaps later in the year, or in 2019, monetary

policy will become one of the complicating factors.”

A clearer picture should form this week when the Norges Bank, Fed, Bank of England, European Central Bank and Swiss National Bank announce their final policy decisions of 2017. They collectively set borrowing costs for more than a third of the world economy. At least 10 other central banks also deliver decisions this week.

The Fed will dominate the headlines on Wednesday amid predictions it will raise its benchmark by a quarter of a percentage point.

Outgoing chair Janet Yellen is set to signal more increases to come in 2018. On Thursday, the SNB, BOE and ECB will make decisions in quick succession although each is forecast to keep rates on hold.

There will likely be more activity next year as Citigroup estimates the advanced world’s average rate will reach its highest

since 2008, climbing 0.4 percentage point to 1 percent. JPMorgan projects its gauge to rise to 1.2 percent, a jump of more than half a percentage point from 0.68 percent at the end of this year.

Citigroup expects the Fed and its Canadian peer to move three times and the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden and Norway once. JPMorgan is forecasting the Fed will shift four times, the same as the median estimate of economists in the latest Bloomberg survey.

Behind the shift are expectations that the world economy will expand around 4 percent next year, the best since a post-recession bounce in 2011. Among the accelerators: falling unemployment, stronger trade and business spending, as well as a likely tax cut in the US.

The International Monetary Fund predicts consumer prices in advanced economies will climb 1.7 percent next year, the most

since 2012, although it remains below the 2 percent most central banks view as price stability.

The global tightening will still leave rates low by historical standards and central banks may ultimately hold fire if inflation stays weak. Neither the ECB nor the BOJ are currently expected to lift their benchmarks next year.

Past and ongoing bond buying will cushion the withdrawal of stimulus elsewhere, as will easing by some emerging market central banks. Russia and Colombia may this week follow Brazil in cutting their benchmarks.

While BoE Governor Mark Carney and ECB President Mario Draghi pivoted away from easy money without roiling financial markets, the calm may not last. The Bank for International Settlements warned this month that policy makers risk lulling investors into a false sense of security that elevates the risk of a correction in bond yields.

Active funds’ great comeback almost just blew up on them Lu Wang and Sarah Ponczek Bloomberg

Blowing bubbles: Boom and bust from bulbs to bitcoin AFP

The Internet and tech boom of the late 1990s resulted in some “dot.com” companies being valued at billions of dollars despite not having made a cent in profits.

With the world economy heading into its strongest period since 2011, Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. predict average interest rates across advanced economies will climb to at least 1 percent next year.

Investors told to brace for steepest rate hikes since 2006

BUSINESS VIEWS 27TUESDAY 12 DECEMBER 2017

28 TUESDAY 12 DECEMBER 2017BUSINESS

BACK TO BUSINESS

Hedge fund start to take profits after big rise in oil prices

sight

Reuters

Hedge fund managers have started to take profits from the big

rise in crude oil and refined products prices since June now the rally has lost momentum and inventories are showing signs of stabilising.

Portfolio managers cut their combined net long position in the five major futures and options contracts linked to petroleum prices by the equivalent of 34 million barrels in the week to December 5.

Net long positions were reduced to 1,120 million bar-rels, from the previous week’s record of 1,155 mil-lion, according to an analysis of position data published by regulators and exchanges.

The biggest reductions in bullish positions came in US heating oil and gasoline, where positions had reached record levels in recent weeks .Net long positions in heat-ing oil fell by 13 million barrels to 61 million barrels, from a record 75 million the previous week. Long posi-tions were cut by 9 million barrels while short positions were boosted by 4 million barrels.

Net long positions in gasoline fell by 8 million bar-rels, having declined by 3 million barrels and 7 million in the two previous weeks, and were down to just 107 million barrels on December 5 from a record 125 million barrels on November 14.

Profit-taking by the holders of bullish long posi-t ions rather than

short-selling by hedge funds establishing fresh shorts accounted for most of the reduction in net length.

The same phenomenon was evident in European gasoil, which is not included in the analysis of the five major petroleum contracts.

Net long positions in gasoil fell by more than 1.1 million tonnes to 14.7 million tonnes, with long positions down 0.9 million tonnes while short positions rose by 0.2 million tonnes.

On the crude side, the pattern was different. Net long positions declined slightly in both Brent and WTI but the fall was caused by an increase in short posi-tioning rather than profit-taking among the longs.

Gasoline and distillate stocks have stabilised in the past fortnight as a result of very heavy crude process-ing in the United States and elsewhere, which has dis-pelled some of the earlier concerns about falling inventories.

Gasoline and distillate prices led the rally in crude between June and the mid-dle of November and now profit-taking on the products side has caused the crude rally to stall. But even with the recent profit-taking hedge fund positioning in crude and products remains very lopsided.

Portfolio managers have more than seven bullish long positions for every bearish short position in the petro-leum complex. Positioning in parts of the complex is even more stretched.

Capital Comment

HSBC is able to combat financial crime much more effectively today as the result of the significant reforms.

Stuart Gulliver,Chief Executive Officer, HSBC.

NAME IN THE MARKET: TRADE BARRIERS

Market Talk

Roused by shale’s zeal for thrift Bloomberg

Shawn Reynolds is stick-ing to shale, with the $4bn fund manager unshaken in his resolve that the US industry’s

stocks are due for a rebound after a lacklustre 2017.

The veteran energy investor, whose main $2bn fund holds about half its assets in energy and oil-services stocks, says Ameri-can shale producers are now due to reap profits after years of over-spending. The companies have more potential to grow compared with conventional explorers as they face fewer risks related to the extraction of resources, the fund manager at Van Eck Asso-ciates Corp. said.

“There’s justification for a re-rating,” said New York-based Reynolds during an interview in Singapore last week. “I know this shale model deserves a higher valuation than the older conven-tional exploration model.”

Reynolds’s faith in shale companies is being reflected in the firms’ plans. While crude is trading near a two-year high after last week’s agreement by Opec and its allies to extend

output curbs, executives from three of the biggest independent US drillers said they won’t increase activity just because of higher prices. In years past, they routinely outspent their cash flow by 20 to 30 percent in an attempt to grow production as fast as possible.

The emphasis now will be on maintaining spending discipline and generating profits to return to investors, according to Pioneer Natural Resources Co., Parsley Energy Inc. and Newfield Explo-ration Co. That helps pare concern that drillers will boost production and repeat the big-gest oil crash in a generation, which began in 2014 as an Amer-ican shale boom spawned a race for market share between global producers.

Shale explorers and produc-ers are going to be the biggest beneficiaries of the industry’s transition to higher returns while being more disciplined, which is why the fund plans to maintain a large exposure to the group, according to Reynolds. Drilling companies and oil-service pro-viders will also benefit, he said.

“With shale, you have incred-ible visibility on growth, possibly

the best visibility of any industry in the entire market, and lower risk,” said Reynolds, whose pre-vious roles included stints at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Credit Suisse Group AG. “The geological risk of shale is virtu-ally basically null.”

The geological risk refers to the process by which oil and gas is extracted, and the likelihood of reaching the hydrocarbons. In fracking of shale fields, produc-ers can make relatively accurate predictions of where resources are trapped underground before drilling vertically and horizon-tally through fuel-bearing rocks with the help of high-pressured water. The turnaround period is estimated at about 12-18 months.

That’s in contrast to older and conventional models of explora-tion that take at least five years, with companies having to borrow millions of dollars to study land formations and drill a well, hop-ing to hit oil and gas.

Goldman Sachs echoes Rey-nolds’s view that US shale drillers may be ripe for the picking, though for differing reasons. Many companies could be takeover tar-gets as energy stocks have lagged about 40 percent behind crude oil

futures this year, enabling buyers to get cash returns of as much 4 percent in 2020 even if they pay a 30 percent premium, the bank said.

Reynolds is holding firm in his belief of a shale share revival despite his main fund, Van Eck Global Hard Assets Fund, losing 11 percent this year through Thurs-day. Five of its 10 biggest holdings posted a loss during the period, ranging from 1.4 percent to 27 per-cent, while gains range from 22 percent for Glencore Plc, to 4.2 percent for Concho Resources Inc.

His top shale picks -- Parsley Energy, Pioneer Natural Resources and Newfield Exploration as well as Concho Resources, Cimarex Energy Co. and RSP Permian Inc. -- are down as much as 29 per-cent this year through Thursday, with just Concho posting an increase. For this quarter, Pioneer, Concho and RSP have gained, while oil has added 10.5 percent in New York.

“There’s a real ability to pick the winners versus the losers in this environment,” Reynolds said. “You can look at who has the best technology, who has the best sweet spot, and who’s focusing on returns, not just growth.”

VW boss urges end to diesel tax breaksBerlin AFP

The head of the world’s biggest automaker Volkswagen has issued

an unprecedented call to end tax breaks for diesel fuel in Germany, saying the technol-ogy must make way for cleaner ways of getting around.

“I’m convinced that we need to question the sense and purpose of these diesel subsi-dies,” Mueller told business daily Handelsblatt Sunday.

“We could more usefully invest the money in environ-mentally friendly propulsion.” German carmakers like BMW, Mercedes Benz and Volkswa-gen -- with its 12 brands ranging from Audi and Porsche to Skoda and Seat -- bet big on diesel in the 1990s, hoping to lower carbon dioxide output compared with petrol and meet greenhouse emissions targets.

They were supported by

European governments offer-ing tax breaks on the fuel, which last year amounted to some €7.8bn ($9.2bn) in Ger-many according to the country’s federal environment agency (UBA).

But politics and industry have gradually changed their tune over the past two years, owing in part to VW’s 2015 admission that it cheated reg-ulatory tests on 11 million cars worldwide to make them appear to emit fewer harmful nitrogen oxides.

Faced with the prospect of their vehicles being banned from parts of some cities, car-makers have vowed to upgrade older vehicles and offer more battery-electric and hybrid options to consumers.

In recent months, firms like VW, Ford and BMW have offered drivers discounts to trade in older diesels for cars with the latest, less-polluting motors.