Business

By Medha Singh

(Reuters) – Crypto assets bled nearly $800 billion in market value over the past month, touching a low of $1.4 trillion on Tuesday, according to data site CoinMarketCap, as the end of easy monetary policy diminishes appetite for risk assets.

Bitcoin, which makes up for nearly 40% of the crypto market, hit a 10-month low earlier on Tuesday, before rebounding to $31,450, just six days after touching $40,000. It was more than 54% below its Nov. 10 all-time high of $69,000.

Digital asset prices have slumped, mirroring a plunge in equities on fears of aggressive interest rate hikes across the globe to stave off decades-high inflation. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was down 28% from its November 2021 record high.

Total crypto market value was at $2.2 trillion on April 2, well off of its all-time peak of $2.9 trillion in early November, as per CoinMarketCap.

“Bitcoin remains highly correlated to the broader economic conditions, which suggest the road ahead may unfortunately be a rocky one, at least for the time being,” blockchain data provider Glassnode said in a note.

Signs of weakness in stablecoins, typically a safer crypto currency, further spooked investors. TerraUSD, the world’s fourth-largest stablecoin, lost a third of its value on Tuesday as it lost its peg to the dollar.

Despite bitcoin’s price slump, funds and products linked to it posted inflows of $45 million last week as investors took advantage of price weakness, according to digital asset manager Coinshares in a report released on Monday.

“Enormous amount of liquidity that has inflated some of these cryptocurrencies,” said Sebastien Galy, senior macro strategist at Nordea Asset Management. He expects crypto, also correlated to high-growth stocks, to come under pressure as several central banks tighten their monetary policy.

(Reporting by Medha Singh and Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)

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The world is creeping closer to the warming threshold international agreements are trying to prevent, with nearly a 50-50 chance that Earth will temporarily hit that temperature mark within the next five years, teams of meteorologists across the globe predicted.

With human-made climate change continuing, there’s a 48% chance that the globe will reach a yearly average of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels of the late 1800s at least once between now and 2026, a bright red signal in climate change negotiations and science, a team of 11 different forecast centers predicted for the World Meteorological Organization late Monday.

The odds are inching up along with the thermometer. Last year, the same forecasters put the odds at closer to 40% and a decade ago it was only 10%.

The team, coordinated by the United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office, in their five-year general outlook said there is a 93% chance that the world will set a record for hottest year by the end of 2026. They also said there’s a 93% chance that the five years from 2022 to 2026 will be the hottest on record. Forecasters also predict the devastating fire-prone megadrought in the U.S. Southwest will keep going.

“We’re going to see continued warming in line with what is expected with climate change,” said UK Met Office senior scientist Leon Hermanson, who coordinated the report.

These forecasts are big picture global and regional climate predictions on a yearly and seasonal time scale based on long term averages and state of the art computer simulations. They are different than increasingly accurate weather forecasts that predict how hot or wet a certain day will be in specific places.

But even if the world hits that mark of 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial times — the globe has already warmed about 1.1 degrees (2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800s — that’s not quite the same as the global threshold first set by international negotiators in the 2015 Paris agreement. In 2018, a major United Nations science report predicted dramatic and dangerous effects on people and the world if warming exceeds 1.5 degrees.

The global 1.5 degree threshold is about the world being that warm not for one year, but over a 20- or 30- year time period, several scientists said. This is not what the report predicts. Meteorologists can only tell if Earth hits that average mark years, maybe a decade or two, after it is actually reached there because it is a long term average, Hermanson said.

“This is a warning of what will be just average in a few years,” said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, who wasn’t part of the forecast teams.

The prediction makes sense given how warm the world already is and an additional tenth of a degree Celsius (nearly two-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) is expected because of human-caused climate change in the next five years, said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of the tech company Stripe and Berkeley Earth, who wasn’t part of the forecast teams. Add to that the likelihood of a strong El Nino — the natural periodic warming of parts of the Pacific that alter world weather — which could toss another couple tenths of a degree on top temporarily and the world gets to 1.5 degrees.

The world is in the second straight year of a La Nina, the opposite of El Nino, which has a slight global cooling effect but isn’t enough to counter the overall warming of heat-trapping gases spewed by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, scientists said. The five-year forecast says that La Nina is likely to end late this year or in 2023.

The greenhouse effect from fossil fuels is like putting global temperatures on a rising escalator. El Nino, La Nina and a handful of other natural weather variations are like taking steps up or down on that escalator, scientists said.

On a regional scale, the Arctic will still be warming during the winter at rate three times more than the globe on average. While the American Southwest and southwestern Europe are likely to be drier than normal the next five years, wetter than normal conditions are expected for Africa’s often arid Sahel region, northern Europe, northeast Brazil and Australia, the report predicted.

The global team has been making these predictions informally for a decade and formally for about five years, with greater than 90% accuracy, Hermanson said.

NASA top climate scientist Gavin Schmidt said the figures in this report are “a little warmer” than what the U.S. NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration use. He also had doubts about skill level on long-term regional predictions.

“Regardless of what is predicted here, we are very likely to exceed 1.5 degrees C in the next decade or so, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that we are committed to this in the long term — or that working to reduce further change is not worthwhile,” Schmidt said in an email.

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Follow AP’s climate coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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By Tommy Wilkes

LONDON (Reuters) – Stocks fell heavily again on Monday and the dollar rocketed to a new two-decade high as worries about higher interest rates and a tightened lockdown in Shanghai deepened investors’ fears that the global economy is rapidly heading for a slowdown.

After a bruising session on Friday in which U.S. stocks sold off sharply as another rise in long-dated U.S. Treasury yields unnerved investors, markets were set for a rocky start to the week, with most indexes in the red.

Central banks in the United States, Britain and Australia all raised interest rates last week, and investors are bracing for more tightening as policymakers try to get on top of soaring inflation.

“We see recession risk over the next 12 to 18 months to be as high as about 30%,” said Dan Ivascyn, group chief investment officer at bond giant PIMCO.

“One of the key reasons for that is the Fed and other central banks appear dead set on getting inflation under control.”

There was plenty more for investors to worry about on Monday aside from tightening financial conditions.

There appeared to be no let-up in China’s zero-COVID policy, with Shanghai tightening the city-wide lockdown for 25 million residents.

Speculation that Russian President Vladimir Putin might declare war on Ukraine in order to call up reserves during his speech at “Victory Day” celebrations also hurt market sentiment. Putin has so far characterised Russia’s actions in Ukraine as a “special military operation”, not a war.

Wall Street futures headed sharply lower with the S&P 500 futures down 2% and Nasdaq futures 2.5%. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq on Friday posted their fifth straight week of declines — their longest losing streak in a decade.

The Euro STOXX weakened 2%. Germany’s DAX lost 1.6% and Britain’s FTSE 100 1.78%.

MSCI’s main emerging market stocks index fell 1.2% to its lowest level since July 2020.

The MSCI World Index dropped 0.7%, leaving it not far from the 17-month intraday low reached on Friday.

(Graphic- World equities: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/znvnemgrrpl/world%20equities.JPG)

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 1.4% and Japan’s Nikkei 2.53%. Chinese blue chips eased 0.8%, while in offshore markets the yuan fell to as low as 6.7759 per dollar, its weakest since October 2020.

The big data event of the week is the U.S. consumer price report due on Wednesday, when only a slight easing in inflation is forecast, and certainly nothing to prevent the Federal Reserve from hiking by at least 50 basis points in June.

U.S. 10-year bond yields on Monday reached a new 3-1/2 year high of 3.203%.

DOLLAR DOMINANCE

With investors juggling so many worries, one place they are looking for safety is in the dollar.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies, rose as much as 0.4% to 104.19, the latest in a string of 20-year highs.

“Risk appetite is fragile and yield spreads continue to suggest further upside on the Dollar Index,” said Sean Callow, a senior FX strategist at Westpac.

“We look for ongoing demand for DXY (the dollar index) on dips, with 104 already being probed and still potential for a run towards 107 multi-week.”

The soaring dollar is hammering other currencies. The euro briefly dropped back below $1.05 while the Japanese yen fell to its weakest since 2002.

Expectations that the Fed will move more aggressively in raising interest rates are supporting the dollar, as is a sense among investors that the U.S. economy will hold up better than a euro zone hit by the fallout from the war in Ukraine.

But rates are also rising in the euro zone. On Monday, Germany’s 10-year bond yield hit a new highest level since 2014, buoyed by hawkish policymaker Robert Holzmann saying on Saturday that the European Central Bank should raise rates three times this year to combat inflation.

The diary is full of Fed speakers this week, giving them plenty of opportunity to keep up the hawkish chorus.

Oil prices initially see-sawed after the Group of Seven nations committed to banning or phasing out imports of Russian oil over time, before falling.

Brent dropped 2.15% at $109.97 by 1115 GMT, while U.S. crude dropped 2.39% to $107.15. [O/R]

Spot gold prices lost 1.24% to $1,859 an ounce, having struggled recently to gain traction as a safe haven. [GOL/]

(Reporting by Tommy Wilkes; Additional reporting by Wayne Cole in Sydney; Editing by Bradley Perrett and Chizu Nomiyama)

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By Helen Reid and Clara Denina

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – The need to secure new sources of metals for the energy transition amid sanctions on top producer Russia has increased the Africa risk appetite for major miners, who have few alternatives to the resource-rich continent.

Companies and investors are considering projects they may have previously overlooked, while governments are also looking to Africa, anxious to ensure their countries can procure enough metals to feed an accelerating net-zero push.

This year’s Investing in African Mining Indaba conference, which runs May 9-12 in Cape Town, will see the highest-ranking U.S. government official in years attending, organisers say, as well as representatives from the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals Corporation (JOGMEC), in a sign of rich countries’ rising concern about securing supply.

“The reality is that the resources the world wants are typically located in difficult places,” said Steven Fox, executive chairman of New York-based political risk consultancy Veracity Worldwide.

The U.S. administration wants to position itself as a strong supporter of battery metals projects in sub-Saharan Africa, he said.

“While Africa presents its challenges, those challenges are no more difficult than the corresponding set of challenges in Canada. It may be easier to actually bring a project to fruition in Africa, than in a place like Canada or the U.S.,” he added.

The United States has voiced support for new domestic mines, but projects have stalled. Rio Tinto’s Resolution copper project, for example, was halted over Native American claims on the land, and conservation issues.

Certainly, the risks of mining in sub-Saharan Africa remain high. The acute security challenge facing mines in the gold-rich Sahel region was highlighted last month when Russia’s Nordgold abandoned its Taparko gold mine in Burkina Faso over an increasing threat from militants.

And even in the continent’s most industrialised economy, South Africa, deteriorating rail infrastructure is forcing some coal producers to resort to trucking their product to ports.

Yet with Russia’s 7% of global nickel supply, 10% of the world’s platinum, and 25-30% of the world’s palladium off the table, Africa’s rich deposits of those metals start looking a lot more attractive.

“As a mining company, there aren’t many opportunities and if you are going to grow, you’re going to have to look at riskier countries,” said George Cheveley, portfolio manager at Ninety One.

“Clearly, after Russia-Ukraine people are more sensitive to geopolitical risk and you cannot predict which projects are going to work out and which are not,” he added.

Kabanga Nickel, a project in Tanzania, secured funding from global miner BHP in January, and CEO Chris Showalter said it is seeing increased demand from potential offtakers.

Western sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine are forcing metals supply chains to reconfigure along geopolitical lines, Showalter said.

“Not everyone’s going to be able to get clean battery metals from a friendly jurisdiction, so I think some difficult decisions will have to be made, and it is going to force people to make some new decisions about where they want to source.”

(Reporting by Helen Reid in Johannesburg and Clara Denina in London; Editing by Amran Abocar and Susan Fenton)

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(Reuters) – London’s West End focused commercial landlords Capital & Counties Properties Plc and Shaftesbury Plc are in advanced talks about a 3.5 billion pound ($4.32 billion) merger, Sky News reported on Saturday.

The companies are in detailed discussions about an all-share tie-up that could be announced within weeks, the report said.

As of November, Shaftesbury owned about 600 buildings in the heart of London’s West End, which includes Carnaby Street and Chinatown.

In June 2020, Capital & Counties Properties (Capco) bought a 26.3% stake in Shaftesbury from Hong Kong tycoon Samuel Tak Lee for 436 million pounds ($537.85 million).

Shaftesbury and Capco did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

($1 = 0.8106 pounds)

(Reporting by Shivam Patel in Bengaluru; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)

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BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thailand on Saturday warned against the creation of online content that risked insulting the country’s monarchy, after a video by a social media influencer promoting e-commerce platform Lazada incensed royalists, who said it was mocking the palace.

Thai law prescribes punishments of up to 15 years in jail for each offence if found guilty of defaming, insulting or threatening King Maha Vajiralongkorn and his closest family.

The video, which has since been taken down, was promoting Lazada’s May 5 sale and featured a woman dressed in a traditional Thai costume sitting in a wheelchair and playing the role of an influencer’s mother.

Royalists complained the woman in the wheelchair was a veiled reference to a royal family member. The video did not use the language used by the royal family, nor mention any of its members.

In videos posted on Facebook, the influencer, Aniwat “Nara” Prathumthin, said the clip was a parody of a famous Thai soap opera and told critics the perceived royal insult was “all in your imagination”.

Lazada, the Southeast Asian arm of Alibaba Group Holding, in a statement apologised for the “emotional damage” the video had caused and said it should have been more careful.

Government spokesman Thanakorn Wangboonkongchana said such content risked damaging the reputation of brands.

“Let us warn marketers, influencers and content creators to be careful about presenting content or promotions that reference appearances or individuals of the institution that all Thais worship and love,” Thanakorn said in a statement.

“This is inappropriate, and will not only upset every Thai in the country, but also destroy the image and reputation of the brand. It could also be against the law.”

The incident follows an April Fool’s prank tweeted by a staff member at budget airline Thai Vietjet Air, an offshoot of Vietnam’s Vietjet Aviation JSC, about a new route to Munich that stirred anger among royalists, who said it was a hidden joke about the Thai king spending time in Germany. The airline apologised.

(Reporting by Patpicha Tanakasempipat; Editing by Martin Petty and David Holmes)

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By Rowena Edwards

LONDON (Reuters) -Oil prices climbed for a third straight session on Friday, shrugging off concerns about global economic growth as impending European Union sanctions on Russian oil raised the prospect of tighter supply.

Brent futures rose $1.75, or 1.58%, to $112.65 per barrel by 1159 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude climbed $1.57, or 1.45%, to $109.83 a barrel.

Brent and WTI are on track to rise for a second week in a row, buoyed by the EU’s proposal to phase out supplies of Russian crude oil in six months and refined products by the end of 2022. It would also ban all shipping and insurance services for transporting Russian oil.

The EU is tweaking its sanctions plan in a bid to win over reluctant states, three EU sources told Reuters on Friday. [nL2N2WY0F7]

“The looming EU embargo on Russian oil has the makings of an acute supply squeeze. In any case, OPEC+ is in no mood to help out, even as rallying energy prices spur harmful levels of inflation,” PVM analyst Stephen Brennock said.

Ignoring calls from Western nations to hike output more, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, Russia and allied producers, a group known as OPEC+, stuck with its plan to raise its June output target by 432,000 barrels per day. nL2N2WX0IO]

However, analysts expect the group’s actual production rise to be much smaller as a result of capacity constraints.

“There is zero chance of certain members filling that quota as production challenges impact Nigeria and other African members,” said Jeffrey Halley, senior market analyst Asia Pacific at OANDA.

A U.S. Senate panel has advanced a bill that could expose OPEC+ to lawsuits for collusion on boosting oil prices.

Investors are also eyeing higher demand from the United States this fall as Washington unveiled plans to buy 60 million barrels of crude for its emergency stockpiles.

Demand concerns on signs of a weakening global economy capped the price rise.

The Bank of England on Thursday warned that Britain risks a double-whammy of a recession and inflation above 10% as it raised interest rates to their highest since 2009, hiking by a quarter of a percentage point to 1%.

And strict COVID-19 curbs in China are creating headwinds in the second quarter for the world’s second-largest economy.

(Additional reporting by Florence Tan in Singapore and Laura Sanicola in New York; editing by Jason Neely)

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(Reuters) -New York Stock Exchange-owner Intercontinental Exchange posted a rise in first-quarter profit on Thursday, driven by higher trading volumes in several asset classes as interest hike expectations and the Ukraine war raised market volatility.

Demand for portfolio protection grew as sky-high inflation, the Russia-Ukraine war and expectations of interest rate hikes roiled markets.

The exchange operator said on Wednesday it planned to acquire Black Knight in a cash-and-stock deal that values the software and data analytics firm at $16 billion, including debt.

Intercontinental Exchange’s first quarter performance follows strong earnings by rivals CBOE Global Markets Inc and CME Group Inc that sailed past Wall Street estimates as elevated volatility drove up transaction volumes of options and futures.

Net income attributable to the company was up nearly 2% at $657 million, or $1.16 per share, for the three months ended March 31 from $646 million, or $1.14 per share, a year earlier.

Excluding one-time items, ICE, which runs futures and equities exchanges as well as clearing houses, data services and a mortgage origination business, earned $1.43 per share, edging past analysts’ mean estimate of $1.42 a share, according to Refinitiv IBES data.

Total revenue, excluding transaction-based expenses, rose nearly 6% to $1.9 billion, as revenue from exchanges business rose 2%, fixed income and data services rose 8.7% while mortgage tech arm fell 13.5%.

(Reporting by Mehnaz Yasmin in Bengaluru; Editing by Rashmi Aich)

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(Reuters) – Levi Strauss & Co said on Wednesday it will reimburse travel expenses for its full- and part-time employees who need to travel to another state for health care services, including abortions.

The apparel company best known for its jeans is the latest U.S. company to offer the benefit as various states clamp down on access to abortions.

And now, the U.S. Supreme Court looks set to vote to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide, according to a leaked initial draft majority opinion published by Politico on Monday.

“Given what is at stake, business leaders need to make their voices heard and act to protect the health and well-being of our employees. That means protecting reproductive rights,” the company said in a statement.

Other companies have pledged to offer similar support to their U.S. employees who need to travel out of states like Texas and Oklahoma that have restricted access to abortion services.

Amazon.com Inc, the second-largest U.S. private employer, on Monday told employees it will pay up to $4,000 in travel expenses yearly for non-life threatening medical treatments, among them elective abortions.

Crowd-sourced review platform Yelp, Inc said it will start in May to cover expenses for its employees and their dependents who need to travel to another state for abortion services.

One of the leading Hollywood talent agencies, UTA, said it would reimburse travel expenses related to receiving women’s reproductive health services that are not accessible in an employee’s state of residence.

“We’re doing this to support the right to choose that has been a bedrock of settled law for almost half a century,” Jeremy Zimmer, UTA’s chief executive, wrote in a staff memo Wednesday that was seen by Reuters.

Citigroup Inc became in March the first major U.S. bank to make a similar commitment.

(Reporting by Doyinsola Oladipo; Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles; Editing by Anna Driver, Alexandra Hudson, Kirsten Donovan)

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OSLO (Reuters) – Norway’s Equinor posted record pretax profits for the first quarter on Wednesday as the war in Ukraine triggered an energy supply crunch that sent the price of natural gas soaring to all-time highs.

Adjusted earnings before tax rose to $18 billion in the January-March quarter, up from $5.5 billion a year earlier, beating the $17.1 billion predicted in a poll of 25 analysts compiled by Equinor.

“Continued capital discipline and cost focus enabled us to deliver very strong financial results and cash flow, strengthening the balance sheet,” Chief Executive Anders Opedal said in a statement.

The sale of natural gas is now Equinor’s most profitable business, exceeding traditionally dominant crude oil revenues as Europe scrambles to fill depleted gas storages amid fears the war in Ukraine will lead to cut-off of Russian supplies.

(Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis, editing by Terje Solsvik)

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