Sunrise Communications Group bowed to investor pressure yesterday and scrapped its 6.3bn Swiss franc ($6.39bn) acquisition of Liberty Global’s Swiss cable business UPC.
The number two Swiss telecommunications group had battled to save the deal in the face of opposition from its biggest shareholder, Germany’s Freenet, which holds 25% of its stock, and activist investors including Axxion and AOC.
“This is a missed opportunity to promote competition in the Swiss market,” said Sunrise chief executive Olaf Swantee, who had planned to bundle mobile, broadband, TV and fixed-line products to close the gap to market leader Swisscom.
Sunrise will now focus on going it alone, top managers said, stressing that its dividend was not at risk from transaction costs and a 50mn Swiss franc break fee it owes Liberty Global, a firm set up by US cable pioneer John Malone.
The company cancelled an extraordinary shareholder meeting (EGM) planned for today to approve a 2.8bn franc cash call needed to finance the UPC deal, avoiding an embarrassing defeat on the measure.
Freenet and other investors had opposed the rights issue even in its scaled-down form, saying the takeover was too expensive, improperly financed and strategically flawed.
Influential proxy adviser ISS helped doom the deal by recommending shareholders oppose it.
“We regret cancelling the EGM. We have spent a significant amount of time engaging with our shareholders and continue to believe in the compelling strategic and financial rationale of the acquisition,” Sunrise chairman Peter Kurer said.
Not even support from investment banks UBS, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs was able to help Sunrise get the deal across the finish line.
Although the share purchase agreement technically remains in force until late February, Sunrise made clear the deal was effectively dead.
“Management is now really focused on implementing the standalone strategy. We respect the decision of the shareholders,” Swantee told Reuters, adding he did not expect to resume negotiations with Liberty Global.
Asked about his future after championing a deal that went awry, Swantee said only: “Our priority is stabilising Sunrise.”
Kurer, who has said he would likely be voted out of office if the deal failed, was also under fire. “We expect that he will now draw the consequences and immediately resign as chairman,” activist AOC said.
Sunrise shares, which had fallen more than 10% this year, gained 2.7% by 1230 GMT. Freenet boss Christian Vilanek saw more room for them to rise. “If we all pull together the stock can rise significantly over the next 12 to 24 months,” he said, adding Freenet had no plans to divest its Sunrise stake.
Analysts said the collapse would ease pressure on prices in the Swiss market. “Swisscom receives a ‘get out of jail free’ card,” Berenberg analyst Usman Ghazi said.
The future of UPC remained in limbo.
Ghazi said he doubted UPC would join forces with Salt, the third big Swiss player, but an investment banker involved in the deal said this was clearly a possibility, if not in the immediate future.
Liberty Global, which is exiting several European markets, was unlikely to change course and become a buyer, analysts said.
UPC Swiss head Severina Pascu said her operation remained a successful company with a strong standalone strategy.

Google lured billions of consumers to its digital services by offering copious free cloud storage. That’s beginning to change.

The Alphabet Inc. unit has whittled down some free storage offers in recent months while prodding more users toward a new paid cloud subscription called Google One. That’s happening as the amount of data people stash online continues to soar.

When people hit those caps, they realize they have little choice but to start paying or risk losing access to emails, photos and personal documents. The cost isn’t excessive for most consumers, but at the scale Google operates, this could generate billions of dollars in extra revenue each year for the company. Google didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

A big driver of the shift is Gmail. Google shook up the email business when Gmail launched in 2004 with much more free storage than rivals were providing at the time. It boosted the storage cap every couple of years, but in 2013 it stopped. People’s in-boxes kept filling up. And now that some of Google’s other free storage offers are shrinking, consumers are beginning to get nasty surprises.

“I was merrily using the account and one day I noticed I hadn’t received any email since the day before,” said Rod Adams, a nuclear energy analyst and retired naval officer. After using Gmail since 2006, he’d finally hit his 15-gigabyte cap and Google had cut him off. Switching from Gmail wasn’t an easy option because many of his social and business contacts reach him that way.

“I just said, ‘OK, been free for a long time, now I’m paying,’” Adams said.

Other Gmail users aren’t so happy about the changes. “I am unreasonably sad about using almost all of my free google storage. Felt infinite. Please don’t make me pay! I need U gmail googledocs!” one person tweeted in September.

One self-described tech enthusiast said he’s opened multiple Gmail accounts to avoid bumping up on Google’s storage limits.

Google has also ended or limited other promotions recently that gave people free cloud storage and helped them avoid Gmail crises. New buyers of Chromebook laptops used to get 100 GB at no charge for two years. In May 2019 that was cut to one year.

Google’s Pixel smartphone, originally launched in 2016, came with free, unlimited photo storage via the company’s Photos service. The latest Pixel 4 handset that came out in October still has free photo storage, but the images are compressed now, reducing the quality.

More than 11,500 people in a week signed an online petition to bring back the full, free Pixel photos deal. Evgeny Rezunenko, the petition organizer, called Google’s change a “hypocritical and cash-grabbing move.”

“Let us remind Google that part of the reason of people choosing Pixel phones over other manufacturers sporting a similar hefty price tag was indeed this service,” he wrote.

Smartphones dramatically increased the number of photos people take — one estimate put the total for 2017 at 1.2 trillion. Those images quickly fill up storage space on handsets, so tech companies, including Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Google, offered cloud storage as an alternative. Now as those online memories pile up, some of these companies are charging users to keep them.

Apple has been doing this for several years, building its iCloud storage service into a lucrative recurring revenue stream. When iPhone users get notifications that their devices are full and they should either delete photos and other files or pay more for cloud storage, people often choose the cloud option.

Qatar is expected to be a $225bn economy by 2020, thus offering immense investment potential to foreign investors, as Doha eyes substantial inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI). The future of Qatar’s economy, as well as the FDI potential, was highlighted by senior officials from the Qatar Financial Center (QFC), Qatar Free Zones Authority (QFZA) and the Investment Promotion Agency of Qatar (IPAQ) at a recent event in New York.

“Qatar has invested significantly in its economy, generating gross domestic product growth that is expected to hit an impressive $225bn by 2020. This growth unlocked many investment opportunities in the country, and has already attracted the attention of foreign investors interested in establishing themselves in the Middle East,” said IPAQ chief executive Sheikh Ali al-Waleed al-Thani. Saud bin Abdullah al-Attiyah, deputy undersecretary for Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, said Qatar remains one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, with an abundance of investment opportunities across numerous sectors.

“This reflects the forward-thinking and progressive fiscal policies and legislative reforms introduced by Qatar that have already seen a positive impact, as noted by international ratings agencies including Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s, all of which underlines the nation’s attractiveness as an investment hub,” he added. Highlighting that Qatar’s regulatory, digital, entrepreneurial, and legislative frameworks off er a sustainable climate for global investors to prosper, Abdulla al-Misnad, deputy chief executive, QFZA, said the country’s free zones are committed to foster economic growth by focusing on sectors where Qatar has a “strong value proposition”.

“We aim to attract companies with willingness to play an active role in our vision towards a dynamic and diversified economy, and have the ability to penetrate large, fast-growing underserved global markets,” he said. Sarah al-Dorani, chief marketing officer, QFCA showcased Qatar as the ideal location (for global companies) to expand in the region. The event saw a range of experts discuss the outlook for foreign investors in Qatar; some of Qatar’s rapidly growing sectors including FDI in financial technology, as well as the upward investing trends seen in the past several years.

The event was hosted by Jason Kelly, New York Bureau Chief of Bloomberg and included a lineup of highly promi- nent speakers including ambassador Anne Patterson, President of the US- Qatar Business Council; Rachel Duan, president and chief executive of GE’s Global Growth Organisation; and James Zhan, Director of Investment and Enterprise at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Global finance ministers and central bankers pledged to use all their tools, including fiscal policy, to support demand amid a “highly uncertain” outlook and elevated risks.
“The outlook is highly uncertain and subject to elevated downside risks,” including trade tensions, policy uncertainty and geopolitical risks, according to a communique issued Saturday by the International Monetary and Financial Committee, the steering panel of the IMF’s 189 member countries. “We will employ all appropriate policy tools, individually and collectively, to mitigate risks, enhance resilience and shore up growth to benefit all.”
The statement was released in Washington, where the IMF and World Bank are holding their annual meetings.
An International Monetary Fund Committee (IMFC) plenary session on October 18.
“Available fiscal space should be used to support demand as needed,” and monetary policy should aim to keep inflation approaching or stabilising around targets, the communique said.
The downbeat statement caps a week during which the IMF made a fifth-straight cut to its 2019 global growth forecast, projecting the weakest expansion since 2009. The fund’s chief economist, Gita Gopinath, earlier warned that “there is no room for policy mistakes and an urgent need for policymakers to co-operatively de-escalate trade and geopolitical tensions.”
“All tools can be applied — monetary policy where there is space for it” as well as fiscal measures and structural reforms when appropriate, IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva said on Saturday at a press conference in Washington. Governments need to take these steps to stop or reverse the slowdown, she said.
Global finance leaders met against a backdrop of slowing growth in the world’s major economies and central banks grappling with limited room to support expansion.
In the US, the Federal Reserve has reversed some of its tightening to insure against downside risks, though consumer spending has largely held up amid weakness in manufacturing and business investment. China said on Friday that economic growth decelerated to the weakest pace since the early 1990s, yet it may be starting to stabilise as fiscal stimulus works its way through the economy.
For the euro area, policymakers don’t expect to go beyond the interest-rate cuts and quantitative easing pushed through by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi in September unless the economy is hit by shocks such as escalating trade tensions or a no-deal Brexit, according to regional officials.
While the US and China have touted progress toward a trade agreement that leaders Donald Trump and Xi Jinping would sign next month, the situation remains uncertain and there’s no indication that the nations are preparing to roll back tariffs implemented over the past two years.
The IMFC statement repeated language from the prior statement in April saying that “we recognise the need to resolve trade tensions.”
But the latest missive added a line saying that a “strong international trading system with well-enforced rules addressing current and future challenges would support global growth.”

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A set of European Union standards to determine which financial products qualify as “green” should be delayed until the end of 2022, EU governments agreed on Wednesday, stirring concern because the guidelines might end up including investments in nuclear power.

The delay, if confirmed by EU lawmakers, could slow the growth of the $200 billion market for green bonds, by pushing back clearer standards that many investors wanted. Proponents of green investment condemned the postponement.

“We don’t need to waste two more years,” said Luca Bonaccorsi, an activist with the Transport and Environment campaign group. Clearer standards were urgently needed to fund a sustainable economy, he said.

Deciding which investments could be called green was part of a legislative proposal put forward last year by the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm. Its goal was to encourage private investment in environmentally sustainable businesses.

The proposal laid out a taxonomy — a set of criteria and procedures for deciding what made an investment green — that was due to take effect in 2020. But many EU members objected, fearing damage to their national industries.

Diplomats agreed to postpone introduction of the taxonomy by more than two years. They also agreed to grant governments more powers to decide which investments are green, amending procedures proposed by the commission that would have given independent experts more say.

NUCLEAR CONCERNS

EU governments’ compromise does not exclude any economic activity from being listed as green. That could pave the way for declaring as green investments meant to reduce the environmental impact of nuclear reactors or plants seen as highly polluting.

The decision runs counter to recommendations from an EU expert group, which had advised in June excluding nuclear and coal-fired plants from the EU taxonomy. Their environmental impact was seen as going against EU targets to cut carbon emissions and reduce hazardous waste.

The text agreed by EU governments needs the approval of the European Parliament, which also wanted to rule out nuclear and coal investments from projects deemed green.

“This is a disaster,” Green European lawmaker Sven Giegold said. Parliament will do all it can to apply the new standards earlier and to exclude nuclear and polluting activities from the taxonomy, he said.

By setting criteria on what investment is sustainable, the EU hoped to avoid different standards in its 28 states and increase the confidence of climate-conscious investors. Proliferating standards let companies “greenwash” their activities, claiming green credential they not deserve.

However, the EU taxonomy’s broad criteria could divert money to technologies that “cannot be considered either safe or sustainable,” Germany said in a statement appended to the compromise text and also signed by Austria and Luxembourg.

The compromise ignored those concerns and tried instead to allay opposing fears of countries such as France, which relies on nuclear energy, and eastern European nations, which still depend on coal.

(Bloomberg) — As bankers discussed Saudi Aramco’s initial public offering at the Ritz Carlton hotel in Dubai last week, a drone attack was being planned to hit the heart of its operations over the weekend. It caused Saudi Arabia to halve its oil output and may cut the valuation of Aramco’s milestone deal.

The giant oil producer has accelerated preparations for a share sale that could happen as soon as November in Riyadh. Dozens of bankers from Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C). to JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) & Co. met last week to work on the deal, with analyst presentations scheduled for Sept. 22, people familiar with the matter have said.

“Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will push the company to demonstrate that it can effectively tackle terrorism or war challenges,” analysts led by Ayham Kamel, head of Middle East and North Africa research at the Eurasia Group, said in a report. “The attacks could complicate Aramco’s IPO plans.”

In an attack blamed by the U.S. on Iran, a swarm of drones laden with explosives set the world’s biggest crude-processing plant ablaze. Floating a minority stake of the oil giant, officially known as Saudi Arabian Oil Co., is part of Prince Mohammed’s efforts to modernize and diversify the economy.

The attacks underscored geopolitical tensions in the region. Iran denied responsibility, which was instead claimed by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Oil prices surged by the most on record to more than $71 a barrel after the strike removed about 5% of global supplies. The main Saudi stock index Sunday fell as much as 3.1%, leading losses in the Gulf.

Back in 2017, investors suspected that Saudi government-related funds swooped in to support the market after the imprisonment of local billionaires at the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh. That also happened amid the international crisis following columnist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Here’s more from analysts and investors:

Eurasia

• “The latest attack on Aramco facilities will have only a limited impact on interest in Aramco shares as the first stage of the IPO will be local. The international component of the sale would be more sensitive to geopolitical risks”
• Current valuation estimates for Aramco and its assets might not fully account for geopolitical risks
  • NOTE: Prince Mohammed, the architect of the IPO, has said he expects Aramco to be valued at over $2 trillion, but analysts see $1.5 trillion as more realistic

Al Dhabi Capital, Mohammed Ali Yasin

• “I think this attack may delay the IPO even on the local exchange, and could affect the valuation negatively, as the investors have seen a live demonstration of the risk levels of the future revenues and business of the company. That was very low prior to this weekend attack”
• “Aramco has one main source of revenue, oil. That is its strength, but now it is becoming its biggest weakness if it gets disrupted”

United Securities, Joice Mathew

• This “will force investors to go back to the drawing board and re-evaluate their risk models on Aramco”
• “Even though this is a rare event, which could be potentially categorized as 4 or 6 sigma levels, the geopolitical risk premium on Aramco’s valuation model would show a sharp increase”
• “As far as the pricing is concerned, my view is that there may not be much of an impact if the government is contemplating a 1% listing on the Tadawul. I think the government has the power and ability to influence the decisions of anchor investors there”

Tellimer, Hasnain Malik

• “Ultimately the security risk is not so acute that it outweighs oil price, oil output and free float drivers of the valuation”
• This attack “also provides an opportunity for Aramco to demonstrate the redundancy and resilience of its supply chain by minimizing disruption to customers and thereby helping to mitigate the valuation impact of this risk”

Qamar Energy, Robin Mills

• “It will be all but impossible to proceed with the IPO if there are ongoing attacks”
• “Valuing Aramco like Shell (LON:RDSa) or ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) gets us to about $1.2-1.4 trillion. But that would drop significantly if we apply company-specific risk factors”

Al Ramz Capital, Marwan Shurrab

• “The attacks could impact foreign sentiment for the IPO, but I don’t see a substantial hit to the valuation at this stage”
• “Geopolitical risk has always been an important factor for valuations across the Middle East region. Aramco will have to demonstrate its financial resilience toward such incidences to gain investors confidence”

Aug 28, 2019 ANDREW HIGHAM

PM@ (Updates with statement on lifting)

ATHENS, Aug 26 (Reuters) – Greece is set to fully lift remaining capital controls, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in parliament on Monday.

Athens imposed capital controls in June 2015, when Greece’s government had come to the end of its bailout extension period without agreeing on a further extension with its creditors.

The restrictions have been gradually eased since then. The cap on cash withdrawals was fully lifted in October 2018. But limits on money transfers abroad still remained. The newly elected conservative government has been keen to move swiftly to reassure markets that it intends to adopt business-friendly policies to attract investment, key to boost Greece’s economic recovery.

Athens had imposed the capital controls as Greece was embroiled in dispute with its lenders over bailout terms and its banks were bleeding cash.

At the time, the European Central Bank decided to pull the plug on emergency funding to Greek lenders, forcing a three week shutdown of banks and a 60 euro per day cap on cash machine withdrawals.

Finance Minister Christos Staikouras told lawmakers he would submit legislation to fully lift the restrictions effective Sept. 1. (Reporting by George Georgiopoulos; Editing by Alison Williams)

(Repeats Monday’s column with no changes to text. The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.)

* Fund positioning on CME copper: tmsnrt.rs/2Myafvs

* LME Index vs China PMI: tmsnrt.rs/2YnPVnD

* Global Vehicle Production: tmsnrt.rs/2YqBKy7

By Andy Home

LONDON, Aug 5 (Reuters) – If you believe that “Doctor Copper” is a sensitive gauge of the health of the global economy, then you should be worried.

London Metal Exchange (LME) copper fell through the year’s low of $5,725 per tonne on Friday and hit a 26-month low of $5,640 early on Monday.

The trigger for the slump was the latest escalation of the trade stand-off between the United States and China, President Trump announcing the imposition of more tariffs on Chinese goods effective the beginning of next month.

Copper has been used as a proxy for trading the on-off trade talks for some time and funds had amassed a significant short position on the CME copper contract even before Friday’s break-down.

However, what’s troubling Doctor Copper and just about every other LME-traded base metal, with the single exception of nickel, is the accumulating evidence of a global manufacturing downturn.

Quite evidently, an escalation of trade tensions between the world’s two biggest economies is not going to help an already fragile industrial economy.

THE TRUMP TRADE AND THE BIG SHORT

Funds have for many months been expressing their views on the likely success of the trade talks via the CME copper contract.

When a positive outcome looked possible around the end of the first quarter, fund positioning switched to net long. But since then bears have amassed short positions as the prospects of a breakthrough have receded.

The latest Commitments of Traders Report shows money managers holding a net short position of 40,372 contracts.

Outright short positions totalled 86,841 contracts. That’s less than the record 101,593 contracts accumulated at the start of June but the latest report only covers positioning as of last Tuesday. The big short has almost certainly got bigger still, given the price action towards the end of last week.

Long positioning has been largely unchanged since the unwind of previous exuberance in April and May.

THE GLOBAL RECESSION TRADE

It’s not just copper that is being punished by speculators. LME aluminium, zinc, lead and tin are all now trading below year-start levels.

Only nickel is defying this broader trend, with investors keeping faith with nickel’s bull narrative of a lift in demand from the electric vehicle battery sector. It is the only LME metal still showing a net speculative long position, according to LME broker Marex Spectron.

What’s depressing the rest of the LME base metals complex is the deterioration in global manufacturing activity as shown by falling purchasing managers indices (PMI) the world over.

“For the first time in recent history we now have the majority of global manufacturing PMIs in contraction,” said BMO Capital Markets. (“Metals Brief”, Aug. 2, 2019).

The metal markets are particularly sensitive to the health of China’s massive industrial economy, which is struggling, according to both the official and Caixin PMIs. Both indices edged up in July but both, critically, remained below the expansion-contraction threshold.

Other key metals economies such as South Korea, Japan and Taiwan are also suffering.

Manufacturing activity in the euro zone goes from bad to worse, contracting at the fastest pace in July since late 2012.

The United States remains a rare bright spot, but even here activity is slowing fast. The Institute for Supply Management’s July index fell to 51.2 in July, the weakest growth rate in nearly three years.

AUTOMOTIVE PAIN

The automotive sector is a particular source of metals demand weakness.

World motor vehicle production fell last year for the first time since the financial crisis, according to the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers.

Car markets are being hit both by the broader cyclical downturn and the structural challenge of transitioning from the internal combustion engine to electric vehicles.

This double whammy is particularly acute in China, the world’s largest car market and the one that is rolling out electric vehicles faster than anyone else.

Chinese vehicle sales have fallen year-on-year for 12 straight months, with expectations that car demand will slide some 5% this year after a 2.8% fall last year to 28.1 million units – the first decline since the 1990s.

Transport is an important end-use sector for metals such as aluminium, so look no further to understand why China’s exports of semi-manufactured aluminium products are booming even as national aluminium output flat-lines.

Exports of “semis” rose 8% in the first half of 2019 despite the proliferation of trade barriers and anti-dumping duties on Chinese products.

BACK TO SUPPLY

A breakthrough in U.S.-China trade talks could lift some of the manufacturing gloom but the prospects appear to be dimming after the most recent escalation of threatened tariffs by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Beijing, meanwhile, is working hard just to maintain economic stability by using targeted stimulus.

Hopes for a shock-and-awe metals-intensive stimulus package such as that seen in 2009-2010 and again in 2015-2016 have faded.

Beijing has made it quite clear it doesn’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past. The current stimulus pulse is largely bypassing the residential construction sector, another key end-use area for many base metals. Infrastructure spend, meanwhile, also appears to be bypassing the copper- and aluminium-intensive power grid.

With China’s manufacturing sector treading water and other countries’ activity rapidly decelerating, there is no reason for heavyweight fund managers to allocate money to the base metals sector, again with the possible exception of nickel.

Analysts such as those at BMO are looking for some improvement after the seasonal slowdown months of northern hemisphere summer and as destocking through the manufacturing chain comes to an end.

But, until there is “evidence of improvement (…) supply cuts may offer more hope for price upside” in the base metals complex.

That says as much as anything else about the state of global metals demand.