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Tag: iab-financial industry

  • China relaxes mortgage rules to help homebuyers in latest stimulus push | CNN Business

    China relaxes mortgage rules to help homebuyers in latest stimulus push | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    China just made it easier for people to buy homes, in a move that could affect $3.5 trillion in mortgage loans as Beijing seeks to bail out a property market mired in a record slump and worsening cash crunch.

    Down payments will be set at a minimum of 20% for first-time buyers and a minimum of 30% for second-time buyers nationwide, according to a joint statement by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) and the National Administration of Financial Regulation (NAFR) released late Thursday.

    That’s a big cut from the existing requirements of minimums of 30% and 40% for first-time and second-time buyers in cities that implement home-buying restrictions, such as Beijing and Shanghai.

    In addition, minimum mortgage rates for buyers of second homes should be no less than 20 basis points over the loan prime rate (LPR), the statement said. Currently, minimum mortgage rates for second-time buyers are no less than 60 basis points over the LPR.

    The LPR is the benchmark for most household and corporate loans in China and is set by the central bank each month.

    The regulators also indicated in a separate statement that rates on existing mortgages for first-home purchases can be renegotiated between banks and customers starting September 25. The regulators have encouraged banks to offer lower rates.

    “The drop in the interest rates of existing housing loans can save interest expenses for borrowers, which is conducive to expanding consumption and investment,” the regulators said.

    “For banks, it can effectively reduce the phenomenon of early loan repayment and mitigate the impact on banks’ interest income,” they added.

    The new policy measures could affect 40 million home buyers and impact 25 trillion yuan ($3.5 trillion) in mortgages, which is about two thirds of the country’s housing loans, state-owned Yicai reported on Thursday, citing people close to the regulators.

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  • Dollar General shares tumble after it cuts forecasts, blaming a spending slump and theft | CNN Business

    Dollar General shares tumble after it cuts forecasts, blaming a spending slump and theft | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Dollar General slashed its sales and profit outlook for the year on Thursday, blaming headwinds including weaker consumer spending on non-essential purchases and increasing theft.

    Dollar General shares tumbled nearly 17% in pre-market trading Thursday.

    The discount store’s challenges are yet another sign of American consumers pulling back on shopping as inflation remains well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.

    “One of the key reasons for this is because Dollar General’s core customers are feeling the acute pressure of the cost-of-living-crisis,” Neil Saunders, retail analyst and managing director at GlobalData, said in a report Thursday.

    “This has been exacerbated by cuts in SNAP payments as temporary pandemic benefits came to an end. As a result, lower-income shoppers are cutting back on non-consumable and indulgent purchases from the chain in a bid to save money,” he said. “Unfortunately, this dynamic will not change any time soon as, if anything, finances will tighten over the second half of the year.”

    The discount retailer now expects sales for the full year to rise between 1.3% to 3.3%, down from its previous forecast of a 3.5% to 5% increase. It expects full-year earnings to decline 22% to 34% from its previous estimate of a flat-to-8% decrease.

    The retailer said its same-store sales (or sales at stores open at least a year) are expected to range from a decline of about 1% to an increase of 1% for the year, compared to its previous expectation of a 1% to 2%. increase.

    For its second quarter, Dollar General logged a 1% drop in its same-store sales. It said weaker customer traffic to its stores hurt sales in the period, combined with budget-conscious shoppers pulling back on higher-priced discretionary purchases such as home items and clothing in favor of lower-priced everyday necessities.

    The Consumer Price Index rose 3.2% for the year through July, adding pressure on shoppers looking for bargains.

    In addition, food stamp recipients started to receive about $90 a month less in benefits, on average, starting in March, as a pandemic hunger relief program comes to an end nationwide three years after Congress approved it.

    Meanwhile, close on the heels of Dick’s Sporting Goods sounding the alarm on store theft eating into its profit this year, Dollar General also flagged an increase in product theft, among other factors, hurting its profit.

    The company said “an increase in expected inventory shrink for the second half of 2023” factored into its lower guidance. Shrink is an industry term encompassing inventory losses caused by external theft, including organized retail crime, employee theft, human errors, vendor fraud, damaged or mismarked items and other losses.

    Retailers large and small say they are struggling to contain an escalation in store crimes — from petty shoplifting to organized sprees of large-scale theft that clear entire shelves of products. Target warned earlier this year that it was bracing to lose half a billion dollars because of rising theft. It reported a large number of incidents of shoplifting and organized retail crime in its stores nationwide.

    At the same time, it’s not clear that store crime is growing significantly more serious. Within the industry, at least one major player has argued that the problem is being overhyped.

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  • UBS will cut 3,000 jobs in Switzerland as it absorbs Credit Suisse | CNN Business

    UBS will cut 3,000 jobs in Switzerland as it absorbs Credit Suisse | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    UBS expects to shed around 3,000 jobs in Switzerland as it tries to save $10 billion from a sweeping overhaul of the global banking giant created by its emergency rescue of Credit Suisse earlier this year.

    The job cuts amount to around 8% of staff employed by the combined bank’s Swiss operations and may spark new controversy in the country, where the deal has already proved unpopular with the public and some politicians.

    “The Swiss Bank Employees Association demands that the 37,000 employees of the two institutions in Switzerland are treated fairly and equally in the integration process,” the Swiss banking union said in a statement.

    On a call with analysts Thursday, UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti said: “Every lost job is painful for us. Unfortunately, in this situation, cuts were unavoidable.”

    Ermotti said the job cuts would be spread “over a couple of years” and that the bank would provide affected employees with financial support, outplacement services and retraining opportunities.

    The Swiss bank, which has a combined global workforce of nearly 122,000, gave no further details on the numbers of likely layoffs outside of Switzerland in its second quarter earnings statement — the first report since it acquired its rival.

    UBS confirmed plans to retain Credit Suisse’s banking operations in Switzerland, and fully absorb those into the newly-merged group, rather than opting for a spin-off or IPO, even though that may have resulted in fewer redundancies.

    “Our analysis clearly shows that a full integration is the best outcome for UBS, our stakeholders and the Swiss economy,” Ermotti said in a statement. He added that this was “one of the biggest and most complex bank mergers in history.”

    UBS said that it expected to generate more than $10 billion in savings from the integration by the end of 2026, $1 billion more and a year earlier than planned when the takeover was announced in March. The bank’s shares gained as much as 7% on the news.

    UBS (UBS) agreed on March 19 to buy Credit Suisse for the bargain price of 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.4 billion) in a rescue orchestrated by Swiss authorities to avert a banking sector meltdown.

    UBS posted net profit of $29 billion for the second quarter, reflecting a one-off boost from the acquisition of Credit Suisse at a fraction of its value. But it also benefited from continued strong inflows into its global wealth management business, recording $16 billion of net new money — the highest second-quarter figure in over a decade.

    Controversy in Switzerland

    Credit Suisse went bust after confidence in the ailing lender collapsed and customers yanked their money from the bank. The firm had been plagued by scandals and compliance failures in recent years that wiped out its profit and caused it to lose clients.

    But the death blow came after it acknowledged “material weakness” in its bookkeeping and as the demise of US regional lenders Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank spread fear about weaker institutions.

    The combination of the banks has caused controversy in Switzerland because it leaves the country exposed to a single massive financial institution with a market share of about 30% and assets roughly double the size of its annual economic output.

    Taxpayers were originally on the hook for potential losses arising from the deal, but UBS said earlier this month it would no longer need a Swiss government guarantee of 9 billion francs ($10.3 billion) for future potential losses arising from Credit Suisse assets.

    It also said it no longer required a 100 billion franc ($114.2 billion) government-backed loan and that Credit Suisse had repaid an earlier loan from Switzerland’s central bank of 50 billion francs ($57.1 billion).

    “Taxpayers will no longer bear any risks arising from these guarantees,” the Swiss government said at the time.

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  • US intel: Ukraine war caused ‘one of the most disruptive periods’ for global food security | CNN Politics

    US intel: Ukraine war caused ‘one of the most disruptive periods’ for global food security | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused deep disruptions in the global food supply, raising prices and increasing the risk of food insecurity in poorer nations in the Middle East and North Africa, America’s top spy agency said in an unclassified report released by Congress on Wednesday.

    The direct and indirect effects of the war “were major drivers of one of the most disruptive periods in decades for global food security,” the eight-page report found – in large part because Ukraine and Russia were among the world’s largest pre-war exporters of grain and other agricultural products.

    Although food security concerns have abated since the start of this year, according to the report, the future trajectory of global food prices likely will depend in part on what happens with the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which Russia ended in July. The deal, facilitated by the United Nations, had allowed Ukrainian agricultural shipments to safely exit Black Sea ports and reach the international market.

    How much acreage Ukraine is able to cultivate as the war continues to rage and the cost and availability of fertilizers will also have an impact on global food prices, the report found. Global fertilizer prices reached near-record levels in mid-2022 as global oil and natural gas prices rose.

    “The combination of high domestic food prices and historic levels of sovereign debt in many countries – largely caused by spending and recessionary effects of the COVID-19 pandemic – has weakened countries’ capacity to respond to heightened food insecurity risks,” the report said. “These factors probably will undermine the capacity of many poor countries to provide sufficient and affordable food to their population through the end of the year.”

    Droughts last year in Canada, the Middle East, South America and the United States also compounded the war-related stress on global food supplies, according to the report.

    Intelligence officials have accused Russia in the past of weaponizing food supplies by blocking Ukrainian exports, destroying infrastructure and occupying Ukrainian agricultural land.

    Citing satellite imagery and open-source reporting, the report said that Russia stole nearly 6 million tons of Ukrainian wheat harvested from occupied territories in 2022. Cargo ships used to transport the stolen grain out of Russian-occupied territories in 2022 would steer along the coast of Turkey to deliver shipments to ports in Syria, Israel, Iran, Georgia and Lebanon, the report said.

    “We cannot confirm if the buyers of the Russian cargoes were aware of the grains’ Ukrainian origin,” the report said.

    The report was mandated by the annual intelligence authorization bill and released by the House Intelligence Committee.

    “This report casts light on the war’s broader disruption to global food security and reveals how (Russian President Vladimir) Putin has intentionally used food security and the threat of starvation as a negotiating chip,” committee leaders Reps. Mike Turner and Jim Himes said in a statement. “Russia’s recent refusal to renew the Black Sea Grain Initiative will worsen this crisis, driving vulnerable nations into food shortages that could leave millions struggling to eat.”

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  • Hurricane Idalia and Labor Day could send gas prices and inflation higher | CNN Business

    Hurricane Idalia and Labor Day could send gas prices and inflation higher | CNN Business

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    A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Labor Day — one of the busiest driving holidays in the US — is on the horizon, and so is Hurricane Idalia. That’s potentially bad news for gas prices.

    The storm, which is expected to make landfall in Florida as a Category 3 hurricane on Wednesday, could bring 100 mile-per-hour winds and flooding that extends hundreds of miles up the east coast. The impact could take gasoline refinery facilities offline and may limit some Gulf oil production and supplies. Plus, demand for gas is expected to surge as residents of the impacted areas evacuate.

    “Idalia… could pose risk to oil and gas output in the US Gulf,” wrote the Nasdaq Advisory Services Energy Team.

    The storm is expected to make landfall as drivers nationwide load into their vehicles for the Labor Day weekend, pushing up the demand for gasoline even further.

    All together it means the price of oil and gasoline could remain elevated well into the fall.

    Generally, summer demand for oil tends to wane in September, but so does supply as refineries shift from summer fuels to “oxygenated” winter fuels, said Louis Navellier of Navellier and Associates. Since the 1990s, the US has required manufacturers to include more oxygen in their gasoline during the colder months to prevent excessive carbon monoxide emissions.

    With the storm approaching, that trend may not play out.

    What’s happening: Gas prices are already at $3.82 a gallon. That’s the second highest price for this time of year since at least 2004, according to Bespoke Investment Group. (The only time the national average has been higher for this period was last summer, when prices hit $3.85 a gallon).

    Geopolitical tensions have been supporting high oil and gas prices for some time. Recently, increased crude oil imports into China, production cuts by Russia and Saudi Arabia and extreme heat set off a late-summer spike in gas prices. And the threat of powerful hurricanes could send them even higher.

    Analysts at Citigroup have warned that this hurricane season could seriously impact power supplies.

    “Two Category 3 or higher hurricanes landing on US shores could massively disrupt supplies for not weeks but months,” Citigroup analysts wrote in a note last week. In 2005, for example, gas prices surged by 46% between Memorial Day and Labor Day because of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina, according to Bespoke.

    What it means: The Federal Reserve and central banks around the world have been fighting to bring down stubbornly high inflation for more than a year. This week we’ll get some highly awaited economic data: The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures index, is due out on Thursday. But the task of inflation-busting is a lot more difficult when energy prices are high, and it’s even harder when they’re on the rise.

    The PCE price index uses a complicated formula to determine how much weight to give to energy prices each month, but they typically comprise a significant chunk of the headline inflation rate.

    “Crude oil price remains elevated, even after the surge at the start of the Russia-Ukraine War,” said Andrew Woods, oil analyst at Mintec, a market intelligence firm. “Energy prices have been a major contributor to persistently high inflation in the US, so the crude oil price will remain a watch-out factor for future inflation.”

    High oil and gas prices are one of the largest contributing factors to inflation. That’s bad news for drivers but tends to be great for the energy industry, as oil prices and energy stocks are closely interlinked.

    Energy stocks were trading higher on Monday. The S&P 500 energy sector was up around 0.75%. Exxon Mobil (XOM) was 0.85% higher, BP (BP) was up 1.36% and Chevron (CVX) was up 0.75%.

    OpenAI, will release a version of its popular ChatGPT tool made specifically for businesses, the company announced on Monday.

    OpenAI unveiled the new service, dubbed “ChatGPT Enterprise,” in a company blog post and said it will be available to business clients for purchase immediately.

    The new offering, reports my colleague Catherine Thorbecke, promises to provide “enterprise-grade security and privacy” combined with “the most powerful version of ChatGPT yet” for businesses looking to jump on the generative AI bandwagon.

    “We believe AI can assist and elevate every aspect of our working lives and make teams more creative and productive,” the blog post said. “Today marks another step towards an AI assistant for work that helps with any task, is customized for your organization, and that protects your company data.”

    Fintech startup Block, cosmetics giant Estee Lauder and professional services firm PwC have already signed on as customers.

    The highly-anticipated announcement from OpenAI comes as the company says employees from over 80% of Fortune 500 companies have already begun using ChatGPT since it launched publicly late last year, according to its analysis of accounts associated with corporate email domains.

    A multitude of leading newsrooms, meanwhile, have recently injected code into their websites that blocks OpenAI’s web crawler, GPTBot, from scanning their platforms for content. CNN’s Reliable Sources has found that CNN, The New York Times, Reuters, Disney, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Axios, Insider, ABC News, ESPN, and the Gothamist, among others have taken the step to shield themselves.

    American Airlines just got smacked with the largest-ever fine for keeping passengers waiting on the tarmac during multi-hour delays.

    The Department of Transportation is levying the $4.1 million fine, “the largest civil penalty that the Department has ever assessed” it said in a statement, for lengthy tarmac delays of 43 flights that impacted more than 5,800 passengers. The flights occurred between 2018 and 2021, reports CNN’s Gregory Wallace.

    In the longest of the delays, passengers sat aboard a plane in Texas in August 2020 for six hours and three minutes. The 105-passenger flight had landed after being diverted from the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport due to severe weather, with the DOT alleging that “American (AAL) lacked sufficient resources to appropriately handle several of these flights once they landed.”

    Federal rules set the maximum time that passengers can be held without the opportunity to get off prior to takeoff or after landing, at three hours for domestic flights and four hours for international flights. Current rules also require airlines provide passengers water and a snack.

    American told CNN the delays all resulted from “exceptional weather events” and “represent a very small number of the 7.7 million flights during this time period.”

    The company also said it has invested in technology to better handle flights in severe weather and reduce the congestion at airports.

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  • Climate change has ravaged India’s rice stock. Now its export ban could deepen a global food crisis | CNN Business

    Climate change has ravaged India’s rice stock. Now its export ban could deepen a global food crisis | CNN Business

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    Harayana, India
    CNN
     — 

    Satish Kumar sits in front of his submerged rice paddy in India’s Haryana state, looking despairingly at his ruined crops.

    “I’ve suffered a tremendous loss,” said the third generation farmer, who relies solely on growing the grain to feed his young family. “I will not be able to grow anything until November.”

    The newly planted saplings have been underwater since July after torrential rain battered northern India, with landslides and flash floods sweeping through the region.

    Kumar said he has not seen floods of this scale in years and has been forced to take loans to replant his fields all over again. But that isn’t the only problem he’s facing.

    Last month, India, which is the world’s largest exporter of rice, announced a ban on exporting non-basmati white rice in a bid to calm rising prices at home and ensure food security. India then followed with more restrictions on its rice exports, including a 20% duty on exports of parboiled rice.

    The move has triggered fears of global food inflation, hurt the livelihoods of some farmers and prompted several rice-dependent countries to seek urgent exemptions from the ban.

    More than three billion people worldwide rely on rice as a staple food and India contributed to about 40% of global rice exports.

    Economists say the ban is just the latest move to disrupt global food supplies, which has suffered from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as well as weather events such as El Niño.

    They warn the Indian government’s decision could have significant market reverberations with the poor in Global South nations in particular bearing the brunt.

    And farmers like Kumar say market price rises caused by poor harvests doesn’t result in a windfall for them either.

    “The ban is going to have an adverse effect on all of us. We won’t get a higher rate if rice isn’t exported,” Kumar said. “The floods were a death blow to us farmers. This ban will finish us.”

    Satish Kumar with whatever is left of his rice crops.

    The abrupt announcement of the export ban triggered panic buying in the United States, following which the price of rice soared to a near 12-year high, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

    It does not apply to basmati rice, which is India’s best-known and highest quality variety. Non-basmati white rice however, accounts for about 25% of exports.

    India wasn’t the first country to ban food exports to ensure enough supply for domestic consumption. But its move, coming just one week after Russia pulled out of the Black Sea grain deal — a crucial pact that allowed the export of grain from Ukraine — contributed to global concerns about the availability of grain staples and whether millions would go hungry.

    “The main thing here is that it is not just one thing,” Arif Husain, chief economist at the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) told CNN. “[Rice, wheat and corn crops] make up bulk of the food which poor people around the world consume.”

    Workers in India sift through rice grains in capital New Delhi.

    Nepal has seen rice prices surge since India announced the ban, according to local media reports, and rice prices in Vietnam are the highest they have been in more than a decade, according to customs data.

    Thailand, the world’s second largest rice exporter after India, has also seen domestic rice prices jump significantly in recent weeks, according to data from the Thai Rice Exporters Association.

    Countries including Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines, have appealed to New Delhi to resume rice exports to their nations, according to local Indian media reports. CNN has reached out to India’s Ministry of Agriculture but has not received a response.

    The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has encouraged India to remove the restrictions, with the organization’s chief economist, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, telling reporters last month that it was “likely to exacerbate” the uncertainty of food inflation.

    “We would encourage the removal of these types of export restrictions because they can be harmful globally,” he said.

    Now, there are fears that the ban has the world market bracing for similar actions by rival suppliers, economists warn.

    “The export ban is happening at a time when countries are struggling with high debt, food inflation, and declining depreciating currencies,” Husain from the WFP said. “It’s troubling for everyone.”

    Indian farmers account for nearly half of the country’s workforce, according to government data, with rice paddy mainly cultivated in central, southern, and some northern states.

    Summer crop planting typically starts in June, when monsoon rains are expected to begin, as irrigation is crucial to grow a healthy yield. The summer season accounts for more than 80% of India’s total rice output, according to Reuters.

    This year, however, the late monsoon arrival led to a large water deficit up until mid-June. And when the rains finally arrived, it drenched swathes of the country, unleashing floods that caused significant damage to crops.

    The heavy floods have affected the country's farmers.

    Surjit Singh, 53, a third generation farmer from Harayana said they “lost everything” after the rains.

    “My rice crops have been ruined,” he said. “The water submerged about 8-10 inches of my crops. What I planted (in early June) is gone… I will see a loss of about 30%.”

    The World Meteorological Organization last month warned that governments must prepare for more extreme weather events and record temperatures, as it declared the onset of the warming phenomenon El Niño.

    El Niño is a natural climate pattern in the tropical Pacific Ocean that brings warmer-than-average sea-surface temperatures and has a major influence on weather across the globe, affecting billions of people.

    The impact has been felt by thousands of farmers in India, some of whom say they will now grow crops other than rice. And it doesn’t just stop there.

    India's rice stock is piling up as a result of the ban.

    At one of New Delhi’s largest rice trading hubs, there are fears among traders that the export ban will cause catastrophic consequences.

    “The export ban has left traders with huge amounts of stock,” said rice trader Roopkaran Singh. “We now have to find new buyers in the domestic market.”

    But experts warn the effects will be felt far beyond India’s borders.

    “Poor countries, food importing countries, countries in West Africa, they are at the highest risk,” said Husain from the WFP. “The ban is coming on the back of war and a global pandemic… We need to be extra careful when it comes to our staples, so that we don’t end up unnecessarily rising prices. Because those increases are not without consequences.”

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  • Pride Month backlash hurt Target’s sales. They fell for the first time in six years | CNN Business

    Pride Month backlash hurt Target’s sales. They fell for the first time in six years | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Target’s quarterly sales fell for the first time in six years as consumers pulled back on discretionary goods and fierce right-wing backlash to Target’s Pride Month collection took a toll on the brand.

    Target’s sales at stores open for at least one year dropped 5.4% last quarter, including a 10.5% drop online. The company also cut its annual sales forecast.

    Target’s foot traffic dropped 4.8% last quarter, “likely a function of a mix that skews too discretionary, as well as the Pride merchandise issues,” Michael Baker, an analyst at DA Davidson, said in a note to clients.

    Still, Target’s profit came in higher than Wall Street’s expectations, and the stock rose 5% during early trading Wednesday. Heading into Wednesday, Target’s stock dropped 27% over the past year.

    Target was one of the strongest-performing retailers during the pandemic as consumers flocked to stores and its website while stuck at home. But Target has slipped as consumers change their spending patterns.

    Americans are spending more on experiences, including concerts and movies, and less on nonessential items. Home Depot

    (HD)     said Tuesday that consumers took on fewer major home renovation projects.

    Target

    (TGT)     is over-exposed to non-essential merchandise compared to competitors such as Walmart

    (WMT)     and Costco

    (COST)    . More than half of Target

    (TGT)    ’s merchandise is discretionary – clothing, home decor, electronics, toys, party supplies and other non-essentials. The company in recent years has added more food and essentials to its stores.

    “Consumers are choosing to increase spending on services like leisure, travel, entertainment and food away from home, putting near-term pressure on discretionary products,” CEO Brian Cornell said on a call with analysts Wednesday.

    Cornell said that store theft and safety have also become bigger concerns.

    “Safety incidents associated with [theft] are moving in the wrong direction,” Cornell said. “During the first 5 months of this year, our stores saw a 120% increase in theft incidents involving violence or threats of violence.”

    Target has been embroiled in the political culture wars over gender and sexual orientation.

    Beginning in May, Target also faced a homophobic campaign that went viral on social media over its annual Pride Month clothing collection. Fueled by far-right personalities, the anti-LGBTQ campaign spread misleading information about the Pride Month products.

    The campaign became hostile, with violent threats levied against Target employees and instances of damaged products and displays in stores. Target said on May 24 that it was removing certain items that caused the most “volatile” reaction from opponents to protect its workers’ safety.

    But Target’s response frustrated supporters of gay and transgender rights, who said the company caved to bigoted pressure.

    “The strong reaction to this year’s Pride assortment” impacted sales during the quarter, Christina Hennington, Target’s chief growth officer, said Wednesday.

    Target will adjust its Pride Month collection next year, including potential changes to timing, placement in stores and the mix of brands it sells.

    “The reaction is a signal for us to pause, adapt and learn,” she said.

    Other brands, such as Bud Light, have faced right-wing backlash over attempts to be more inclusive.

    America’s former top-selling beer has targeted by right-wing media and anti-trans commentators since April, after sponsoring transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

    The controversy cost Bud Light’s parent company about $395 million in lost US sales and Bud Light lost its top beer spot to Modelo.

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  • US Steel receiving acquisition offers as company promises to maximize stockholder value | CNN Business

    US Steel receiving acquisition offers as company promises to maximize stockholder value | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    United States Steel Corp. (X) is considering a sale after fielding acquisition offers, according to a Sunday press release from the company.

    The steel producer is under a formal review process after “receiving multiple unsolicited proposals” for both specific assets and the entire firm, the release announced.

    “U. S. Steel’s Board and management team are committed to maximizing value for our stockholders, and to that end, we have commenced a comprehensive and thorough review of strategic alternatives,” wrote David Burritt, U. S. Steel’s CEO. “The Board is taking a measured approach to considering these proposals, including seeking more information in order to evaluate proposals that are preliminary and subject to ongoing due diligence and review.”

    There is currently no set timeline or end date for the review process.

    This is a developing story

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  • Chinese property giant Country Garden flags loss of up to $7.6 billion as it nears default | CNN Business

    Chinese property giant Country Garden flags loss of up to $7.6 billion as it nears default | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    One of China’s biggest property developers says it has burned through up to $7.6 billion in the first half of the year, compounding the crisis coursing through the country’s embattled real estate sector.

    Country Garden warned investors in a Hong Kong stock exchange filing Thursday that it would likely record a loss of 45 billion to 55 billion Chinese yuan (about $6.2 billion to $7.6 billion) for the six months through June.

    That compares with a profit of approximately 1.9 billion yuan ($264.3 million) for the same time last year.

    The disclosure lays bare the financial woes currently facing Country Garden, a massive builder of hundreds of thousands of homes annually across China.

    The developer, which employs some 300,000 people, has a massive debt pile that’s being compared to that of Evergrande, the world’s most indebted property group.

    In recent weeks, the company has become the latest sign of China’s economic troubles, as it teeters on the brink of default and, by its own admission, works to save itself.

    Country Garden shares plunged 8.7% in Hong Kong Friday following its loss warning, as well as a report from Chinese news outlet Yicai that the firm was preparing for a debt restructuring, citing unidentified sources.

    CNN has not independently confirmed Yicai’s reporting.

    The company had said in its filing that it would “consider adopting various debt management measures,” without elaborating further, as well as lean on a task force newly set up to “cope with” its challenges. Country Garden did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    As of early afternoon in Hong Kong Friday, its stock had reached a record low of 95 Hong Kong cents, below its previous low of 98 Hong Kong cents reached in October 2008.

    Earlier this week, Country Garden stoked concerns by missing two bond payments, according to analysts. The company did not respond to multiple requests for comment from CNN on the matter.

    Its failure to pay up raised concerns about its overall liabilities, which racked up to a whopping 1.4 trillion yuan (about $194 billion) as of the end of last year.

    Some of the company’s debt — roughly $4.3 billion in onshore and offshore bonds — will come due or “become puttable” through the end of 2024, meaning the company will face obligations to bondholders, according to Moody’s.

    For the rest of this year alone, “we estimate that CGH needs to fulfill at least $137 million of bond interest payments through the rest of 2023,” Morningstar analyst Jeff Zhang wrote in a report Thursday.

    News of the missed payments led to the company being downgraded, with Moody’s bumping down its credit rating from B1 to Caa1 on Thursday.

    The downgrade reflects Country Garden’s cash flow problems, “in view of its deteriorated liquidity and financial flexibility, sizable refinancing needs and still-constrained access to funding,” Kaven Tsang, a Moody’s senior vice president, said in a report.

    “The negative outlook reflects the uncertainty over Country Garden’s ability to service its debt obligations, including coupon payments, in a timely manner over the next [six to] 12 months,” he added.

    Zhang also said Morningstar believed the missed payments “may not be an isolated event.”

    “Country Garden is likely to default,” he wrote in his report.

    The company is working to stem the bleeding.

    In its filing Thursday, it attributed the expected first-half loss to a series of problems, from falling property sales to lower profit margins.

    New home sales by China’s 100 biggest developers dropped by 33% in July from a year ago, according to data released last week.

    “Facing such an extremely difficult situation industry-wide, the company [has] worked together to carry out self-rescue by all means,” Country Garden told investors.

    But “the overall market has not yet recovered, the absolute scale of the industry has declined, and the capital market needs time to restore its confidence.”

    The company also detailed how its chairwoman, who is also its controlling shareholder, had personally tried to contain the crisis.

    Since the company’s listing in 2007, Yang Huiyan and her family have pumped in approximately 38.6 billion Hong Kong dollars ($4.9 billion), in the form of new loans and share and bond purchases, the firm said in its filing.

    Some of that debt — about 6.6 billion Hong Kong dollars ($844 million) is unsecured, it added.

    But Yang alone won’t be able to turn things around. In its report, Moody’s cited “the absence of new external financing” as one reason it now considers the firm’s liquidity “weak,” compared to its previous classification of “adequate.”

    The assessment was reached despite Yang’s willingness to provide “funding support to the company,” the agency added.

    One of China’s wealthiest women, Yang has seen her own fortune plunge recently, dropping 84% since June 2021, or $28.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires index.

    That’s the biggest wealth drop of any billionaire in the world over the past two years, according to its calculations.

    The impact of Country Garden’s problems won’t be felt in China alone, according to Alfredo Montufar-Helu, head of the China center for economics and business.

    “The global economy is losing one of its engines of growth,” he told CNN.

    “That’s why everyone should care about what is happening to real estate. Real estate is the main drag right now on confidence levels, on demand, and on industrial productivity.”

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  • Mortgage rates rise to just short of 7% | CNN Business

    Mortgage rates rise to just short of 7% | CNN Business

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    Washington, DC
    CNN
     — 

    US mortgage rates remained elevated this week, rising for the third week in a row, but stayed just under the market’s 7% threshold.

    The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.96% in the week ending August 10, up from 6.90% the week before, according to data from Freddie Mac released Thursday. A year ago, the 30-year fixed-rate was 5.22%.

    “There is no doubt continued high rates will prolong affordability challenges longer than expected,” said Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. “However, upward pressure on rates is the product of a resilient economy with low unemployment and strong wage growth, which historically has kept purchase demand solid.”

    The average mortgage rate is based on mortgage applications that Freddie Mac receives from thousands of lenders across the country. The survey includes only borrowers who put 20% down and have excellent credit.

    The rate stayed elevated this week after the Federal Reserve highlighted its reliance on data on jobs and inflation in its July monetary policy meeting and in recent comments.

    Markets had been waiting for July’s inflation report, released Thursday morning, which showed consumer price hikes rose 3.2% annually, the first increase in 12 months. The data also showed that shelter costs contributed 90% of total inflation last month.

    “July’s Consumer Price Index holds significant importance for the Fed’s upcoming decisions,” said Jiayi Xu, an economist at Realtor.com.

    Since inflation rose, it could support the Fed’s concern that the battle is not over, Xu said. The Fed also will consider the forthcoming August employment and inflation data prior to the next policy meeting, in September.

    In addition, the most recent jobs report offered some mixed signals about the labor market, Xu said, including a smaller number of net new jobs added and a dipping unemployment rate.

    “While July’s jobs report itself is very unlikely to have a direct impact on the Fed’s upcoming decision, the decline to a 3.5% unemployment rate may imply that more significant slowing is needed to align with the Fed’s projected year-end rate of 4.1%,” she said.

    This story is developing and will be updated.

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  • US regulator seeks court order to compel Elon Musk to testify about his Twitter acquisition | CNN Business

    US regulator seeks court order to compel Elon Musk to testify about his Twitter acquisition | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    The US Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday applied for a court order to force Elon Musk to testify in an ongoing probe related to his acquisition of Twitter and public disclosures he made in connection with the deal, according to court filings.

    The filing Thursday in San Francisco federal court seeks a judge’s order requiring Musk to testify, alleging “blatant refusal to comply” with an earlier SEC subpoena.

    X, the company formerly known as Twitter, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The SEC action is the latest turn in a long-running inquiry into whether Musk fully complied with his disclosure obligations when he began acquiring large amounts of Twitter stock, prior to his deal to buy the company. And it underscores years of friction between Musk and the agency over his public comments on numerous matters involving his companies.

    Musk began buying up large amounts of Twitter stock in early 2022, and he revealed on April 4 of that year that he had become the company’s largest shareholder. Later that month, Musk inked a deal to buy the platform for $44 billion and — after a monthslong legal battle attempting to exit the deal — officially closed the acquisition in October of last year. Musk has faced a number of legal challenges related to his Twitter acquisition in the months since his takeover.

    Musk testified twice as part of the SEC’s investigation in July 2022, according to the agency.

    Starting that same month, Musk produced “hundreds of documents” to federal investigators working on the probe, “including documents Musk authored,” according to a declaration by an SEC attorney filed alongside the agency’s court request.

    The SEC served Musk with a subpoena to testify again in the matter in May 2023, according to the court filing. The current subpoena at issue seeks evidence and testimony from Musk that the SEC does not yet possess, the agency said.

    Despite previously agreeing to testify on September 15 and rescheduling the testimony once, Musk “abruptly notified the SEC” two days before his scheduled appearance to say he would not be showing up, the filing states.

    The SEC attempted to negotiate with Musk to find alternative dates later this fall, according to court documents.

    “These good faith efforts were met with Musk’s blanket refusal to appear for testimony,” it adds.

    “The subpoena with which Musk failed to comply relates to an ongoing nonpublic investigation by the SEC,” the filing continued, “regarding whether, among other things, Musk violated various provisions of the federal securities laws in connection with (1) his 2022 purchases of Twitter, Inc (“Twitter”) stock, and (2) his 2022 statements and SEC filings relating to Twitter.”

    When Musk informed the SEC he would not be appearing to testify, his lawyer, Alex Spiro, wrote to the agency on September 13, saying Musk had “already sat for testimony twice in this matter” and that “enough is enough.”

    Spiro’s letter, which was included as an exhibit in the SEC’s court filings, accused regulators of seeking Musk’s testimony in bad faith and attempting to waste Musk’s time.

    In addition, Spiro claimed that the recent release of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk would interfere because it contained “new information potentially relevant to this matter” that would take time for both sides to digest.

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  • New York AG accuses crypto firms of deceiving investors in $1 billion fraud | CNN Business

    New York AG accuses crypto firms of deceiving investors in $1 billion fraud | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    The fallout from the colossal implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto business is still rippling through the digital asset industry nearly a year later.

    On Thursday, New York’s attorney general filed a lawsuit against three digital asset firms that were caught up in the collapse of Bankman-Fried’s empire last fall — Gemini Trust, Genesis Global Capital and Digital Currency Group, parent company of Genesis. The lawsuit accused the companies of lying to investors and covering up more than $1 billion in losses.

    The AG’s office said that an investigation found Gemini, the crypto firm founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, deceived investors about significant risks associated with a lending service it ran jointly with Genesis. The program, called Gemini Earn, marketed itself as a low-risk investment in which customers could lend crypto assets to Genesis while earning interest payments as high as 8%.

    “These cryptocurrency companies lied to investors,” Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “And it was middle-class investors who suffered as a result.” At least 29,000 New Yorkers were among the 230,000 investors whose money was lost, James said.

    James’ lawsuit is the latest effort among US officials to crack down on the trillion-dollar crypto industry, which for years has operated in the shadows of traditional financial regulation. Crypto advocates argue that regulators have dragged their feet in establishing guidelines for digital assets, which they believe are distinct from traditional securities like stocks or bonds.

    In the immediate aftermath of the FTX crash, Genesis froze customer redemptions in its lending unit, citing market turmoil. The lending unit later filed for bankruptcy.

    According to the latest lawsuit, Gemini knew that Genesis’ loans were risky and, at one point, “highly concentrated” with Bankman-Fried’s crypto trading house Alameda Research. Bankman-Fried is currently on trial in federal court in New York, where he has pleaded not guilty to seven counts of fraud and conspiracy.

    “Gemini hid the risks of investing with Genesis, and Genesis lied to the public about its losses,” James said.

    The lawsuit also names former Genesis CEO Soichiro “Michael” Moro and Digital Currency Group CEO Barry Silbert.

    Gemini’s owners, the Winklevoss twins, have said Genesis owed more than $900 million to some 340,000 customers using the Earn program.

    The AG’s lawsuit follows another civil action brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which in January sued Genesis and Gemini for offering unregistered securities through the Earn product.

    Gemini responded to the latest suit Thursday with a statement on X (formerly Twitter), claiming that Gemini itself was the victim of a “massive fraud.”

    “The NY AG’s lawsuit confirms what we’ve been saying all along” — that Gemini, its customers and other creditors were lied to about Genesis’ finances. But the company said it “wholly” disagrees with the lawsuit.

    “Blaming a victim for being defrauded and lied to makes no sense and we look forward to defending ourselves against this inconsistent position.”

    A Genesis spokesperson said that “while there is no basis for the NYAG’s claims against Genesis, we have been cooperating with all authorities and intend to continue doing so.”

    “Genesis has not violated the law and continues to focus on maximizing recoveries for creditors in its Chapter 11 cases,” the spokesperson added.

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  • China is huge for chip designer Arm. That’s a risk for its new investors | CNN Business

    China is huge for chip designer Arm. That’s a risk for its new investors | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    As British chip designer Arm prepares to raise about $5 billion in an initial public offering (IPO) on Thursday, its China business has become a serious point of concern.

    The SoftBank-owned firm used many pages of its IPO prospectus to warn investors of risks related to its exposure to China at a time of rising tension between Washington and Beijing over chip technology.

    Its regulatory filing last month revealed that a quarter of its sales come from China, through an unusual relationship with an entity it does not control and with which it has a complex history.

    Arm China is “an entity that operates independently of us and is our single largest customer,” the company said in its prospectus. “Neither we nor SoftBank Group control the operations of Arm China.”

    Arm, which is based in Cambridge, added that the scale of its business in China made it “particularly susceptible to economic and political risks,” which could be worsened by tensions between the country and the United States or the United Kingdom.

    The company has long been vulnerable in this area, which may have already contributed to a lower market valuation than SoftBank was expecting.

    Arm blamed an economic slowdown in China as well as “factors related to export control and national security matters” for slower growth in royalty revenues from China in its fiscal year to March. Total revenue from China did increase in that period, however.

    Royalties are hugely significant for Arm, which gets a fee from each chip developed using its products. The company relies on royalties and licensing for most of its income.

    Arm said Wednesday it priced its shares at $51 each, raising as much as $4.9 billion. The tally could rise to $5.2 billion if banks exercise an option to buy additional shares, valuing the chip designer at as much as $54.5 billion.

    That’s less than the $64 billion valuation implied when SoftBank bought a remaining 25% stake in the company from its Vision Fund unit just last month.

    Arm has declined to comment.

    Concerns about China are likely to have been “built into IPO pricing expectations already, although a worst-case scenario of increased US sanctions [or] trade restrictions probably is not,” Kirk Boodry, an investment advisor at Astris Advisory, a Japanese investment research firm, told CNN.

    Arm was publicly listed until 2016, when Japan’s SoftBank bought it for $32 billion.

    Four years later, SoftBank tried to sell Arm to Nvidia for $40 billion, in what would have been the biggest chip deal of all time. But it didn’t pass muster with global antitrust regulators, and was called off in February 2022.

    Now, Arm’s return to the stock market is being closely watched as it promises to be the biggest US IPO since 2021.

    SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has touted it as an AI company that could have “exponential growth,” and promised that ChatGPT-like services will eventually be offered on Arm-designed machines.

    “The value of chips, and Arm’s technology, has maybe never been more in demand from the global economy,” said Kyle Stanford, lead venture capital analyst at PitchBook.

    But Arm is a middleman in the semiconductor industry, which is a key source of tension in US-China relations. Both countries are racing to boost their prowess in the sector, and each side has recently enacted export controls aimed at limiting the other’s capacity.

    “Chip tensions will never go away,” Stanford argued. “Political and regulatory pressure is likely to increase.”

    On Tuesday, former US Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton told US lawmakers that large public companies with major exposure to China should be prompted to disclose specific risks associated with the country, “and what type of scenario planning they have done in the event of abrupt decoupling.”

    Although US officials have insisted that America is not seeking to decouple from China, they have pointed to the importance of reducing its reliance on the world’s second largest economy.

    In its filing, Arm said it held just a “4.8% indirect ownership interest in Arm China,” through a 10% non-voting stake in a SoftBank-controlled entity that owns less than half of the Chinese company.

    While such convoluted corporate structures aren’t unique in China, “in my view, it is very problematic,” said Ivana Delevska, founder and chief investment officer of asset manager Spear Invest.

    “Investors of other companies are just waking up to this fact in light of increased tensions,” she added.

    Arm has had trouble with Arm China before. In its filing, it said the business has a record of late payments.

    “Although these historical issues did not have a material impact on our operations, any future failure to pay us the amounts we are owed … could have a material adverse effect on our business,” Arm said.

    Arm China has also been subject to a legal battle with its former CEO, Allen Wu.

    Since April 2022, Wu and entities effectively controlled by him have lodged several lawsuits in Chinese courts against Arm China, “seeking to challenge certain aspects of Arm China’s corporate governance and the actions of Arm China’s board of directors,” Arm said in its filing.

    As of August, the cases had been resolved in favor of Arm China, it said, but the outcome could still be appealed. potentially hurting the British firm in the future.

    That hasn’t stopped many of the biggest names in global tech from jumping on board.

    Companies including Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOGL), Nvidia (NVDA), AMD (AMD), Samsung and TSMC (TSM) have indicated interest in acting as cornerstone investors in the offering, according to a filing last week.

    Delevska said the interest reflected Arm’s strong position in the industry and had helped to prop up its overall valuation.

    “I believe it is good timing for the IPO,” she added. “Investors will just have to price in the China risk.”

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  • Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain implant startup, raises $280 million from Peter Thiel’s VC fund | CNN Business

    Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain implant startup, raises $280 million from Peter Thiel’s VC fund | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Elon Musk’s biotechnology startup Neuralink raised $280 million in a fundraising round, the company announced Monday via X, the Musk-owned social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

    The Series D round was led by Founders Fund, a San Francisco-based VC firm established by Peter Thiel, the controversial billionaire who was also a cofounder at PayPal.

    “We’re extremely excited about this next chapter at Neuralink,” the company wrote.

    The brain chip startup wants to use implants to connect your brain to a computer, a goal Musk has been working on for five years. The company so far has only tested on animals and faced scrutiny after a monkey died in project testing in 2022 as part of efforts to get the animal to play Pong, a computer game.

    Macaque monkeys have been used in testing by Neuralink as the company has been developing Bluetooth-enabled implantable chips — inserted into the monkey’s brains — that ​the company says can communicate with computers via a small receiver.

    The funding news comes months after Musk announced the company was moving towards human trials. The billionaire said at a December recruiting event that Neuralink has submitted “most” of its paperwork to the US Food and Drug Administration and could begin testing on humans within six months.

    But employees have said the company is rushing to market, resulting in careless animal deaths and a federal investigation, according to a December report by Reuters.

    Before Neuralink’s brain implants are mass-produced and hit the broader market, they’ll need regulatory approval. The FDA put out a paper in 2021 mapping out the agency’s initial thoughts on brain-computer interface devices, noting the field is “progressing rapidly.”

    A tweet by Neuralink Monday announced they were hiring and invited those interested to “join in on engineering challenges to restore vision and mobility.”

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  • Biden administration seeks to remove medical bills from credit reports | CNN Politics

    Biden administration seeks to remove medical bills from credit reports | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Millions of Americans with unpaid medical bills would no longer have that debt show up on credit reports under proposals being considered by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

    The agency, which is soliciting feedback from small businesses that may be affected, expects to issue a proposed rule next year, the bureau said Thursday.

    If the rule is finalized, consumer credit companies would be barred from including medical debt and collection information on reports that creditors use to make underwriting decisions.

    Creditors would only be able consider non-medical information when evaluating borrowers’ loan applications. And debt collectors would no longer be able to use the listing of medical debt on credit reports as leverage to pressure consumers into paying questionable bills, the bureau said.

    “Research shows that medical bills have little predictive value in credit decisions, yet tens of millions of American households are dealing with medical debt on their credit reports,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra. “When someone gets sick, they should be able to focus on getting better, rather than fighting debt collectors trying to extort them into paying bills they may not even owe.”

    Roughly 20% of Americans reported having medical debt, according to a 2022 report from the bureau. But Chopra stressed that many health care bills contain mistakes.

    “Families are often barraged with a string of confusing and error-ridden bills, and too many of us have ended up in a doom loop of disputes between insurance companies and health care providers,” he said. “These bills, even ones where the patient doesn’t owe anything further, can end up being reported on the patient’s credit report.”

    The proposals under consideration are the latest step in the bureau’s efforts to curb the impact of medical debt on consumers. CFPB and other agencies are also looking into medical billing practices, including costly products such as medical credit cards and installment loans.

    The White House has also sought to help lessen Americans’ medical debt burden as part of its effort to help people contend with inflation and higher costs of living. Last year, it laid out a four-point plan to help protect consumers, including having the bureau investigate credit reporting companies and debt collectors that violate patients’ and families’ rights.

    Medical debt has lowered people’s credit scores, which affects their ability to buy a home, get a mortgage or own a small business, Vice President Kamala Harris said in a call with reporters on Thursday.

    “We know credit scores determine whether a person can have economic health and well-being, much less the ability to grow their wealth,” she said. “Today, we are offering a solution to fix this problem … Together, these measures will improve the credit scores of millions of Americans so that they will better be able to invest in their future.”

    Also last year, the three largest credit reporting agencies – Equifax, Experian and TransUnion – announced they would remove nearly 70% of medical debt from consumer credit reports.

    The agencies no longer include medical debt that went to collections on consumer credit reports once it has been paid off. That eliminated billions of dollars of debt on consumer records.

    In addition, unpaid medical collection debt no longer appears on credit reports for the first year, whereas the previous grace period was six months. That gives people more time to work with their health insurers or providers to address the bills. And medical collection debt of less than $500 is no longer included on credit reports.

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  • Cisco taps new M&A firm Tidal for $28 billion Splunk acquisition deal | CNN Business

    Cisco taps new M&A firm Tidal for $28 billion Splunk acquisition deal | CNN Business

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    A new mergers and acquisitions advisory firm launched last year by former Centerview Partners dealmakers has scored a big win by advising Cisco Systems on its $28 billion acquisition of cybersecurity firm Splunk.

    Based in Palo Alto, California, Tidal Partners was started by technology bankers David Handler and David Neequaye. Their firm, which employs just two dozen people, according to its website, was the sole financial adviser to Cisco, while larger investment banking peers Qatalyst Partners and Morgan Stanley advised Splunk.

    While at Centerview, Handler worked closely with Cisco for several years and advised on numerous deals, including Cisco’s $5 billion acquisition of NDS Group in 2012 and Cisco’s $3.7 billion purchase of AppDynamics in 2017.

    “We’ve known David (Handler) and his partner David (Neequaye) for a very long time. They did a great job for us, and so we’ve had that relationship for a long time,” Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said in an interview on Thursday.

    Tidal’s win comes as more technology bankers decide to launch their own firms amid an overall slowdown in dealmaking in the sector. Three former Qatalyst Partners bankers launched a new technology-focused investment banking boutique called AXOM Partners earlier this week, Reuters reported.

    Handler and Neequaye helped launch Centerview’s technology advisory group in 2008. The group went on to advise other major technology companies, including Cisco, Qualcomm Inc and Twilio.

    Since its launch last year, Tidal Partners has advised on transactions, including ServiceNow Inc’s acquisition of G2K Group and Bloom Energy’s $550 million convertible notes offering.

    Handler, who previously worked at UBS Group, sued Centerview after his departure over a pay dispute.

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  • Another top Silicon Valley investor is splitting off its China business as pressure mounts | CNN Business

    Another top Silicon Valley investor is splitting off its China business as pressure mounts | CNN Business

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    Editor’s Note: Sign up for CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter which explores what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world.


    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    GGV Capital, a prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firm, has become the latest big investor to break up its US and China operations into separate companies as tensions between the two countries over tech and geopolitics continue to rise.

    The firm announced Thursday that it would divide its business into two “completely independent” firms with separate new brands, which have not been revealed.

    According to the company, one side will concentrate on North America, Latin America, Europe, Israel and cross-border US-India deals, led by teams in California and New York by managing partners Glenn Solomon, Hans Tung, Jeff Richards and Oren Yunger.

    The other side will focus on China, Southeast Asia and South Asia, run from its headquarters in Singapore, by managing partners Jenny Lee and Jixun Foo.

    GGV’s existing Chinese yuan-denominated funds “will continue to be managed independently” under its Chinese brand, Jiyuan Capital, it said.

    In a statement, the firm attributed the decision to the fact that “over the last decade, the investment landscape has shifted significantly, and the operating environment has become highly complex.”

    “Against these new realities, GGV is also evolving,” it added, without elaborating further.

    The transition is expected to be completed by the end of the first quarter of next year.

    GGV Capital has approximately $9.2 billion in assets under management. The firm is known for backing tech companies around the world, such as Alibaba (BABA), Airbnb (ABNB), Slack, TikTok owner ByteDance and Chinese ride-hailing provider Didi.

    The move comes as US-China tensions continue to affect how businesses operate across the world’s top two economies.

    Last month, the Biden administration announced it would restrict investments by US venture capital and private equity firms, as well as joint ventures, in Chinese artificial intelligence, quantum computing and semiconductors.

    The executive order will exacerbate a slump in deals between the United States and China, and deliver a “major blow” to Chinese startups, analysts and investors previously told CNN.

    Asked whether the US order or wider geopolitical tensions had factored into its decision, GGV Capital declined to comment.

    The firm has recently come under greater scrutiny from US lawmakers.

    In July, a US House committee said it had sent letters to four investment firms, including GGV, “expressing serious concern and demanding information about the firms’ investments” in artificial intelligence, chips and quantum computing companies in China.

    One investment named was a GGV deal with Megvii, an AI developer. The company is best known for its facial recognition software, and has long been accused of human rights violations against Uyghurs and other members of Muslim minority groups in China’s Xinjiang region.

    Megvii was added to a US trade blacklist in 2019 over the issue and previously told CNN that there were “no grounds” for that decision.

    The ongoing pressure has already led other firms to separate their US and Chinese businesses this year.

    In June, top global venture capital firm Sequoia announced a similar decision to cordon off its operations into three entities that cover Europe and the United States; China; and India and Southeast Asia. Its China business will be run independently under its Chinese name, Hongshan.

    Leaders of the Silicon Valley firm said at the time that it had “become increasingly complex to run a decentralized global investment business.”

    In August, Dentons, a leading law firm, also said its China unit would become a standalone legal entity, in response to new Chinese regulations related to data privacy, cybersecurity and capital control.

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  • Arm’s mega IPO could be just around the corner, a year after the biggest chip deal in history fell apart | CNN Business

    Arm’s mega IPO could be just around the corner, a year after the biggest chip deal in history fell apart | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    A hotly anticipated IPO for a company that designs chips for 99% of the world’s smartphones is just around the corner, after it filed paperwork Monday to go public.

    Arm is a British tech company that architects power-sipping microchips for phones and tablets and licenses them to CPU makers, including Apple and Samsung. The company was public until 2016, when Japan’s Softbank bought it for $32 billion.

    Softbank tried to offload Arm to Nvidia for $40 billion, in what would have been the biggest chip deal of all time. But global antitrust regulators put a stop to it, and the deal fell apart in February 2022.

    Arm had been a hot commodity for decades, when the smartphone business was booming. But sales of smartphones have subsided recently, as customers opt to keep their phones for longer and new tech features have become less enticing to consumers.

    The company, in its regulatory filing, said sales slipped 1% to $2.7 billion in the year that ended March 31, 2023. In the following quarter, which ended in June, sales fell 2.5%.

    Still, Arm has piqued the interest of tech investors who are looking to catch the AI wave. Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son has touted Arm as an AI company that could have “exponential growth.” He promised ChatGPT-like services would eventually be offered on Arm-designed machines.

    In its IPO filing, Arm said the company “will be central” to the transition to AI.

    “Arm CPUs already run AI and [machine learning] workloads in billions of devices, including smartphones, cameras, digital TVs, cars and cloud data centers,” the company said. “In the emerging area of large language models, generative AI and autonomous driving, there will be a heightened emphasis on the low power acceleration of these algorithms.”

    But Son and Arm’s AI promises may overstate the company’s potential, at least somewhat. Arm-based chips have appeared in some gadgets beyond smartphones and tablets, such as servers that are less power-hungry. But Arm said it does not make AI chips and is not a direct competitor to Nvidia and others that make chips that are purpose-built for AI. Nvidia’s stock has exploded more than 200% this year.

    Arm did not list the number of shares it planned to sell, so a valuation wasn’t determinable yet. But Reuters reported Softbank is looking to basically double its investment from seven years ago with a $60 billion to $70 billion valuation for Arm when it IPOs, likely next month.

    Softbank also this week bought the 25% stake in Arm that it did not own directly but that had been held by the Saudi Vision Fund, which Softbank manages. That purchase valued Arm at $64 billion, according to the Financial Times.

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  • Fact check: Republicans make false, misleading claims at first Biden impeachment inquiry hearing | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Republicans make false, misleading claims at first Biden impeachment inquiry hearing | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Republican-led House Oversight Committee is holding its first hearing Thursday in the impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden – and Republicans on the committee have made a series of false and misleading claims, as well as some other claims that have left out critical context.

    Below is a CNN fact check. This article will be updated as additional fact checks are completed.

    Republican Rep. James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said in his opening remarks at the hearing on Thursday that the committee has uncovered how “the Bidens and their associates created over 20 shell companies” and “raked in over $20 million between 2014 and 2019.”

    Facts First: The $20 million figure is roughly accurate for Joe Biden’s family and associates, according to the bank records subpoenaed by the committee, but the phrase “the Bidens and their associates” obscures the fact that there is no public evidence to date that President Joe Biden himself received any of this money. And it’s worth noting that a large chunk of the money went to the “associates” – Hunter Biden’s business partners – not even Biden’s family itself.

    So far, none of the bank records obtained by the committee have shown any payments to Joe Biden. And a Washington Post analysis in August found that, of about $23 million in payments the committee had identified from foreign sources, nearly $7.5 million went to members of the Biden family – almost all of it to Hunter Biden – and the rest to people Hunter Biden did business with. (The Post also questioned the use of the vague phrase “shell companies,” noting that “virtually all of the companies” that had been listed by the committee at the time had “legitimate business interests” or “clearly identified business investments.”)

    A Republican aide for the House Oversight Committee disputed the Post’s analysis on Thursday, saying that bank records obtained by the panel actually show that, of $24 million in payments between 2014 and 2019, $15 million went to members of the Biden family and $9 million went to associates. CNN has reached out to the Post for comment; the committee has not publicly released the underlying bank records that would definitively show the breakdown in payments.

    The records obtained by the committee have shown that during and after Joe Biden’s tenure as vice president, Hunter Biden made millions of dollars through complex financial arrangements from private equity deals, legal fees and corporate consulting in Ukraine, China, Romania and elsewhere. Again, Republicans have not produced evidence that Joe Biden got paid in any of these arrangements.

    Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio repeated a false claim about Hunter Biden that CNN debunked when Jordan made the same claim last week.

    Jordan claimed that Hunter Biden himself said he was unqualified to sit on the board of directors of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings.

    “Hunter Biden’s not qualified, fact number two, to sit on the board. Not my words, his words. He said he got on the board because of the brand, because of the name,” Jordan said Thursday.

    Facts First: It’s not true that Hunter Biden himself said he wasn’t qualified to sit on the Burisma board. In fact, Hunter Biden said in a 2019 interview with ABC News that “I was completely qualified to be on the board” and defended his qualifications in detail. He did acknowledge, as Jordan said, that he would “probably not” have been asked to be on the board if he was not a Biden – but he nonetheless explicitly rejected claims that he wasn’t qualified, calling them “misinformation.”

    When the ABC interviewer asked what his qualifications for the role were, he said: “Well, I was vice chairman on the board of Amtrak for five years. I was the chairman of the board of the UN World Food Programme. I was a lawyer for Boies Schiller Flexner, one of the most prestigious law firms in the world. Bottom line is that I know that I was completely qualified to be on the board to head up the corporate governance and transparency committee on the board. And that’s all that I focused on. Basically, turning a Eastern European independent natural gas company into Western standards of corporate governance.”

    When the ABC interviewer said, “You didn’t have any extensive knowledge about natural gas or Ukraine itself, though,” Biden responded, “No, but I think I had as much knowledge as anybody else that was on the board – if not more.”

    Asked if he would have been asked to be on the board if his last name wasn’t Biden, Biden said, “I don’t know. I don’t know. Probably not.” He added “there’s a lot of things” in his life that wouldn’t have happened if he had a different last name.

    A side note: Biden had served as the board chair for World Food Program USA, a nonprofit that supports the UN World Food Programme, not the UN program itself as he claimed in the interview.

    Jordan cited new documents obtained from IRS whistleblowers, made public by House Republicans on Wednesday, to argue that the Justice Department improperly blocked investigators from asking about Joe Biden in a 2020 search warrant related to Hunter Biden’s overseas dealings.

    “We learned yesterday, in the search warrant…examining Hunter Biden electronic communications, they weren’t allowed to ask about Political Figure 1,” Jordan said. “Political Figure number 1 is the big guy, is Joe Biden.”

    Facts First: This is highly misleading. The Justice Department official who gave this instruction said Joe Biden’s name shouldn’t be mentioned in the search warrant because there wasn’t any legal basis to do so. Furthermore, this occurred during Trump’s presidency, so it doesn’t prove pro-Biden meddling by the Biden-era Justice Department.

    The August 2020 email from a deputy to now-special counsel David Weiss, the Trump-appointed federal prosecutor who is leading the Hunter Biden probe, said the warrant was for “BS,” an apparent reference to Blue Star Strategies, a lobbying firm that represented Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden was on the board.

    The Weiss deputy said in the email that “other than the attribution, location and identity stuff at the end, none if it is appropriate and within the scope of this warrant” and that “there should be nothing about Political Figure 1 in here,” according to emails released by House Republicans. Another document released by the GOP confirm that Joe Biden is “Political Figure 1.”

    Before obtaining a search warrant, investigators need to establish probable cause and secure approval from a judge. If federal prosecutors believed the references to Joe Biden weren’t within the legal scope of what the warrant was looking for, it wouldn’t have been appropriate or lawful to include them.

    Comer said in his opening remarks that the committee recently uncovered “two additional wires sent to Hunter Biden that originated in Beijing from Chinese nationals; this happened when Joe Biden was running for president of the United States – and Joe Biden’s home is listed on the beneficiary address.”

    Facts First: This lacks important context. Comer was correct that the committee has found evidence of two wire transfers sent to Hunter Biden from Chinese nationals in the second half of 2019, during Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, but he did not explain that Joe Biden’s home being listed as the beneficiary address doesn’t demonstrate that Joe Biden received any of the money. Nor did he explain that there may well be benign reasons for the inclusion of the address. Hunter Biden has lived at his father’s Wilmington, Delaware, home at times and listed that address on his driver’s license; Hunter Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell said in a statement to CNN this week that the address was listed on these transfers simply because it was the address Hunter Biden used on the bank account the money was going to, which Lowell said Hunter Biden did “because it was his only permanent address at the time.”

    “This was a documented loan (not a distribution or pay-out) that was wired from a private individual to his new bank account which listed the address on his driver’s license, his parents’ address, because it was his only permanent address at the time,” Lowell said in the statement. “We expect more occasions where the Republican chairs twist the truth to mislead people to promote their fantasy political agenda.”

    White House spokesman Ian Sams wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday: “Imagine them arguing that, if someone stayed at their parents’ house during the pandemic, listed it as their permanent address for work, and got a paycheck, the parents somehow also worked for the employer…It’s bananas…Yet this is what extreme House Republicans have sunken to.”

    Comer told CNN this week his panel is trying to put together a timeline on where Hunter Biden was living around the time of the transfers, which occurred in July 2019 and August 2019. Joe Biden was a candidate in the Democratic presidential primary at the time.

    Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina claimed at the Thursday hearing, “We already know the president took bribes from Burisma,” a Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden sat on the board of directors.

    Facts First: Mace’s claim is false; we do not “already know” that Joe Biden took any bribe. The claim about a bribe from Burisma is a completely unproven allegation. The FBI informant who relayed the claim to the FBI in 2020 was merely reporting something he said he had been told by Burisma’s chief executive. Later in the hearing, a witness called by the committee Republicans, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, called “the bribery allegation” the most concerning piece of evidence he had heard today – but he immediately cautioned that “you have to only take that so far” given that it is “a secondhand account.”

    According to an internal FBI document made public by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa earlier this year over the strong objections of the FBI, the informant said in 2020 – when Donald Trump was president – that the CEO of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, had claimed in 2016 that he made a $5 million payment to “one Biden” and another $5 million payment to “another Biden.” But the FBI document did not contain any proof for the claim, and the document said the informant was “not able to provide any further opinion as to the veracity” of the claim.

    Republicans have tried to boost the credibility the allegation by saying it was in an FBI document and that the FBI had viewed the informant as highly credible. But the document merely memorialized the information provided by the informant; it does not demonstrate that the information is true. And Hunter Biden’s former business associate Devon Archer testified to the House Oversight Committee earlier this year that he had not been aware of any such payments to the Bidens; Archer characterized Zlochevsky’s reported claim as an example of the Ukrainian businessman embellishing his influence.

    Rep. Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, falsely claimed that Hunter Biden never paid taxes on his foreign income.

    He said Hunter Biden “failed to pay any taxes” on the millions of dollars he got from Ukrainian companies, and that this shows how “the Biden family doesn’t have to” pay taxes.

    “Who’s going to write the check for the money Hunter Biden didn’t pay?” Burchett asked, adding that “hardworking Americans” would end up footing the bill.

    Facts First: This is false. Hunter Biden repeatedly missed IRS deadlines, and his conduct was so egregious that federal investigators believe it was criminal, but he eventually belatedly paid all of his back taxes, plus interest and penalties, to the tune of about $2 million.

    Documents from Hunter Biden’s criminal cases indicate that he repeatedly missed tax deadlines, even though he had the funds and was repeatedly warned by his accountant and business partners. He was prepared to plead guilty to two misdemeanors in July, for failing to pay taxes on time in 2017 and 2018, before the plea deal collapsed.

    But there’s a difference between failing to pay taxes on time and failing to pay taxes at all. In 2021, while the criminal investigation was still underway and before any charges were filed, Hunter Biden paid roughly $2 million to the IRS to cover all the back taxes, plus penalties and interest.

    Hunter Biden was able to make the massive payment thanks to a roughly $2 million loan from a friend and attorney who has been supporting him during his legal troubles, according to court filings.

    Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York accused a Republican member of the committee, Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, of cutting out “critical context” from an image of a purported text message that Donalds displayed earlier in the Thursday hearing. Ocasio-Cortez also said that Donalds had displayed a “fabricated image.”

    The dispute was over an image Donalds showed of a purported 2018 text message from the president’s brother James Biden to the president’s son Hunter Biden – provided by IRS whistleblowers and released by House Republicans on Wednesday – in which James Biden purportedly wrote, “This can work, you need a safe harbor. I can work with you father [sic] alone !! We as usual just need several months of his help for this to work.”

    After showing the image, Donalds asked a witness at the committee, “If you saw a text message like this between the president’s brother and the president’s son, wouldn’t you be concerned about them trying to give plausible deniability for the president of the United States to not have any knowledge of said business dealings?”

    Facts First: Donalds didn’t invent the James Biden text message, but Ocasio-Cortez was correct that Donalds left out critical context – specifically, context that showed there was no sign that the purported text exchange between James Biden and Hunter Biden was about business dealings. The information released by House Republicans this week appeared to show that James Biden’s purported text about getting “help” from Joe Biden came in direct response to a purported Hunter Biden text saying he could not afford alimony, school tuition for his children, food and gas “w/o [without] Dad.” Donalds did not display this purported Hunter Biden text at the Thursday hearing.

    In other words, when James Biden purportedly mentioned the possibility of several months of help from Joe Biden, he gave no indication he was referring to some sort of business transaction, much less the foreign transactions that House Republicans have been focused on in their investigations into the president. But Donalds didn’t make that clear.

    With that said, Ocasio-Cortez herself could have been clearer about what she meant when she claimed the image Donalds showed was “fabricated.”

    The contents of the purported James Biden text Donalds displayed were not made up, according to the IRS whistleblowers. What appeared to be novel was the graphic Donalds used; he showed the text in a form that made it look like a screenshot from an iPhone text conversation, with white words over a blue background bubble. The House Republican spreadsheet that the words were taken from did not include any such graphics, and, again, it did include the preceding purported Hunter Biden message that Donalds didn’t show.

    Republican Rep. Pat Fallon of Texas said at the Thursday hearing, “In an interview back in 2019 with The New Yorker, even Hunter admitted that he talked to his dad about business, specifically Burisma.”

    Facts First: This needs context. The 2019 New Yorker article in question reported that Hunter Biden said he recalled Joe Biden discussing Burisma with him “just once” in a brief exchange that consisted of this: “Dad said, ‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ and I said, ‘I do.’”

    It’s fair for Fallon to say that this counts as Joe Biden discussing business with his son, but Fallon did not mention how brief and limited Hunter Biden said the purported discussion was.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Inside efforts to avert environmental ‘catastrophe’ in the Red Sea | CNN

    Inside efforts to avert environmental ‘catastrophe’ in the Red Sea | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.



    CNN
     — 

    Moored five miles off the coast of Yemen for more than 30 years, a decaying supertanker carrying a million barrels of oil is finally being offloaded by a United Nations-led mission, hoping to avert what threatened to be one of the world’s worst ecological disasters in decades.

    Experts are now delicately handling the 47-year-old vessel – called the FSO Safer – working to remove the crude without the tanker falling apart, the oil exploding, or a massive spill taking place.

    Sitting atop The Endeavor, the salvage UN ship supervising the offloading, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Yemen David Gressly said that the operation is estimated to cost $141 million, and is using the expertise of SMIT, the dredging and offshore contractor that helped dislodge the Ever Given ship that blocked the Suez Canal for almost a week in 2021.

    How to remove one million barrels of oil from a tanker

    Twenty-three UN member states are funding the mission, with another $16 million coming from the private sector contributors. Donors include Yemen’s largest private company, HSA Group, which pledged $1.2 million in August 2022. The UN also engaged in a unique crowdfunding effort, contributing to the pool which took a year to raise, according to Gressly.

    The team is pumping between 4,000 and 5,000 barrels of oil every hour, and has so far transferred more than 120,000 barrels to the replacement vessel carrying the offloaded oil, Gressly said. The full transfer is expected to take 19 days.

    The tanker was carrying a million barrels of oil. That would be enough to power up to 83,333 cars or 50,000 US homes for an entire year. The crude on board is worth around $80 million, and who gets that remains a controversial matter.

    Here’s what we know so far:

    The ship has been abandoned in the Red Sea since 2015 and the UN has regularly warned that the “ticking time bomb” could break apart given its age and condition, or the oil it holds could explode due to the highly flammable compounds in it.

    The FSO Safer held four times the amount of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez off Alaska in 1989 which resulted in a slick that covered 1,300 miles of coastline. A potential spill from this vessel would be enough to make it the fifth largest oil spill from a tanker in history, a UN website said. The cost of cleanup of such an incident is estimated at $20 billion.

    The Red Sea is a vital strategic waterway for global trade. At its southern end lies the Bab el-Mandeb strait, where nearly 9% of total seaborne-traded petroleum passes. And at its north is the Suez Canal that separates Africa from Asia. The majority of petroleum and natural gas exports from the Persian Gulf that transit the Suez Canal pass through the Bab el-Mandeb, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

    The sea is also a popular diving hotspot that boasts an impressive underwater eco-system. In places its banks are dotted with tourist resorts, and its eastern shore is the site of ambitious Saudi development projects worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

    The first step of the mission was to stabilize and secure the vessel to avoid it collapsing, Gressly said. That has already been achieved in the past few weeks.

    “There are a number of things that had to be done to secure the oil from exploding,” Gressly told CNN, including pumping out gases in each of the 13 compartments holding the oil. Systems for pumping were rebuilt, and some lighting was repaired.

    Booms, which are temporary floating barriers used to contain marine spills, were dispersed around the vessel to capture any potential leaks.

    The second step is to transfer the oil onto the replacement vessel, which is now underway.

    exp Yemen tanker United Nations cnni world 072611ASEG1_00001402.png

    Oil being removed from tanker near Yemen in Red Sea

    After The Safer is emptied, it must then be cleaned to ensure no oil residue is left, Gressly said. The team will then attach a giant buoy to the replacement vessel until a decision about what to do with the oil has been made.

    “The transfer of the oil to (the replacement vessel) will prevent the worst-case scenario of a catastrophic spill in the Red Sea, but it is not the end of the operation,” Gressly said.

    While the hardest part of the operation would then be over, a spill could still occur. And even after the transfer, the tanker will “continue to pose an environmental threat resulting from the sticky oil residue inside the tank, especially since the tanker remains vulnerable to collapse,” the UN said, stressing that to finish the job, an extra $22 million is urgently needed.

    A spill would shut the Yemeni ports that its impoverished people rely on for food aid and fuel, impacting 17 million people during an ongoing humanitarian crisis caused by the country’s civil war and a Saudi-led military assault on the country. Oil could bleed all the way to the African coast, damaging fish stocks for 25 years and affect up to 200,000 jobs, according to the UN.

    A potential spill would cause “catastrophic” public health ramifications in Yemen and surrounding countries, according to a study by researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine. Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Eritrea would bear the brunt.

    Air pollution from a spill of this magnitude would increase the risk of hospitalization for cardiovascular or respiratory disease for those very directly exposed by 530%, according to the study, which said it could cause an array of other health problems, from psychiatric to neurological issues.

    “Given the scarcity of water and food in this region, it could be one of the most disastrous oil spills ever known in terms of impacts on human life,” David Rehkopf, a professor at Stanford University and senior author of the study, told CNN.

    Up to 10 million people would struggle to obtain clean water, and 8 million would have their access to food supplies threatened. The Red Sea fisheries in Yemen could be “almost completely wiped out,” Rehkopf added.

    The tanker has been an issue for many people in Yemen over the past few years, Gressly said. Sentiment on social media surrounding the removal of oil is very positive, as many in Yemen feel like the tanker is a “threat that’s been over their heads,” he said.

    The tanker issue remains a point of dispute between the Houthi rebels that control the north of Yemen and the internationally recognized government, the two main warring sides in the country’s civil conflict.

    While the war, which saw hundreds of thousands of people killed or injured, and Yemen left in ruins, has eased of late, it is far from resolved.

    Ahmed Nagi, a senior analyst for Yemen at the International Crisis Group think tank in Brussels, sees the Safer tanker issue as “an embodiment of the conflict in Yemen as a whole.”

    “The government sees the Houthi militias as an illegitimate group controlling the tanker, and the Houthis do not recognize (the government),” Nagi told CNN.

    The vessel was abandoned after the outbreak of the Yemeni civil war in 2015. The majority of the oil is owned by Yemeni state firm SEPOC, experts say, and there are some reports that it may be sold.

    “From a technical point of view, the owner of the tanker and the oil inside it is SEPOC,” Nagi said, adding that other energy companies working in Yemen may also share ownership of the oil.

    exp un yemen oil spill tanker achim steiner vause intv FST 071912ASEG2 cnni world_00003204.png

    U.N. begins high-risk operation to prevent catastrophic oil spill from Yemen tanker

    The main issue, Nagi added, is that the Safer’s headquarters are in the government-controlled Marib city, while the tanker is in an area controlled by the Houthis. The Safer is moored off the coast of the western Hodeidah province.

    Discussions to determine the ownership of the oil are underway, Gressly said. The rights to the oil are unclear and there are legal issues that need to be addressed.

    The UN coordinator hopes that the days needed to offload the oil will buy some time for “political and legal discussions that need to take place before the oil can be sold.”

    While the UN may manage to resolve half of the issue, Nagi said, there still needs to be an understanding of the oil’s status.

    “It still poses a danger if we keep it near a conflict zone,” he said.

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