By Alec Hogg
In today’s global business headlines:
- British Prime Minister Theresa May is headed for more Brexit talks with the EU after doing a reading about unity from the bible at the Commonwealth Service hosted by her monarch at Westminster Abbey yesterday. Mrs May faces another vote on her Brexit deal in the UK’s Parliament today. She flew to Strasbourg to meet with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker in a last-minute effort to secure concessions. After talks between the parties deadlocked on Sunday, Mrs May needs a break-through on how to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland to reverse Parliament’s 230 vote defeat of her previous proposal in January. Lawmakers remained sceptical of her chances. The UK government says if Mrs May’s Brexit deal is defeated again today there will be two more votes this week. The one tomorrow will be on whether to endorse a “no-deal” Brexit; the second on Thursday whether to push out the deadline from March 29. Mrs May has also been facing mounting pressure to quit from the right wing of her party. The Conservative Eurosceptic rebels say only once she steps down will they vote with other members of the party.
- Newmont Mining has managed to fend off a hostile takeover bid by agreeing to inject its prized Nevada gold mines into a Barrick-controlled joint venture. Barrick’s chief executive, South African Mark Bristow, told Bloomberg that as part of the agreement all hostilities will cease for the next two years. Barrick said the merger of the Nevada properties would unlock an annual saving of $500m a year in the first five years. Bristow said the agreement has been 20 years in the making: “We are finally taking down the fences to operate Nevada as a single entity to deliver full value to both sets of shareholders.” Barrick will own 61.5% of the joint venture, up from 55% offered by Newmont last week. Bristow’s business will also have management control of the merged operation. Last month the Fraser Institute ranked Nevada as the friendliest jurisdiction for mining worldwide.
- The US Department of Justice is hitting major obstacles in its efforts to bring former Credit Suisse executives to account for Mozambique’s crooked $2bn Tuna Bond deal. The Wall Street Journal reports that after having been released on bail, the three bankers are fighting extradition from London to the US. And Mozambique has arrested former government officials and their associates named in the indictment, including the former president’s son, effectively blocking their extradition to America. Mozambique has also requested that its former finance minister Manuel Chang, currently in a South African jail, be sent home rather than be extradited to America. The bankers, Chang and executives of an Abu Dhabi ship building firm Privinvest are accused of having stolen at least $200m of Mozambique’s $2bn loan through bribes and kickbacks. The case is part of the US’s new strategy of curbing global corruption by targeting individuals rather than companies.
- South African airline company Comair, which operates in the country through the British Airways and Kulula brands, has grounded all of its Boeing 737 MAX aircraft in the wake of Sunday’s Ethiopia Airlines crash which killed 157 people. Comair executive director Wrennelle Stander said while the airline is confident in the inherent safety of the MAX, it has decided not to schedule the aircraft while it consults other operators, Boeing and technical experts. Yesterday, China’s Civil Aviation Administration ordered the country’s 13 airlines to suspend the use of all 737 MAX aircraft, citing similarities between Sunday’s crash and the one in Indonesia last October. Indonesia and Ethiopia have also stopped all 737 MAX flights. Boeing’s share price dropped 6.5% yesterday as investors feared that fallout from the crash would lead to cancellations among standing orders of 5,000 new aircraft, of which only 350 have thus far been delivered.
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