Aurelia Butler

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) -Vietnamese electric vehicle maker VinFast (NASDAQ:VFS) aims to increase its free float, or shares available to the public for trading, to 10% to 20% by the end of this year from roughly 2% currently, the company’s chairperson said on Tuesday.”This year we plan as the markets recover and as we show more achievements of progress, we will do follow-on transactions … increasing the free float, bringing in many more investors, including long-only investors,” Le Thi Thu Thuy, the former CEO and current VinFast chairperson, told Reuters on the sidelines of the CES trade show in Las Vegas. The free float “hopefully would be 10% to 20% at least,” she said.A larger free float could lessen the intense volatility in the company’s stock, which has tumbled since a splashy debut on the Nasdaq in August, when shares surged more than 255%, notching a market value of roughly $85 billion. It is now valued at nearly $16 billion.VinFast, which is yet to make a profit, entered the EV market as car prices were under pressure, led by cuts at market leader Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) and Chinese companies including BYD (SZ:002594).The company sells 60% of its EVs to an affiliate company owned by its founder Pham Nhat Vuong, Vietnam’s richest man, who also controls VinFast. In the first three quarters of 2023, VinFast sold more than 21,000 EVs and posted a net loss of $1.73 billion.At CES on Tuesday, the automaker launched a prototype of its new pickup truck VF (NYSE:VFC) Wild, which will not be ready for deliveries before 2026. It also said it plans to launch its mini electric SUV VF 3 globally, rather than just in Vietnam as initially planned. It expects to start delivering the model in the United States early next year.Last week, VinFast announced a plan to set up manufacturing and battery facilities in India. It also aims to expand in more markets in the Middle East, Latin America and Asia, including Indonesia.It also shuffled executives last week, with Thuy and Vuong swapping jobs. Chairman Vuong became CEO and CEO Thuy became chair. Thuy said the move allowed her to concentrate on raising funds for growth. “This year I need to focus on fundraising for VinFast,” she told Reuters. “Also, we need to tell the right story of VinFast to people.” People assume a Vietnamese company making EVs may not have the best technology, Vuong said, adding she wanted to change that notion. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen pledged U.S. support for Egypt’s economy and reforms after meeting with the North African nation’s authorities on Tuesday in Washington amid talks over expanding Egypt’s $3 billion International Monetary Fund loan program.The Egyptian officials, including the country’s finance minister and central bank governor, also were due to meet with IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva during their visit to Washington on Tuesday, an IMF spokesperson said, without providing further details.The high-level meetings come as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visits the Middle East and works to prevent the Israel-Gaza war from expanding into a wider regional conflict.Georgieva told Reuters in November that the IMF was “seriously considering” augmenting Egypt’s $3 billion loan program as the country struggles with the economic impact from Israel’s invasion of Gaza.Already facing high foreign debt levels, Egypt has been hit hard by the war in the neighboring Gaza Strip, which threatens to disrupt tourism bookings and natural gas imports, as well as recent attacks on Red Sea ships.A statement from Treasury said that Yellen discussed challenges to Egypt from the Gaza war during her meeting with Egyptian Finance Minister Mohamed Maait, Minister of International Cooperation Rania Al-Mashat, and Central Bank of Egypt Governor Hassan Abdalla.”Secretary Yellen underscored strong United States support for Egypt and its economic reform program. She underscored the goal of bolstering Egypt’s economy and supporting inclusive, sustainable growth,” the Treasury said.Egypt’s $3 billion loan program agreed with the IMF in December 2022 faltered after the North African country failed to let its currency float freely or make progress on the sale of state assets. The IMF, in which the U.S. is the largest shareholder, delayed disbursements of about $700 million expected in 2023, but in December said it was in talks to expand the $3 billion program given economic risk from the Israel-Gaza war.A spokesperson for Egypt’s embassy in Washington could not be reached for comment. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Federal Aviation Administration is facing questions about its oversight of planemaker Boeing (NYSE:BA) following the emergency landing on Friday of an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9.Mike Whitaker, who took over as the agency’s head in late October, will testify before the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Feb. 6, sources said. The hearing was in the works before the Alaska Airlines flight and is expected to cover a broad range of issues.The 737 MAX is certain to come up at the hearing, the sources said.The FAA, which was without a permanent administrator for 18 months until Whitaker’s 98-0 confirmation, has come under growing scrutiny after a series of potentially catastrophic near-miss aviation safety incidents, persistent air traffic control staffing shortages and a January 2023 pilot messaging database outage that disrupted 11,000 flights.Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal on Tuesday asked the FAA to answer detailed questions about its handling of the Alaska Airlines incident.The FAA MAX 9 grounding order “is the least that should be done,” Blumenthal said, adding he wanted to know “what more the FAA is doing to ensure our skies are safe.”Blumenthal added: “This disturbing event is another black mark for Boeing’s 737 MAX aircraft fleet and troublingly, appears to be part of a wider pattern.” The FAA grounded 171 MAX 9 airplanes on Saturday and said on Tuesday they would remain out of the sky until the agency was satisfied with Boeing’s inspection and maintenance instructions. Republican Senator J.D. Vance on Tuesday urged the Senate Commerce Committee to hold a hearing. “Every American deserves a full explanation from Boeing and the FAA on what’s gone wrong and on the steps that are being taken to ensure another incident does not occur in the future,” he said.The FAA has scrutinized Boeing’s quality and other issues in recent years as it faced harsh criticism for its actions in the run-up to the MAX certification. Following two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019, the FAA grounded the plane for 20 months and mandated significant software and training improvements.Boeing declined to comment on Tuesday. The FAA continues to inspect each 737 MAX before an “airworthiness certificate is issued and cleared for delivery,” the agency has noted. Typically the FAA delegates the final signoff on individual airplanes to the manufacturer once the model has been certified.Alaska Airlines and the other U.S. 737 MAX 9 operator, United Airlines, said on Monday they found loose parts on multiple grounded aircraft.The FAA did not directly answer questions about how it typically inspects those bolts before approving a plane for service. “The FAA inspects every airplane prior to issuing an airworthiness certificate,” a spokesperson said.The agency is still deciding whether to certify the smaller MAX 7. Whitaker told Reuters in an interview last month that he has no “specific timetable” to certify the plane, adding the agency will certify the plane when “we have all the data that we need and it is safe.”A 2020 congressional report concluded the MAX crashes “were the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing’s engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing’s management, and grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA.”After the Alaska Airlines data from last Friday’s emergency landing was lost, National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy this week criticized the FAA’s decision not to require retrofitting of airplanes with recorders that capture 25 hours of data. The FAA has boosted Boeing oversight staffing and in 2022, the agency gave Boeing a shorter regulatory compliance program extension than the planemaker sought in order to “verify that Boeing completes required improvements.” More

Japan’s wage trend draws an unusual amount of attention from financial markets worldwide since the Bank of Japan regards pay and inflation outlooks as the most important data in considering the dismantling of its negative interest rate policy.Inflation-adjusted real wages, a key determinant of consumer purchasing power, fell 3.0% in November from a year earlier, faster than a 2.3% decrease in October, data from the labour ministry showed.The consumer inflation rate the government uses to calculate real wages, which includes fresh food prices but excludes owner’s equivalent rent, decelerated to 3.3%, the lowest since July 2022, thanks to falling fuel costs and moderating food price hikes.However, nominal pay grew a paltry 0.2% in November, the slowest in nearly two years, after a 1.5% increase in October. The main culprit behind the weak pay growth was a 13.2% contraction in special payments, which gives an early glimpse into the winter bonuses companies paid to employees. But the indicator tends to be very volatile this time of year due to the small sample size collected during the year-end period.”It’s too early, if not misleading, to judge the winter bonus trends from November’s special payments figure alone,” a labour ministry official said.Regular or base salary in November rose by 1.2% year-on-year, almost the same as a revised 1.3% increase in the previous month. Overtime pay, an indicator of business activity strength, increased by 0.9% year-on-year, the first gain in three months.Japanese businesses are entering the collective pay talks season known as “shunto”, which culminates in March. Last year, major firms struck a deal with unions that resulted in the largest pay rises – 3.58% – in three decades amid four-decade-high inflation.For the 2024 shunto, the country’s biggest labour group Rengo has said it will ask for at least a 5% pay increase, including at least 3% base salary growth, to cushion the lasting blow from higher living costs.Meanwhile, Tokyo’s consumer inflation, a leading indicator of nationwide price trends, showed a further slowdown on Tuesday, raising hopes for real wages to rebound eventually, which will provide supporting ground for the Bank of Japan’s monetary policy normalisation.The table below shows preliminary data for monthly incomes and number of workers in November:—————————————————————-Payments (amount) (yr/yr % change)Total cash earnings 288,741 yen ($2,004) +0.2-Monthly wage 272,379 yen +1.2-Regular pay 252,591 yen +1.2-Overtime pay 19,788 yen +0.9-Special payments 16,362 yen -13.2—————————————————————-Number of workers (million) (yr/yr % change)Overall 52.807 +2.0-General employees 35.686 +1.5-Part-time employees 17.121 +3.6—————————————————————-The labour ministry defines “workers” as 1) those employed for more than one month at a company that employs more than five people, or 2) those employed on a daily basis or had less than a one-month contract but had worked more than 18 days during the two months before the survey was conducted, at a company that employs more than five people.To view the full tables, see the labour ministry’s website at: ($1 = 144.1000 yen) More

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