Sacked GM workers in India sue company, CEO Barra for unpaid compensation



Thu, January 19, 2023 

By Aditi Shah and Arpan Chaturvedi

NEW DELHI (Reuters) -A union in India has sued General Motors' local unit and its global CEO for failing to pay court-ordered compensation to sacked factory workers, deepening the U.S. automaker's struggles to exit the country years after it shuttered local operations.

GM stopped selling cars in India in 2017 after years of low sales but its complete exit from the market has been marred by complications including legal tussles with workers and failure to find a buyer for a plant in the western state of Maharashtra after talks with China's Great Wall Motor collapsed last year.

GM and the factory workers - who allege illegal termination after the company decided to exit - have been locked in legal battles since 2021. The latest filing signals an escalation in the dispute as workers accuse GM's India unit and its executives, including CEO Mary Barra, of failing to follow court orders.

In a filing to the High Court of Bombay dated Jan 16, the General Motors Employees Union of 1,086 factory workers states the company has failed to pay them compensatory wages of 50% of their monthly salary starting April last year, as ordered by a local industrial court while it continues to hear the dispute, the documents show.

A union leader told Reuters that GM so far owes the workers around 250 million rupees ($3 million) in wages, based on the industrial court's order.

A GM spokesperson said the company remains "very confident" of its legal position. Adding: "GM is continuing to explore options for the sale of the (plant) site."

In its earlier court filings, it has said the industrial court acted beyond its power in ordering the compensation. The company has previously said it has tried to settle the issue amicably and has offered workers a generous severance package.

The union disagreed, and said GM continues to "blatantly violate" the industrial court's order by not paying the workers a single cent. In its latest filing, the union urged the court to hold the company and its executives in contempt, and punish them with imprisonment.

"The workers are unable to feed their families, pay for medical expenses, pay for their children's education," the union said in the filing, which has not previously been reported.

The lawsuit is likely to be heard in the coming days.

India has been a graveyard for some Western carmakers, especially U.S. companies, that have struggled to break the dominance of Japan's Suzuki Motor and South Korea's Hyundai Motor, which together hold a market share of about 60%. Like GM, Ford Motor ceased operations in India in 2021.

GM stopped selling cars in India at the end of 2017 but one of its two factories continued to produce vehicles for export until December 2020. After that, GM ceased all operations and moved to close the plant in Maharashtra, but it has not received permission.

The state government has rejected applications by GM to close the plant - a move that the company has previously said sends a "concerning message" to potential future investors.

(Additional reporting by Aditya Kalra; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

OLD FASHIONED CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Vanished $4 Billion Brings Down Century-Old Retailer in a Week



Vinícius Andrade, Cristiane Lucchesi and Maria Elena Vizcaino
Fri, January 20, 2023 

(Bloomberg) -- Hours after revealing a scandal that would roil Brazilian markets, Sergio Rial joined a Zoom call with hundreds of panicked investors. It was an attempt to explain the $4 billion accounting gap that pushed him to quit his new job at the helm of retailer Americanas SA.

The Jan. 12 call was a tumultuous mix of English and Portuguese that some analysts were locked out of because the meeting reached its 1,000-participant capacity. Those who were able to cram into the headquarters of Banco BTG Pactual SA — the Sao Paulo-based creditor that was hosting the event — were left “perplexed” by Rial’s presentation, as one participant put it.

Four hours later, when the shares started trading, the stock plummeted 77%, wiping out $1.6 billion in market value. By the end of the day, bonds had lost half their value.

Within a week, the company filed for bankruptcy protection with $8.2 billion of debt.

“I don’t think there’s a company whose debt has gone down this much in two to three days,” said Omotunde Lawal, a portfolio manager at Barings UK Limited who focuses on emerging-market debt. “Maybe this is the fastest plunge ever.”

The startling and rapid meltdown has left Brazilians with the prospect of losing a ubiquitous company known for its unmistakable red-and-white logo and holiday sales, including in Rio de Janeiro where it was founded in 1929. The collapse dragged down the country’s stock market, sent creditors rushing to organize and pitted some of the nation’s most famed investors against each other. Billionaire Andre Esteves’s BTG Pactual, which days before had hosted the meeting with Rial, called it “the biggest fraud in Brazil’s capital markets.”

It was a sharp reversal for a company that had seen its stock rally after Rial was named chief executive officer last August, a job he only started on Jan. 2. Investors thought Americanas, which has been backed by billionaires Jorge Paulo Lemann, Marcel Telles and Carlos Alberto Sicupira for more than four decades, was set for improved performance under the 62-year-old former banker’s leadership.

It unraveled on the night of Jan. 11 when it announced “inconsistencies” that had artificially boosted profits and reduced reported liabilities by half. The company’s disclosures imply it misreported numbers tied to financing of debts with suppliers while also wrongly deducting interest paid to lenders from its liabilities.

In the Thursday bankruptcy protection filing — similar to a Chapter 11 in the US — lawyers for the company said, “due to unexpected reasons that rocked the group’s structure, the petitioners saw their cash and revenue expectations crumble within minutes.”

Americanas Bondholders Face $8.2 Billion Debt Restructuring

The findings set off a whirlwind week in which Rial decided to personally deliver the bad news to a group of employees. Many of them had been working at the Brazilian retailer for decades, and put all their savings in shares of the company.

“Your faces are not particularly nice. But their faces were in deep pain,” he told investors on the BTG call, recalling the meeting with employees.

Shares in other Brazilian retailers including Via SA and Magazine Luiza SA sold off immediately, but trimmed losses as the firms rushed to reassure analysts that all their debt was properly booked on their balance sheets.

Americanas saw its market value collapse 90% from its peak hit during the coronavirus pandemic. Wall Street analysts quickly put their ratings under review and ratings firms downgraded the debt, after which banks refused to advance credit card receivables, draining more than 3 billion reais from the company’s cash.

After the Thursday bankruptcy protection filing, MSCI Inc. and Brazilian stock exchange operator B3 SA removed the stock from their indexes.

Americanas was granted emergency temporary protection against creditors from a court in Rio de Janeiro on Jan. 13, which also forbade them from freezing or seizing assets. The decision surprised bankers, who rushed to file motions to overturn the decision. Days later, BTG was allowed to block 1.2 billion reais to compensate part of the company’s debt. That triggered a similar reaction from other creditors, which also cut credit lines, and accelerated the crisis.

Americanas Scandal Pits BTG Billionaire Versus 3G ‘Demigods’

The collapse threatens to tarnish the reputation of Lemann and his partners as well as lead to losses in the shares they hold in Americanas. The trio controlled the company until they were diluted in a 2021 reorganization, which left them with a stake of 31%, still the main shareholders. They told the board they plan to keep supporting the company, but investors fear that any negative outcome may hurt other firms in which they are involved, such as Kraft Heinz Co. and Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV.

Americanas said in its bankruptcy protection filing the move by creditors to declare the early maturity of obligations, closed “the door to any kind of viable friendly negotiation.” The firm has approximately 43 billion reais in debt and now has 48 hours to present a list of creditors, which already started to organize.

Investment banks Moelis & Co. and Seaport Global Securities LLC are separately pitching to organize bondholders into a group. Investors holding local debt have hired lawyers and are deciding whether to work with a financial adviser, according to a person familiar with the matter who requested anonymity as the discussions are private.

“It’s hard to tell what the bankruptcy process will bring,” said Omar Zeolla, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. It seems Americanas’s main shareholders “are willing to contribute capital, but it’s hard for me to see at the moment how that could play out in terms of recovery for bondholders.”

STATE SANCTIONED WAGE THEFT
Treasury Taps Retirement Funds to Avoid Breaching US Debt Limit

WHO IS PAYING FOR GOP STUPIDITY?

THE WORKINGCLASS

Christopher Anstey

Thu, January 19, 2023 

(Bloomberg) -- The Treasury Department is beginning the use of special measures to avoid a US payments default, after the federal debt limit was reached Thursday.

The department is altering investments in two government-run funds for retirees, in a move that will give the Treasury scope to keep making federal payments while it’s unable to boost the overall level of debt.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen informed congressional leaders of both parties of the step in a letter on Thursday. She had already notified them of the plan last week, when she flagged that the debt limit would be hit Jan. 19.

Yellen reiterated that the period of time that the extraordinary measures will avoid the government running out of cash is “subject to considerable uncertainty,” and urged Congress to act promptly to boost the debt limit. Last week she said the steps wouldn’t likely be exhausted before early June.

The specific funds affected by the Treasury’s move are:

• The Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund, or CSRDF, which provides defined benefits to retired and disabled federal employees

• The Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund, or PSRHBF, which provides postal-service retiree health-benefit-premium payments. The fund is also invested in special-issue Treasuries

The two funds invest in special-issue Treasury securities that count under the debt limit. After the debt limit is increased, the three will be “made whole,” with participants unaffected.

EXPLAINER: What’s the Debt Ceiling, and Will the US Raise It?

It’s far from the first time the Treasury has resorted to these moves: Since 1985, the agency has used such measures more than a dozen times.

For the CSRDF, Yellen said that the Treasury is entering a “debt-issuance suspension period” starting Thursday and lasting through June 5. The Treasury will suspend additional investments credited to the fund and redeem a portion of the investments held by it, she said.

As for the PSRHBF, the Treasury will suspend additional investments of amounts credited to that fund, Yellen said.

Last week, Yellen had advised that the Treasury also anticipated tapping — this month — the resources of a third fund, the Government Securities Investment Fund of the Federal Employees Retirement System Thrift Savings Plan, which is a defined-contribution retirement fund for federal employees.

The so-called G Fund is a defined-contribution retirement fund for federal employees, and also invests in special-issue Treasury securities that count under the debt limit. Yellen’s letter on Thursday made no mention of the G Fund.

Yellen’s letter didn’t specify the amount of headroom under the debt ceiling that would be created by the extraordinary measures she listed.

The Treasury probably now has $350 billion to $400 billion of headroom available in all, said Gennadiy Goldberg, a senior US rates strategist at TD Securities. That, along with the influx of revenue that will come from individual income taxes due in April, should let the Treasury go until sometime in the July to August window without running out of cash, he said.

Other measures the Treasury has taken in the past to conserve headroom under the debt limit include suspending the daily reinvestment of securities held by the Exchange Stabilization Fund. That’s a special vehicle that dates back to the 1930s, over which the Treasury secretary has wide discretion.

The Treasury previously has also suspended issuance of state and local government series Treasuries. Those securities are a place where state and local governments can park cash, and they count toward the federal debt limit. Those governments need to invest in other assets when SLGS issuance is suspended.

--With assistance from Sydney Maki.

WEF DAVOS

View from the top

Even amid high-profile layoffs and economic clouds, U.S. workers should be optimistic about their prospects, according to political and business leaders at Davos.

A majority of CEOs have no plans to freeze hiring or lay off workers over the next 12 months, according to new research from PricewaterhouseCoopers. “When I look at the bulk of our clients, they’re still hiring in the right areas,” said Tim Ryan, U.S. Chair at PwC.

It’s partly simple math: there are still close to two job openings for every person who’s looking for work. Longer-term demographic trends also favor workers. “We aren’t having enough babies and the U.S. immigration policy isn’t bringing in enough workers to meet the needs,” said Rachel Romer, CEO of Guild, an education, skilling, and career-mobility platform, via phone. She also noted that the current layoffs wave is concentrated in the tech and finance industries and corporate headquarters, with limited impact beyond that.

Senior executives in Davos also privately acknowledged that their efforts to drag employees back into offices more days per week are being broadly ignored. They admitted they’re unlikely to be able to enforce traditional office attendance, even as it’s less easy for workers to hop from company to company these days, theoretically diminishing some of their leverage.

U.S. Labor Secretary Martin Walsh contended that businesses need to continue increasing pay and benefits as well. “It’s going to come down to retention,” Walsh told a group of reporters. “If you have a happy workforce and a loyal workforce, then you don’t have to worry about retention.”

Business leaders in Davos discussed concerns that the accelerating application of artificial intelligence could reduce the demand for human workers. But Romer countered that AI isn’t for the foreseeable future capable of replacing many front-line workers in industries such as retail, healthcare, and services. “If you develop the right skills, the world is your oyster—and not only that, you’re going to get to do some amazing things,” said Ryan. “I think climate is exciting. I think reinventing on the backs of world class technology is exciting.”
— Kevin Delaney

Peak moment

Speaking at the Victor Pinchuk Foundation’s Ukrainian Breakfast on Thursday, Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, invoking a Wayne Gretzky metaphor, told attendees that the “puck is going to Ukrainian victory, so let’s skate there.” Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson added: “Tell Putin to get the puck out of Ukraine.”

Dutch export rules on China in focus ahead of ASML results


ASML Holding logo is seen at company's headquarters in Eindhoven

Fri, January 20, 2023 
By Toby Sterling and Stephanie van den Berg

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Expectations that the Dutch government will further limit sales to China by chip equipment giant ASML Holding NV may overshadow what are expected to be strong fourth quarter results due next week.

The Hague is expected to impose at least some additional restrictions on ASML's exports to China, a Dutch government source familiar with security discussions between the United States and Netherlands told Reuters, though they could not give a timeframe.

ASML, a key supplier to chipmakers, generates about 15% of its sales in China, an important growth market even after it was restricted from selling its most advanced machines there under U.S. pressure in 2019.

Tensions between Washington and Beijing over semiconductors have since steadily worsened.

Washington in October imposed export restrictions on its own chip equipment companies aimed at hobbling China's ability to make chips and to blunt its military progress.

U.S. officials say they expect the Netherlands to follow suit.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Jan. 17 said he expected a "good outcome" to discussions with the United States on the matter after meeting with President Joe Biden in Washington.

But Dutch trade minister Liesje Schreinemacher has underlined the Netherlands will not simply adopt U.S. rules.

"I know there's a lot of pressure internationally but I will be fighting for open trade and against protectionism," she told a panel in Davos on Jan. 19.

The government source said The Hague has been working to resolve several concerns.

One is making sure Dutch rules are drafted in such a way that they are not actually more restrictive for ASML than for U.S. companies.

Another is that Japan, home to ASML competitor Nikon, have similar rules, and a third is that new restrictions do not upend the global chip market, which is just emerging from COVID-19 era shortages and needs Chinese production, especially for less-advanced chips.

"We will figure it out," the source said.

EARNINGSThe Dutch Foreign Affairs Ministry, which oversees export controls, declined to comment. ASML also declined to comment citing a quiet period ahead of earnings due on Jan. 25.

ASML is expected to post fourth-quarter net income of 1.68 billion euros ($1.82 billion) on record revenue of 6.37 billion euros, according to Refinitiv Eikon data.

In November ASML raised its annual revenue estimates by 25% to at least 30 billion euros by 2025.

The company's top customers including TSMC, Samsung and Intel are engaged in major expansions, so any loss of Chinese sales could initially be offset elsewhere.

Still, the U.S. restrictions are expected to impact 5% of ASML's 38-billion-euro order backlog.

There could be further losses from tougher Dutch rules, if for example, limits are re-applied to sales to China of older technology deep ultraviolet lithography (DUV) equipment.

ASML has sold more than 8 billion euros worth of such equipment in China since 2014, when DUV was removed from international lists of goods deemed of possible military use.

The government would need to expand its definition of sensitive technology to include DUV in order to restrict it and may not specify that such a move is targeting China.

($1 = 0.9223 euros)

(Reporting by Toby Sterling; editing by Jason Neely)

SCOTLAND UPHOLDS LGBTQ RIGHTS

Nicola Sturgeon: Alister Jack has acted like a ‘governor-general’ over trans law

Simon Johnson
Thu, January 19, 2023 

Nicola Sturgeon - Jane Barlow/PA Wire

Nicola Sturgeon has accused the Scottish Secretary of acting like a colonial “governor-general” after he vetoed her gender reforms over their impact on UK-wide protections for women.

The First Minister said Alister Jack had treated the Scottish Parliament as a “subordinate body” by “deciding which democratic decisions and laws to veto”.

In a speech to a group of pro-independence businessmen and women, she claimed the decision signalled the start of “a new and more dangerous phase for devolution” that showed Scotland should leave the UK.

Ms Sturgeon claimed that the Tories have “broken cover” and their “stealth attacks” on the Scottish Parliament had “been joined by a full-frontal assault”.

But UK Government sources rejected her allegations, saying that her decision to resort to personal slurs against Mr Jack demonstrated the weakness of her case.

Her outspoken assault on the Scottish Secretary came after one of the country’s most eminent legal authorities rejected as “quite wrong” the First Minister’s claim that the veto represented an attack on Holyrood.

Lord Hope of Craighead, a former deputy president of the UK Supreme Court, said the power was “not destroying devolution at all” but was included in the Scotland Act that created it.

Despite her claims to be very confident of victory, he warned Ms Sturgeon that she had a “very low” chance of overturning the veto in her planned judicial review court action and questioned whether it was a “sensible use of public money”.

Alister Jack - Andrew Milligan/PA Wire

On Thursday, Shona Robison, the SNP’s Social Justice Secretary, said Mr Jack should “immediately” withdraw the block to “show the UK Government is serious about improving the lives of trans people and respecting Scottish democracy”.

She claimed that Tory ministers had failed to raise any issues about the Bill undermining UK-wide protections for women during its passage at Holyrood.

But, although she said the Scottish Government remained “absolutely determined to vigorously defend the Bill”, she did not repeat her previous threat of court action and warned a legal battle “only raises further uncertainty”.

Mr Jack has offered talks to try and find a compromise but Ms Sturgeon argued his actions demonstrated that “Westminster control means the worst of both worlds” for Scotland, with a weaker Holyrood and a weaker economy.

She said: “Through his actions, the UK Government Secretary of State for Scotland is demonstrating he is, sadly, not interested in working in partnership.

“He’s decided to act like a governor-general: treating the Scottish Parliament as a subordinate body and deciding which democratic decisions and laws to veto.”

Ms Sturgeon also argued that Westminster decision-making was also undermining the Scottish economy, despite her plans to join the EU requiring a hard border with England, the country’s dominant trading partner.

The UK Government said it raised “a number of concerns” about the impact of the Bill on the rest of the UK “as part of our constructive approach, in advance of the legislation passing”.

A series of potential problems were also highlighted by women’s rights groups and the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), the UK's equalities watchdog.

But Ms Robison insisted the Scottish Government kept UK ministers informed about the Bill’s development during its passage at Holyrood and “at no point” did they ask for it to be amended.

She said: “Put bluntly, this was a one-way conversation up until the final moments this Bill should have gone for Royal Assent and become law.

“So for the Scottish Secretary to announce this week that he was unilaterally vetoing the Bill is fundamentally disrespectful to Scotland’s parliament and the MSPs who have been part of its scrutiny, consideration and passing.”

Referring to Mr Jack’s offer of talks, she said: “If he really wants to work together in a partnership of equals, then he should acknowledge that yesterday’s announcement is completely incompatible with such a partnership, and he should immediately revoke the Section 35 order.

“That would show the UK Government is serious about improving the lives of trans people and respecting Scottish democracy.”

But a UK Government spokesman said a Section 35 order was only issued “after thorough and careful consideration of all the relevant advice and the policy implications”.

He said: “This legislation would have an adverse impact on the operation of Great Britain-wide equalities legislation.

“Transgender people deserve our respect, support and understanding. Our decision is about the legislation’s consequences for the operation of GB-wide equalities protections and other reserved matters.”

An AI rival to ChatGPT passed a university level law and economics exam, and did better than many humans, professor says

Sawdah Bhaimiya
Thu, January 19, 2023 


An AI received a marginal pass in a law and economics exam, economics professor Alex Tabarrok said.


Tabarrok, a professor at George Mason University, said the AI's answer was "better than many human responses."


The AI, known as Claude, was built by Anthropic, a company part-funded by Sam Bankman-Fried.

An AI which received funding from FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried passed a university-level law and economics exam, according to a professor at Virginia's George Mason University.

The AI, named Claude, was designed by AI safety and research firm Anthropic, and was used by Alex Tabarrok to take a law and economics

Claude received a "marginal pass" on a recent law and economics exam at George Mason University in Virginia, Alex Tabarrok, an economics professor at the college wrote on the influential Marginal Revolution University blog, which he runs with fellow economist Tyler Cowen.

Tabarrok said the exam was graded blind and that he considered Claude "a competitor" and "improvement" to OpenAI's GPT3, the tech underlying viral sensation ChatGPT.

Tabarrok did note that there were some weaknesses in the answer including the fact that it was "mostly opinion," and a better answer would have used more economic reasoning.

"Still a credible response and better than many human responses," he added.

There has been an explosion of interest in AI capabilities since the launch of OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT in November. ChatGPT has an eerie human-like ability to do everything from writing convincing cover letters to beating 80% of human candidates to an interview.

Anthropic secured $580 million in Series B funding in May 2022 with investors including Bankman-Fried, FTX's former director of engineering Nishad Singh, and former CEO of Alameda Research Caroline Ellison.

FTX, Alameda Research, and other affiliated companies filed for bankruptcy on November 11, after customers withdrew funds en masse.

Bankman-Fried was arrested in December and had eight criminal charges brought against him by federal prosecutors including wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Singh and Ellison have also been implicated in Bankman-Fried's alleged fraudulent activities, and have been cooperating with prosecutors.

KING  OF THE PUMP & DUMP

Trump backer Peter Thiel reportedly made $1.8 billion cashing out an 8-year bet on crypto – when he was still touting a massive bitcoin price surge

George Glover
Thu, January 19, 2023 

Peter Thiel's fund made $1.8 billion cashing out its crypto positions last year, according to the Financial Times.

Marco Bello/Getty Images

Peter Thiel's fund closed almost all of its crypto positions shortly before prices crashed last year, according to the Financial Times.

Founders Fund made $1.8 billion cashing out its bet on digital assets, the publication said.

Thiel predicted bitcoin's price would surge 100 times around the same time his fund was reportedly selling its crypto holdings.

Peter Thiel's venture capital firm reportedly made $1.8 billion closing out its crypto positions last year – around the time when the early bitcoin bull was still predicting the token's price to surge 100 times.

Founders Fund had cashed out almost all of its bets on digital assets by March 2022, according to a Financial Times report that cited people familiar with the matter.

But Thiel was still backing bitcoin when he spoke at a crypto conference in Miami the following month.

"We're at the end of the fiat money regime," he said, adding that the token's price could increase 100-fold from its level at the time of $44,000.

That prediction was proven false as rising interest rates and failures of high-profile firms like Celsius Network, Three Arrows Capital and FTX dragged the crypto sector into a prolonged slump. Bitcoin plummeted over 60% in 2022 and was trading at under $17,000 by the end of the year.

Founders Fund first started pouring money into crypto in 2014 – when bitcoin was trading at around $750. By the time bitcoin reached its all-time high in November 2021, it had surged 8,500% from that level.

Thiel has a long track record as one of Silicon Valley's most prominent tech investors.

He took early stakes in start-ups including Facebook, Elon Musk's SpaceX and ride-hailing app Lyft, and co-founded PayPal in 1998.

Thiel is also a high-profile supporter of the Republican party and has continued to voice his support for Donald Trump since the former president left office in January 2021.

The fund held around two-thirds of its portfolio in the token at one time but now has no significant exposure to crypto, according to the FT's sources.

Founders Fund did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

UAE Explores Non-Oil Trade in Rupees, Sees Major Role for Crypto


DUBAI PORTS

Abeer Abu Omar, Manus Cranny and Ben Bartenstein
Fri, January 20, 2023 

The United Arab Emirates and India are discussing ways to boost non-oil commerce in rupees as the Gulf country looks to strengthen ties with its second-largest trade partner.

“We are still in early-stage discussions with India on this dirham-rupee trade,” Thani Al-Zeyoudi, the UAE’s minister of state for foreign trade, told Bloomberg Television in Davos, Switzerland. Another area he spotlighted in a separate interview on Friday is the role of cryptocurrencies in commerce.

“Crypto will play a major role for UAE trade going forward,” Al-Zeyoudi said. The UAE — and especially Dubai — has been working to lure the world’s largest firms with its crypto-friendly policies.

“The most important thing is that we ensure global governance when it comes to cryptocurrencies and crypto companies,” Al-Zeyoudi said. “We started attracting some of the companies to the country with the aim that we’ll build together the right governance and legal system, which are needed.”

The UAE has been seeking to step up trade with crucial partners and last year signed multiple economic pacts with countries including India, Indonesia, Turkey, Israel and Ukraine. In the coming months, the UAE expects to finalize similar agreements with Cambodia and Georgia, Al-Zeyoudi said.

The economic agreements are set to boost the UAE’s gross domestic product by 3.4% to 3.8% by 2030, he said.

OPEC’s third-biggest producer has long maintained a currency peg to the dollar and most trade in the Gulf is settled in the US currency. Total bilateral trade between the UAE and India was nearly $64 billion in 2021, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Oil sales in the Indian currency are “not under consideration,” Al-Zeyoudi said. “This is only going to be focusing on non-oil trade.”

Al-Zeyoudi’s statement echoes that of neighboring Saudi Arabia. Earlier this week, Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan said the kingdom is open to discussions about trade in currencies other than the US dollar.

The dollar’s strength in the first half of last year and its weaponization to enforce sanctions on Russia has given fresh impetus to some of the world’s biggest economies to explore ways to circumvent the US currency. China has looked to bolster the yuan’s global appeal and has been pushing to boost its use in transactions with major energy and commodity exporters.

Discussions on a trade agreement with China are also taking place, the UAE minister said.

“China is our first trade partner,” he said. “For sure, more is going to be good for consumers, for workers, for people, for businesses.”

Bullish Outlook

The UAE and neighboring Gulf countries look relatively resilient to the risk of a global recession this year, mainly due to massive oil bounties they collected in 2022 and measures they have taken since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Dubai, part of the seven sheikhdoms comprising the UAE, has seen an influx of businesses, entrepreneurs and tourists over the past couple of years.

The UAE is “very immune” if a recession in the world economy materializes in 2023, Al-Zeyoudi said. “We did excellently last year, and we’re going to have an excellent performance this year as well.”

The governement will also start imposing a 9% corporate tax later this year, a rare move in a region otherwise known for being tax-free. The UAE said it would slash other fees to offset the impact of the levy.

“There will be an overlap for some time between the normal fees and the corporate tax,” Al-Zeyoudi said. “It’s the first time we are applying it, it’s going to take some time.”

Turkey's opposition to announce presidential candidate in February: party official

Supporters of the main opposition CHP cheer during an election rally of their mayoral candidate Imamoglu in Istanbul

Fri, January 20, 2023 at 3:21 AM MST·1 min read

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey's six-party opposition alliance is set to announce in February their presidential candidate to challenge President Tayyip Erdogan's 20-year rule in elections set for May, an opposition party official said on Friday.

Turkey is heading towards one of the most consequential votes in the century-long history of the modern republic and Erdogan signalled on Wednesday that the presidential and parliament elections would be on May 14, a month ahead of schedule.

"The name of the (six-party opposition's) presidential candidate will probably be declared sometime in February," Unal Cevikoz, an adviser of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, told reporters.

The six-party alliance is seeking to forge a united platform but has yet to agree a candidate to challenge Erdogan for the presidency.

Turkey's two main opposition parties, the secularist CHP and centre-right nationalist IYI Party, have allied themselves with four smaller parties under a platform that would seek to dismantle Erdogan's executive presidency in favour of the previous parliamentary system.

Cevikoz said leaders of the six opposition parties would reveal on Jan. 30 in two documents their proposals for a transitional period to a parliamentary system and their government programme.

(Reporting by Birsen Altayli; Writing by Huseyin Hayatsever; Editing by Daren Butler and Alex Richardson)