Solar Is Dirt-Cheap and About to Get Even More Powerful

Dan Murtaugh
Tue., July 6, 2021,

Solar Is Dirt-Cheap and About to Get Even More Powerful

(Bloomberg) -- The solar industry has spent decades slashing the cost of generating electricity direct from the sun. Now it’s focusing on making panels even more powerful.

With savings in equipment manufacturing hitting a plateau, and more recently pressured by rising prices of raw materials, producers are stepping up work on advances in technology — building better components and employing increasingly sophisticated designs to generate more electricity from the same-sized solar farms.

“The first 20 years in the 21st century saw huge reductions in module prices, but the speed of the reduction started to level off noticeably in the past two years,” said Xiaojing Sun, global solar research leader at Wood Mackenzie Ltd. “Fortunately, new technologies will create further cost-of-electricity reductions.”

A push for more powerful solar equipment underscores how further cost reductions remain essential to advance the shift away from fossil fuels. While grid-sized solar farms are now typically cheaper than even the most advanced coal or gas-fired plants, additional savings will be required to pair clean energy sources with the expensive storage technology that’s needed for around-the-clock carbon-free power.

Bigger factories, the use of automation and more efficient production methods have delivered economies of scale, lower labor costs and less material waste for the solar sector. The average cost of a solar panel dropped by 90% from 2010 to 2020.

Boosting power generation per panel means developers can deliver the same amount of electricity from a smaller-sized operation. That’s potentially crucial as costs of land, construction, engineering and other equipment haven’t fallen in the same way as panel prices.

It can even make sense to pay a premium for more advanced technology. “We’re seeing people willing to pay a higher price for a higher wattage module that lets them produce more power and make more money off their land,” said Jenny Chase, lead solar researcher at BloombergNEF.

Higher-powered systems are already arriving. Through much of the past decade, most solar panels produced a maximum of about 400 watts of electricity. In early 2020, companies began selling 500-watt panels, and in June, China-based Risen Energy Co. introduced a 700-watt model.

“More powerful and highly-efficient modules will reduce costs throughout the solar project value chain, supporting our outlook for significant sector growth over the next decade,” Fitch Solutions analysts said in a research note last month.

Here are some of the ways that solar companies are super-charging panels:

Perovskite

While many current developments involve tweaks to existing technologies, perovskite promises a genuine breakthrough. Thinner and more transparent than polysilicon, the material that’s traditionally used, perovskite could eventually be layered on top of existing solar panels to boost efficiency, or be integrated with glass to make building windows that also generate power.

“We will be able to take solar power to the next level,” said Kim Dohyung, principal researcher on a perovskite project team at Korea Electric Power Corp., one of several companies experimenting with the material. “Ultimately, this new technology will enable us to make a huge contribution in lowering greenhouse gas emissions.”

Adoption of perovskite has previously been challenged by costs and technical issues that prevented commercial-scale production. There are now signs that’s changing: Wuxi UtmoLight Technology Co. in May announced plans to start a pilot line by October with mass production beginning in 2023.

Bi-facial Panels

Solar panels typically get their power from the side that faces the sun, but can also make use of the small amount of light that reflects back off the ground. Bi-facial panels started to gain in popularity in 2019, with producers seeking to capture the extra increments of electricity by replacing opaque backing material with specialist glass. They were also temporarily boosted by a since-closed loophole in U.S. law that exempted them from tariffs on Chinese products.

The trend caught solar glass suppliers off-guard and briefly caused prices for the material to soar. Late last year, China loosened regulations around glass manufacturing capacity, and that should prepare the ground for more widespread adoption of the two-sided solar technology.

Doped Polysilicon

Another change that can deliver an increase in power is shifting from positively charged silicon material for solar panels to negatively charged, or n-type, products.

N-type material is made by doping polysilicon with a small amount of an element with an extra electron like phosphorous. It’s more expensive, but can be as much as 3.5% more powerful than the material that currently dominates. The products are expected to begin taking market share in 2024 and be the dominant material by 2028, according to PV-Tech.

In the solar supply chain, ultra-refined polysilicon is shaped into rectangular ingots, which are in turn sliced into ultra-thin squares known as wafers. Those wafers are wired into cells and pieced together to form solar panels.

Bigger Wafers, Better Cells

For most of the 2010s, the standard solar wafer was a 156-millimeter (6.14 inches) square of polysilicon, about the size of the front of a CD case. Now, companies are making the squares bigger to boost efficiency and reduce manufacturing costs. Producers are pushing 182- and 210-millimeter wafers, and the larger sizes will grow from about 19% of the market share this year to more than half by 2023, according to Wood Mackenzie’s Sun.

The factories that wire wafers into cells — which convert electrons excited by photons of light into electricity — are adding new capacity for designs like heterojunction or tunnel‐oxide passivated contact cells. While more expensive to make, those structures allow the electrons to keep bouncing around for longer, increasing the amount of power they generate.

(Adds analyst comment in ninth paragraph)

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Blast rocks Caspian Sea area near Azerbaijani gas field


Mon., July 5, 2021, 



MOSCOW (AP) — A strong explosion shook the Caspian Sea area where Azerbaijan has extensive offshore oil and gas fields. A column of fire rose from the area, but the state oil company said none of its platforms were damaged.

The state oil company SOCAR said the blaze late Sunday may have come from a mud volcano.

The Caspian Sea has a high concentration of such volcanoes, which spew both mud and flammable gas.

SOCAR spokesman Ibrahim Ahmadov told the Interfax-Azerbaijan news agency on Monday that the company staff found a mud volcano ablaze on the uninhabited island of Dashly, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) off the coast of Azerbaijan between the towns of Alat and Neftchala.

Azerbaijan's Emergency Ministry said that the volcano continued to burn on Monday morning, but the fire “doesn't pose a threat either to the sea oil and gas infrastructure and other objects, or to people's lives.”

The Associated Press

Thailand chemical factory fire out;

 health concerns remain

Tue., July 6, 2021, 

BANGKOK (AP) — Firefighters finally extinguished a blaze at a chemical factory just outside the Thai capital early Tuesday, more than 24-hours after it started with an explosion that damaged nearby homes and then let off a clouds of toxic smoke that prompted a widespread evacuation.

Little was left of the Ming Dih Chemical factory other than the twisted metal frames and charred remains of its warehouses that were destroyed in the explosion and fire, which broke out at about 3 a.m. Monday.

More than 60 people were injured in the disaster, including a dozen emergency responders, and more than 30 of them were hospitalized. One man, identified as an 18-year-old volunteer firefighter, was killed in the blaze.

Even though fire was entirely put out by 3:40 a.m. Tuesday, firefighters continued to douse water and foam over the site to prevent the highly inflammable chemical styrene monomer from reigniting. The cause of the disaster was still under investigation.

Authorities ordered a 5 kilometer (3 mile) area around the foam and plastic pellet manufacturing factory, near Bangkok's main airport, evacuated as the factory burned, telling residents to avoid inhaling any fumes and warning that if breathed in it could cause dizziness and vomiting, and cancer in the long term.

On Tuesday, Attapol Charoenchansa, who heads the country's pollution control department, said teams were testing the air quality and water in the area of the factory, and were considering narrowing the evacuation zone to allow some residents to return home.

He cautioned, however, that if the forecast rain comes, it could wash the chemicals into water sources, which would be difficult to control.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said he had ordered authorities to gather as much information as possible on the extent of contamination to soil, ground water, the city's drinking water and air so as to “mitigate the health impact in both the short and long term.”

“Although the fire is under control, our work has not yet been completed,” he said in a statement posted on Facebook.

In addition to the casualties, officials said shockwaves from the initial explosion also damaged about 100 houses and 15 cars.

Styrene monomer is used in the production of disposable foam plates, cups and other products, and can produce poisonous fumes when ignited.

The chemical itself also emits styrene gas, a neurotoxin, which can immobilize people within minutes of inhalation and can be fatal at high concentrations. Last year in the Indian city of Visakhapatnam, a leak of styrene gas from a chemical factory killed 12 people and sickened more than 1,000.

The area around the factory is a mixture of older industrial complexes and newer housing developments that were built after the opening of the airport in 2006.

___

Associated Press writer Chalida Ekvittayavechnukul contributed to this report.

David Rising, The Associated Press

 

Despite jobs rebound, economists warn ‘She-cession’ still lingers

Dani Romero

Mon., July 5, 2021, 7:24 a.m.·3 min read

The U.S. labor market, having rebounded strongly from COVID-19, still has pockets of weakness in spite of a worker shortage throttling multiple industries.

Most notably, economists cite the continued struggles of the leisure and hospitality sector, where millions of laid-off women helped to create what some observers have recently called a “she-cession.” Lockdowns exacerbated racial and gender employment gaps that existed before COVID-19 walloped the global economy.

The hospitality industry — which includes restaurants, hotels, museums, spectator sports, and more — accounted for 10% of the entire workforce pre-pandemic, the National Women’s Law Center said in May. Even amid the broad economic rebound, the NWLC found that the sector is still lagging its size in February 2020.

And between February 2020 and May 2021, women lost nearly 1.4 million leisure and hospitality jobs, a NWLC analysis revealed. The net female job losses represented more than half of those lost in the entire sector between February 2020 and May 2021, the organization said.

The answer to healing a still damaged jobs market lies with closing the workforce’s gender gap, labor policy experts say.

“Certain occupations, certain industries that are dominated by women have seen a traumatic loss in jobs and massive layoffs,” Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center, said in an interview.

At the height of the COVID-19 outbreak in June 2020, women over the age of 20 had an unemployment rate of 11.3%, Bureau of Labor Statistics survey data show, higher than the male unemployment rate of 10.3%. Since that spike high, female joblessness has gradually normalized, dropping to 5.5% in the most recent jobs data.

Still, the NWLC argues that women have a lot of lost ground to recapture.

“It's important for us all to remember that we are not actually out of this crisis yet,” Julie Vogtman, director of job quality at the NWLC, told Yahoo Finance Live in a recent interview.

'Alarming rate'

Sandra Presley, 57, is interviewed at a job fair for restaurant and hotel workers, after coronavirus disease (COVID-19) restrictions were lifted, in Torrance, near Los Angeles, California, U.S., June 23, 2021. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

Female-dominated sectors, like leisure and hospitality, were heavily scaled back during the pandemic, and have yet to fully recover, economists say.

Even the C-suite has not been spared, with Challenger Gray tracking data noting high female executive turnover at the start of 2021.

“Women are leaving the workforce at an alarming rate,” the firm said in February. “The pandemic has hit industries primarily employing women hardest, and child care and compensation issues which continually plague women are being exacerbated by the pandemic.”

According to UCLA’s Wong, women are more likely to bear the responsibilities for caregiving at home — be it children, parents, in-laws, or other family members. They are also more inclined to shoulder most of the responsibilities associated with balancing work and family.

“We need to think about how they can attract and retain folks by creating jobs that will actually support women, support their families and support our economy, rather than keeping people hanging on by a thread,” Vogtman said.

And now that most states are moving to curtail COVID-era unemployment benefits, state and federal laws still allow employers to pay less than $5 an hour to people working for tips, said Vogtman.

Within that segment, “nearly one in five Black women” live in poverty, he said - underscoring how the recovery could leave scores of women — particularly those of color — behind.

Vogtman warned that policymakers and employers should guard against a return “to a status quo that wasn’t working for millions of people well before the pandemic.”

Dani Romero is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter: @daniromerotv

 

Israel blocks law that keeps out

Palestinian spouses

Tue., July 6, 2021, 

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s parliament early on Tuesday failed to renew a law that bars Arab citizens from extending citizenship or residency rights to spouses from the occupied West Bank and Gaza, in a tight vote that raised doubts about the viability of the country’s new coalition government.

The 59-59 vote, which came after an all-night session of the Knesset, marked a major setback for Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

The new Israeli leader, who had hoped to find a compromise between his hard-line Yamina party and the dovish factions in his disparate coalition, instead suffered a stinging defeat in a vote he reportedly described as a referendum on the new government. The vote means the law is now set to expire at midnight Tuesday.

The Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law was enacted as a temporary measure in 2003, at the height of the second intifada, or uprising, when Palestinians launched scores of deadly attacks inside Israel. Proponents said Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza were susceptible to recruitment by armed groups and that security vetting alone was insufficient.

Under it, Arab citizens, who comprise a fifth of Israel’s population, have had few if any avenues for bringing spouses from the West Bank and Gaza into Israel. Critics, including many left-wing and Arab lawmakers, say it’s a racist measure aimed at restricting the growth of Israel’s Arab minority, while supporters say it’s needed for security purposes and to preserve Israel’s Jewish character.

The law has been renewed annually and appeared to have the support of a large majority in parliament, which is dominated by hard-line nationalist parties. But former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party and his allies decided to oppose it to embarrass Bennett and harm his coalition, which includes a collection of eight parties across the political spectrum, including a small Islamist Arab party.

Interior Minister Minister Ayelet Shaked, a member of Bennett's Yamina party, said the opposition move to block the law's renewal would lead to thousands more applications for citizenship. She accused Netanyahu and his allies of choosing "petty and ugly politics, and let the country burn.”

Amichai Chikli, a renegade member of Yamina who voted with the opposition, said the outcome was a sign of deeper issues.

“Israel needs a functioning Zionist government, and not a mismatched patchwork that is reliant on” the votes of Arab lawmakers, said Chikli. He was the only member of his party to oppose the new coalition-led government last month.

Netanyahu, ousted by the new coalition after 12 years as prime minister, made clear his political goals.

“With all due respect for this law, the importance of toppling the government is greater,” Netanyahu said Monday.

Bennett reportedly proposed a compromise with liberal members of the coalition that would have extended the law by six months while offering residency rights to some 1,600 Arab families, a fraction of those affected. But the measure was defeated, in part because two Arab members of the coalition abstained. The vote exposed the deep divisions and the fragility of the new government.

The decision, however, gave some hope to Arab families that have been affected by the law. The law has created an array of difficulties for thousands of Palestinian families that span the war-drawn and largely invisible frontiers separating Israel from east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, territories it seized in the 1967 war that the Palestinians want for a future state.

“You want your security, it’s no problem, you can check each case by itself,” said Taiseer Khatib, an Arab citizen of Israel whose wife of more than 15 years, from the West Bank city of Jenin, must regularly apply for permits to live with him and their three children in Israel.

“There’s no need for this collective punishment just because you are Palestinian,” he said during a protest outside the Knesset on Monday ahead of the vote.

The law has been continually renewed even after the uprising wound down in 2005 and the number of attacks plummeted. Today, Israel allows more than 100,000 Palestinian workers from the West Bank to enter on a regular basis.

Male spouses over the age of 35 and female spouses over the age of 25, as well as some humanitarian cases, can apply for the equivalent of a tourist permit, which must be regularly renewed. The holders of such permits are ineligible for driver’s licenses, public health insurance and most forms of employment. Palestinian spouses from Gaza have been completely banned since the militant Hamas group seized power there in 2007.

The law does not apply to the nearly 500,000 Jewish settlers who live in the West Bank, who have full Israeli citizenship. Under Israel’s Law of Return, Jews who come to Israel from anywhere in the world are eligible for citizenship.

Israel’s Arab minority has close familial ties to Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and largely identifies with their cause. Arab citizens view the law as one of several forms of discrimination they face in a country that legally defines itself as a Jewish nation-state.

Palestinians who are unable to get permits but try to live with their spouses inside Israel are at risk of deportation. Couples that move to the West Bank live under Israeli military occupation.

The citizenship law also applies to Jewish Israelis who marry Palestinians from the territories, but such unions are extremely rare.

Laurie Kellman, The Associated Press

Supercar maker Bugatti taken over by Croatian company Rimac


Mon., July 5, 2021, 

ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) — Croatia’s electric supercar maker, which started in a garage a decade ago, is taking over the iconic French manufacturer Bugatti in a deal that is rorted to be worth millions of euros.

The Croatian car producer Rimac Automobili said Germany’s Volkswagen Group, including the Porsche division — which owns a majority stake in Bugatti — plans to create a new joint venture. The new company will be called Bugatti-Rimac.

Rimac Automobili announced Monday that it will be combining forces with Bugatti to “create a new automotive and technological powerhouse.”

Rimac has progressed in 10 years from a one-man garage startup to a successful company that produces electric supercars. Mate Rimac, who founded the company in 2009, says the venture is an “exciting moment” and calls the combination of the companies “a perfect match for each other.”

Porsche will own 45% of Bugatti-Rimac while Rimac Automobili will hold the remaining 55% stake, according to Croatian media reports. Financial details of the deal were not published.

Bugattis will continue to be assembled in eastern France, where the company was established in 1909. The vehicles will use engines developed and made in Croatia.

“In an industry evolving at ever-increasing speed, flexibility, innovation and sustainability remain at the very core of Rimac’s operations," the company said. “Uniting Rimac’s technical expertise and lean operations with Bugatti’s 110-year heritage of design and engineering prowess represents a fusion of leading automotive minds."

The Associated Press

Report finds extremist right-wing rhetoric in the US is going down a darker path
Alex Henderson, AlterNet
July 03, 2021

Fox News host Tucker Carlson

Because the right-wing media are so competitive, countless pundits are resorting to increasingly over-the-top rhetoric in the hope of juicing their ratings or traffic. The conservative pundits of the 1970s and 1980s — most famously, George Will and the late National Review founder William F. Buckley — were downright tranquil compared to the far-right extremism one finds on Newsmax TV or One America News on a daily basis. And journalist Adam Gabbatt, in an article published by The Guardian this week, reports that critics of this inflammatory rhetoric fear it will lead to violence at a time when political tensions are extremely high in the United States.

According to Gabbatt, "The extremist rhetoric from right-wing news networks and some elected Republicans is 'intensifying,' experts have warned, after a Republican congressman compared Democrats to Nazis and a hard-right news host suggested tens of thousands of Americans should be executed. Right-wing TV personalities, including Fox News' Tucker Carlson, and Republican politicians have seized every opportunity to rail against Democrats and liberals in recent months, with race increasingly coming to the fore."

Gabbatt notes that Fox News' Tucker Carlson has said that Democrats want the U.S. to "become Rwanda," and Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania compared Democrats to Nazis and said, "They are not the loyal opposition…. They want to destroy the country."
Chris Matthews talks to Raw Story: Who would you bet on in 2024, Trump or Kamala?

Gabbatt quotes Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters, as saying, "The rhetoric is both intensifying and it's more widespread. It's not like this is the first time right-wing media has had moments or flare-ups of intense or inflammatory rhetoric. But typically, it would have been limited to one show or personality. What happened, especially without (former President Donald) Trump having social platforms, is that it did create this pretty big vacuum."

Carusone continued, "What you've seen is jockeying to get as much of that audience share, but also, influence share. Everyone is kind of scrambling right now to grab as much as they can. That's why they hit as many themes as they possibly can; you're not just going to get more racial inflammatory rhetoric — there's more conspiratorial stuff."

Newsmax TV and OAN are cable news competitors of Fox News, and both of them have been jumping through hoops to show that they are even more right-wing and more pro-Trump than Fox. For example, OAN's Pearson Sharp called for mass executions during a late June broadcast. Making the false and debunked claim that thousands of election officials helped now-President Joe Biden steal the 2020 election, Sharp told OAN viewers, "In the past, America had a very good solution for dealing with such traitors: execution."

OAN CEO Robert Herrin has defended Sharp's rhetoric, saying, "He was only telling what could happen if you try to overthrow America.... He gave the laws that would apply."
Report Advertisement

CNN's Brian Stelter has had a lot to say about right-wing media trends on his Sunday program "Reliable Sources." Stelter, Gabbatt notes, recently told the Washington Post, "People want to be lied to, and it's above my head to know what to do about that. What do we do about that, when millions of people want to be lied to every day?"

Belarus jails former presidential contender Babariko for 14 years

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A court in Belarus on Tuesday sentenced former Belarusian presidential contender Viktor Babariko to 14 years in prison on corruption charges, local media and Russian news agencies reported

.

© Reuters/Vasily Fedosenko FILE PHOTO: Presidential challenger Babariko attends a news conference in Minsk

Babariko's team said before the ruling that the charges against their client had been fabricated to thwart his political ambitions.

Babariko, the former head of Belgazprombank, was arrested last June as he was trying to register as a candidate to run against veteran leader Alexander Lukashenko in a presidential vote critics and observers say was massively rigged.

Prosecutors had requested that Babariko, who maintains his innocence, be sentenced to 15 years in jail for his alleged offences.

After Babariko was barred from running and detained, Maria Kolesnikova, one of his allies, joined forces with two other women - Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and Veronika Tsepkalo - to lead the opposition's campaign.

Kolesnikova is now jailed in Belarus, Tsepkalo has fled abroad, and Tsikhanouskaya, who ran against Lukashenko and has since emerged as the opposition's most prominent figure at liberty, is trying to undermine Lukashenko from neighbouring Lithuania.

Belarusian authorities have cracked down on the anti-government protests that erupted in the wake of the vote, prompting a flurry of Western sanctions against Minsk.

Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, denies electoral fraud.

(Reporting by Maria Kiselyova/Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

Scion of Richest Thai Family Prepares for Bad Debt Bonanza


(Bloomberg) -- Just three months after Thailand threw a $11 billion lifeline to businesses struggling to survive the pandemic, a scion of the nation’s wealthiest business dynasty is betting the bailout won’t be enough to stanch a deluge of distressed assets.

Schwin Chiaravanont -- whose family controls the 100-year-old Charoen Pokphand Group -- is planning to raise $500 million for his flagship private-equity venture 9 Basil, which aims to use most of the new money to step up purchases of distressed assets. The fund is positioning itself to benefit from bad loans soaring from a 16-year high as Southeast Asia’s second-largest economy battles its worst recession since the Asian crisis of the late 1990s.

“Policies around distressed debt management are unsustainable,” Schwin, 29, said in a phone interview last week. “The question is more ‘when’ than ‘if’ there will be a lot of distressed debt that floods the market.”

The grandson of CP Group’s Co-Vice-Chairman Wallop Chiaravanont is doubling down on soured loans when stimulus packages around the world help companies weather the slump and shrink the pool of distressed assets. Even Thai lenders are scaling back sales: Last month, Bangkok Commercial Asset Management Pcl -- the nation’s biggest manager -- said it managed to buy only 500 million baht ($15.6 million) of bad debt this year, well short of its 2021 target of 9 billion baht.

As a slow vaccination drive, more virulent coronavirus strains and clusters of outbreaks hinder plans to throw open the $544 billion economy, Schwin is betting on delays to a quick recovery from the devastation. Countless factories, hotels, restaurants and retailers have shut down. Non-performing loans at all Thai lenders jumped 15% since end-2019 to 537 billion baht, the most since 2005, according to Bank of Thailand data.

Asset quality outlook across banks in most Southeast Asian markets will remain clouded into 2022, as extended loan relief plans are likely to keep credit costs high in the near term, Fitch Ratings said June 25. The normalization of credit costs may take longer in markets where relief has been extensive but economic outlooks remain under pressure, such as in Malaysia and Thailand, Fitch said.

While Rathanon Fookiat, a manager at Bangkok Commercial Asset Management, has echoed Schwin’s views on the likelihood of more distressed assets coming to market, he warned investors against haste.

“The current economic crisis will increase the supply of distressed loans and assets being offered for sale by banks,” Rathanon said last month. “Still, there must be some caution in rushing to buy those assets, because prices may fall further with possible worsening of the pandemic.”

9 Basil more than doubled its asset value by betting on rural-focused micro-lender Ngern Tid Lor Pcl, which raised 33 billion baht in April in an initial public offering, Schwin said. The fund now holds 5% of the company, he said, whose current market value is about $2.9 billion.

Most of the new money raised by 9 Basil will be used to boost the holdings of distressed-asset manager Alpha Capital Asset Management Co., in which 9 Basil owns 49%, he said. Alpha Capital is planning a listing next year.

Red Ocean

“The distressed asset industry is a red ocean and would be hard for any newcomer,” said Bunyong Visatemongkolchai, executive chairman of Bangkok Commercial Asset Management. “Competition is very intense. You have to bid at high prices, while risks to recovering debt or selling those assets are very high too.”

After graduating with a master’s degree in business from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2014, Schwin worked in his family office before venturing into two startups that later failed. His family fortune is estimated at $32 billion, according to a Bloomberg News report in November.

Though a novice in distressed-asset management -- a career move to step out of the shadow of his clan’s business empire -- Schwin said he would be drawing from the experiences of his own family back in the 1990s. During the Asian financial crisis, the CP Group had to divest some parts at fire-sale prices to stay afloat. While it survived -- and has thrived since -- many other Thai businesses and banks collapsed.

“Management of distressed assets is one sector that’s done very well in most business cycles,” Schwin said. “Despite the slowdown last year due to political pressure, we’ve more than doubled our portfolio size over the last 12 months through new portfolio acquisitions and secondary portfolio acquisitions.”

Many small and medium-sized enterprises, the backbone of Thailand’s economy, are struggling with crushing debt loads that could force them out of business, according to the Federation of Thai SME. Bank loans to smaller businesses total 3.5 trillion baht, including 240 billion baht that are nonperforming. Another 440 billion baht are rated scarcely higher and may turn bad by the end of the year if the economy doesn’t improve, according to the federation.

(Adds SME bad loan situation in last paragraph.)

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Austria's former far-right leader on trial for corruption
AFP 

Austria's former vice-chancellor and longtime leader of the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe) stands trial for alleged corruption on Tuesday, in a case linked to a scandal that brought down the government.

© ALEX HALADA The trial concerns charges that Heinz-Christian Strache helped to change a law for an FPOe donor when he was in a coalition government

One of Europe's most high-profile far-right leaders, Heinz-Christian Strache was forced to resign as vice-chancellor in 2019 after the publication of a video that showed him offering public contracts in return for electoral campaign support from a woman posing as a Russian investor.

The scandal, dubbed "Ibiza-gate" as the video was secretly filmed on the Spanish party island, spawned a sweeping corruption investigation which uncovered several different accusations of wrongdoing.

Tuesday's trial concerns charges that Strache helped change a law for an FPOe donor when he was in a coalition government with the centre-right People's Party (OeVP) of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.

The donor, Walter Grubmueller, owns a private clinic in Vienna and told a parliamentary committee that he had invited Strache aboard his yacht and on a vacation at his holiday home on the Greek island of Corfu in 2016.

While negotiating the coalition agreement with the OeVP, Strache directly asked the clinic owner "which amendment to the law" he would need for his "clinic to finally be treated in a fair manner", according to chat messages uncovered in the investigation and which were later leaked to the media.

In the messages, the donor also reportedly said that he'd deliver a draft law to the FPOe's party headquarters.

After Strache took office in 2017, the far-right took charge of the health ministry and went on to oversee a change in the law that widened the category of establishments that were eligible for public funding.

According to expert estimates, this means clinics like Grubmueller's were allowed to apply for as much as 2.2 million euros (US$ 2.6 million) in funding in 2019 alone.

Grubmueller has also been charged, but denies any wrongdoing or that he profited from the amendment.

When contacted by AFP last week, Strache's lawyer Johann Pauer said: "Neither my client nor I will make a statement before or during active proceedings."

- Far-right infighting -

When the "Ibiza-gate" footage emerged in 2019, the coalition between the FPOe and the People's Party collapsed.

In the video, Strache claimed that several high-profile billionaires and international gambling company Novomatic had been funding political parties through off-the-books donations to associations, some owned by high-ranking OeVP politicians.

All those named by Strache deny any wrongdoing.

The claims triggered an array of investigations, including a probe into the appointment of Thomas Schmid -- a civil servant and Kurz ally -- as head of the Austrian state holding company OeBAG.

Kurz told a parliamentary committee that he had no hand in the appointment, but leaked chat messages have suggested otherwise.

Prosecutors have now put him under investigation for the possible offence of making false statements to the committee.

Kurz, who returned as Chancellor after a snap 2019 election, denies the allegation.

But if he is indicted, he faces going on trial for an offence which can be punished by a prison sentence of up to three years.

Strache was at the helm of the FPOe for 14 years before having to resign in disgrace when the scandal erupted.

Since then he has also been accused of embezzling party funds to pay for his luxurious lifestyle.

The revelations disillusioned many of the party's voters, and the FPOe slumped from 26 percent of the vote in the 2017 general election to just 16 percent in 2019.

Last year Strache attempted a comeback in Vienna municipal politics with a bid for mayor, but his list gained just three percent of the vote.

The FPOe has spent much of the time since the scandal consumed by infighting.

Last month Strache's successor as leader, Norbert Hofer, resigned after weeks of tension with party colleague and former Interior Minister Herbert Kickl.

Kickl, seen as a party ideologue and mastermind of some of its anti-Islam and anti-migrant campaigns, swiftly took over as leader.

deh/jsk/mbx