Aurelia Butler

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Republicans who control the U.S. House of Representatives heard pitches on Tuesday from prominent party members Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan, who are vying for the powerful role of speaker, under mounting pressure from a war in the Middle East and another looming government shutdown.Lawmakers exiting a closed-door forum said neither Scalise, the House majority leader, nor Jordan, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, will have a clear advantage when Republicans begin to vote for a nominee by secret ballot on Wednesday.”We’ve got two good leaders within our party, with good perspectives on where the party needs to go and an understanding and an emphasis on reuniting the party,” Representative Mike Garcia told reporters. But before voting for a candidate on Wednesday, Republicans will have to decide whether to keep internal disagreements behind closed doors by requiring any nominee to win 217 Republican votes, enough to elect the next speaker on the House floor over Democratic opposition. Current rules require only a simple majority.”The first order of business is figuring out a rules change that works for the conference,” said Representative Kat Cammack. Republicans hold a narrow 221-212 majority in the House.The narrowly divided caucus raised some worries that neither candidate would be able to win enough support to be elected speaker in the first round of voting.”We’re going to go get this done tomorrow, and the House is going to get back to work,” Scalise told reporters after the candidate forum, which ran over two hours.Scalise and Jordan each pledged to back whichever candidate ultimately emerged as the nominee, lawmakers said. Republicans’ narrow majority in House made it possible for a fraction of their members to force Kevin McCarthy, who was ousted as speaker last week, to endure 15 grueling floor votes to become speaker in January.”We need to handle this inside the caucus and not go through what we did in January,” said Representative Ralph Norman, who opposed McCarthy at the time.McCarthy on Monday said he would take the job back if asked to by House Republicans, but on Tuesday told reporters, “I asked them please not to nominate me.”It took only eight Republicans to oust McCarthy last week, which could make leading the caucus a challenge for any new speaker. While McCarthy was the first speaker to be ousted in a formal vote, the prior two Republicans to hold the job left under pressure from party hardliners.FUNDING DEADLINERepublicans may have to tackle other thorny issues, including how to move forward on government funding for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1 and whether to change the rule that allowed just one lawmaker to call a vote to oust McCarthy. Current government funding expires on Nov. 17.Jordan, a prominent hardline conservative backed by former President Donald Trump, told Tuesday’s forum that he would back a new stopgap measure to fund the government through April to avoid a partial government shutdown, according to Representative Thomas Massie, a Jordan supporter. Other lawmakers said Scalise also backed a temporary funding measure, but they offered few details. Scalise appeared to have the support of many veteran and establishment Republicans including party leaders, while Jordan drew endorsements from others including Trump-style populists.Representative Patrick McHenry, who is standing in as interim speaker, has been seen as a possible fallback candidate if no one else wins enough votes. But McHenry told reporters on Tuesday that he has not spoken to colleagues about running, adding that there are two candidates.Until a new speaker is chosen, the House cannot take action. That has brought new pressure on Republicans after Israel declared war on Sunday following an attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas that has prompted calls for more U.S. military aid. Some Republicans are hoping to have a new speaker in place as early as Thursday. More

SEOUL (Reuters) -Samsung Electronics on Wednesday said its preliminary third-quarter profit dropped by a smaller-than-expected 78%, as the battered memory chip market shows early signs of recovering from a severe downturn.Samsung (KS:005930) shares opened 3.3% higher versus a 1.4% rise in the wider market, as analysts said memory chip prices likely bottomed in the third quarter, with some types starting to rebound. The world’s largest memory chip and smartphone maker estimated its operating profit fell to 2.4 trillion won ($1.79 billion) in July-September, from 10.85 trillion won a year earlier in a short preliminary earnings statement.The profit beat a 2.1 trillion won LSEG SmartEstimate, which is weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate.”It’s better than expected. Although the situation is not great in the chip business… the decline in memory prices is easing, and further drops will be limited,” said Ko Yeongmin, an analyst at Daol Investment & Securities. Though down sharply from last year, Samsung’s third quarter profit was well above the first quarter’s 640 billion won, the lowest since 2009, and the second quarter’s 670 billion won. The company reported losses of 4.58 trillion won and 4.36 trillion in its chip business in the first and second quarter respectively, as memory chip prices plunged and its inventory values were slashed. A global economic slowdown and high interest rates dampened demand for most consumer goods following a pandemic-driven boom, forcing chipmakers to cut production in an attempt to stem falling prices. But in the third quarter, analysts said losses in Samsung’s memory chip business likely shrank to around 3 trillion won as Samsung focused on more profitable, higher-end chips such as DRAM chips used in artificial intelligence, while continuing to cut production of older legacy chips. Prices of some DRAM chips, used in tech devices, also began rebounding near the end of last quarter, while prices of NAND Flash chips used in data storage may start recovering as early as the current quarter, winding down the severe industry downturn that began last year, analysts said. “When Samsung announces detailed earnings later this month, investors will be tuning in to what it has to say about any changes in prices of legacy chips such as NAND Flash or older DRAM, in order to form outlooks about the chip industry’s more complete recovery,” Ko said. The detailed earnings release is due on Oct. 31. Samsung’s said its revenue likely fell 13% from the same period a year earlier to 67 trillion won.The company’s mobile business likely reported an operating profit of around 3 trillion won, similar to last year, according to an average of forecasts from five analysts. The company launched its premium foldable smartphones during the quarter, drumming up sales despite the sluggish global smartphone market. The third quarter is normally strong for Samsung’s mobile and display businesses given that is when it launches its flagship smartphones, and demand for display panels from clients like Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) rises before the debut of the latest iPhone.($1 = 1,342.1900 won) More

MARRAKECH, Morocco (Reuters) – Senior executives at multilateral development banks will meet on Wednesday with the top credit ratings agencies, bank executives said, amid a broad push to expand their lending capacity and help countries brace for climate change and other challenges.The closed-door meeting will address how to value callable capital – a commitment from shareholders to step in during extreme circumstances — in the banks’ capital adequacy frameworks, Roberta Casali, vice president for risk at the Asian Development Bank, told a Rockefeller Foundation event on Tuesday. It will be the fourth such meeting this year, she said.The World Bank’s main lending arms could expand their lending capacity by nearly $900 billion if the ratings agencies changed their processes and modified the allowance they make for callable capital, a study commissioned by Rockefeller found.Lakshmi Shyam-Sunder, the World Bank’s chief risk officer, said the ratings agencies had shown some openness to considering revisions in how they treat callable capital in the banks’ balance sheets.”They are beginning to change their tune,” she said. “We’re now seeing a more open-minded willingness to consider changes in their methodology.”The key to the multilateral development banks’ strategy to boost lending is to preserve their AAA credit ratings, which enable them to borrow at low rates and pass on the savings to developing countries.Casali said Wednesday’s meeting, on the sidelines of the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Morocco, would include officials from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the African Development Bank, along with the three top credit raters – Moody’s (NYSE:MCO), Standard & Poor’s and Fitch. Earlier on Tuesday, World Bank President Ajay Banga told Reuters that the rules governing how pledged capital can be called in times of stress are “very loose” and need a “clear and tangible process” to reassure ratings agencies. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Tuesday said Treasury has asked the multilateral development banks to prioritize incorporating “a prudent share” of callable capital into their capital adequacy frameworks, as part of broader reforms aimed at expanding funding options to help developing countries amid a worsening climate crisis.Experts say developing and emerging economies need $2.4 trillion per year to meet global climate challenges.Currently, the ratings agencies apply widely different rules and standards in assessing the risks associated with the banks’ lending and balance sheets. More