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BENGALURU (Reuters) – Ford Motor (NYSE:F) said on Friday it plans to restart manufacturing at its factory in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, two years after it ended production in India, the world’s third-largest car market.The major U.S. carmaker said it intends to use its shuttered Chennai plant in Tamil Nadu for manufacturing for export but did not give details of what it will build. Ford previously built both cars and engines at the factory.”The move will see the facility re-purposed to focus on manufacturing for export to global markets,” Ford said in its statement.Ford stopped producing cars in India for domestic sale in 2021 after struggling to boost volumes and pulled the plug on export car production there in 2022, effectively exiting a huge market dominated by Asian rivals.The automaker still builds engines in India for export at its factory in the western state of Gujarat. If it decides to restart car manufacturing in Chennai, it would mark a re-entry for the brand’s vehicle business.”This step underscores our ongoing commitment to India as we intend to leverage the manufacturing expertise available in Tamil Nadu to serve new global markets,” Kay Hart, president, international markets group at Ford said in a LinkedIn post.Hart said the company has submitted a letter of intent to the state government and details about the type of manufacturing and export markets will be shared later.Ford’s comments come two days after Tamil Nadu’s chief minister said that the two were in talks to restart manufacturing in the state for exports.The automobile hub of Chennai is home to several carmakers such as Hyundai Motor (OTC:HYMTF), Nissan (OTC:NSANY) Motor and Renault (EPA:RENA). New entrants like Vinfast and Tata Motors (NYSE:TTM)’ Jaguar Land Rover plan to build new factories there to construct electric vehicles.Ford’s return to India will lead to an increase in its workforce by up to 3,000 people in the next few years from the 12,000 people it currently employs, Hart said. More
HONG KONG (Reuters) – Chinese regulators on Friday hit PwC’s auditing unit in mainland China with a six-month business suspension and a record fine of 441 million yuan ($62 million) over the firm’s audit of troubled property developer China Evergrande (HK:3333) Group.The business suspension and fines are the toughest ever penalty received by a Big Four accounting firm in China. The regulators’ action puts the spotlight the Big Four’s activities in the country and on how big a role they play in auditing major Chinese companies. Chinese authorities have been examining PwC’s role in the accounting of Hengda Real Estate, the name of Evergrande’s mainland unit, since the China Securities Regulatory Commission accused the developer in March of a $78 billion fraud over a period of two years through 2020.”We are disappointed by PwC Zhong Tian’s audit work of Hengda, which fell unacceptably below the standards we expect of member firms of the PwC network,” PwC network, the alliance of PwC’s global member units, said in a statement.Here are some details on the Big Four’s activities in China * THE BIG FOUR AUDITING FIRMS IN CHINAThe Big Four accounting firms – PwC, EY, Deloitte, and KPMG – were the top four auditors, ranked by revenue in China in 2022, based on a report by the Chinese Institute of Certified Public Accountants, an industry association.The four firms audit 18 of China’s 20 biggest state-owned companies by assets, or 95.1% of the total assets as of 2023, research published in July showed. The research was led by professor Chen Hanwen from University of International Business and Economics and professor Han Hongling from Zhejiang University.Their research also found the Big Four audited the majority of China’s biggest banks, insurers and brokerages in 2023, with their audited assets making up 63.2% of the total 461 trillion yuan worth of total assets of China’s financial institutions.In total, the Big Four audited 12% of the companies listed on Shanghai Stock Exchange and 5% of companies on Shenzhen bourse by this March, PwC said on its official website.* HOW HAVE THE BIG FOUR ATTRACTED CHINA BUSINESS? The Big Four firm’s strong market position in China is similar to the level they enjoy in the U.S., Jackson Johnson, president and founder of Johnson Global Advisory said. Johnson Global Advisory is an audit quality advisory firm based in Washington, D.C., with clients globally, including in Greater China.Johnson said this market position was built on the Big Four’s workforce, experience, and global resources, which “the next tier” of local Chinese firms could hardly compete with. The Big Four are also able to attract high quality staff, he said.If major Chinese companies hire the Big Four as their auditors for financial statements this can bring down financing costs, the research by Chen and Han showed.Their research also showed that the Big Four accounting firms handled 23 of the 25 biggest initial public offering deals on China’s A-share market by the end of 2023.* PREVIOUS REGULATORY ACTION AGAINST BIG FOUR IN CHINAChina fined auditing firm Deloitte 211.9 million yuan ($30 million) in March 2023 for failing to perform its duty in assessing the asset quality of China Huarong Asset Management Co Ltd.The finance ministry at that time said Deloitte had failed to discover the real situation of the underlying assets in its audit and ignored the approval compliance for Huarong’s major investment matters.Deloitte said at the time it respected and accepted the ministry’s decision.($1 = 7.0940 Chinese yuan renminbi) More
LONDON/SINGAPORE (Reuters) -The dollar fell on Friday to its lowest level this year against the Japanese yen after media reports reignited the debate about an outsized Federal Reserve rate cut next week.The U.S. currency fell 1% to 140.36 yen, the lowest since late December, and last traded 0.7% lower at 140.87. The euro, pound and Swiss franc made gains against the dollar.U.S. economic data this week appeared to support the case for a typical 25 basis point (bp) cut next week, with the measure of consumer price inflation that strips out volatile food and energy prices rising more than expected in August.However, market analysts said reports by the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times saying a 50 basis point cut is still an option, and comments from a former Fed official arguing for an outsized cut, caused a shift in market expectations.”A couple of articles were published in the Wall Street Journal and the FT suggesting that a 50 bp move was still in play, which has led markets to once again re-evaluate their expectations,” said Henry Allen, macro strategist at Deutsche Bank.”That was something of a surprise to investors, who had been increasingly pricing in 25 bps, not least after the core CPI (inflation) print was a bit stronger than expected on Wednesday.”Traders were assigning a roughly 40% chance of a 50 bp cut by the Fed next Wednesday, up from around 25% on Thursday and 15% on Wednesday, according to money market pricing.Former New York Federal Reserve President Bill Dudley said on Friday there was a strong case for a 50 bp cut, arguing rates were currently 150-200 basis points above the so-called neutral rate for the U.S. economy, where policy is neither restrictive nor accommodative. “Why don’t you just get started?” he said.The euro was last up 0.11% at $1.1086 after rising 0.57% on Thursday after the European Central Bank cut interest rates by 25 bps but ECB President Christine Lagarde dampened expectations for another cut next month.Expectations that interest rates will be higher than previously expected tend to boost a currency by making fixed income assets in the country or region more attractive, and vice versa.The euro “is eyeing $1.11 again after the combined support of a not-dovish-enough European Central Bank and rising dovish bets on the Fed,” said Francesco Pesole, currency strategist at ING.The dollar index, which tracks the currency against six peers, was 0.1% lower at 101.06.Sterling was little changed at $1.3119, around its highest in a week. The Bank of England is expected to hold interest rates at 5% next week after kicking off easing with a 25 basis point reduction in August.The dollar fell 0.51% against the Swiss franc, which like the yen is particularly sensitive to expectations about Fed policy and U.S. bond yields.Investors were also looking to the Bank of Japan’s interest rate decision next Friday, where it’s expected to keep rates steady at 0.25%.BOJ board member Naoki Tamura said on Thursday the central bank must raise rates to at least 1% as soon as the second half of the next fiscal year but added that it would likely raise rates slowly and in several stages. More
HONG KONG (Reuters) -Chinese regulators on Friday hit PwC’s auditing unit in mainland China with a six-month business suspension and a record fine of 441 million yuan ($62 million) over the firm’s audit of troubled property developer China Evergrande (HK:3333) Group.Delivering a strong rebuke to the Big Four firm, China’s securities regulator said its investigation found that PwC Zhong Tian LLP “turned a blind eye” to and “even condoned” Evergrande’s fraud while auditing the annual results of the developer’s onshore flagship unit – Hengda Real Estate – in 2019 and 2020. “PwC has seriously eroded the basis of law and good faith, and damaged investors’ interest,” said the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) in a statement.Chinese authorities have been examining PwC’s role in Evergrande’s accounting practices since the CSRC accused the developer in March of a $78-billion fraud over a period of two years through 2020. PwC audited Evergrande for almost 14 years until early 2023.The business suspension and fines are the toughest ever penalty received by a Big Four accounting firm in China, and come against the backdrop of an exodus of clientele and layoffs at the firm in recent months.The move is set to cloud PwC’s prospects in the world’s No.2 economy. PwC Zhong Tian, the registered accounting entity and the main onshore arm of PwC in China, was the country’s top-earning auditor in 2022, according to the latest official data. “The cost is enormous in reputation, affecting the ability to get new business in China beyond the fine. In the short run, PwC’s market share will decline in China, benefiting the other big three auditing firms,” said Gary Ng, Asia-Pacific senior economist at Natixis. As part of the penalties, PwC Zhong Tian will be barred from signing off on certain key documents for clients in mainland China such as results and IPO applications in the next six months.The business suspension will also affect the unit as a whole from taking on new state-owned or domestically-listed clients in the next three years, in accordance with Chinese regulations.Last year, domestic regulators reiterated state-owned firms and mainland China-listed companies should be “extremely cautious” about hiring auditors that have received regulatory fines or other penalties in the past three years.”We are disappointed by PwC Zhong Tian’s audit work of Hengda, which fell unacceptably below the standards we expect of member firms of the PwC network,” PwC network, the alliance of PwC’s global member units, said in a statement. The firm said as part of its “accountability and remedial actions”, PwC China’s territory senior partner Daniel Li had stepped down and Hemione Hudson (NYSE:HUD), the firm’s global risk and regulatory leader, had taken over from him.’CONDONED FRAUD’ The business suspension was imposed by China’s Ministry of Finance (MOF) which also ordered the closure of PwC Zhong Tian’s branch in Guangzhou – which according to sources led the audit work on Evergrande. The ministry also imposed a fine of 116 million yuan on the firm for its auditing failure of Hengda in 2018, according to an MOF statement.The CSRC said in its statement it had fined PwC Zhong Tian 325 million yuan, close to the total amount of penalties imposed by the regulator on over 50 auditors in the past three years. The CSRC probe found that 88% of PwC’s observation records on Evergrande’s real estate projects in 2019 and 2020 were inauthentic or untrue, making its audit working papers “severely unreliable”. The regulator pointed out PwC’s on-site inspection of the developer’s properties failed to flag problems – some residential properties that the auditor considered ready for home deliveries still remained as “vacant land” when the CSRC inspected later.PwC also deliberately excluded properties that Evergrande marked as “not allowed to visit” from audit samples, it added. “PwC has, to a certain extent, covered up and even condoned Evergrande’s financial fraud and fraudulent issuance of corporate bonds,” said the CSRC statement. “It (PwC) has to be severely punished according to law.”A Reuters calculation based on filings showed more than 50 Chinese firms have in recent months either dropped the firm as their auditor or cancelled plans to hire it, following the launch of the regulatory investigation into the firm.PwC had about 400 Chinese clients, listed at home or in offshore markets such as Hong Kong or New York, in March this year, including tech behemoths Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) and Tencent.($1 = 7.0942 Chinese yuan renminbi) More
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Thousands of workers who build commercial planes in the Seattle and Portland, Ore., areas rejected a tentative contract recommended by union leaders.Thousands of machinists and aerospace workers walked off the job on Friday, after rejecting a proposal that would have delivered raises and improvements to benefits but fell short of what the union initially sought.Lindsey Wasson for The New York TimesThousands of Boeing workers walked off the job on Friday after rejecting a contract offer from the company, a potentially costly disruption as Boeing tries to increase airplane production after a safety crisis.The strike, the first at Boeing in 16 years, is expected to bring operations to a halt in the Seattle area, home to most of Boeing’s commercial plane manufacturing. The slowdown could also further disrupt the company’s fragile supply chain.Kelly Ortberg, the company’s new chief executive, had urged employees to approve the deal. “A strike would put our shared recovery in jeopardy, further eroding trust with our customers,” he said in a video statement on Wednesday.Boeing plays a substantial role in the U.S. economy. It employs almost 150,000 people across the country — nearly half of them in Washington State — and is one of the nation’s largest exporters. The company, which also makes military jets, rockets, spacecraft and Air Force One, is a global symbol of America’s manufacturing strength.The union said the strike vote passed by 96 percent, well above the two-thirds required to initiate a walkout, after 95 percent rejected the proposed contract.The contract had been agreed upon by union leaders and company management on Sunday after months of talks. It included many gains for workers, but fell short of what the union initially sought. Union leaders had hoped to get bigger raises and other concessions from the company, but said it was still “the best contract we’ve negotiated in our history.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
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