Aurelia Butler

The trade pact would remove tariffs for 51% of New Zealand’s exports to the region from day one and deliver duty-free access for 99% of New Zealand’s exports over 10 years, New Zealand Trade Minister Todd McClay said in a statement late on Thursday. “Successfully concluding a trade agreement with the GCC has been a long-standing ambition for successive governments for almost two decades,” McClay said in Doha. The statement did not specify when the trade pact will become effective.The agreement with the Gulf states comes after New Zealand reached a trade deal with the United Arab Emirates in September. Trade between New Zealand and the GCC is worth more than NZ$3 billion ($1.79 billion) annually. The Pacific island nation exported NZ$2.6 billion to the Middle Eastern member countries in the year to June 2024, which included NZ$1.8 billion of dairy, official data showed.($1 = 1.6734 New Zealand dollars) More

Benchmark natural gas prices remained subdued during much of the quarter, hurt by high storage levels and tepid demand. The U.S. Energy Information Administration expects U.S. gas production to decline in 2024, the first time since 2020, as producers like Coterra have reduced their output after prices touched multi-decade lows. The company’s average sales price for natural gas, excluding hedges, fell to $1.30 per thousand cubic feet (mcf) from $1.80 per mcf a year earlier. Oil prices also fell 8.4% to $74.04 per barrel on demand woes. Total production fell marginally to 669,100 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) from 670,300 boepd, as declines in natural gas output were mostly offset by a 22.2% rise in oil production. Coterra has reallocated resources to oil-heavy Permian and Anadarko basins from the country’s largest gas producing region, Marcellus shale, following the slump in natural gas prices this year. The company, however, raised 2024 production forecast to a range of 660,000 to 675,000 boepd, up 1% at midpoint compared to its earlier projections, primarily backed by strong oil production.Its shares rose 1.8% in after-market trade.The company also forecast oil production to grow at 5% annually for the next two years.But it said total equivalent production growth would be in the range of zero to 5% until 2026.Coterra’s third-quarter net income fell 22% to $252 million, compared to the year-ago quarter.Its adjusted profit of 32 cents per share came in below market estimate of 34 cents, according to data compiled by LSEG. More

(Reuters) – A look at the day ahead in Asian markets. Market sentiment in Asia will be fragile at best on Friday as high and rising bond yields sink their teeth into risky assets, and worries about escalating AI costs appear to slam the brakes on the megacap, Big Tech rally.There probably won’t be any positive spillover from Wall Street after the S&P and Nasdaq on Thursday posted their steepest one-day losses in two months.However, shares in Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) rose sharply in after-hours trading following their earnings reports on Thursday, but Apple shares (NASDAQ:AAPL) dipped. Traders will likely play it safe ahead of U.S. employment data on Friday and ahead of the weekend.There’s a sprinkling of potentially market-moving events in Asia on Friday, namely purchasing managers index reports from several countries including China, Indonesian inflation, and Japanese earnings from Mitsui, Nomura, Mitsubishi and others.Perhaps more importantly though, the so-called ‘bond vigilantes’ are flexing their muscles again, pushing up yields across the developed world – with the possible exception of Canada – in an attempt to enforce some degree of discipline on what they consider fiscally lax governments.A bearish narrative coalescing around three main facets – fiscal slippage, huge debt supply coming down the pike, and sticky inflation resulting from higher spending – is dominating bond market sentiment right now.Yields are on the rise, with UK gilts feeling the heat most in the last 24 hours following Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ debut budget on Wednesday. And on Thursday, the Bank of Japan kept rates on hold but left the door open to a near-term hike.For markets in Asia, U.S. bonds are what matter most. And only days away from the U.S. presidential election the signs are flashing amber, if not red – implied volatility and the ‘term premium’ are the highest in a year, and the 10-year yield has risen more after the first cut in this Fed easing cycle than any since 1989. If that wasn’t bad enough for Asian markets, the dollar just clocked its biggest monthly rise in two and a half years. Most Asian stock markets lost ground in October and the MSCI Asia/Pacific ex-Japan index fell 4.5%. Chinese stocks lost more than 3% in October, perhaps unsurprising given the previous month’s 21% rise, while the weak yen has helped Japan’s Nikkei 225 index post a monthly gain of around 3%.Given the nervous global backdrop, however, it would not be a surprise to see Japanese stocks retreat on Friday, regardless of the exchange rate. Asia’s main data point on Friday is China’s ‘unofficial’ manufacturing PMI. This follows the Bureau of Statistics PMI reports on Thursday that showed manufacturing activity crept back into expansion territory in October for the first time since April.Here are key developments that could provide more direction to markets on Friday:- Reaction to Apple, Amazon results- China PMI (October)- Indonesia inflation (October) More

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Parents who employ nannies could see their annual childcare bills jump by more than £1,000 from April under measures announced in this week’s Budget.The chancellor’s key tax-raising policy will see employers’ national insurance contributions increase from 13.5 per cent to 15 per cent next year, with the salary threshold at which employers pay contributions dropping from £9,100 to just £5,000.While this move was aimed at businesses, parents who employ nannies for their childcare arrangements will also be impacted.Jenni Bond, managing director of Nannytax, a payroll service for parents, said the extra NI charges would add more than £1,000 to the annual cost of hiring a nanny, based on the average salary of £46,228 for nannies in London.The additional costs could be higher still, said Bond, if the number of hours the nanny was working placed their hourly income below the level of April’s new national minimum wage.Although the chancellor extended protection to small businesses by boosting the employment allowance to enable them to offset higher payroll costs, employers of domestic staff including nannies, cleaners and gardeners are exempt from using it. The rules exclude workers who are being employed in a personal capacity to support the running of a household. “The cost of childcare is astronomical, and domestic employers should absolutely be included [in the employment allowance],” said Bond.Joeli Brearley, founder of the charity Pregnant Then Screwed which campaigns for more affordable childcare, said the NI increase would “hit working parents hard, particularly mothers, who still bear the brunt of childcare costs”. “For many, employing a nanny isn’t a luxury but a necessity to keep their careers going. With this added expense, we risk pushing more parents — especially single parents and mothers — out of the workforce.”Bond said that increases in the minimum wage, announced on Tuesday, would also pile “on top of those increases parents would have expected”. The national living wage for over-21s will rise from £11.44 to £12.21 in April 2025.199The number of children’s nurseries forced to close in the year to September 2024, according to the National Day Nurseries AssociationThe NI hit to parents with nannies comes as parents grapple with the costs of childcare after a surge in nursery closures and a push for workers to return to the office after the pandemic. The yearly salary for nannies outside London rose by 12 per cent year-on-year to £40,326 in 2023-24, according to Nannytax’s annual salary index report. In London, annual salaries for nannies rose by 8 per cent to £46,228.In the year to September 2024, 199 nurseries were forced to close, according to the National Day Nurseries Association, a charity representing nurseries across the UK.“A lot of this comes down to chronic underfunding, particularly for three and four-year-olds,” said Purnima Tanuku, chief executive of NDNA, in September.The Treasury declined to comment. More