Aurelia Butler

HOUSTON (Reuters) – Hess Corp (NYSE:HES) on Tuesday approved the company’s $53 billion merger with the No. 2 U.S. oil company Chevron (NYSE:CVX), according to preliminary results of the vote. The merger required a majority vote to approve the deal by a majority of Hess’ 308 million shares outstanding to pass. The company did not immediately provide the vote tally. Chevron offered to acquire Hess last October in a move to gain a foothold in oil-rich Guyana’s lucrative offshore fields. The deal has been stalled by an ongoing review by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and clouded by an arbitration claim filed by Hess’ partner in Guyana, Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) and CNOOC (NYSE:CEO). The result is a win for Hess CEO John Hess and puts to rest claims by some shareholders who wanted additional compensation for the delay in closing the sale. Exxon’s arbitration could push the deal’s closing into 2025. “Assuming Chevron wins the arbitration from Exxon or finds a settlement, the transaction is now going to happen,” said Mark Kelly, an analyst with financial firm MKP Advisors. (This story has been refiled to remove the extra word ‘some’ in paragraph 4) More

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) -Argentina’s financial markets dipped on Tuesday after libertarian President Javier Milei, traveling on a U.S. tech tour, shook up his Cabinet, firing his chief of staff and bringing on board the architect of his government’s key economic reform package.The financial markets, which have rallied hard since Milei took office in December, saw bonds dip around 1% and the S&P Merval stock index lose around 1.5%, as investors digested the first major government overhaul.On Monday night, Milei fired his Cabinet chief Nicolas Posse and replaced him with current Interior Minister Guillermo Francos, seen as a more outgoing and aggressive deal maker, which is key as Milei’s main reform package faces a hold-up in Congress.”Francos’ appointment is a very welcome political opening, he’s strong on dialogue, something Posse lacked,” a private financial trader at local bank Macro said on Tuesday, citing the need for results on Milei’s reforms to boost sentiment.”The market needs laws to come out to begin deregulating the economy once and for all.”Milei will also bring economist Federico Sturzenegger into a new ministry focused on economic deregulation, new Cabinet chief Francos announced at a press conference, a move to try to bolster the reform package currently heading to the Senate.Argentine political analyst Juan Mayol said the appointment of Francos was a bold step for Milei, an economist and former TV pundit with little political experience who won a shock election last year pledging to slash state over-spending to overturn a deep fiscal deficit and bring down triple-digit inflation.”He is a complementary opposite to Milei,” Mayol said, a reference to Francos’ political savvy versus Milei’s showmanship. Milei recently sang in a rock concert, and he has traveled regularly overseas and built ties with global figures like billionaire Elon Musk.In radio comments, Francos said he had been tasked with handling the political juggling act needed for the government to push laws through, a challenge as Milei only controls a small minority in Congress and relies on winning over allies.”The president does not have an easy relationship with politics because he does not understand politicians,” Francos said, a nod to Milei’s regular criticism of the political elite. “He sought in me someone to facilitate that dialogue.” More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States and its partners are prepared to use sanctions and export controls to prevent China-Russia trade that threatens their security amid the ongoing Ukraine war, a White House official said on Tuesday.White House Deputy National Security Adviser For International Economics Daleep Singh said the countries could also further act to increase Russia’s cost of using a shadow fleet to evade the Group of Seven countries’ oil price cap. They could also broaden current sanctions language regarding financial facilitation given Moscow’s moves to shift its economy to war footing, he said, although he declined to say if the U.S. and its allies were moving to adopt secondary sanctions.He noted that Russia was utterly dependent on China, giving Beijing “enormous leverage” over Moscow’s ability to project power, and China faced risks and costs as well, given its combined goods trade with the European Union and the U.S. was seven times that of its trade with Russia.”To be clear, we have no desire to disrupt all trade between Russia and China, but we and our partners are prepared to use our sanctions and our export controls to prevent the trade of goods and technologies that threaten our collective security,” he said.He said Russia-China trade had dropped since U.S. President Joe Biden had expanded Treasury’s ability to target financial institutions, adding authorities may expand further.Singh told an event hosted by the Brookings Institution think tank that Western countries needed to intensify efforts to prevent Moscow’s circumvention of sanctions, and urged U.S. companies to ensure their products were not unwittingly aiding Russia’s war effort.He said the G7 leaders’ summit next month was the best chance to shore up Ukraine’s financing gap by planning to monetize around $300 billion in frozen Russian assets, a move he said was risky but necessary. “Of course there are risks involved in mobilizing these assets, the policy is all about tradeoffs,” Singh told an event at the Brookings Institution. “I think sanctions are doing their job, relative to the objectives that we set.”There was no consensus yet among the G7 countries on monetizing frozen Russian assets, which could quickly provide Kyiv with at least $50 billion in additional funding, but Washington was pressing for agreement given the dire situation facing Ukraine on the battlefield, Singh said.Leaders from the G7 leading democracies are scheduled to gather in Italy from June 13 through June 15. More

“Our findings suggest that, under a scenario with no large-scale efforts to reduce carbon emissions, future increases in extreme heat would reduce the capital stock by 5.4% and annual consumption by 1.8% by the year 2200,” wrote Stephie Fried, a senior economist at the San Francisco Fed, and co-authors Gregory Casey and Matthew Gibson, both professors at Williams College. The researchers used scientists’ best estimates for the number of days per year where working outdoors would cause heat stress, estimated to rise from 22 days in 2020 to 80 in 2100. They then projected the likely drain on labor productivity in construction, where – unlike most of the services and manufacturing sectors – air-conditioning cannot counter the impact of hot days.They focused on construction because it makes up a larger share of overall economic output and U.S. investment than other sectors like agriculture or mining where workers are also vulnerable to heat. “Decreases in construction productivity slow capital accumulation and therefore have long-lasting effects on macroeconomic outcomes,” they wrote. Using a less-likely alternative scenario under which the number of extreme-heat days rises to 125 in 2100, the authors found much larger consequences from a decline in construction productivity, with capital accumulation projected to fall by 18% and consumption by 7% in 2200. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Tuesday to hear a bid by imprisoned celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti to overturn his conviction for defrauding a youth basketball coach he represented and extorting athletic wear company Nike (NYSE:NKE) in a case in which he was sentenced to 2-1/2 years behind bars.The justices turned away Avenatti’s appeal after a lower court upheld his 2020 federal convictions in the case by a jury in New York City. Avenatti has been sentenced to 19 years in prison in three criminal cases and is incarcerated in California. In another trial, Avenatti in 2022 was convicted of defrauding a different client, porn star Stormy Daniels. That case was not at issue in the current appeal.At the center of the Nike-related case was a threat, caught on an audio recording, that Avenatti made in 2019 to stain the company’s reputation and hurt its stock price by exposing its alleged corrupt payments to families of college basketball prospects. Avenatti was heard threatening to “blow the lid” on Nike at a press conference unless it paid up to $25 million for him to conduct a probe, plus $1.5 million to his client, youth basketball coach Gary Franklin.Prosecutors said Avenatti was looking to enrich himself and pay down debts related to his law firm and a recent divorce. He was convicted of extorting Nike and of committing “honest services fraud” against Franklin, a crime in which someone in a position of authority deprives a client or constituent of his right to honest services. Franklin testified that he did not want an investigation and merely wanted Nike to resume sponsoring his team.Nike has denied wrongdoing.The Manhattan-based U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in August 2023 rejected Avenatti’s appeal of his convictions, prompting his appeal to the Supreme Court.Justice Brett Kavanaugh did not participate in the Supreme Court’s decision to deny the case. Avenatti was a lawyer for a woman who claimed before Kavanaugh’s U.S. Senate confirmation to the Supreme Court in 2018 that she witnessed alleged misconduct by Kavanaugh involving women decades earlier. Kavanaugh denied all the allegations.Avenatti’s lawyers in a Supreme Court filing argued that the 1988 statute criminalizing honest services fraud is so vague that it violates the right of defendants to due process under the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment. They also urged the justices to take up the case to declare that settlement negotiations like Avenatti’s communications with Nike cannot give rise to criminal extortion charges.A lawyer for Avenatti declined to comment on Tuesday.President Joe Biden’s administration had recommended that the justices decline Avenatti’s appeal.Avenatti, 53, gained fame in 2018 while representing Daniels in litigation against then-U.S. President Donald Trump. Avenatti was convicted of defrauding Daniels out of a book contract and was sentenced in June 2022 to an additional 2-1/2 years behind bars. The 2nd Circuit upheld that conviction in March. Hush money paid to Daniels ahead of the 2016 U.S. election is at the heart of Trump’s criminal trial in a New York state court. In December 2022, Avenatti was sentenced to 14 more years in prison after he pleaded guilty to cheating four other clients, including a paraplegic man, out of millions of dollars.Avenatti, who obtained his California law license in 2000, is now ineligible to practice law in the state, according to the State Bar of California website. More