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  • Life after Rosneft deal: CEFC ambitions face debt, regulatory hurdles

    CHINA, 2017/09/17 CEFC China Energy is considering additional deals next recently snapping up a $9.1 billion stake in Russia's Rosneft, industry sources said, shrugging off a growing deficit pile and rising regulatory scrutiny. Privately owned CEFC, in just a few years, has gone from a niche oil trader to a $25 billion conglomerate with strong political ties and a rare arrangement to store part of the country's strategic oil reserve. Its ambit presently extends beyond oil assets to infrastructure and even financial services. It is one of a handful of conglomerates in China with all financial services licenses, owning or controlling banks, an insurer, a brokerage firm, a trading platform and several funds, according to its website.
  • Life after Rosneft deal: CEFC ambitions face debt, regulatory hurdles

    CHINA, 2017/09/17 CEFC China Energy is considering additional deals next recently snapping up a $9.1 billion stake in Russia's Rosneft, industry sources said, shrugging off a growing deficit pile and rising regulatory scrutiny. Privately owned CEFC, in just a few years, has gone from a niche oil trader to a $25 billion conglomerate with strong political ties and a rare arrangement to store part of the country's strategic oil reserve. Its ambit presently extends beyond oil assets to infrastructure and even financial services. It is one of a handful of conglomerates in China with all financial services licenses, owning or controlling banks, an insurer, a brokerage firm, a trading platform and several funds, according to its website.
  • Pakistan's election body asks police to arrest, produce Imran Khan

    PAKISTAN, 2017/09/16 Pakistan's election commission has ordered the police to arrest Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman Imran Khan and present him before it on September 25 in a contempt case, according to media reports today. In a letter written to the Islamabad Senior Superintendent of Police (Operations) yesterday, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) said that Imran was charged with contempt of the ECP under the Representation of Peoples Act, 1976, Dawn reported.
  • Tuition fees row: education expert warns over graduate earnings

    WORLD, 2017/09/16 Graduates do not get as good a return on their investment in English system as in other OECD nations, says Andreas Schleicher A leading world education expert has intervened in the row over student tuition fees in England, warning about price for money as earnings for graduates become additional volatile.
  • UN report attacks austerity budgets for growing inequality

    WORLD, 2017/09/16 Study says spending cuts have encouraged rise of robots and AI and heightened job insecurity, particularly for women Austerity budgets adopted by governments across the world since the 2008 financial crash are to blame for undermining the job security of millions of workers and threatening the evolution made by women in the workplace, according to a UN statement. The threat to jobs from the growing use of robots and artificial intelligence has been exacerbated by a lack of government investment and lack of national support for skills training, the statement as well said.
  • Former Fed official Fisher: China could be the key to solving the North Korea crisis

    CHINA, 2017/09/16 Richard Fisher, the former Federal Reserve official and current top advisor at Barclays, said Friday he is looking for China to play a pivotal role in resolving problems on the Korean Peninsula. Following North Korea's new missile launch before in the day, Fisher said the current U.S. government's strategy in getting nations to acknowledge on sanctions against North Korea was a "step in the right direction." He acknowledged, however, that recent steps taken by the international community were likely less severe than the White Home would've like.
  • In the Philippines, infrastructure program could grant businesses 'manna from heaven'

    PHILIPPINES, 2017/09/16 Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte appears committed to improving the country's infrastructure as part of economic reform plans, and that could bring about huge opportunities for businesses, Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, chairman and CEO of Ayala Corporation, told us. "They really feel very keenly about making a major contribution in that sector and they're allocating budgets accordingly to be able to push that," Zobel de Ayala said of the Duterte government.
  • In the Philippines, infrastructure program could grant businesses 'manna from heaven'

    PHILIPPINES, 2017/09/16 Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte appears committed to improving the country's infrastructure as part of economic reform plans, and that could bring about huge opportunities for businesses, Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, chairman and CEO of Ayala Corporation, told us. "They really feel very keenly about making a major contribution in that sector and they're allocating budgets accordingly to be able to push that," Zobel de Ayala said of the Duterte government.
  • Maersk's former head praises restructuring efforts

    SINGAPORE, 2017/09/16 Shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk is taking the right steps to improve shareholder price, said the company's former group chief executive. The conglomerate is currently in the midst of separating its transport and logistics businesses from its energy operations — an effort that's been a lot of years in the making, Nils Andersen told CNBC on Friday. Maersk share prices have been steadily sliding ever since July, but investors shouldn't take that as an indicator of world increase, Andersen warned. "At the same time as you see short-term movements in share prices that don't correspond with trade developments, often it's a worry whether new orders for ships will be placed."
  • Aluminium-Lithium Alloys Fight Back

    FRANCE, 2017/09/16 At the same time as it comes to the aviation industry, new technologies and manufacturing techniques have been mounting a silent revolution in the new generation of commercial twin-aisle aircraft: the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus A350. Both these aircraft contain around 50% of CFRP composites, as opposed to their previous iterations where aluminium alloys had dominated. This explains why, at the same time as Boeing and Airbus introduced these two crafts several years ago, most experts thought that the next generation of planes would be made out of composites, a trend that would again expand to include smaller jets – but as turns out, they were wrong.