BusinessDay 21 Aug 2018

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Tuesday 21 August 2018 @ FINANCIAL TIMES LIMITED Stocks rally ahead of US-China trade talks and Fed minutes Wall Street joins global advance but its pace cools, dollar holds firm Michael Hunter and Alice Woodhouse There is an optimistic feel to trade ahead of trade talks this week between the US and China, with the dollar remaining in demand and stock markets holding their nerve. On Wall Street, the S&P 500 is inching ever closer towards January’s record high. European markets are outperforming while China’s stocks bounced up off their lowest point in almost two years. The dollar index is up 0.1 per cent at 96.15, while oil prices have found support even as the currency in which they are denominated rises. Brent crude is up 0.7 per cent at $72.35. A delegation led by Wang Shouwen, China’s vice-commerce minister, will conduct two days of talks in Washington starting on Wednesday, the first formal negotiations since the US imposed tariffs on $50bn of Chinese imports. “Investors will be hoping that negotiations between China and the US can start to break the trade tariff deadlock or at the very least open the door to a summit between President [Donald] Trump and President Xi [Jinping], which might begin to ease the pressure.” Rebecca O’Keeffe, Head of Investment at interactive investor Attention is also starting to turn to the minutes of the US Federal Reserve’s August monetary policy meeting, set to be released on Wednesday, and the meeting of global central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, from Thursday to Tianqi Lithium, China’s biggest producer of the battery raw material, has chosen Morgan Stanley and CLSA for a listing in Hong Kong to fund its $4.07bn purchase of a stake in Chile’s SQM, according to a prospectus. The Chengdu-based company said 90 per cent of the listing proceeds will be used to “partially repay debt” for the deal, which was announced in May. The rest will be for general corporate purposes, it said. Tianqi still needs regulatory approval for its purchase of Nutrien’s 24 per cent stake in SQM, which will make it the second-largest shareholder in the company after Julio Ponce Lerou, a billionaire Chilean businessman. Tianqi said it has borrowed a total of $3.5bn to fund the deal. The transaction has raised concerns in Chile about Tianqi’s dominance in the lithium market. In June Chile’s national competition authority, the FNE, opened an investigation into the deal. “As a result, the SQM transaction might be delayed, modified or entirely blocked if the FNE determines that it entails antitrust risks and refers the SQM Transaction to the Chilean Antitrust Court,” Tianqi FINANCIAL TIMES C002D5556 COMPANIES & MARKETS Saturday. Investors will be looking for more information on the Fed’s assessment of the economy, inflation and its take on trade. Equities Wall Street’s S&P 500 is up 0.1 per cent in at 2,854, leaving it less than 0.7 per cent shy of the record high set in January at 2,872.87. The Europe-wide Stoxx 600 is up 0.8 per cent, with gains for industrial metals and mining stocks setting the pace. Frankfurt’s Xetra Dax 30 is up 1.3 per cent and the FTSE 100 is 0.6 per cent stronger. Mainland China’s indices bounced up off two-year lows after calls over the weekend from regulators urging banks to support infrastructure projects and exporters to bolster economic confidence. The CSI 300 index of Shanghai- and Shenzhen-listed stocks rose 1.2 per cent, its first rise in six sessions. The index has fallen by about 20 per cent for 2018, tracking concerns about a slowing Chinese economy and the US-China trade war. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.4 per cent with technology and telecommunications stocks in demand. Japan’s Topix slipped 0.3 per cent. Forex The Turkish lira is weaker by 2.6 per cent at TL6.1694 per dollar following a tumultuous week and a sharp fall on Friday after rating agencies Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s downgraded Turkey’s debt deeper into non-investment grade territory. China’s largest lithium producer set for HK IPO to fund SQM purchase Henry Sanderson said in its listing prospectus filed in Hong Kong. Chengdu-based Tianqi mines lithium in China and also at the Greenbushes hard rock mine in Australia, the largest lithium mine in the world. The company has become “a critical supplier in the supply chain system of many key battery and EV OEMs around the world,” according to its prospectus. Tianqi said it aims to expand its business into Northeast Asia and Europe, “to strengthen our ties with top-tier end customers in lithiumbased new energy sectors such as EV and energy storage systems.” “We plan to enter into mediumto long-term supply contracts with industry leading international customers which have stringent requirements on product quality and consistency with strict accreditation processes,” it said. Demand for lithium is set to grow by 19.8 per cent a year up to 2027 due to growing sales of electric cars and greater of use of batteries for storage of renewable energy, Tianqi said, citing data from consultancy Roskill. But shares in lithium producers have declined this year, on concerns about an oversupply of the battery raw material. Shares in SQM have fallen 24 per cent year-to-date in New York. BUSINESS DAY Staff at UK’s second busiest airport write up flight departure details for several hours Josh Spero A5 Wang Shouwen, China’s vice-commerce minister, is leading a delegation to Washington this week to discuss US-China trade relations © Reuters Damaged cable forces Gatwick airport to switch to whiteboards Two days after a consumer survey showed UK aviation passenger satisfaction had fallen, a damaged cable at Gatwick, the country’s second busiest airport, led to staff writing flight departure gates on whiteboards for several hours on Monday. Telecoms company Vodafone apologised for the “problems”, which occurred in its network. It blamed it on “a damaged fibre cable”. Gatwick, which processed 45.6m passengers in 2017, said: “Contingencies are working — we have whiteboards and friendly staff on hand to help, and tens of thousands of passengers have departed on time.” The cable was fixed by mid-afternoon after a five-hour outage. While some passengers took to social media to castigate the airport for the confusion, Chris Han, who was waiting at airport for a flight to Los Angeles, said: “It’s slightly chaotic, and pretty difficult to see what’s at the bottom of the whiteboards, but I think the Premier Oil will press ahead with the development of one of the largest undeveloped gas discoveries in the southern North Sea after the FTSE 250 company secured backing from infrastructure investors. The oil and gas independent said on Monday it had sanctioned the development of its Tolmount Main gasfield, which is expected to produce its first gas by the end of 2020 before reaching peak production by 2021. It will produce about 500bn cubic feet of natural gas in total and around 58,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day at its peak — equivalent to close to 5 per cent of Britain’s domestic gas supplies. staff are doing a pretty decent job, all things considered.” The disruption came against a background of falling passenger happiness, according to the UK Aviation Consumer Survey. Overall satisfaction has dropped from 90 per cent in March 2016 to 83 per cent in April 2018, and satisfaction with airport experience has declined from 83 per cent to 78 per cent over the same period. The Civil Aviation Authority, which is now carrying out its next survey, said that it was too early to tell if results would worsen, given a summer of strikes by airline staff and air traffic controllers across Europe and long queues at border control. Tim Johnson, director at the CAA, said: “While we note that some of this summer’s operational challenges have been outside of the industry’s control, some remain within industry control.” At Heathrow, Britain’s busiest airport, Border Force has missed its target for passport holders from outside the Eu- The field could produce gas for between 10 to 15 years. The approval of Tolmount is the latest in a series of new investments announced by oil and gas companies in the North Sea as the region, traditionally one of the most expensive given its maturity, recovers from the crash in oil prices. Tolmount’s go-ahead marked “a major milestone” for Premier, said chief executive Tony Durrant. The company, he added, had also secured “an innovative financing structure” for the project that would minimise Premier’s capital expenditure. Under the terms of the deal Premier, which owns a 50 per cent stake in the field, will spend about ropean Economic Area for three years running. In June 2013, 99.7 per cent of non-EEA passengers passed through Heathrow’s flagship Terminal 5 in less than 45 minutes. In June of this year, just 76 per cent cleared passport control in the allotted time. At Gatwick, which has fewer non-EEA passengers than Heathrow, Border Force met its targets between November 2017 and April of this year for both EEA and non-EEA passport holders. Earlier this year, the Financial Times reported that the owners of Gatwick airport had paid themselves dividends of £643m in the past year as they issued £650m of debt. The dividends were an increase of more than half a billion pounds on the previous year’s £125m total. Gatwick is owned by a consortium comprising private equity firm Global Infrastructure Partners, with 42 per cent; the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, with 16 per cent, and pension funds from California, South Korea and Australia. Premier Oil gives green light to Tolmount field Development to begin at one of the North Sea’s largest undeveloped gas discoveries Sylvia Pfeifer $120m on developing the site, comprising of project management and development drilling costs. However, a joint venture between its partner Dana Petroleum, which owns the other 50 per cent, and CATS Management Limited, a UK gas infrastructure company owned by Antin Infrastructure Partners, will pay for the construction of a new platform and pipeline to export the gas to shore. In return Premier will pay a tariff for the transportation and processing of Tolmount gas through the infrastructure. The gas will be piped to the Easington terminal on the Yorkshire coast owned by Centrica, the energy company, which will process the gas.
Politics & Policy A6 BUSINESS DAY C002D5556 Tuesday 21 August 2018 INEC condemns alleged extortion at voter registration centres … Vows to prosecute erring officials The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has condemned any form of extortion of Nigerians in the on-going Continuous Voter Registration (CVR), vowing to prosecute any of its officials found to be involved in the act. In a release to the media by the commission’s Lagos office yesterday, signed by its Public Relations Officer (PRO), Femi Akinbiyi, reacting to an online media report, which stated that an official of the commission in a registration centre in Ikorodu Local Government Area INEC office, was colluding with touts demanding an amount of money from unsuspecting members of the public before facilitating their registration. The commission said it had set up a panel to investigate the claim, while the official had been withdrawn from the centre, stressing that it does not tolerate extortion and had on several occasions warned its officials against the act. Governor Udom Emmanuel of Akwa Ibom State and Senate President Bukola Saraki during a visit to the government house in Uyo The commissions said it recently arrested some touts engaging in illegal registration in certain parts of Lagos State following a tip-off, with the assistance of the officers from Department of Security Services (DSS), while apologising for any stress Nigerians may be encountering in the course of carrying out their registration. “Attention of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has been drawn to an online publication. In the said publication it was alleged that ‘some of the INEC officials in cohorts with touts illegally sneaked in people who had paid them N1,500.00 to fast-track their registration’ and one Prince Chucks was described as the link man.” According to the statement, “It is a fact that touts are around some of our CVR Centres going about with their nefarious activities, yet we have been doing everything possible to apprehend them and hand them over to law enforcement agencies for prosecution. The Commission few weeks ago with the assistance of the officers from DSS arrested some touts engaging in illegal registration in certain parts of Lagos State after tips off. “They will be prosecuted after the Police investigation. The Commission has zero tolerance for any form of extortion. Although, the Ikorodu matter is going through investigation.” Kwara targets 1.2m voters - INEC boss SIKIRAT SHEHU, Ilorin Garba Madami, the Kwara State Resident Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has said that 1.2 million eligible voters are expected from the state for the 2019 general election but that so far, 900,000 (nine hundred thousand) have done their registration. Madami also disclosed that only 160,000 residents have so far taken part in the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise across the state. The REC, who spoke during a courtesy visit to the Correspondents’ Chapel of the state council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), said that about 315,000 permanent voters’ cards (PVCs) are yet to be claimed by registered voters since 2015 in the state. He said that some strategies had been mapped out to address poor registration of voters. According to him, part of the strategies was to deploy officers to villages and rural areas of the state to register eligible voters as against local government headquarters where registration points were. Military commends Ortom over support to security operatives BENJAMIN AGESAN, Makurdi The Nigerian Military has commended Governor Samuel Ortom for timely and consistent support to enhance activities of Operation Whirl Stroke in Benue State. Force Commander of the operation, Major General Mutiu Yekini gave the commendation yesterday when he received Governor Ortom who visited the Air Force Hospital, Makurdi to see soldiers recently attacked by armed herdsmen while on operation. He noted with satisfaction the concern shown by the governor over the welfare of their men, stating that such would spur them to step up their operations. Major General Yekini assured the governor and the entire people of the state of the readiness of their operation to comb areas known to be hideouts for criminal herdsmen in the state and beyond. Also speaking, Governor Ortom applauded the Nigerian Army for the good work it had been doing since the operation was deployed to the state and urged it to maintain the tempo. He also acknowledged the Federal Government for deploying operation Whirl Stroke, pointing out that the performance by men of the operation had largely brought the attacks on Benue communities under control. He, on behalf of the government and people of the state, expressed sympathy over a member of the operation that had lost his life and others wounded during the attack and were receiving treatment in the hospital. INIOBONG IWOK …PDP, APC trade accusation as INEC suspends collation IGNATIUS CHUKWU AND INNOCENT ETENG, Port Harcourt Stop promoting violence - U.S Ambassador warns Nigerian leaders The United State Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, Samuel Brownback, has warned Nigerian political office holders, civil society and religious leaders to avoid amplifying ethno-religious tension in the country but focus on peace building. Brownback stated this at a oneday national youths dialogue on ethno-religious tolerance organised by the U.S Consulate General in Lagos, which was in partnership with the African Youths Initiative for Crime Prevention (AYICRIP). Brownback, who had met with a group of religious leaders during a recent visit to Nigeria in June, Violence in local by-election raises anxiety in Rivers ahead 2019 Violence took a centre stage at a by-election in Rivers State to replace a local parliamentarian but it provided a test of muscles for the two bitterest rival political parties in the fight to control the oil-rich state. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in the state suspended the election citing massive violence and disruption by rampaging groups, but this was at collation stage when one of the parties was already backslapping in advance. Both the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) have each accused the other of perpetrating violence and using different factions of the police to do its bidding. Observers said the preparedness by both parties to march for with force either with ‘youths’ or police backers points to what may happen in few months time as 2019 general elections fast approach. Guns began early to boom on Election Day around Diobu as youths freely moved about chanting slogans and carrying out violent actions despite ban on movement. Later in the day, more shooting continued and teargas was heavy in Emenike Junction area. The police battled with hoodlums. Youths snatched bags and phones. INEC Obo Effanga announced suspension at collation stage and said miscreants and hoodlums backed by ‘heavily armed security operatives’ stormed the voting centres and destroyed, snatched and ruined voting materials and commended increased inter-faith engagement and dialogue in Nigeria, but noted that the country can do more to protect citizens’ rights to religious freedom. “When I visited Nigeria in June, I met with communities from all different faiths located all over the country and heard about how interfaith groups and people from every religion have come together to begin stopping the violence at the community level, which is a great starting point,” Brownback said. “However, we need to do better than just achieving tolerance; we need to truly care for each other. The people who stand for peace do not do this because they are from the same ethnic group, or because they share a common religion. They believe the lives of everyone card readers. In a state broadcast Sunday afternoon, the governor, Nyesom Wike, said the police failed completely. “Instead of providing security for voters and INEC officials the police brazenly colluded with political thugs of the APC to subvert the democratic process and denied the people of Port Harcourt Constituency III their rights to free, fair and credible elections.” He said while voting was underway, armed thugs from the APC moved freely from one polling unit to the other, violently assaulted voters and INEC officials and are sacred,” he said. Speaking earlier, the U.S. Consul-General, John Bray, reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to supporting initiatives that promote peace, while admonishing Nigerians to ensure that cyclical communal violence does not threaten national unity. “Each of us has a role to play in tramping down tensions between communities of all kinds,” Bray said. “It is in your hands to ensure that this tragic violence does not descend into broader ethnic and religious fighting, and a cycle of reprisals. We must all make sure that the fighting does not eat away at the fabric of Nigeria, the multireligious and multi-ethnic tolerance that makes this a great and unified nation,” Bray said. carted away election materials, including smart card readers and ballot boxes.” He squarely accused the state chairman of the APC of leading thugs to destroy materials. “Consequently, the thugs and their police accomplices successfully disrupted the bye-election in virtually all the 142 polling units across the 8 wards of the Constituency and caused bodily injuries to several innocent voters and INEC officials.” On the other hand, the APC said the governor’s chief of staff led PDP thugs to disrupt the election.
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BusinessDay 21 Aug 2018

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