Flash Briefing: Zuma abuse of SA Intelligence; Deutsche/Commerzbank talk merger; Ethiopia Airline plane crashes

By Alec Hogg

In today’s global business headlines:

  • A Boeing 737 MAX operated by Africa’s leading Ethiopian Airline crashed killing all 157 on board, just six minutes after leaving Addis Ababa on yesterday’s scheduled flight to Nairobi. Confirmed among those who died are 32 Kenyans, 18 Canadians, 8 Americans and citizens of France, China and the UK. The aircraft, which was only four months old, had landed just hours before from Johannesburg. This is the second fatal crash of a 737 MAX, the updated version of Boeing’s best-selling single aisle plane. In October last year, an identical plane operated by Lion Air crashed into the Java Sea 11 minutes after take-off, killing all 189 people on board. October’s accident focused attention on a new stall-prevention system which Boeing designed for the plane. Ethiopian Airlines is the continent’s largest, having quadrupled passenger numbers four-fold in the last decade to the current 10m a year. The airline last suffered a fatal crash nine years ago.
  • Germany’s two biggest money lenders, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, have agreed to hold merger discussions after both have suffered extended performance and share price declines. Insiders say Deutsche’s CEO Christian Sewing has finally dropped his opposition to a deal that large shareholders in both companies have been proposing for some months to reverse their flagging fortunes. German government officials have also been encouraging a merger between the banks to support a policy of creating National Champions in financial and other industries. Doing so is regarded as the best way to counter the consolidated global power of American and Chinese competitors. Analysts believe the two banks would have to cut between 30,000 and 40,000 jobs in Germany alone for a merger to make economic sense.
  • The respected Pew Research Centre’s investigation into 11 leading emerging markets concludes that over half the adults either own or have access to a smartphone – and over 90% of them use social media like Facebook and messaging Apps like WhatsApp. The vast majority of those who participated in the 11 nation survey say mobile phones and social media have been good for society and for them personally, with education highlighted as the biggest plus. Among those which access to a smartphone, South Africa ranked fourth of those surveyed at 63%. WhatsApp is the favoured messaging vehicle for 77% of adult South Africans, ranking the country second only to the 96% of Lebanon. It is in the middle of the 11 country pack with three quarters of adults saying they use the internet, but near the bottom on convenient access points with only a third of those doing so from a computer or tablet at home.
  • In other South African news, the trend to greater transparency accelerated over the weekend with the release of a critical report by the High-Level panel on the State Security Agency. The 10-person panel chaired by former Safety and Security minister Dr Sydney Mufamadi recommends a total overhaul of the country’s intelligence and security architecture. The report’s key finding is that for the past decade or more “there has been a serious politicisation of the intelligence community…resulting in an almost complete disregard for the Constitution…to serve the political and personal interests of particular individuals.” Leading those who abused the SSA is former president Jacob Zuma.
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