BUSINESSBUSINESSMonday 20 November 2017

Queen Maxima of the Netherlands, attends the presentation of the 2017 annual report of SMEs, during the Entrepreneur Day at the Octatube company in Delft, the Netherlands.

Entrepreneur Day

PAGE | 23PAGE | 22QInvest declares 14.9% IRR on US

real estate deal

SIIL to support ‘Made in Qatar’ expo

Dow & Brent before going to press

Qatar-Italy joint ministerial meeting in JanuaryMohammad Shoeb The Peninsula

The second-edition of Qatar-Italy joint min-isterial meeting on trade and economic cooperation is expected

to be held in early next year in Rome. The long-awaited meeting will be attended by top business leaders, CEOs and senior govern-ment officials from both sides, including the Minister of Economy and Commerce, H E Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim Al Thani, and his Italian counterpart.

During the meeting both sides will hold discussions on a wide-range of topics and issues,

including ways of deepening and expanding bilateral cooperation, with special focus on exploring opportunities in upcoming Invest-ment Free Zones in Qatar, where

Italian companies, especially SMEs, are keen to establish man-ufacturing units.

Qatar recently announced new legislations to attract local and foreign investments by enhancing business environment,

which offers no restriction on nationality of investors, capital cap, choice of legal framework for the project, freedom of fixing prices of products, setting profits.

“Both sides have agreed to hold the meeting in the first month of 2018; and the exact dates are to be finalised very soon”, Pasquale Salzano (pic-tured), Ambassador of Italy to Qatar told The Peninsula in an exclusive interview. He also said that the first edition of the meet-ing was held two years ago in Doha.

“Scores of Qatari and Italian companies, CEOs and senior gov-ernment officials are expected to

participate in the meeting that aims at further strengthening bilateral trade and economic cooperation,” said Salzano.

He added: “Italian companies expect Qatar offering the best knowledge and investment con-ditions about the local economy, with special focus on the new opportunities in the current envi-ronment which is completely different.”

The envoy noted that Qatar and Italy are experiencing a very good moment. Political and eco-nomic relations are growing and strengthening steadily.

“We just had the visit of the Italian Prime Minister (Paolo Gen-tiloni) to Qatar few weeks ago. In

addition, we also had the visit of three important cabinet minis-ters—minister of foreign affairs, minister of transport, and minis-ter of defense—last months, which speak volumes about the bilateral ties,” said Salzano.

Commenting on the economic relations he said that its growing fast, and cited example of last week’s strategic cooperation between Qatar Petroleum and Eni, an Italian energy giant, who jointly acquired 85 percent stake in the contractors interest under the exploration and production sharing agreement (EPSA) for Block 52 in offshore Oman.

Strengthening tiesScores of Qatari and Italian companies, CEOs and senior government officials are expected to participate in the meeting that aims at further strengthening bilateral trade and economic cooperation.

Tech-driven payment processing industry set to grow in big waySatish Kanady The Peninsula

Payment processing busi-ness is fast becoming an integral part of Qatar’s

financial ecosystem. The indus-try is growing at an exponential rate in Qatar and is quickly becoming the backbone of Qatar’s critical micro small and middle enterprises (MSME) sec-tor, according to an industry leader.

QPAY, the country’s pioneer Fintech solution provider, which process a high-value money every month, is witnessing over 300 percent year-on-year growth in its businesses.

The homegrown company, which is the preferred Fintech partner for several leading local and international banks and financial institutions, and pre-mier solutions provider for the crucial SME sector, was crowned the Banking Technology leader and the Middle East’s leading Payment Enterprise, recently.

Launched in 2014, QPAY is now the largest Fintech solution provider in Qatar, with high-profile partnerships with MasterCard, VISA, AMEX and Union Pay as well as the top five largest banks in Qatar. Today, QPAY offers a suite of electronic payment solutions to more than 10,000 Qatari businesses and 280,000 consumers. QPAY’s Fintech solutions and electronic payment offerings focus prima-rily on servicing Qatar’s MSMEs, business markets, and low-wage labour markets.

“We are a technology plat-form that helps banks issue the cards, transact and check the balances in the accounts. At the end of the day, money moves from banks to banks. We don’t

touch the money”, QPAY Inter-national CEO & Founder Nebil Ben Aissa (pictured), told The Peninsula in an interview.

Nebil, a veteran in electronic payments, mobile banking, cloud computing, social com-merce, and virtual currency, says cash is fast giving way to virtual money across the world. Qatar’s electronic payment industry is poised for a great stride. The industry will witness steady growth in the run up to FIFA 2022.

“We have a system to deal with companies all the way to the back and to the banks. The banks come to us ask us to out-source the service. QNB, Mashreq and UBL are some of our major banking partners”, Nebil said.

According to Nebil, QPay is playing a significant role in Qatar’s efforts for ‘financial inclusion’ of people in the local economy. With the FIFA 2022 fast approaching, the size of Qatar’s low-income labour force is set to increase manifolds in the coming years. The banks believe they cannot make money out of serving this crowd and they don’t want their branches to be crowded by this

section of customers. These banks will be forced outsource more services to the payment processors.

The QPAY Payroll WPS (wage protection ssystem) cloud based solution is fully compli-ant with Qatari labour laws and makes payroll hassle-free and we are getting great response to this service. Powered by Mas-tecard, the QPAY Card has it’s own. The QPAY Payroll solution is the only solution in Qatar that offers free Salary Information File (SIF) submission in compli-ance with the Qatar Department of Labour & Social Services’ WPS.

QPay’s business model demands lot of security,and lot of technology infrastructure. QPAY is the only entity in Qatar which has the highest data secu-rity point that you can see in visa, MasterCard and American Express.

On QPay’s future plans, Nebil said : “QPay is looking to reinvent its business by bring-ing the innovative blockchain into its security stream. The technological side of blockchain is important for me as one who is in the business of payment industry. Just like the internet, blockchain will challenge many of our business models; don’t fight it; embrace and leverage it.”

“As of now, I can tell you our system is 100 percent secure, But as a techie, I am looking to bringing the advantage of block-chain into our model. Lot of banks has already taken ideas from blockchain solution. We are trying to put in some block-chain ideas into our system, which would make our security system one billion-times more secure”, he said.

→ Continued on page 22

Britain to submit ‘Brexit bill’ planbefore December EU meetingLondon

Reuters

Britain will submit propos-als on how to settle its divorce bill with the Euro-

pean Union before an EU summit next month and is expected to negotiate hard, finance minister Philip Ham-mond said yesterday. The EU told Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday that there was more work to be done to unlock the Brexit talks, repeating its early December deadline for her to flesh out Britain’s opening offer on the financial settlement.

“We will make our propos-als to the European Union in time for the Council,” Hammond told the BBC, referring to the December 14-15 meeting of EU heads of government.

Last week, May met fellow EU leaders to try to break a deadlock over how much Brit-ain will pay on leaving the bloc, an issue threatening to derail British hopes for a negotiated exit and an agreement on a new trading relationship by March 2019.

May has signaled she would increase an initial offer that is estimated at some ¤20bn

($24bn) - about a third of what Brussels wants. But Hammond, who has been criticised by sup-porters of Brexit for being too conciliatory towards Brussels and lobbying for a “softer” exit, said Britain would take a tough stance about how much it owes.

“There are some things that we’re very clear we do owe under the treaties, other things where we dispute the amounts or even whether something should be included,” Hammond said in a separate interview. “Of course we’ll negotiate hard to get the very best deal for the British taxpayer.”

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22 MONDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2017BUSINESS

Business continuity meet to be held on December 3The Peninsula

The first-edition of the ‘Qatar Business Con-tinuity Conference’, which is to be held at the Four Seasons

hotel in Doha on December 3, 2017, has attracted overwhelm-ing response from media and sponsors.

The one-day conference under the theme ‘Business Con-tinuity. . . Stability and Achievements’ will be held under the patronage of the Min-ister for Energy and Industry, H E Dr Mohammed bin Saleh Al Sada, and in partnership with the Qatari Businessmen Associ-ation (QBA), in collaboration with Business Continuity Insti-tute, United Kingdom (BCI, UK).

The preparations for the upcoming event is full progress and has attracted support from numerous private and govern-ment entities, media houses.

The conference will discuss good practices in the area of ‘Business Continuity and Risk Management’ across various public and private entities of the State workforce, and will high-light the role of the departments of communication and informa-tion in crisis communication.

The conference will address, in particular, the best practical applications of Business Conti-nuity and Crisis Management

which enabled to tide over the current crisis. The conference has fostered key partnerships with Arab newspaper as media partner, Qatar Primary Materi-als Company as diamond sponsor, Qatar Industrial Man-ufacturing Company as Gold Sponsor, and Vodafone Qatar as Silver Sponsor.

Abdullatif Ali Al Yafei, Chair-person of the BCI Qatar Forum, said that the conference organ-ised by the BCI Qatar Forum holds in its contents in national dimensions and strategies that have been active in pushing development in Qatar in both near term and long term, regardless of the circumstances and crises, has largely contrib-uted to the continuation of

normal life ensuring it is not affecting either the service, eco-nomic or social aspects. There are a number of programmes in the vital sectors, institutions and corporations in Qatar to provide theoretical and practical refer-ence in the management of crises and disasters of all types.

Abdullatif added that the presence of the Business Conti-nuity and Risk Management in many of the organizations of the State, the strategic sectors and major companies, acted as one of the most important reasons that have led to reduced impact of crises or disasters on the ground in Qatar. This itself con-firms the importance of Business Continuity and Risk Manage-ment in both public and private sectors.

The BCI-QF organizing committee said that the prepa-rations for the conference is going on as planned. It is impor-tant to mention that the conference has attracted great attention and interest from var-ious media institutions and economic entities across the State of Qatar. Particularly, the strategies on managing crises and methods that enabled the businesses to overcome the cur-rent crisis, are being used as a reference in the advancement of the country’s economy and move towards self-sufficiency in the future.

Crisis communicationThe conference will discuss good practices in the area of ‘Business Continuity and Risk Management’ across various public and private entities of the State workforce, and will highlight the role of the departments of communication and information in crisis communication.

SIIL to support ‘Made in Qatar’ expoThe Peninsula

Qatar Chamber has said that the Salam Interna-tional Investment Ltd

(SIIL) is supporting the ‘Made in Qatar 2017’ exhibition as sil-ver sponsor.

Scheduled to be held on December 14 to 17, the expo is organized by Qatar Chamber, in cooperation with the Minis-try of Energy and Industry on a 20,000sqm area at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Centre.

Qatar Chamber director-general Saleh bin Hamad Al Sharqi and Salam Internation-al’s CEO Abdul Salam Abu Issa signed the sponsorship

agreement at the Chamber’s headquarters yesterday.

Abu Issa said: “We are very proud to join hand with the chamber in this distinctive exhibition which is highly sup-ported by various bodies,”

Abu Issa expected the ongoing edition would achieve great success in light of the cur-rent circumstances imposed on Qatar that saw a great interest in local products from all authorities concerned.

Regarding the company’s strategy, he noted that the group is specialised in several sectors including timber indus-try, electrical boards, glass, carpet, general contracting, retail and oil services. Our

strategy currently focuses on strengthening our businesses and developing our products to be more competitive and able to address difficulties and challenges, Abu Issa pointed out.

He said the expo provides a good opportunity to meet with importers and companies representatives and to inform visitors on our products which is of high standard of quality.

On his part, Saleh Al Sharqi expressed his thanking to SIIL for its support of “Made in Qatar” expo, noting that the expo offers an ideal chance for leading companies to enhance their cooperation ties and pro-moting local products.

Saleh bin Hamad Al Sharqi (right), Qatar Chamber Director-General; and Abdul Salam Abu Issa, Salam International’s CEO, signing the sponsorship deal, yesterday at Qatar Chamber headquarters.

Pasquale Salzano, Ambas-sador of Italy to Qatar also mentioned about Rossito Marino, yet another important Italian company (serving in oil & gas sector), which opened its first branch in Doha last Thursday.

Bilateral trade volume between Qatar and Italy touched $2bn (QR7.28bn) last year, which he referred as “an important achievement”. However, he stressed that there is still scope to expand economic coopera-tion, especially in the field of

agriculture, food, food process-ing and manufacturing industries.

“There is a great scope for Italian companies to establish food processing units in Qatar to contribute in the country’s efforts to achieving food secu-rity,” noted the Italian Envoy.

Commenting on other prom-ising sectors of bilateral cooperation he said that tour-ism is very important industry, both for Italy and Qatar. He noted that a lot of Qatari citizens and residents visit Italy every year, but the number of Italians visiting Qatar can also be

increased. “Qatar has a lot to offer. But

not many people in Italy are well aware about it... I would also like to see more Italians visiting to Qatar,” Salzano said.

He pointed out that civil avi-ation is one of the several promising areas of growing cooperation. Qatar Airways, which has direct flights to Italy’s four major destinations (Rome, Milan, Pisa, and Venice), has recently acquired 49 percent stake in Meridiana, one of Ita-ly’s major airlines, will start harnessing benefits from the huge growth potential.

Asked about SMEs sector, he added that Italian SMEs are world renewed, and they have a lot to offer. “Italy is the second largest manufacturing hub in Europe after Germany. We have over 150,000 SMEs, which are the backbone of the Italian economy.”

He also said that with the steps taken by Qatar’s visionary leadership for economic reforms such as new legislation with regard to labour laws, creating more favourable conditions for investments, and the will surely attract more SMEs from around the world, including Italy.

Qatar-Italy joint ministerial meeting in January→ Continued from page 21

Barwa Bank announces Thara’a draw winnersThe Peninsula

Barwa Bank, Qatar’s most progressive Shari’ah com-pliant financial service

provider, announced the names of the most recent round of draw winners for Thara’a, its Shari’ah compliant savings account, at the Bank’s headquarters.

As the draw results showed, Mohamed Abdulrahman Fakhroo, Fahad Ahmed, Saleh Nasser Alyafei and Ahed Esam Omer, each won a cash prize of QR10,000. Also, a cash prize

worth QR5,000 was awarded to Bibibakhiyar Mahoudinowdaz, Nouf Ibrahim Al Sada, Mohamed Ibrahim Mahmoud, Hussain Mishleh Al Dosari, Elasyed Salem, Khalid Towaim Al Hajri and Jassim Mohamed Al Ammari.

The draw was conducted under the supervision of a rep-resentative of the qualitative license and market control department at the Ministry of Economy and Commerce. Thara’a offers account holders the chance to benefit from cash rewards up to QR1,000,000.

ExxonMobil Foundation president participates at WISE plenary sessionThe Peninsula

ExxonMobil Foundation President Kevin Murphy participated in a high-level

plenary session entitled ‘Educa-tion for Refugee Youth: From Policies to Programming, Let the Evidence Speak’ at the recently concluded ‘World Innovation Summit for Education’ (WISE).

Organised by Education Above All (EAA), the plenary also included Commissioner Chris-tos Stylianides, European Commissioner for Humanitar-ian Aid and Crisis Management (Cyprus); Allen E Goodman, Founder, International Institute of Education (USA); and Dr Alaa Murabit, SDG Advocate and UN High-Level Commissioner on Health Employment and Eco-nomic Growth (Canada).

The session was attended by H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the Chairperson and Founder, Education Above All Foundation; and H E Sheikha Hind bint Hamad Al Thani, Vice-Chairper-son and CEO of Qatar Foundation for Education, Sci-ence and Community Development; key government officials; international academia representatives; and various stakeholders in education.

The conversation focused on

the 260 million children and adolescents who remain out of school worldwide as a result of poverty, cultural factors, natu-ral disasters and other barriers to quality education. The plenary emphasised that without imme-diate action, more than half of the upcoming youth generation – 825 million of the 1.6 billion

young people in 2030 – could be left behind on opportunities provided by education.

In his opening remarks, Murphy spoke about the role of the corporate sector in helping achieve the goals of UN Sustain-able Development Goal 4: inclusive and quality education for all. He discussed the

ExxonMobil Foundation’s projects and the partnerships it has developed to address the challenge of getting out-of-school children around the world into classrooms.

“I would like to thank Qatar Foundation, WISE and Educa-tion Above All for inviting me to participate on behalf of the

ExxonMobil Foundation in this important conversation,” Mur-phy said.

“ExxonMobil knows firsthand what is possible when partners work together. Our Foundation is proud to support programmes that embody the United Nations’ strategies to achieve inclusive and quality education for all.”

Murphy highlighted Exxon-Mobil Foundation’s partnership with ‘Educate A Child’, a global initiative launched by H H Sheikha Moza almost five years ago.

More than 61 million chil-dren worldwide do not have access to a quality primary school education. Educate A Child plans to ultimately enroll more than 10 million children into quality schools. To date, Educate A Child has already helped 6.6 million children, and plans are being developed to help an additional three million children in 40 different countries.

“ExxonMobil supports Edu-cate A Child projects that are already underway in Nigeria and Angola. As a society, we cannot create sustainable com-munities if we don’t first provide access to schools,” Murphy said.

“Millions of children around

the world face barriers like con-flict, cultural factors and gender inequality that prevent them from attending school and hav-ing the education they deserve,” said Fahad Al Sulaiti, chief exec-utive officer, Education Above All.

“Every child has the right to a primary education guaran-teed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and it is our collective responsibility as a global com-munity to make certain each child gets the education they deserve.

“With this commitment guiding our work, Education Above All has been working with corporate and community partners to provide children around the world with the opportunity to learn, and in turn break the cycle of poverty. If we are to effectively reach our goals, we need to discuss what’s important and better support one another. That is what today’s plenary was all about, and I am grateful to those who participated. By putting our heads together, I believe that we can empower children around the world to lead the lives they dream of liv-ing, and help them believe in a brighter future,” he added.

Kevin Murphy, ExxonMobil Foundation President addressing the plenary session entitled ‘Education for Refugee Youth: From Policies to Programming, Let the Evidence Speak’ during the WISE conference recently.

23MONDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2017 BUSINESS

Geely automobiles are seen at an assembly line at the Belarusian-Chinese closed joint-stock company BelGee plant in Zhodino, Belarus.

BelGee plant

QInvest declares 14.9% IRR on US real estate dealThe Peninsula

QInvest, Qatar’s leading private investment group and one of the region’s most promi-nent Islamic financial

inst i tut ions , yesterday announced the successful exit of a real estate mezzanine mura-baha transaction in the US. The transaction, backed by a diver-sified portfolio of 17 assets, generated an IRR (internal rate of return) of 14.9 percent (repre-senting a 1.23x multiple) over 20 months.

Tamim Hamad Al Kawari (pictured), Chief Executive Officer of QInvest, said: “While 2017 has been notable for adverse market conditions in the region, QInvest has witnessed continuing investor appetite for

the international real estate sec-tor, with particular interest in the US market. A return of almost 15 percent over 20 months reflects a strong return for a mezzanine transaction given the conserva-tive level of risk.”

“Across the year, we have seen strong performance within our Real Estate division demon-strating the sustainability and resilience of our business strat-egy and professionalism of our team. We will continue to invest in key global markets on an opportunistic basis as we focus on delivering sustainable value for clients and shareholders.”

Craig Cowie, Head of Real Estate Investments & Advisory at QInvest, said: “The real estate market continues to be a strate-gic priority for QInvest. As part of our strategy of originating new

investment opportunities, across both the debt and equity seg-ment, we have closed several real estate transactions this year. The latest is the mezzanine murabaha of a diversified port-folio of 17 US assets.”

“Since inception, the Real Estate division has invested over $1bn of QInvest’s balance sheet

and advised on transactions with an aggregate value of over $4bn. We are committed to providing effective financing solutions for real estate transactions in Qatar and in international markets, such as Continental Europe, UK and the US.”

Since the beginning of the year, QInvest’s Real Estate team

has completed the acquisition of two real estate assets in the United States, both as part of the bank’s US multifamily residen-tial investment strategy. The team also made investments in Spanish and Scottish develop-ment assets. In 2017, QInvest fully exited the St Edmund Fund, an investment in a prime real-estate development in Central London, which delivered a real-ized net return of 22 percent, and is finalizing a forward sale of a redevelopment project in Lux-embourg, which is anticipated to net an over 2x equity multiple upon completion.

Al Kawari added: “Alongside our achievements within the real estate sector, and in response to the growing investor demand for more innovative and income-generating products, we have

successfully launched the sec-ond version of our QInvest SQN Income Fund. This series of products offers shareholders and investors a unique opportunity to access income generating assets in developed markets. The first version of these funds was oversubscribed. It aims to pay out a net yield of 7 percent per annum on a monthly basis and has a targeted IRR of between 8 percent and 9 percent, with a tenure of 5 years. We also have a strong track record in manag-ing funds via our managed account platform QMAP, as well as managing local equity funds Currently, we are developing a series of attractive products, including those targeting local investment opportunities, that we plan to announce in coming months.”

Total investmentSince inception, the Real Estate division has invested over $1bn of QINVEST’s balance sheet and advised on transactions with an aggregate value of over $4bn.

Collins says Senate tax plan needs workColombus

Bloomberg

Senator Susan Collins said the Republican tax plan passed by the Senate

Finance Committee on Thurs-day “needs work.”

“I want to see changes in that bill, and I think there will be changes,” the Maine Republican said on ABC’s “This Week,” one of two appearances she made yesterday. Asked directly whether she can vote for the measure as written, Collins said, “I haven’t reached that conclu-sion yet.” If no Democrats vote for the Senate bill, Republicans can afford to lose only two votes and still pass it under Senate rules. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson has already said he can’t back the bill as written.

Collins said it was a “prob-lem” for her if the provision to

remove the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act is repealed as part of the effort to overhaul U.S. tax law. On CNN’s “State of the Union,” Collins stated flatly that “I don’t think that provision should be in the bill. I hope the Senate will fol-low the lead of the House and strike it.”

“The fact is that if you do pull this piece of the Affordable Care Act out, for some middle-income families, the increased premium is going to cancel out the tax cut that they would get,” Collins said on CNN.

Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said Sunday that the White House would be OK removing the mandate if it was an “impediment” to passage of the Senate bill, although White House legislative director Marc Short said “we like the fact that

the Senate has included it.”Collins laid out several other

critiques of the bill that passed the Senate Finance Committee, of which she’s not a member, after a four-day markup:

The top individual income-tax rate, targeted for reduction in the Senate plan, should be kept at the current 39.6 percent for people making more than $1 million a year

Business tax rates shouldn’t be lowered to 20 percent from the current 35 percent. She sug-gested 22 percent to allow other deductions to be kept

The state and local tax deduction, targeted for elimina-tion in the Senate bill, should be continued. “We need to restore the tax deduction for state and local taxes, the way that the House did,” Collins said. “That will help our middle-income taxpayers get more tax relief.”

Honda recalls 800,000Odyssey vansNew York

Bloomberg

Honda Motor Co. is recall ing about 800,000 of its Odys-

sey minivans in the U.S. after receiving 46 reports of inju-ries over faulty passenger seats.

The company will repair the seats free of charge for owners of 2011-2017 models, it said in a statement Saturday.

“If a second row seat is not properly latched after adjusting it side-to-side or reinstalling a removed seat, the seat may tip forward dur-ing moderate to heavy braking, increasing the risk of injury to an occupant,” the company said in the statement.

Honda said it’s looking into how best to repair the seats and will start notifying owners of the fault via mail beginning in late December.

The recall comes two months after Honda agreed to pay $484 million to settle economic-loss claims tied to Takata Corp. air-bag recalls. As of mid-September, about 20 million vehicles contain-ing defective Takata air-bag inflators still haven’t been fixed, 64 percent of the 31.5 million vehicles containing the defective parts, accord-ing to a progress report.

Honda has yet to come up with a permanent fix but until it does, owners of affected Odysseys are advised to take extra care in ensuring that their minivan’s seats are latched down properly.

Coal returns as flashpoint in global climate-change fight

Oil short-sellers return as doubts loom on Opec’s horizon

London

Bloomberg

Coal emerged as the sur-prise winner from two weeks of international cli-

mate talks in Germany, with leaders of the host country and neighboring Poland joining Donald Trump in support of the dirtiest fossil fuel.

While more than 20 nations, led by Britain and Canada, pledged to stop burning coal, German Chancellor Angela Mer-kel defended her country’s use of the fuel and the need to pre-serve jobs in the industry. Meanwhile Poland’s continued and extensive use of coal raised concerns that the next meeting, to be held in the nation’s min-ing heartland of Katowice, could thwart progress.

“People don’t have total confidence that Poland wants to increase ambition, to put it plainly,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group. “They’re 80 percent dependent on coal, they’ve been pushing back

against European Union propos-als to increase ambition.”

A growing group of coun-tries are promising to end coal use altogether, saying its eco-nomic appeal is diminishing as carbon taxes push up costs while solar is increasingly competi-tive. Merkel herself led the world in installing renewable energy in recent years, but the pres-sures of forming a new government have seen her waver. Her change of tone at the Bonn talks, which were already clouded by Trump’s vow to take the U.S. out of the landmark Paris accord, fueled concern over the deal’s future as dele-gates look nervously to Katowice.

“The host of a meeting is a pretty important group,” said Jake Schmidt, a director at the US. Natural Resources Defense Council. “We fully expect to see Poland selling us on how awe-some their coal is.”

Poland, hosting the talks in December next year, has said coal will be key to its energy security for decades. That wor-ries those pushing for tougher pollution limits, who say the country’s stance -- together with Trump’s pledge -- could derail efforts agreed on in Paris two years ago to keep global warm-ing since pre-industrial times to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius.

“If we can’t persuade Poland to make the transition, then we’re not going to succeed with Paris” targets, said Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of

Economics.The promises that countries

made in Paris aren’t enough to meet the temperature target they set. Faltering political will and rising emissions mean the world is on track for an increase of 3.4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, according to the United Nations.

While the country holding the rotating presidency of the annual UN talks doesn’t have a direct role in the content of the discussions, its participation is seen as crucial in driving the agenda forward, particularly when nations disagree on a par-ticular issue. The failure of the 2009 Copenhagen talks was in part blamed on weak leadership shown by the Danish govern-ment. Since then, hosting nations have gone out of their way to ensure they have a clear, strong plan in place to deliver success while they’re in charge.

Poland’s presidency, which the country will start preparing for now, follows this summit’s Fiji presidency. In the final text from the Bonn talks -- known formally as the Conference of the Parties -- Fiji committed to press for greater ambitions to tackle climate change, even after its presidency ends.

“We have been fighting so much during this COP to make sure Fiji gets a good handle on this,” said Yamide Dagnet, sen-ior associate at the Washington-based World Resources Institute. Fiji must be positioned “to lead that process with Poland, and not just leave Poland to deal with the ambi-tion game, because otherwise we really have lower expectations.”

New York

Bloomberg

Short-selling is rearing its head in the oil market again.

After bullish bets on Brent crude hit a record and futures surged to two-year highs, hedge funds are pulling back with a sense that the rally reached its limit for now.

Wagers on lower prices rose by the most since June as Middle East tensions took a backseat, while uncertainty looms over Saudi Arabia’s push to extend Organisation of oil producing country’s (Opec) output curbs this month.

“We’re at levels where the market appears to have crested,” said Gene McGillian, a market research manager at Tradition Energy in Stamford, Connecticut.

“Continuing to see supply draw-downs is probably what the next leg of the rally will be predicated on.”

Doubts over Russia’s will-ingness to go along with the Saudis, record production from America’s prolific shale fields and a worse outlook for demand from the International Energy Agency helped snap oil’s longest streak of weekly gains in a year.

At the same time, concern over heightened geopolitical risks in the Middle East seems to have subsided, at least for now, said Rob Haworth.

Haworth helps oversee about $150bn in assets at US

Bank Wealth Management in Seattle.

“We haven’t seen more conflict,” he said. “For prices to get a lot higher, you have to see a meaningful increase in disruptions -- and we haven’t.”

Hedge funds lowered their Brent net-long position -- the difference between bets on a price increase and wagers on a drop -- by 1 percent to 537,557 contracts in the week ended November 14, accord-ing to data from ICE Futures Europe.

Shorts surged 8.7 percent, while longs fell 0.1 percent.

Meanwhile, the net-bull-ish position on West Texas Intermediate, the US bench-mark, rose 10 percent to 349,712 contracts over the same period, according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The net-long position on benchmark US. gasoline rose 11 percent, and diesel net-longs rose 3.3 percent.

But that optimism may be fading, too. WTI also fell from its recent highs, with Ameri-can crude stockpiles rising by more than 4 million barrels in two weeks.

Plus, there are real risks that Opecmay not be able to effectively extend cuts and will add to the overhang spurred by the US shale surge, said Haworth.

“It’s hard for me to make a case that we’re creating a new higher trading range,” he said. “We’re still staying cau-tious here.”

While more than 20 nations, led by Britain and Canada, pledged to stop burning coal, German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended her country’s use of the fuel and the need to preserve jobs in the industry.

24 MONDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2017BUSINESS

People try out iPads with the augmented reality app that shows what the finished Apple Park will look like at the opening of the Apple Park Visitor Center in Cupertino, California, the United States.

Augmented reality app

UK aims for driverless vehicles by 2021London

AFP

British finance minister Philip Hammond is to announce £75 million

($99m, ¤84m) funding for Arti-ficial Intelligence and plans to put driverless cars on UK roads by 2021, in his budget speech on Wednesday.

Hammond will announce regulation changes to allow Britain’s driverless car indus-try, which the government estimates will be worth £28bn by 2035, to get cars on the road within as little as three years, according to extracts of the budget released by his office yesterday.

“Some would say that is a bold move, but I believe we have to embrace these technol-ogies if we want to see Britain leading the next industrial rev-olution,” he told BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.

The minister, who is under pressure to deliver an eye-catching budget following Brexit spats with cabinet col-leagues, will also announce a £400m fund for companies hoping to roll out electric-car charge points across the country.

People who want to buy a battery-electric vehicle will also be able to access funding as Britain attempts to move towards zero-emission transport.

With a focus on tech indus-tries, the government is also p l a n n i n g t o s p e n d

£75m supporting companies developing AI and £160m in developing 5G technology, which it believes will be neces-sary for the mass rollout of driverless cars.

However, the Conservative minister is likely to be judged more on his social spending policies, particularly on his housing policy in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster that killed 71 people.

He is expected to announce plans to build 300,000 homes every year, telling the Sunday Times that he will do “whatever it takes” to meet the target.

“That’s a big step up from where we are now,” he told Andrew Marr.

“There is no single magic bullet and it’s certainly not just about pouring money in, because if you pour money in without fixing the other ele-ments of supply, you will simply create more house price infla-tion, that makes the problem worse, not better.”

Critics accuse the chancel-lor, nicknamed “spreadsheet Phil”, of being obsessed by facts and figures and lacking a grand vision.

“I recognise that I can’t use this budget just to trail a bunch of numbers, but must tell a story about where Britain is going,” he told the newspaper.

He has also come under fire for not using Britain’s low inter-est rates to borrow money and increase public spending, par-ticularly on wage increases for public servants.

Renault Twizy electric vehicles are seen during the Regent Street Motor Show in London recently.

Toshiba to boost capital by $5.3bn share issuanceTokyo

AFP

Embattled Japanese conglomerate Toshiba said yesterday it plans to raise $5.3bn by issuing new shares, a

move aimed at avoiding a humiliating delisting from the Tokyo bouse.

A board meeting yesterday decided on the move, it said.

Toshiba will issue 2.28 bil-lion new shares to raise a total of 600 billion yen ($5.3bn), with financing expected to close on December 5.

The new shares will be allotted to 60 overseas invest-ment funds. Each will be priced at 262.8 yen, a 10 percent dis-count from Friday’s closing price.

The number of new shares is roughly half the number of currently listed shares.

“This of course poses a con-cern of dilution of the value of shares but... we believe this measure will enable us to clear obligations and focus on core business, which will ultimately contribute to the value of

shares,” a Toshiba spokes-woman said. Toshiba is on the ropes after the disastrous acquisition of US nuclear energy firm Westinghouse, which racked up billions of dol-lars in losses before being placed under bankruptcy protection.

Those losses came to light as the group was still reeling from revelations that top exec-utives had pressured underlings to cover up weak results for years after the 2008 global financial meltdown. In

order to survive and avoid delisting, the cash-strapped group has decided on the multi-billion-dollar sale of its prized chip business to a consortium led by Bain Capital.

The chip unit brought in around a quarter of Toshiba’s total annual revenue and is the crown jewel in a vast range of businesses ranging from home appliances to nuclear reactors.

But the sale has been delayed due to legal disputes with a production partner, US chipmaker Western Digital.

The Tokyo-based conglom-erate logged a net loss of $436m for the April-September fiscal first half.

Toshiba said proceeds from the new share issuance would be used for full payment of par-ent company guarantees related to Westinghouse.

After Toshiba settles its obli-gations to Westinghouse creditors, it will be able to demand reimbursement from Westinghouse itself.

Toshiba intends to sell the claims against Westinghouse to a third party, thus focusing more on its own rehabilitation.

New sharesProceeds from the new share issuance would be used for full payment of parent company guarantees related to Westinghouse.

The new shares will be allotted to 60 overseas investment funds. Each will be priced at 262.8 yen.

Norway oil bosses insist end isn’t nigh after $35bn shockOslo

Bloomberg

After the initial shock of learning that Norway’s $1 trillion wealth fund wants

nothing to do with it, the petro-leum industry says both are in fact possible.

But the mood is shifting. While the fund said its proposal is about spreading risk and doesn’t imply a negative outlook on the oil industry, the plan reverberated as a nod from western Europe’s biggest oil producer to the uncertain future facing oil.

Such doubts are the last thing the country’s offshore industry needs. It’s just suffered through a three-year slump, and is struggling with public opin-ion as it faces an historic lawsuit to stop its expansion in the Arc-tic. After more than 40 years of pumping oil, Norway is also in need of new investments to replenish reserves just as many of the big global oil companies are looking for the exit.

“This is just one of several negative news stories that are piling up -- that’s probably what made me shake my head at the beginning,” Frode Alfheim, the head of Industry Energy, Nor-way’s biggest oil union, said. “But I both hope and believe that this isn’t something that will impair international investors’ desire to invest on the Norwe-gian shelf.”

The proposal needs approval

from Norway’s government and possibly even Parliament. Cru-cially, it has no bearing on the terms offered to oil companies operating offshore Norway, said both Industry Energy and the Norwegian Oil and Gas Associ-ation, a lobby group for companies such as Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Total SA and Exxon Mobil Corp. -- all companies that could be dropped by Nor-way’s wealth fund if the proposal is implemented.

The country’s powerful oil lobby chose to look on the bright side, confident the government won’t take any direct steps that would harm an industry that still provides about 15 percent of economic output.

The measures “seem a lot more reasonable than sugges-tions from the environmental movement that Norway should reduce this risk by reducing oil activity in Norway,” Karl Eirik Schjott-Pedersen, the head of the lobby, said in an email. “That would lead to the loss of thou-sands of jobs and huge tax income for Norway.”

Some opposition parties and environmental groups such as Greenpeace -- one of those suing the government to fight exploration in the Arctic Barents Sea -- argue Norway should curb incentives for the oil indus-try, such as a cash refund for the tax value of exploration expenses. What to do with Nor-way’s oil industry became one of the biggest issues of the

campaign ahead of the general election in September, with vot-ers debating the financial risk and moral aspects of further exploration.

But opponents of drilling made limited gains in the elec-tion, and union leader Alfheim, who represents almost 20,000 workers in the offshore indus-try, said he remained confident that the biggest political parties -- the Conservative and Progress parties in government and Labor in opposition -- will safeguard a consensus surrounding stable terms for oil companies.

The energy policies from the government, which has been supportive of the industry, are what oil companies will base their decisions on -- not the cen-tral bank’s view on crude prices, said Jarand Rystad, who heads the Oslo-based consultancy Rys-tad Energy AS. “I don’t think anyone investing in oil sees Norges Bank as holding the absolute truth,” he said.

Norwegian Labor Party leader, Jonas Gahr Store, wel-comed the current debate, saying in an interview on Friday that it’s not climate related but has to do with “financial risk.” The biggest opposition party will now study the plan before deciding, he said.

Government policy on its 67 percent ownership in Statoil ASA, the dominant oil and gas producer in Norway, also remains firm, the Petroleum and Energy Ministry said.

Fox in talks with multiple buyers for TV assetsSHARES in media-enter-tainment giant 21st Century Fox surged to seven-month highs on Friday after news it has been holding talks with at least three potential buy-ers for some of its television and film operations.

A source familiar with the discussions said Comcast, Verizon and Sony are among the suitors in “preliminary” talks for the assets, which include Fox’s stake in the British pay TV group Sky and its movie and television stu-dio properties. Fox shares rallied more than six percent to end at $31.15, the highest level since April. Last week, unconfirmed reports said Fox rival Disney held similar talks without any agreement on asset sales. Comcast approached Fox, along with Verizon, a major telecom and cable operator. Another invi-tation to talks has come from Sony.

Battered GE shares lure some buyers New York

Reuters

General Electric Co shares stabilised after a brutal slide last week sent the

stock near six-year lows, but the worst may not be over.

Some investors still do not see enough value to warrant buying the shares, which have lost some of their lustre as a blue-chip investment.

They are sorting through massive changes announced by GE’s new Chief Executive John Flannery (pictured) last Mon-day: hugely reduced near-term profit-growth prospects, a halved dividend, and a wave of promised divestitures.

“In a sense, the stock is try-ing to find an investor,” said Scott Lawson, vice president of Westwood Holdings Group in Dallas, who follows industrial stocks, as the stock was sliding last week. “That investor is not a growth guy, because they are not growing. It’s not a value guy, because they’re not cheap on the value metrics.”

The massive decline for the stock - more than 40 percent this year - suggests that it would pique the interest of value players.

GE shares fell to $17.90, their lowest closing price since December 2011. The stock closed on Friday at $18.21 amid news that Flannery had bought about $1.1m worth of the stock.

But GE shares have not fallen enough for some investors.

“What we are looking for is a sufficient margin of safety to reasonable intrinsic value, and at the current stock price, we just don’t think the margin of safety is there,” Michael Kon, portfolio manager with Golub Group in

San Mateo, California, said as the stock hovered around $18.

Kon said he was looking either for the stock to fall further or for better-than-expected improvement in GE’s power-tur-bine division before any investment.

Investment advisory firm Alan B. Lancz & Associates bought some GE shares last week as the stock dipped into the $17 range, seeing value in the company’s assets, which also include remaining major busi-nesses in jet engines and healthcare, said Alan Lancz, president of the Toledo, Ohio-based firm. But Lancz said he sees GE as an investment with a three- to five-year payoff and acknowledged the stock may fall further before that.

“We don’t see any short-term, intermediate-term catalysts but we think that there is value there,” Lancz said. “It’s not high on our list of buys, but it is something that, I think for the long-term, it can be accu-mulated here.” One question facing investors is how to assess

the company against its rivals.Following the stock’s slide

this year, including fallout from third-quarter financial results last month that Flannery him-self called “unacceptable,” GE now trades at a discount to those companies: 16.9 times forward earnings estimates against 17.3 times for United Tech and 19 times for Honeywell.

“It is going to take a long time before you can clear the cloud and maybe get GE back to a comparable valuation level with respect to other similar companies,” said Chip Pettengill, portfolio manager at Bahl & Gaynor Investment Counsel in Cincinnati. Pettengill calls GE a “tarnished blue-chip stock.”

GE’s earnings power is stronger than the “trough,” or bottom, projected for 2018, said Scott Schermerhorn, chief investment officer at Granite Investment Advisors in Concord, New Hampshire who sees the shares particularly discounted to other industrial companies based on enterprise value to sales comparisons.

25MONDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2017 BUSINESS

Alain Bellemare (centre), President and CEO of Bombardier Inc, inspects a Global 7000 fuselage test rig with Dominique Anglade (left), Quebec’s Deputy Premier and Minister of Economy, Science and Innovation and David Lametti, Liberal member of parliament, following a news conference on the acceleration of Global 7000 business jets aircraft interior completion operations and the inauguration of the new Bombardier Centre of Excellence in Pointe-Claire, Quebec, Canada,

Hammond under pressure; promises more homesLondon

Reuters

British finance minister Philip Hammond (pic-tured), under pressure to help weakened Prime Minister

Theresa May in this week’s budget, promised to speed up house building and said he had some room to help voters despite his squeeze on public finances.

Aware that to some her gov-ernment looks overwhelmed by the task of delivering Brexit, May needs her finance minister to show voters that she has a han-dle on Britain’s domestic problems like a housing short-age, low productivity and stagnant pay.

Hammond told the Sunday Times he wanted 300,000 homes built each year, a big step up from recent levels closer to 200,000.

May - who suffered a rebuke

from voters in an election in June when she lost her parliamentary majority - has said she wants to help younger households, many of whom fear they will not achieve the living standards of their parents’ generation.

Hammond told the newspa-per he would do “whatever it takes,” including new powers and planning rules, to get com-panies to build more homes and pledged that “the next genera-tion will have the same opportunities as their parents

to own a home.”He also said the world’s fifth-

biggest economy was at a turning point after a hard year in what seemed to be an attempt to chal-lenge his critics in the Conservative Party who say he is too downbeat about Britain’s prospects as it prepares to leave the European Union.

Some Conservatives have even called on May to sack Ham-mond because he is too cautious about Britain’s Brexit strategy.

Hammond said Britain was now “on the brink of making some serious progress” on Brexit and inflation looked likely to fall after rising sharply because of the fall in the value of the pound after the June 2016 Brexit vote.

“And after many years of struggling to get the (budget) def-icit down and seeing our debt still rising I think we are at last about to turn that corner and see debt begin to fall,” Hammond said.

Debt is expected to reach

nearly 90 percent of GDP next year, more than double its lev-els before the global financial crisis, before falling back, according to Britain’s official budget forecasters.

New forecasts are due to be delivered on Wednesday, along-side Hammond’s budget.

Britain’s high debt levels have alarmed some investors and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney says the country remains dependent on “the kind-ness of strangers” to finance itself.

Hammond has previously set himself a target of bringing the ratio down by the end of the decade.

That target may be made easier by a move to shift debt held by housing associations off the government’s books which was announced last week.

As well as his push to speed up house building, the Sunday Times said Hammond suggested he would boost spending for Britain’s health service and fur-ther ease a squeeze on the pay of public sector workers in his budget plan.

But Hammond said he had to “signal a continued commit-ment to fiscal responsibility,” suggesting he would stick to his

targets for cutting the budget deficit.

“We are heavily constrained fiscally. We don’t have huge amounts of room for manoeu-vre. But we do have some room,” he told the newspaper.

In an apparent joke at the tough balancing act he faces, Hammond was photographed by the Sunday Times looking puz-zled and scratching his head as he pored over papers coming from his famous red budget briefcase.

Many economists say Ham-mond will struggle to meet his target of eliminating Britain’s budget deficit by the mid-2020s because of the country’s stub-born productivity problem.

Britain’s official budget fore-casters have said they expect to cut their productivity growth forecasts, suggesting slower overall economic growth ahead and less tax revenue for Hammond.

Inflation to fallInflation looked likely to fall after rising sharply because of the fall in the value of the pound after the June 2016 Brexit vote.

Debt is expected to reach nearly 90% of GDP next year, more than double its levels before the global financial crisis, before falling back.

PBOC to closely track liquidity amid crackdown on debtBeijing

Bloomberg

China’s central bank said it will closely monitor liquid-ity conditions amid its

campaign to reduce debt levels, in a quarterly report where it reiterated a commitment to “pru-dent and neutral” monetary policy.

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) seeks an “optimal” envi-ronment to help stabilise economic growth, while facili-tating deleveraging, curbing bubbles and preventing risks, according to a quarterly report on monetary policy implemen-tation released late Friday in Beijing. The document, mainly a review of policy conducted in the third quarter, also said the cen-tral bank aims to deepen reform in interest-rate and foreign-exchange markets.

“We shall strike a balance between keeping liquidity basi-cally stable and reducing the leverage,” the PBOC said in the report. “Overall, the prudent and neutral monetary policy has achieved relatively positive results,” it said, reiterating the policy settings it’s aimed for all year.

Stability is job No. 1 for Chi-na’s policy makers, who have been working to balance contin-ued expansion with defusing the country’s debt bomb and deep-ening economic reforms. Separately on Friday, the PBOC and other regulators unveiled sweeping new draft rules for

asset-management products, the latest step to help reduce risk in the financial system.

The PBOC also referred to easing access for international firms in the report, comments that follow an historic announce-ment on November 10 that will see China remove foreign own-ership limits on banks while allowing overseas companies to take majority stakes in local securities ventures. The move scraps another barrier to the country’s engagement with the world and should bolster com-petition in the local financial system.

Commenting on the yuan, the PBOC said the flexibility of the exchange rate has improved and supply and demand for the currency is more balanced. As a result, it’s necessary to “neutral-ize” the counter-cyclical measures that are aimed at smoothing out volatility.

The quarterly report follows losses in Chinese bonds in recent days amid signs of quickening inflation and concern that Bei-jing will intensify the deleveraging campaign. PBOC Governor Zhou Xiaochuan has made a series of blunt warnings in recent weeks about debt lev-els in the economy.

“While reining in the total leverage ratio, we shall priori-tize reducing the leverage of state-owned enterprises, focus on tackling ‘zombie firms’ and promote the debt-to-equity swap in a market-oriented and law-based manner,” the PBOC said.

Goldman sees four 2018 Fed rate hikesWashington

Bloomberg

The US economy is heading into 2018 with strong momentum that’s likely to

boost wages and inflation more broadly, requiring the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates four times next year, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. economists said in a research note.

The New York-based invest-ment banking and securities firm raised its growth outlook for 2018 to 2.5 percent and low-ered its forecast for unemployment to 3.7 percent by the end of 2018, said Goldman chief economist Jan Hatzius, a co-author of the note, which

was released by email late Friday.

Before the latest revision the most recent Goldman Sachs forecast for 2018 growth was 2.4 percent, according to forecasts compiled by Bloomberg.

The US jobless rate, which was 4.1 percent in October, may reach 3.5 percent in late 2019, Goldman predicted. That would be the lowest level since the late-1960s.

“Our projections would imply an evolution over the cur-rent cycle from the weakest labor market in postwar US his-tory to one of the tightest,” the economists said in a summary of their report. “We expect that a tight labor market and a more

normal inflation picture will lead the Fed to deliver four hikes next year.”

That’s one more rate increase than the median fore-cast of Fed officials, and more than financial markets are cur-rently pricing in. One of the reasons why Goldman Sachs economists said they disagree with market expectations is “we see little evidence that soft infla-tion is structural in nature.”

Core inflation should accel-erate in 2018, rising by about a half percentage point to 1.8 per-cent by year end, Goldman projected.

The Fed has raised its target range for the federal funds rate four times since December 2015.

India’s highest credit rating in decades makes Modi’s job harderNew Delhi

Bloomberg

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s wriggle room to relax his deficit targets just

got reduced by Moody’s Inves-tors Service. On Thursday, the government was talking about easing its budget goals as sweep-ing policy changes hurt growth and revenue. Then, early Friday, Moody’s upgraded India’s sov-ereign rating to the highest since 1988, prompting a U-turn from the administration.

“We’ll continue to maintain the glide path,” Finance Minis-ter Arun Jaitley (pictured) said at a briefing in New Delhi on Fri-day, referring to his plan to shrink the budget shortfall to 3.2 percent of GDP in the year

through March 2018 and a dec-ade-low of 3 percent the next year. “The upgrade is a recogni-tion of the fact that India continues to follow a path of fis-cal prudence.”

Jaitley’s words contrast with his comments to investors in Sin-gapore on Thursday, when he said “challenges arising from structural reforms could change the glide path.” He can’t afford to follow through on that now because Moody’s one-notch rat-ing upgrade is a bet that India will contain public debt.

Both S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings rate India at BBB-, a notch above junk status. S&P’s highest ever rating for India stood at BBB in 1990 from which it was downgraded in March 1991. Fitch Ratings’ current rating

stands as its highest ever.While rating companies have

lost some of their allure abroad after they failed to predict the financial crisis of 2008, they’re still considered a stamp of cred-ibility in emerging markets, where local statistics can often be dodgy.

Modi needs such a boost: he faces elections in his home state of Gujarat next month, where polls point to the closest contest in years. Voters are concerned about a lack of jobs and higher inflation after Modi’s decision last year to invalidate almost 90 per-cent of currency in circulation and the disruptive roll out of a consumption tax this July. More-over, India’s financial assets have seen a sell-off over the past weeks.

“The government will likely remain on the path of fiscal con-solidation as it is mindful of maintaining investor confidence,” said Dhawal Dalal, chief

investment officer for debt at Edelweiss Asset Management Ltd. “There has been significant increase in positivity generated among foreign investors as they have appreciated fiscal policy and various measures taken by the present government in order to improve economic growth.”

The rupee strengthened as much as 1 percent in Mumbai on Friday, the most since mid-March, while the main equity index rallied 0.7 percent. The yield on 10-year sovereign bonds, which slipped from a 14-month high to 7.05 percent, could fall to 6.95 percent by March, accord-ing to Yes Bank Ltd. It predicts the currency may strengthen fur-ther if Fitch Ratings and S&P Global Ratings follow Moody’s in upgrading India.

China home prices snap three month drop as market stabilisesShanghai

Bloomberg

Chinese home prices rose in more cities in October, snapping a

three-month decline, a sign the market is stabilising amid government efforts to curb property speculation.

New-home prices, excluding state-subsidised housing, climbed in 50 of the 70 cities tracked by the gov-ernment, compared with 44 in September, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Saturday. Prices fell in 14 cit-ies from the previous month and were unchanged in six.

The moderate gains show China is having some success in its bid to rein in the buoy-ant property market without forcing a sharp deceleration. Prices had been coming off after the government imposed restrictions on pur-chases earlier in the year.

“More cities were seeing increases in property prices, but they are indeed growing very steadily,” Xia Dan, an analyst at Bank of Commu-nications Co., said by phone from Shanghai after the data. “There’s very limited room for home prices to move upward or downward.”

China’s biggest cities diverged, with new-home prices falling 0.2 percent in Beijing from September, while rising 0.3 percent in Shanghai, according to Sat-urday’s report.

Data earlier this week showed the curbs are biting, with home sales last month dropping by the most in almost three years. They fell 3.4 percent by value from a year earlier, and 8.5 percent by area, according to Bloomberg calculations based on the official figures.

The main near-term risk to China’s property market could come from a housing bubble in the larger cities expanding to encompass smaller ones, International Monetary Fund researchers said in a working paper dated Nov. 16. The nation needs to tailor policy to indi-vidual cities to effectively address the issue.

A “sharp correction” in China’s wider housing mar-ket would “weaken growth, undermine financial stabil-ity, reduce local government spending room, and spur capital outflows,” the IMF researchers wrote.

Global 7000 business jets

26 MONDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2017BUSINESS

QATAR STOCK EXCHANGE

QE Index 7,827.50 0.02 %

QE Total Return Index 13,126.26 0.02 %

QE Al Rayan Islamic Index 2,946.93 0.05 %

QE All Share Index 2,132.46 0.20 %

QE All Share Banks &

Financial Services 2,503.12 0.19 %

QE All Share Industrials 2,386.23 0.18 %

QE All Share Transportation 1,474.92 0.30 %

QE All Share Real Estate 1,301.62 0.40 %

QE All Share Insurance 2,797.12 0.21 %

QE All Share Telecoms 992.81 0.00 %

QE All Share Consumer

Goods & Services 4,233.68 0.53 %

QE INDICES SUMMARY QE MARKET SUMMARY COMPARISON19-11-2017Index 7,827.50

Change 1.73

% 0.02

YTD% 25.00

Volume 2,201,938

Value (QAR) 89,470,194.45

Trades 1,677

Up 17 | Down 17 | Unchanged 216-11-2017Index 7,825.77

Change 64.52

% 0.83

YTD% 25.02

Volume 6,057,199

Value (QAR) 166,036,262.16

Trades 2,701

WORLD STOCK INDICES

GOLD AND SILVER

EXCHANGE RATE

GOLD QR150.1136 per grammeSILVER QR2.0046per gramme

Index Day’s Close Pt Chg % Chg Year High Year LowAll Ordinaries 6023.539 11.215 0.19 6124.7 5635.1

Cac 40 Index/D 5335.43 34.18 0.65 5536.4 4733.82

Dj Indu Average 23271.28 -138.19 -0.59 23602.12 18806.06

Hang Seng Inde/D 29018.76 167.07 0.58 29320.03 21883.82

Iseq Overall/D 6792.59 68.32 1.02 7157.43 6369.05

Kse 100 Inx/D 40813.31 150.52 0.37 53127.24 39478.05

S&P 500 Index/D 2564.62 -14.25 -0.552568 2597.02 2245.13

Currency Buying SellingUS$ QR 3.6305 QR 3.6500

UK QR 4.7755 QR 4.8422

Euro QR 4.2575 QR 4.3178

CA$ QR 2.8278 QR 2.8829

Swiss Fr QR 3.647 QR 3.6981

Yen QR 0.03189 QR 0.03251

Aus$ QR 2.7414 QR 2.7953

Ind Re QR 0.0553 QR 0.0564

Pak Re QR 0.0342 QR 0.0350

Peso QR 0.0711 QR 0.0725

SL Re QR 0.0235 QR 0.0240

Taka QR 0.0444 QR 0.0454

Nep Re QR 0.0346 QR 0.0352

SA Rand QR 0.2526 QR 0.2576

No ‘fireworks’ at Nafta talks, but few signs of progressMexico City Reuters

Negotiations in Mexico to update Nafta have not made much progress on

tough US demands that could sink the 1994 trade pact, but the current round of talks are pro-gressing with civility, some participants said on Saturday.

Officials from the United States, Canada and Mexico are meeting in Mexico City for the fifth of seven planned rounds to update the North American Free Trade Agreement, from which US President Donald Trump has threatened to withdraw.

Time is running short to seal a deal by the deadline of end-March 2018. Officials say next year’s Mexican presidential election means talks after that

date will not be possible.The US administration has

made demands that the other members say are unacceptable, such as a five-year “sunset” clause and tightening so-called rules of origin to boost the North American content of autos.

Within hours of the latest round of talks formally starting

on Friday, Canada was com-plaining about inflexibility by the United States. Officials have so far discussed other issues such as labor, gender, intellec-tual property, energy and telecommunications but it is too soon to say whether there will be any breakthroughs this round, added a source familiar with the talks.

“The work is moving for-ward,” Mexican deputy economy minister Juan Carlos Baker (pictured) told report-ers, adding that the three countries had prioritised tech-nical work in Mexico City. But he said negotiators were aware that much work lay ahead and “we have to double our efforts.”

“The atmosphere is good, the atmosphere is one of work,” Baker added. The mood was calmer than the tense scenes

during last month’s round in Arlington, Virginia, where tough US demands were revealed. Still, the negotiations have passed the halfway point of an initial schedule with few clear signs of process.

Mexican officials hope chapters on telecommunica-tions and e-commerce will be concluded by the end of busi-ness on Tuesday, but there has been no indication of this yet.

Although negotiators are scheduled to discuss rules of origin every day, the source said detailed talks on boosting North American content would not be held before the end of the round on Tuesday.

Canada and Mexico say the new rules of origin are unwork-able and would damage the highly-integrated auto industry.

Private-jet owners spared tax hit in Senate GOP planNew York Bloomberg

Senate Republicans say their tax bill will bring big tax cuts for middle-class families

and businesses. It’ll also make sure that owners of private jets don’t get hit with the same taxes

that commercial carriers face. The revised bill that emerged

from the Senate Finance Com-mittee this week has a provision that scraps excise taxes on man-agement services for private aircraft.

The exemption would apply to expenses including storage,

maintenance and hiring a crew. The provision is expected to cost the federal government less than $50m over a decade, according to the nonpartisan Joint Commit-tee on Taxation.

The exemption clarifies the boundaries of existing tax laws, Troy Rolf, an attorney at GKG

Law, said Friday in a phone interview. Commercial aviation operators are subject to taxes including a 7.5 percent excise levy. That doesn’t apply to pri-vate operators, who instead pay a higher tax on fuel.

Some private-jet owners let management companies charter

the planes to other customers. The Internal Revenue Service has scrutinized such cases in recent years to determine whether those planes should qualify as commer-cially owned. If so, the owner’s personal trips would be subject to excise taxes.

People who lease aircraft for

more than 31 consecutive days also would be eligible for the exemption. The tweak wasn’t included in an earlier version of the Finance Committee’s tax plan but was introduced in both the House and the Senate in February, with bipartisan support.

Verizon & NFL to announce digital streaming deal soonBloomberg

Verizon Communications Inc is close to a new deal with the National Foot-

ball League for digital streaming rights that would give the larg-est US wireless carrier the ability to deliver game broadcasts to internet-connected TVs, tablets and phones, according to peo-ple familiar with the matter. The deal expands on Verizon’s pre-vious contract, which limited the carrier to streaming on screens 7 inches or smaller—basically just phones.

With the new agreement, Verizon will be able to give sub-scribers access to games on all devices, including big-screen TVs. Verizon will lose exclusive

rights to air games on mobile devices. Financial details and the duration of Verizon’s con-tract with the NFL couldn’t immediately be learned.

Verizon’s rights will include the NFL’s Thursday night games, among others, one of the people said. The NFL has splintered its broadcasting rights among several parties, including online.

Verizon currently has mobile streaming rights to Sun-day day games in a team’s home market, along with games on Thursday, Sunday and Mon-day nights. AT&T Inc’s DirecTV has exclusive rights to out-of-market games during the day on Sunday, including on mobile devices.

Business jet operators, already offering double digit raises to attract pilots, could face a labor shortfall in North America as they compete with US airlines

for talent, executives and analysts said.Competition is intensifying from airlines, which gen-

erally offer higher salaries and better benefits and are taking delivery of new aircraft at a fast pace, US-based aviation consultant Rolland Vincent said. Boeing Co and Airbus SE left the Dubai Air Show this week with around 700 provisional orders for narrowbody commercial jets, potentially adding to already hefty backlogs.

It is expected that the world’s rapidly growing com-mercial aviation industry will need an additional 255,000 pilots by 2027, according to training specialist CAE Inc.

US legacy carriers are recruiting employees to fly new aircraft and replace retiring staff, with American Airlines expected to hire 900 mainline pilots in 2018, up from just over 500 in 2017, said Dennis Tajer, a spokesman for the Allied Pilots’ Association (APA), which represents Amer-ican Airlines pilots.

“It’s really a buyers’ market and the buyer is the pilot now,” Tajer said in a telephone interview. “If you don’t pay pilots the market rate you’re going to lose them.”

By contrast, in Europe corporate jet operators did not lose many pilots this year to commercial aviation because carriers had an adequate supply of pilots after Air Berlin and Britain’s Monarch Airlines ceased operations, said Adam Twidell, Chief Executive of PrivateFly, a global pri-vate jet charter broker.

According to the 2017 pilot salary survey from the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA), a captain flying a midsized corporate plane like the Bombardier Challenger 350 made about $130,000 on average. In 2017, an American Airlines captain flying the B737 or A320 nar-rowbody earned just over $268,000, according to an APA compensation document.

Don Haloburdo, vice president and general manager of flight services for business aircraft management and charter company Jet Aviation, a division of General Dynamics Corp, said corporate pilots’ salaries rose 20 percent this year on an annual basis.

Haloburdo expects the higher salaries to slightly increase operating costs for business jet companies, but that could be absorbed. He does not think they would hurt sales since owners’ largest expense, fuel, is relatively low.

Although business jet sales are flat, Haloburdo expects demand for corporate pilots and maintenance techni-cians to pick up after 2018 as airlines boost recruiting efforts and popular new planes hit the market from Bom-bardier and Gulfstream, also a division of General Dynamics.

“When Bombardier starts delivering the Global 7000 in significant numbers, Gulfstream starts delivering their G500 and G600 in significant numbers, that’s where our industry is going to have a very significant challenge find-ing qualified crew members,” he said.

Most buyers of the Global 7000, which lists for about $73m, already own corporate jets and have their own pilot crews, Bombardier Business Aircraft President David Coleal said in an interview.

But the new jets could attract less well-paid corpo-rate pilots who work on contract and fly smaller aircraft.

It can already be difficult for companies without full time crews to schedule last-minute flights, said Warren Peck, president of Phoenix Rising Aviation, an Oklahoma-based maintenance and repair operation specializing in Dassault Aviation SA Falcoln jets. A former US military pilot, Peck offers to fly at a discounted rate for his main-tenance customers who cannot find a pilot.

China’s frenzied construction of subway systems in cities all over the country may be easing, amid reports funding has been pulled for some projects as Beijing

pushes to rein in debt levels.The National Development and Reform

Commission, China’s top economic planning body, is revising a 2003 policy on subway development, Caixin reported on Saturday.

The NDRC wants to “raise the bar” for approving local rail projects amid growing concern over a debt-driven infrastructure boom, the financial magazine said, citing sources that it didn’t identify. Population lev-els, as well as the economy and fiscal conditions of Chinese cities seeking permis-sion for subway projects will be more closely scrutinized, Caixin said.

Subway construction is a constant pres-ence in China’s cities, with streets torn up to build the capacity needed to transport the swelling ranks of urban commuters. Beijing alone has been testing three lines: a driver-less subway, a maglev train, and a tram to be launched in the city’s western suburbs at the end of the year, the official Xinhua News Agency reported in September.

But investment in the sector appears to be tapering off, just as China’s leaders make reining in financial risks a top priority.

Fixed-asset investment in rail transpor-tation has slowed almost to a standstill in 2017, increasing just 0.4 percent in January-October from a year earlier, statistics bureau data show.

That’s down from 3.5 percent growth in the first four months of the year. Private rail transport investment—which makes up a tiny share of an industry that’s dominated

by state-backed enterprises—slumped 58.6 percent January-October from a year earlier.

Cities in Inner Mongolia have been told by China’s central government to halt infra-structure projects, Caixin reported earlier this month. That included a 30bn yuan ($4.5bn) subway project in the city of Bao-tou, and another valued at 27bn yuan in the regional capital, Hohhot.

Bloomberg’s calls to the media office of Hohhot’s city government weren’t answered after regular business hours, and a hotline for the mayor of Baotou also wasn’t picked up on Saturday.

Reduced rail investment would be a reversal for a country that’s feverishly embraced trains. China operated nearly 2,600 high-speed trains at the end of 2016, 60 percent of the total worldwide, accord-ing to Xinhua. The fast-rail network has surpassed 20,000 kilometers (12,430 miles) and leaders are targeting 45,000 kilometers by 2030, the state-media service said in June.

In 2012, the NDRC approved plans for subways in 18 Chinese cities including south-ern export powerhouses Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Back then, the body also author-ized inter-city rail projects throughout Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Ningxia and Jiangsu province.

Still, Yicai Global, a state-backed busi-ness publication, reported in September that some 43 so-called third-tier cities—mostly in provinces in China’s more populous east—secured approval to build subways as part of economic development and urbanization efforts.

Inner Mongolia’s population has held at around 25 million since 2010, according to the northern region’s statistics bureau, while the eastern province of Zhejiang, the head-quarters of e-retailing giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, is home to almost double that many people.

If China is taking a more discriminating

approach to infrastructure growth, it marks an about turn. In the wake of the global financial crisis, the government championed projects in far flung provinces—from new highways to sports stadiums—as a way of keeping people employed and maintaining economic momentum.

That spending saw leverage balloon to more than double gross domestic product, a risk factor Beijing is now trying to tackle.

People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan has issued blunt warnings about debt levels in the world’s second-largest economy. Regulators have been clamping down on shadow banking and trying to deter bond issuance.

In October, Zhou called for further meas-ures to constrain local government borrowing. The liabilities built up by local authorities’ financing vehicles in the post-crisis spending binge became symbolic for many investors of China’s excesses when it comes to debt.

Both Moody’s Investors Service and S&P Global Ratings have reduced China’s credit rating this year citing risks from extreme lev-

erage, while the International Monetary Fund warned in June that deep reforms will be needed to break away from debt-fueled growth.

Paris

AFP

Supporters of a free trade pact between the EU and the Mer-cosur states in South America,

under negotiation for nearly 20 years, are seeking to swim against the current and secure a deal by the end of the year.

“At a moment when the Anglo-Saxon world is in retreat on both sides of the Atlantic ... we should take advantage of that opportu-nity to reinforce cross-Atlantic ties b e t w e e n t h e E U

and Latin America,” said former Spanish foreign minister Josep Pique in reference to Brexit and the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States.

The two events are seen as partially due to a rising tide of public opinion against free trade deals, but numerous agreements are still in the works.

With the free trade deal with Canada provisionally entering into force in September and an agree-ment in principle reached with Japan in July, the EU is now trying to reach a deal with the Mercosur states: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Given the size of the Brazilian and Argentine economies, the deal is estimated to be worth four times as much as the deal with Japan for the EU and would represent an important victory for supporters of multilateral trade deals.

Pique, speaking at a recent conference organised by the Sci-ences Po university in Paris, said

the talks which first began 18 years ago have stalled in part due to Bra-zil and Argentina dragging their feet.

“But now we have a window of opportunity given the political circumstances in these two coun-tries,” said Pique, noting that Argentina’s President Mauricio Macri and his Brazilian counter-part Michel Temer now look positively on the pact.

With elections due next year in Brazil, the push by the trade pact’s supporters recalls the efforts by those who pressed for the rapid completion of the pact with the United States before Barack Obama left the White House.

After the latest round of nego-tiations was completed on November 10 in Brasilia, the EU said a deal was at hand.

Holding his index finger and thumb just slightly apart, Jyrki Katainen, an EU Commission vice president, said: “We’re that close to having a new association and

trade agreement between EU and Mercosur.” Argentina’s former for-eign minister, Susana Malcorra, who will preside over the WTO’s ministerial meeting, set to take place in Buenos Aires on Decem-ber 10-13, hopes the EU and Mercosur will be able to reach a preliminary agreement at the ses-sion. “In a context where global trade has been called into ques-tion, it is fundamental that two such considerable markets announce they are ready” to seal a new deal, Malcorra told AFP.

She insisted it was not “a response to anyone”, especially not the US president. Trump threw a massive spanner into the works to extend multilateral trade deals when he pulled the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an attempt to create the world’s largest and most comprehensive free trade deal, embracing econ-omies representing 40 percent of global GDP. He has threatened to do the same with the North

American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Against this background, an EU-Mercosur deal “will be a polit-ical symbol”, said Malcorra, adding that the announcement of “con-crete decisions” was needed to counter the growing protection-ist trend and public opinion against trade deals.

The EU has previously sig-nalled it is ready to make concessions with Mercosur on beef and ethanol in exchange for more market share for its cars in order to reach a deal.

It still needs to overcome the reticence of France, however, and Katainen recently tried to assuage the fears of Paris. For the Merco-sur countries, the deal offers another advantage: it will permit them “to balance their economic relations and be less dependent on China,” said Christian Daude, a Uruguayan who is the head of socio-economic relations at Latin America’s development bank, CAF.

Business jets risk US pilot shortage as they compete with airlinesAllison LampertReuters

Subways: Latest casualty of China’s crackdown on debt

A general view of a subway in China.

Jeffrey Black & Emma O’Brien Bloomberg

Fixed-asset investment in rail transportation has slowed almost to a standstill in 2017, increasing just 0.4% in January-October from a year earlier, statistics bureau data show. That’s down from 3.5% growth in the first four months of the year.

With the free trade deal with Canada provisionally entering into force in September and an agreement in principle reached with Japan in July, the EU is now trying to reach a deal with the Mercosur states: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

EU-Mercosur free-trade pact supporters push for deal

BUSINESS VIEWS 27MONDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2017

28 MONDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2017BUSINESS

BACK TO BUSINESS

European Union to pick post-Brexit agency winners

sight

AFP

The fight to host major EU regulatory agencies leaving London after

Brexit reaches its climax today when ministers vote to choose new host cities in a perplexing process com-pared to the Eurovision song contest.

The 27 EU affairs minis-ters meeting in Brussels will decide on how to resolve one of the collateral effects of the UK divorce: finding new locations for the European Medicines Agency and the European Banking Author-ity, both currently located in London’s high-rise Canary Wharf district.

There is “hot bargaining” behind the scenes, a diplo-matic source told AFP, as hopeful EU governments jos-tle to secure the backing of other countries for agencies that promise both prestige and prosperity.

The EU has given no indication of the top candi-dates, but British bookmaker Ladbrokes makes Bratislava, Milan and Amsterdam favourites to host the EMA, while Frankfurt, Vienna and Dublin lead the running for the EBA. In total there are 19 candidates to be the new home of the EMA, one of the world’s most powerful drugs watchdogs, which employs 900 pharmaceutical experts, biologists and doctors from every corner of Europe.

There is a smaller batch of eight bidders for the EBA, the banking overseer with 159 staff. The EBA is perhaps best known for its regular stress tests on the EU’s finan-cial sector in the wake of the

global financial crisis.Mem-ber states brought out all the stops to extol the merits of their candidate cities, pro-ducing glossy brochures and videos and offering a host of perks.

The Irish government has said it is willing to con-tribute ¤78m over 10 years to cover costs, while Vienna promised a children’s nurs-ery, and Milan threw in access to a gym.

Italy was even forced to deny press reports that it would increase its military contingents to the Baltic countries as a bargaining chip to promote Milan’s candidacy.

In an unusually complex procedure—even for the EU—each member state will have a set amount of points to distribute in a secret bal-lot to determine the candidate cities.

EU diplomats have com-pared the process to the annual Eurovision Song Con-test, whose nail-biting televised voting sequence is one of the most watched TV moments in Europe, known for its come from behind sur-prises and mixture of backscratching and backstabbing.

The European Commis-sion, the EU’s executive arm, delivered an evaluation of the applications in Septem-ber based on a range of criteria from transport links, to job prospects for spouses and schools.

But the commission was careful not to formulate a preference, and member states are under no obliga-tion to take that assessment into account in today’s vote.

Capital Comment

We say often that tax reform is the Trump Administration & the US economy’s greatest opportunity for growth & while the House voted to pass its tax bill this past week, the Senate is where the real battle will take place.

Kathy Lien, Managing

Director, FX Strategy for BK

Asset Management.

Market Talk

Pietro Beccari, CEO of Fendi, poses for a photograph at Palazzo Fendi, Fendi’s flagship store and private suites hotel in Rome.

Raytheon’s sale of Patriot to Poland approvedWarsaw

Reuters

The US State Department approved a possible $10.5bn sale of Raytheon Co’s Patriot

missile defence system to Poland, the Pentagon said on Friday.

NATO member Poland has sped

up efforts to overhaul its military following Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014 and in response to Moscow’s renewed military and political assertiveness in the region. Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said in March that Poland expected to sign a deal with Raytheon to buy

the Patriot missile defense system by the end of the year. The pro-posed sale includes 208 Patriot Advanced Capabilty-3 (PAC-3) Mis-sile Segment Enhancement missiles, 16 M903 launching sta-tions, 4 AN/MPQ-65 radars, 4 control stations, spares, software and associated equipment.

Dior taps Fendi’s fountain of youthRobert Williams Bloomberg

At luxury house Fendi, Pietro Beccari made Kendall Jenner walk on water. His next assignment: to make

Christian Dior fly again.Beccari, chief executive

officer of the Italian fur-and-leather purveyor, has been tapped by parent LVMH to take over leadership of Christian Dior Couture in early 2018. Over the past five years, he’s moved Fendi to the forefront of luxury brand-ing, offering customers a full-immersion experience rang-ing from eye-popping stores and a whimsical e-commerce site to a boutique hotel and VIP suite in the Roman palazzo that houses its flagship store.

The Fendi chief also cemented the brand’s ties to Rome, sponsoring art exhibits and cultural restoration projects and staging a runway show last year in which Jenner and other models traversed a plexiglass runway atop the Trevi Foun-tain—a Roman landmark that had been renovated under the brand’s sponsorship.

Beccari’s challenge will be to take Dior, the first luxury asset French billionaire Bernard Arnault acquired on the way to assembling industry leader LVMH, and restore its status as a trend-setter.

While the brand’s tight-waisted “New Look” helped revive the French fashion indus-try after World War II and its clients have run the gamut from Ava Gardner to Melania Trump, it’s become an elder statesman in an industry being revived by designers like Gucci’s Alessan-dro Michele.

Under Sidney Toledano, who’s moving on from his posi-tion as Dior CEO to a supervisory role at other LVMH brands, Dior has been one of the steadiest performers in fashion, growing an average of 12 percent a year since 2000. But the output of chief designer Maria Grazia Chiuri, hired in 2016 as the first woman creative director since Dior’s founding in 1946, has drawn mixed reviews. Menswear collections by Kris Van Assche pass largely unnoticed—a far cry from the agenda-setting power the brand enjoyed a decade ago when Hedi Slimane’s skinny

suits and jeans set the pace for the industry.

Meanwhile, the luxury industry’s changing fast. Gone are the days when growth could be achieved simply by opening another store in China, or even by designing a generation’s must-have handbag or heels. Led by millennials newly attuned to the allure of high fashion, con-sumers visit stores to envelop themselves in the brand and its provenance—and then do their buying at home, online.

Beccari, 50, carried out a multipronged revamp of Fendi after taking over in 2012 follow-ing a six-year stint as marketing and communications director at LVMH’s Louis Vuitton. Under his leadership, Fendi doubled down on its identity as a specialist in high-end leather and furs, ditch-ing entry-level logo-printed canvas handbags to focus on $4,000 Peekaboo bags, $12,000 fox-fur coats and intricate, handmade ensembles that can cost as much as $1m.

Fendi hasn’t ignored its retail network, opening new stores in Australia, Japan and the US, including boutiques in New York, San Francisco and Dallas.

Rather than sitting on shelves against cold marble walls, hand-bags dangle from golden wands. Entry-level shoppers can still get “bag bugs”—furry charms to per-sonalize their handbags—for $650 and up.

The website’s holiday gift guide invites shoppers to explore “Fendi Land”—an animated depiction of a carnival that walks them through the brand’s range. Fendi under Beccari “has become a top performer in terms of how to convey a luxury expe-rience to clients when they purchase online,” Pozzi said.

While those investments have been costly, Fendi’s expanded scale helps to offset the expense, says Rogerio Fuji-mori, a luxury analyst at RBC Capital Markets in London. LVMH doesn’t break out figures for individual brands, but RBC says Fendi has sales of about $1.1bn, with a profit margin over 20 percent. Fujimori estimates that Dior’s margin, as gauged by earnings before interest and taxes, is in the low teens.

Beccari should be able to improve profitability at Dior, Fujimori said, “because of the power of the brand, its scale.”

Prime Minister Lee says Singapore growth could top 3% this yearSingapore

Bloomberg

Singaporean Prime Min-ister Lee Hsien Loong (pictured) says his

country is expected to exceed expectations this year by recording economic growth above 3 percent.

Addressing his People’s Action Party’s 2017 conven-tion yesterday, Lee said Singapore was benefiting from an improved world economy, but would have to press on with plans to restructure and upgrade the economy to sustain growth.

“Our unemployment remains low, wages have gone up, and most signifi-cantly productivity has picked up,” said Lee. “Initially we expected 1.5 percent growth, then we revised it up to 2 to 3 percent, now it looks like we may exceed 3 percent.”

After surging to nearly 4.5 per cent in 2013, economic growth dipped below 2

percent in 2015-16 as the trade-reliant nation was buf-feted by an unfavorable world economy. While a pick up in manufacturing and financial services has added momentum to the economy, a series of blockbuster land deals this year suggests the city-state’s property market is also set to break out of a prolonged slump.

Looking ahead, Lee said he expected government spending on healthcare, infrastructure, and other social services to keep rising, meaning that “raising taxes

is not a matter of whether, but when.” And, despite a rail collision last week on Singa-pore’s Mass Rapid Transit network that injured over 30 people, Lee said Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan retained his “full support and confidence.”

Noting his recent visits to Washington, DC and Beijing, Lee said Singapore’s relations with both countries were in good shape.

“It’s not always easy to be good friends with both the US and China at the same time,” Lee said. “But as a small nation, we have to make friends with as many coun-tries as we can.”

Lee said that on his recent visit to Beijing ahead of the 19th Communist Party Congress, he met with both President Xi Jinping and Pre-mier Li Keqiang and that both sides recognized the value of the bilateral relationship. Lee said it was his job to keep Singapore “a blip on the radar” of US officials.