Aurelia Butler

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s wages rose in April as major companies lifted pay at the fastest pace in three decades following increased worker demands for salaries to keep up with inflation, government data showed on Tuesday.The April wage data provides an early glimpse of the effects of the spring labour negotiations, or “shunto”, and comes as Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda says an end to easy policy would depend on the economy achieving sustainable 2% inflation along with wage hikes.Total cash earnings, or nominal wages, grew 1.0% in April from a year earlier, the labour ministry data showed. The growth was smaller than a revised 1.3% rise logged in March, suggesting it would take more time for the shunto gains to fully appear in official statistics.Inflation-adjusted real wages fell 3.0%, marking the 13th straight month of year-on-year declines, as nominal pay growth lags relentless consumer inflation.Separate data showed Japanese household spending fell 4.4% in April from a year earlier, more than the median market forecast for a 2.3% fall. On a seasonally adjusted month-on-month basis, household spending decreased 1.3%, against an estimated 0.6% gain. More

LONDON/WASHINGTON(Reuters) -The world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao have been sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which alleged in a June 5 court filing that the firm operated a “web of deception” that included artificially inflating its trading volumes and commingling customer funds. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) also sued Binance over regulatory violations in March. Binance did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story. Here are some key facts about Binance: THE COMPANY Binance was founded in Shanghai in 2017, but later moved to Tokyo and then Malta. While its holding company is based in the Cayman Islands, Binance says it does not have a headquarters and has declined to state the location of its main Binance.com exchange. The exchange offers spot and derivatives trading and a host of services from non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to crypto loans and asset management. It has 120 million users, according to its website. Zhao said in November tweet that Binance has more than 7,400 employees across the world. The company also boasts a formidable social media presence, with over 10 million Twitter followers.FINANCES Binance’s global trading platform, Binance.com, is by far the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange. Last year it processed crypto trades worth about $65 billion a day, Binance said, dominating the crypto trading landscape with more than half of the market, CryptoCompare data shows.Yet its finances are opaque. As a privately held company, it does not disclose basic financial information such as revenue, profit and cash reserves. Binance has also not raised outside capital since 2018, industry data show, which means it has not had to share financial information with external investors since then. A Reuters analysis of Binance’s corporate filings last year found that the core of the business – the Binance.com exchange – remains mostly hidden from public view.LEADERSHIP Binance was founded by CEO Changpeng Zhao, a Canadian citizen born and raised age 12 in China, and Yi He, former host of a Chinese TV travel show. The pair were in a romantic relationship and have a son together who was born in the United States, Reuters reported in October. Yi He is now one of Zhao’s most powerful deputies, running the company’s $7.5 billion venture capital arm as well as holding other key roles including marketing chief. Zhao assigned top jobs to an inner circle of associates, many of whom had worked or studied in China, according to the Reuters report in October. The company has hired extensively from the traditional financial and regulatory worlds in recent years. In February, Noah Perlman, a veteran of Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), said he had become Binance’s chief compliance officer. In late May, Binance appointed Richard Teng to head its regional markets outside the United States. Teng is seen as the most likely candidate to succeed Zhao as CEO, according to media reports.INVESTMENTSBinance’s venture capital arm has since 2018 invested in over 200 venture investments, the company says. PitchBook data shows that it has spend almost $2 billion across over 150 deals, including major data site CoinMarketCap.Binance last year extended its reach beyond the crypto sector in 2022, investing $500 million in Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) boss Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter.The company is also prominent in the world of sport, sponsoring Italian soccer team Lazio and the Argentina national team. It also sponsored the 2021 African Cup of Nations tournament. In 2022, Binance signed a partnership to promote its NFTs with Portuguese soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo.LEGAL WOESThe CFTC in March sued Binance, Zhao and the firm’s former top compliance executive with “willful evasion” of U.S. law, alleging that from at least July 2019 to the present, Binance “offered and executed commodity derivatives transactions on behalf of U.S. persons” in violation of U.S. laws.The commodities regulator also said Binance’s compliance program has been “ineffective” and the firm, under the direction of Zhao, told employees and customers to circumvent compliance controls. Zhao called the CFTC’s complaint “unexpected and disappointing.”The SEC on June 5 filed 13 charges against Binance and Zhao for failing to restrict U.S. customers from its platform, misleading investors about its market surveillance controls and for operating an unregistered securities exchange.The agency also alleged that Binance and Zhao secretly control customers’ assets, allowing them to commingle and divert customer funds, and that Binance created separate U.S. entities “as part of an elaborate scheme to evade U.S. federal securities laws.”In a statement, Binance said it intends to defend its platform “vigorously,” and that any allegations that user assets on Binance’s U.S. platform have ever been at risk “are simply wrong.”Binance is also under investigation by the Justice Department for suspected money laundering and sanctions violations, Reuters has reported, citing people familiar with the probe.A top Binance executive told the Wall Street Journal in February that the company expected to pay penalties to resolve U.S. investigations. More

President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to force the reform through with special constitutional powers prompted angry protests this spring, but the issue has slowly moved down the media agenda, making it harder for unions to mobilise.”Protests have been going on for six months, it’s unprecedented,” Sophie Binet, the new leader of the hardline CGT union said on BFM TV. “There’s a lot of anger but also fatigue,” she said, adding that strikers were feeling the pinch on paychecks.Macron is now enjoying a timid rebound in opinion polls, having launched a PR blitz after the reform passed that saw him criss-cross the country to confront public anger but also to announce big investments in new technologies.Between 400,000 and 600,000 people are expected to turn out at protests across France, authorities said, which would be down from more than a million who took part in marches at the height of the pension protests earlier this year.Inter-city trains are likely to be only “slightly disrupted”, the SNCF railway company said, while the metro network in Paris will run a normal service. One-third of flights out of Paris-Orly airports have been cancelled, however.”I’m not sure there’ll be other protests afterwards,” Jean-Claude Mailly, the former leader of the FO union said. “So it’s a way to mark the occasion.”The unions, which have kept a rare united front during the whole pension episode, are holding the nationwide strike just two days before an opposition-sponsored bill aimed at cancelling the minimum pension age increase is reviewed by parliament.The provision is expected to be rejected by the lower house’s speaker, a member of Macron’s party, because under the French constitution, lawmakers can’t pass legislation that weighs on public finances without measures to offset those costs.But unions hope a big protest turnout could pressure lawmakers into reviewing the bill anyway and holding a vote. Opposition lawmakers, meanwhile, say the bill being rejected would revive public anger, branding any such move “antidemocratic”.Macron, who says the reform is essential to plug a massive deficit, will be hoping that the approaching summer holidays and improving inflation numbers will help the public move on.The president’s popularity has gained four points in a monthly Elabe poll in June and eight points in a YouGov poll, although it is still languishing around 30%. More

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil’s government will partially reintroduce a federal diesel tax this year to pay for leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s plan to bring down the cost of vehicles, Finance Minister Fernando Haddad said on Friday.The plan offers tax credits to manufacturers who lower auto prices. Last year, former President Jair Bolsonaro eliminated the diesel tax until the end of 2023 to combat inflation ahead of the presidential election.Lula had previously said the tax would remain suspended through the end of 2023, but under his temporary executive order, a partial reinstatement of 0.11 reais ($0.022) per liter out of the total cut of 0.35 reais per liter will take effect in September.Brazil’s president has the authority to temporarily reintroduce the tax without congressional approval.According to sources, the government initially aimed for a still higher diesel tax to help boost public accounts.The diesel tax hike is expected to generate around 1.5 billion reais to pay for the tax credits, Haddad said at a press conference.An estimated 1 billion reais of the diesel tax proceeds will go to discounts for buses and trucks, while the remainder will be used for passenger cars, the minister added. The plan would give carmakers tax credits for granting discounts, ranging from 2,000 reais to 8,000 reais for cars depending on energy efficiency, price and domestic content.Expected discounts for consumers will range from 1.6% to 11.6% of the vehicle cost, Vice President Geraldo Alckmin said at the same press conference.Separately on Monday, Haddad announced a program to renegotiate consumer debt targeting families earning up to two minimum wages and total debt of up to 5,000 reais ($1,015).($1 = 4.9270 reais) More

High food inflation pushed up UK grocery spending last month, prompting many consumers to cut back on discretionary purchases, according to retail sector data published on Tuesday.Figures from trade body the British Retail Consortium and KPMG, the advisory services firm, showed that UK food sales increased by an annual rate of 9.6 per cent in May, well above the 12-month average of 6.9 per cent. The figure was also more than double the overall retail growth rate of 3.9 per cent, the slowest in six months, highlighting how rising food prices are now the main driver of overall inflation.May’s pace of overall retail spending was dragged down by non-food sales, which remained largely flat at 0.7 per cent. BRC data is not corrected for the pace of price changes, suggesting that consumers bought fewer goods than in May 2022. Paul Martin, UK head of retail at KPMG, said the grocery sector was the “fastest growing part of the consumer wallet”, which meant that consumers were “having to spend more . . . in the one area that is getting disproportionately more expensive”.UK inflation declined less than expected between March and April, from 10.1 per cent to 8.7 per cent, according to official data published last month. In April, food prices rose at an annual rate of 19.1 per cent, only marginally down from a 45-year high of 19.2 per cent in March.Martin added that retailers would “be hoping that inflation levels in the wider economy continue to move in the right direction in order to boost much-needed consumer confidence”.Separate data from Barclays, which monitors almost half of all UK credit and debit card transactions, also showed fast-rising supermarket spending, up 9.4 per cent in May. In addition to high food inflation, the bank attributed the increase in grocery spending to parties to mark the Coronation bank holiday weekend and Eurovision Song Contest. Spending at pubs and on takeaway meals also continued to perform well, posting rises of 6.4 per cent and 13 per cent. But expenditure in restaurants and on furniture and electronics all contracted compared with the year before, with purchases of household goods and clothing down 4.2 per cent and 5.1 per cent respectively compared with May 2022.

Overall consumer spending rose only 3.6 per cent, according to Barclays, well below the rate of inflation and down from 4.3 per cent in April. Esme Harwood, director at Barclays, said many consumers were “having to forgo discretionary purchases to offset rising food prices, with clothing and restaurants most impacted”.Meanwhile, spending on fuel fell 10.7 per cent, the bank said, reflecting the decline in energy costs since May last year, when gas and petrol prices soared after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Silvia Ardagna, head of European economics research at Barclays, said the drop had helped the UK avoid a technical recession — defined as two consecutive quarters of economic contraction. But she added that “the forward-looking outlook remains one in which the economy is likely to stagnate”. More