Aurelia Butler

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanon’s telecom duopoly, once cash cows for the state, used to allocate most of their spending on wages, rent and infrastructure.Now revenues have nosedived, and the biggest cost for Alfa and Touch is diesel for the power generators that – with the country’s economic meltdown causing national blackouts on top of a currency crash – they use to run the creaking telecom network.”We are in crisis management mode without being able to look at all at long-term problems or see what the overall solutions are because we’re distracted by daily matters,” Telecoms Minister Johnny Corm told Reuters. “We are living day by day.”While global telecoms operators compete on offers for subscribers or building 5G networks, Lebanon’s mobile firms – which both returned to state hands in 2020 – are focused on more mundane matters such as stopping the regular theft of their network tower cables.”Every day there is a robbery,” Corm said. “It has reached the point that we contact municipalities to ask for help because the security services no longer have the capacity.”Last year, when Lebanon’s ailing power grid was just about on its feet, generator fuel made up 7% of the telecom sector’s expenses. That is projected to soar to two thirds of the budget this year, the minister said. Wages are forecast to fall to 10% of costs from one third – a measure of how revenues are now being eaten up by costs and how employees’ spending power has shrunk.In dollar terms, those revenues are just 5% of their level before the crisis erupted in 2019, showing the extent of the collapse of the Lebanese pound, which has made imported equipment cripplingly expensive.The minister said Touch made the equivalent of $850 million in 2018, when Lebanon’s pound was at 1,500 to the dollar. Based on the current exchange rate of 31,000, that shrank to the equivalent of $45.5 million in 2021.Corm said the companies had to review prices to keep operating and avoid draining the state’s already almost empty coffers.However, any price adjustment needs cabinet approval, he said, which adds complications as ministers have not met for three months amid a dispute over a probe into Beirut’s huge port blast in 2020.Internet outages and weak mobile signals plague the system, but Corm suggested the outlook for any improvement was bleak, with as many as half of the two firms’ employees failing to turn up for work. For some, wages don’t even cover transport costs.Revenues from telecoms were in decline before the crisis, Corm said, a fall often blamed on corruption. But the minister said the impact of graft was now dwarfed by the economy’s collapse. “When there was a lot of corruption there was a lot of money,” he said. “Today there is no money left.” More

“I expect us to complete our taper of asset purchases by March. Then, we can probably expect a rate hike of 25 basis points,” Harker said in prepared remarks to a virtual event hosted by the Philadelphia Business Journal. “We could very well continue to raise rates throughout the year as the data evolve,” Harker added, as the central bank prepares to more swiftly dial back stimulus it put in place almost two years ago to nurse the economy through the COVID-19 pandemic.Earlier on Thursday, Harker said in an interview with the Financial Times that he would currently support three interest rate hikes this year, starting from March, and would be open to more if inflation worsens.Harker’s backing adds to a steady drumbeat of Fed policymakers this week who have signaled that a March interest rate rise is now firmly on the table with inflation near a 40-year high and well above the central bank’s 2% flexible target, and employment closing in on pre-pandemic levels.Investors currently see a 83% probability that the Fed will raise its benchmark overnight lending rate, still set at the near-zero level, at its March 15-16 policy meeting, according to CME Group’s FedWatch program.Earlier this week, Fed Chair Jerome Powell also threw his weight behind a firm tightening of monetary policy this year, arguing the strong economy, despite the surge in cases due to the Omicron variant, no longer “needs or wants” as much stimulus as he flagged coming rate hikes as a reduction in the Fed’s $8 trillion balance sheet.As a precursor to raising interest rates, the Fed has already accelerated the reduction of its monthly purchases of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, introduced to support the pandemic-hit economy. It is now set to finish tapering that program completely by mid-March. More

Health Minister Carolina Darias said that from Saturday antigen tests would be sold to the public for a maximum of 2.94 euros ($3.37), bringing prices closer in line with other European countries.”Our objective was first to stabilise the supply after demand increased by a factor of over 1,000 – and then we focused on regulating prices,” Darias told reporters.Spain had sporadic shortages of antigen tests throughout December amid a sudden spike in demand because of Omicron’s high transmissibility and people wanting to get tests during the year-end festivities.Antigen tests are currently are only available for sale in pharmacies in Spain, despite calls from supermarket lobby groups and some health experts to allow their sale in supermarkets, as neighbouring Portugal has done.Carolina Darias added that the interval between people receiving the last dose of the vaccine and the booster shot will be cut to five months from six months.”Reducing the period between last dose and booster is in consonance with the countries in our region, and is part of a strategic response which is constantly evolving,” Darias said, noting that the vaccine drive would proceed from older to younger age groups. More

(Reuters) -Countryside Properties’ shares slumped nearly 28% on Thursday after the British housebuilder said its first-quarter performance was below expectations and Chief Executive Iain McPherson was stepping down immediately.The company forecast adjusted operating profit for the quarter more than halved, contrasting with upbeat news from rivals. Britain’s undersupplied housing market has stayed resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic, helped by low mortgage rates and government support measures for buyers. Countryside said Chairman John Martin would conduct a review of the company’s developments, without elaborating. The company’s shares, listed on London’s midcap index, hit their lowest in more than a year.Peel Hunt analysts said in a note the review could find internal operational problems, since the company reported robust market conditions and said the supply of materials and labour had not gotten worse. Martin will stand in as interim CEO until a replacement for McPherson is found. The outgoing CEO joined the firm in late 2014 and became CEO at the beginning of 2020.The homebuilder’s shares have fallen 12% in the two years since, with Martin taking over as chairman from David Howell last year, following pressure from U.S.-based investor Browning West.. On Thursday, Countryside also appointed Browning West partner Peter Lee to its board, while reporting adjusted operating profit of 16.5 million pounds ($22.7 million) for the first quarter, compared with 36.6 million pounds a year earlier. Britain’s No.2 housebuilder Persimmon (LON:PSN) forecast higher profit margins for the 2021 fiscal year on Thursday, and smaller rivals MJ Gleeson and Vistry both reported healthy trading figures this week on robust demand.Countryside, which last year had flagged delays to the start of work at its sites after coronavirus-induced lockdowns, has projects across London, north and central England among other areas, and is a key player in the affordable housing sector.($1 = 0.7276 pounds) More

“We are relatively confident for 2022 but we know that it’s a volatile and uncertain world,” CEO Luca de Meo told journalists at a company event, adding that the carmaker’s restructuring efforts were running ahead of their schedule.Shares in Renault (PA:RENA) edged up after the publication of the comments midday on Wednesday and traded 3.9 % higher at 1231 GMT, topping France’s bluechip CAC40 index which was down 0.55%.Renault’s finance chief at the same event said that the carmaker was hoping to pay back as soon as possible the remainder of a 3 billion euros ($3.44 billion) loan backed by the French state, Renault’s biggest shareholder. The company also said it would step up the ambitions to shift its core Renault brand towards e-mobility, targeting to produce a “100 % electric” fleet by 2030, from 90% previously announced. ($1 = 0.8724 euros) More

(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures were muted on Thursday ahead of jobless claims data and fresh inflation figures that are expected to give more cues on the Federal Reserve’s tightening policy, while Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL) led gains among carriers on strong earnings.Both jobless claims and producer prices data at 08:30 a.m. ET come after Wall Street eked out slim gains on Wednesday when consumer prices largely met market expectations despite hitting a 40-year high.The producer price index (PPI) for final demand is expected to rise 0.4% in December, compared with a 0.8% increase in November. In the 12 months through December, the PPI likely accelerated 9.8% after shooting up 9.6% in November.Delta Air Lines gained 2.2% in premarket trading after beating estimates for fourth-quarter earnings and said it has recovered nearly 80% of its 2019 pre-pandemic level revenue.Shares of peers American Airlines (NASDAQ:AAL) and United Airlines advanced 1.6% each.More U.S. companies will report results on the final quarter of 2021 in the coming weeks, with year-over-year earnings growth from S&P 500 companies expected to be at 22.4%, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) is due to report on Friday along with Citigroup (NYSE:C) and Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC). Results from big technology and other mega-cap companies start next week, with Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) due to report on Jan. 20.Banks have been among the best performers since the start of the new year, with retail investors also raising their exposure to bank stocks ahead of the earnings announcements, according to Vanda (NASDAQ:VNDA) Research’s weekly report on retail flows.Major U.S. tech firms edged lower ahead of a White House meeting with their top executives, including representatives from Alphabet-owned Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN), to discuss software security.Also on the radar, Fed Governor Lael Brainard will appear at a Congressional hearing later in the day for her nomination as deputy chair.Wells Fargo joined Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank (DE:DBKGn) in forecasting an aggressive tightening of U.S. monetary policy in the coming months and estimating the Fed to raise interest rates four times this year. At 7:03 a.m. ET, Dow e-minis were up 38 points, or 0.11%, S&P 500 e-minis were up 0.75 points, or 0.02%, and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were down 3.5 points, or 0.02%.Recently listed satellite launch service provider Virgin Orbit gained 2.1% after tweeting that it is on track for its first commercial satellite launch on Thursday between 1300 and 1530 Pacific Time. More