Aurelia Butler

Yoon was impeached in a second vote by South Korea’s opposition-led parliament over his short-lived attempt to impose martial law, which shocked the nation.KCNA had reported for the first time on Dec. 11 South Korea’s martial law crisis which was sparked on Dec. 3. On Monday, KCNA did not offer much commentary, but called Yoon’s defiant televised remarks on Dec. 12 “a press statement spliced with lies and obstinacy” and noted the rally in front of South Korean parliament that called for Yoon’s impeachment. It also noted media reports on various South Korean military and police officials’ suspension from duties and ongoing investigation into Yoon. After the impeachment vote passed on Saturday, South Korea’s acting defence minister, Kim Seon-ho, called on the military to maintain preparedness and ordered commanding officers to work promptly to stabilise their troop commands.On Saturday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia has begun using North Korean troops in significant numbers for the first time to conduct assaults on Ukrainian forces battling to hold an enclave in Russia’s Kursk region. More

(Reuters) – A look at the day ahead in Asian markets. Asia kicks off the final full trading week of 2024 with the monthly ‘China data dump’ landing on Monday, and with investors leaning toward keeping the stock market bull run going as central banks around the world go into easing mode.Several G10 central banks last week cut interest rates or, in the case of Australia, signaled it may do so soon, and authorities in China pledged to dive even deeper into monetary and fiscal stimulus territory. This helped buoy risk appetite, despite the inclination to take chips off the table ahead of year-end and with Wall Street at record highs. Another wave of G10 central bank decisions, including from the Federal Reserve, will go a long way to determining whether that continues this week. A quarter point rate cut from the Fed is a near certainty, according to futures market pricing, while in Asia, the focus will be on the Bank of Japan.The BOJ is heading in the other direction, slowly ‘normalizing’ policy after years of zero interest rates. Could the stronger-than-expected ‘Tankan’ survey of business conditions last week seal a rate hike this week? Economist Phil Suttle thinks it should. “The question now is whether the BoJ has the confidence to make the move or whether …(Governor Kazuo) Ueda might prefer to wait (for what?). Importantly, rate normalization would be presented as a success, not as a problem,” Suttle wrote on Friday.Meanwhile, the South Korean won could come under further selling pressure after President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment on Saturday, the latest twist in a remarkable crisis sparked by his surprise decision to impose martial law on Dec. 3.Monday’s economic calendar in Asia is packed with potential market-moving releases, especially the clutch of Chinese economic indicators including industrial production, fixed asset investment, retail sales, house prices and unemployment.This comes days after Beijing said it will increase the budget deficit, issue more debt and loosen monetary policy to support growth. China is girding for more trade tensions with the U.S., and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Reuters on Friday that Washington won’t rule out sanctions on banks and further curbs on “dark fleet” tankers.Investors have welcomed Beijing’s stimulus announcements since September. But only time will tell if they will pull the economy out of a property sector bust and deflation, revive growth, and draw investment back into the country.Official data on Monday are expected to show that the annual rate of industrial production and fixed asset investment growth last month held steady, while retail sales growth dipped slightly.House price data for November also will be released after October’s 5.9% year-on-year fall was the steepest decline in almost 20 years.Here are key developments that could provide more direction to markets on Monday:- China ‘data dump’ (November)- Australia, India manufacturing PMIs (November)- Japan machinery orders (October) More

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MILAN (Reuters) -UniCredit on Friday filed its buyout offer for rival Banco BPM with Italy’s market regulator, and CEO Andrea Orcel said the price was adequate.The filing makes the 10-billion-euro ($10.5 billion) all-share offer, which UniCredit announced on Nov. 25, binding and sets a price floor. UniCredit also applied to relevant authorities for regulatory approval.Shares in Banco BPM closed at 7.846 euros on Friday, well above the 6.657 euros a share UniCredit is offering based on the bid’s exchange ratio, indicating investors are betting on an improvement of the proposal.”We consider our initial offer to Banco BPM shareholders to be fair and appropriate,” Orcel said in a statement.Any deal must create shareholder value and be superior to the return from any UniCredit share buyback, he said. An M&A veteran, Orcel has said he wants any deal to return at least 15%.In announcing the bid for BPM, Orcel had signalled that UniCredit could consider topping it up with cash down the road.”We remain committed to our disciplined approach to all M&A, with any transaction having to prove a strategic fit and meeting, or exceeding, our core financial metrics,” he said.While BPM has long been a target for UniCredit, Orcel, who built his fortune as a bank merger adviser, resisted buying BPM until now in part because of the M&A premium built into BPM’s share price, sources previously told Reuters.Accelerating domestic consolidation forced his hand.Orcel said BPM investors would fare better holding UniCredit shares due to “its far greater resiliency and diversification going into a challenging year and two-times higher total distribution yield.”UniCredit is offering 175 newly issued shares for every 1,000 BPM shares, a premium of just 0.5% to BPM share price prior to the bid.UniCredit says the terms are a 15% premium to BPM’s share price before BPM bid for fund manager Anima Holding on Nov. 6, a move that triggered gains in the stocks of both Anima and BPM.”Given the robustness of our approach, (the) premium put forward and the situation remaining the same to that existing at the time of our original offer, we are moving forward at such terms”, Orcel said.UniCredit has also invited BPM’s biggest shareholder Credit Agricole (OTC:CRARY) (CA) to sit down for talks that are widely expected to focus on commercial partnerships.CA partners with both BPM and UniCredit. To strengthen its negotiating position, CA has applied to the ECB to reach a 19.99% holding in BPM and used derivatives to raise its BPM stake to 15% from just below 10%. “We are in continuous discussions with all relevant stakeholders,” Orcel said.($1 = 0.9528 euros) More

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ABUJA (Reuters) – Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger will have a six-month grace period after their scheduled exit from West Africa’s main political and economic group next month during which the ECOWAS bloc will try to persuade them to stay, the bloc’s leaders agreed on Sunday. The summit of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was seen as a chance to address the impending withdrawal of the three countries on Jan. 29, a year after they jointly announced they would leave in a reversal of decades of regional integration.ECOWAS has so far failed in its goal to push them to reconsider, while the three countries in the insurgency-torn central Sahel region have set up their own alliance, sought ever-closer alignment in defence and other areas and mooted abandoning the West African currency union.While Jan. 29 remains the official withdrawal date, the effective date for their departure has been extended to July 29 – a transition period during which mediators from the bloc will seek “to bring the three member countries back to ECOWAS without prejudice,” commission president Oumar Touray said at the end of the summit. On Saturday, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso reaffirmed their decision to leave as irreversible and jointly declared that their territories would remain visa-free for all ECOWAS citizens post-exit.This move could be an effort to address warnings that their departure threatens the bloc’s freedom of movement and its common market of 400 million people.Their withdrawal would cap a tumultuous period for the Sahel, where a string of coups since 2020 has swept military authorities to power who have fostered closer ties with Russia at the expense of former colonial ruler France, and other one-time allies from the region and elsewhere. More