GE has a wild plan to ‘vacuum’ air pollution right out of our skies — here’s how the mind-blowing idea would work



Nick Paschal
Sat, July 15, 2023 

It’s been decades since General Electric (GE) made vacuums, but now, it’s getting back in the game — only this time, the company will be vacuuming carbon pollution out of the air.

GE announced the successful test of its direct air capture (DAC) prototype and is planning larger-scale demonstrations in 2024. If the company can successfully scale its DAC system, it could be a massive weapon in the fight against our overheating planet.
What is direct air capture?

Direct air capture uses chemical reactions to remove carbon dioxide from the air. When air moves over the chemicals, it selectively traps the carbon, leaving the other parts of the air to pass through.

Once the carbon is successfully sucked out of the air and removed from the chemicals — typically by applying heat — it can be injected deep into the ground in geologic formations, never to be seen again, or used in products like concrete or plastic that will hold on tight to that carbon for a very long time.
How can direct air capture help?

There is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than we need.

The concentration of atmospheric carbon pollution has increased by 47% since the beginning of the Industrial Age. And if that stat isn’t crazy enough, half of the increase in the last 300 years has happened since 1980.

Transitioning to clean energy like solar, wind, and electric vehicles is vital to reducing air-polluting gases, but just slowing down how much carbon we pump into the air isn’t enough — and that’s where DAC comes in.

Nature’s way of pulling carbon from the air is filtering it through plants and trees, so cutting back on cutting down trees is important — but again, it’s not enough. That’s why companies and scientists have been focused on carbon removal.

DAC is one of many solutions needed to pull enough carbon out of the atmosphere to slow the devastating impacts of planet-warming gases. Unlike other forms of carbon removal — like reforestation — DAC uses relatively little space and has few restrictions on where it can be located.

The DAC space is mostly full of startups and incumbent energy companies. But a behemoth like GE has the ability to produce DAC systems on a large enough scale to make a real difference.

“One thing … that we bring to bear is this ability to scale and scale rapidly,” David Moore, a top GE carbon management official, told Axios. “GE is arguably the best company in the world, at least one of the best companies in the world when it comes to moving large quantities of air.”

It’s too early to tell if DAC will grow to the size of the vacuum in “Spaceballs,” but getting GE into the mix will give it a much better chance.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M;BUSINESS AS USUAL

Cantor Fitzgerald Failed to Report Large Traders for Years, SEC Alleges

Austin Weinstein
Fri, July 14, 2023 



(Bloomberg) -- Cantor Fitzgerald LP agreed to pay $1.4 million to settle allegations from the US Securities and Exchange Commission that it failed to properly let the regulators know about clients who were considered to be large traders.

Over several years, Cantor seldom submitted required forms that identify which clients can have significant sway over the market, the SEC said. Cantor failed to pinpoint more than 100 accounts with significant daily and monthly transactions, the Wall Street regulator said.

The brokerage didn’t admit or deny the SEC’s allegations as part of the settlement. A representative for Cantor didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

She's 47, anorexic and wants help dying. Canada will soon allow it

Lisa Pauli is choosing MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying)

Anna Mehler Paperny
Sat, July 15, 2023 
By Anna Mehler Paperny

TORONTO (Reuters) - Lisa Pauli wants to die.

The 47-year-old has wrestled with the eating disorder anorexia for decades; she says she has had a warped relationship with her body since age 8.

These days, Pauli says, she weighs 92 pounds and may go days without eating solid food. She says she is too weak to carry groceries home without stopping for breaks.

"Every day is hell," she said. "I'm so tired. I'm done. I've tried everything. I feel like I've lived my life."

Pauli cannot legally get medical help to die - yet.

An expansion of the criteria for medically assisted death that comes into force in March 2024 will allow Canadians like Pauli, whose sole underlying condition is mental illness, to choose medically assisted death.

 

Canada legalized assisted death in 2016 for people with terminal illness and expanded it in 2021 to people with incurable, but not terminal, conditions. The legal changes were precipitated by court rulings that struck down prohibitions on helping people to die.

The new mental health provision will make Canada one of the most expansive countries in the world when it comes to medical assistance in dying (MAID), according to an expert panel report to Canada's parliament.

Proponents of assisted death - which is still a novel concept in many parts of the world - say it is an issue of personal autonomy.

But six disability rights and religious advocates told Reuters that the pace of the planned changes to the assisted death framework in Canada brings additional risks of people opting for MAID because they are unable to access social services - that lack of which could exacerbate their suffering.

Canada's Justice Minister, David Lametti, dismissed criticism that the country was moving too fast or opening up the system to abuse. Some disability advocates have demanded rolling back the current framework because they argue it puts people with disabilities at risk.

"We have gotten where we are through a number of very prudent steps," Lametti said in an interview with Reuters in June. "It's been a slow and careful evolution. And I'm proud of that."

In 2021, the most recent year available, 10,064 people died through medically assisted death, about 3.3% of deaths in Canada that year. That compared to 4.5% in the Netherlands and 2.4% in Belgium, where assisted dying has been legal since 2002, according to each country's official data.

The vast majority of assisted deaths in Canada conformed to the legal rules but provincial authorities deemed a small number worthy of investigation, according to previously unreported provincial government data. Provinces and territories are responsible for health care in Canada.

In 2021-22, Quebec found 15 assisted deaths, 0.4% of the total, did not follow the rules. The province referred the cases to Quebec's self-governing medical body and medical facilities, provincial spokesperson Marie-Claude Lacasse said. In six of those cases, the person did not have a serious and incurable condition, according to a provincial commission.

In British Columbia, government officials have referred 19 assisted death cases to regulatory bodies and a further two to law enforcement since 2018, according to a provincial spokesperson who did not provide further details.

None of the referrals in the two provinces resulted in disciplinary action for doctors, regulatory bodies said, declining to provide further details.

Four other provinces reported no problematic cases of medically assisted death. Other provinces and territories including Ontario, Canada's most populous province, did not respond.

30,000 MEDICALLY ASSISTED DEATHS

More than 30,000 people have died with medical assistance in Canada since 2016, more than 10,000 of them in 2021 when the law was expanded to people whose deaths were not "reasonably foreseeable." Even after the change in the legislation, about 98% of the assisted deaths in 2021 were people deemed near their natural death, according to Health Canada data.

"So far nothing I see would suggest that we need to worry about having gone too far," Lametti said.

The procedure is only available to people covered by a Canadian healthcare program. It requires a written application and assessments from two independent medical practitioners, including at least one specialized in their condition if the applicant is not near their natural death. The procedure frequently involves an injection administered at home.

Lametti said the federal government is considering recommendations from a parliamentary committee to allow advance requests and "mature minors" - people under 18 deemed capable of making this decision - to access assisted death.

Quebec passed a law June 7 that would allow people to make advance requests for assisted death that would go into effect when they reach a predetermined point of incapacity due to Alzheimer's or similar conditions.

But Georges L'Esperance, president of the Quebec Association for the Right to Die with Dignity, said it could take up to two years for the provision to go into effect.

Dying With Dignity Canada has organized nearly 10,000 letters this year to government officials seeking to legalize advance requests across Canada, spokesperson Sarah Dobec said.

Lametti did not say whether the federal government – which is responsible for administering the criminal code - would challenge Quebec's law in the courts. When it comes to minors and advance requests, he said: "We need more time" to gauge public opinion and address policy questions.

Pauli first raised the idea of assisted death with psychiatrist Justine Dembo in April 2021.

Dembo served on an expert panel on assisted death and mental illness that presented a report to Canada's parliament last year. She assesses people for MAID although on that visit Pauli was seeing her for body dysmorphic disorder.

Pauli has tried a multitude of treatments and been hospitalized twice but said she still thinks constantly about what she has eaten; what she will eat.

Dembo told Pauli she could be eligible for assisted death once Canada's law changes.

"She's undergone very high-quality treatments and they just have not made an impact," she said.

When Dembo assesses people for MAID, she said, she treats it as "a last resort," and tries to determine whether they have received all available medical and social supports.

Pauli says she plans to apply for MAID once she is eligible. When Pauli first broached the possibility of getting help dying, her mother Mary Heatley could not accept it.

"The wind knocked out of me. … I just couldn't imagine her not being in this world," she said in an interview.

But Heatley talked to her daughter and realized what she was going through.

"She just could not foresee another 10, 20, whatever years of this, living with this eating disorder," she said.

"I say to myself, 'You have to try and remember. This is what she wanted. It's her life.' … And I would just have to go on without her."

MEDICAL CRITERIA

Some medical experts say mental illness alone should not be a criterion for assisted death. It can be difficult to determine whether a mental illness is truly irremediable, as the law requires, and to differentiate between pathological suicidality and a rational desire to die, says Sonu Gaind, chief psychiatrist at Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.

"We don't even understand the biology of most mental illnesses," he said.

Six activists said Canada's expansion of assisted death puts people with intellectual and physical disabilities, low incomes or other vulnerabilities at risk.

"My biggest fear is that we go to this absolute terminal end and people die but we haven't invested time, money, people in putting the things in place that would mean that people don't want to consider" assisted death, Michelle Hewitt, co-chair of the advocacy group Disability Without Poverty, said in an interview.

Hewitt pointed to a widely reported case of a British Columbia man, Sean Tagert, with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's disease who opted for medically assisted death in 2019 after he struggled to get 24-hour care.

"[H]e was very clear on what he wanted - more care hours at home - and when he was told he would have to move to a care facility a distance from his family, particularly his young son, he used MAID," Hewitt wrote in an email.

Social media posts by Tagert's family said that finding care was "a constant struggle and source of stress for Sean".

The reported cases of people resorting to medically assisted death in part due to lack of supports are "tragic," Lametti said.

But "you can't get MAID simply because you're having some social challenges or economic challenges. ... Unless they fall into the medical criteria, they can't access."

While the reported numbers of problematic assisted deaths in Canada are low, some opponents of assisted death in other jurisdictions are using the country's experience as a cautionary tale, three people involved in the debate in Britain told Reuters.

"Canada is being used primarily as an argument against us, not an argument in favour," said Charles Falconer, a British Labour peer who supports assisted death for people with a terminal illness in Britain, where it is not legal.

"It does in one sense [represent a slippery slope], doesn't it, because it started off with terminal illness and it's ended up with non-terminal illness and mental illness."

($1 = 1.3211 Canadian dollars)

(Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny; Editing by Denny Thomas and Suzanne Goldenberg)

AT LEAST ONCE A DECADE

Jack the Ripper's identity 'revealed' by newly discovered medical records

Dalya Alberge
Sat, July 15, 2023 

Hyam Hyams, photographed at Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum in 1899, has been named as a key suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders - London Metropolitan Archives

A former police volunteer claims to have discovered the identity of the figure behind some of the most shocking crimes in British history, unmasking the 19th-century murderer who terrorised the nation as Jack the Ripper.

Sarah Bax Horton – whose great-great-grandfather was a policeman at the heart of the Ripper investigation – has unearthed compelling evidence that matches witness descriptions of the man seen with female victims shortly before they were stabbed to death in 1888 in the East End of London.

Her detective work has led her to Hyam Hyams, who lived in an area at the centre of the murders and who, as a cigar-maker, knew how to use a knife. He was an epileptic and an alcoholic who was in and out of mental asylums, his condition worsening after he was injured in an accident and unable to work. He repeatedly assaulted his wife, paranoid that she was cheating on him, and was eventually arrested after he attacked her and his mother with “a chopper”.

Significantly, Ms Bax Horton gained access to his medical records and discovered dramatic details. She told The Telegraph: “For the first time in history, Jack the Ripper can be identified as Hyam Hyams using distinctive physical characteristics.”

Sarah Bax Horton has researched medical records in her quest to find Jack the Ripper 

- HENRY HARRISON

Witnesses described a man in his mid-thirties with a stiff arm and an irregular gait with bent knees, and Ms Bax Horton discovered that the medical notes of Hyams – who was 35 in 1888 – recorded an injury that left him unable to “bend or extend” his left arm as well as an irregular gait and an inability to straighten his knees, with asymmetric foot dragging. He also had the most severe form of epilepsy, with regular seizures.

The victims were prostitutes or destitute. Their throats were cut and their bodies butchered in frenzied attacks with the authorities received taunting anonymous notes from someone calling himself Jack the Ripper. They are some of the most infamous unsolved crimes.

At least six women Martha Tabram, Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elisabeth Stride, Kate Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly – were killed in or near Whitechapel between August and November 1888.

Hyams’ medical notes, taken from various infirmaries and asylums, reveal that his mental and physical decline coincided with the Ripper’s killing period, escalating between his breaking his left arm in February 1888 and his permanent committal in September 1889.

“That escalation path matched the increasing violence of the murders,” said Ms Bax Horton. “He was particularly violent after his severe epileptic fits, which explains the periodicity of the murders.”

She added: “In the files, it said what the eyewitnesses said – that he had a peculiar gait. He was weak at the knees and wasn’t fully extending his legs. When he walked, he had a kind of shuffling gait, which was probably a side-effect of some brain damage as a result of his epilepsy.”

An 1888 Illustrated Police News front page reports on the murders - alamy

Witness accounts of the man’s height and weight were similar to the details in Hyams’ medical files, Ms Bax Horton discovered.

“They saw a man of medium height and build, between 5ft 5in. and 5ft 8in. Tall, stout and broad-shouldered. Hyams was 5 foot 7 and a half inches, and weighed 10 stone 7 lbs… His photograph demonstrates that he was noticeably broad-shouldered,” she said.

She has concluded that Hyams’ physical and mental decline – exacerbated by his alcoholism – triggered him to kill. The murders stopped at the end of 1888, around the time Hyams was picked up by the police as “a wandering lunatic”. In 1889, he was incarcerated in the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, north London, until his death in 1913. Jack the Ripper never struck again.

Various suspects have previously been suggested as the man behind the killings, including the artist Walter Sickert, who painted gruesome pictures of a murdered prostitute.

Hyams had been on a “long list” of around 100 culprits, but Ms Bax Horton said he had been discounted because he had been misidentified. “When I was trying to identify the correct Hyam Hyams, I found about five. It took quite a lot of work to identify his correct biographical data. Hyam Hyams has never before been fully explored as a Ripper suspect. To protect the confidentiality of living individuals, two of the Colney Hatch Asylum files on patients, including Hyams, were closed to public view until 2013 and 2015.”

What makes her research particularly extraordinary is that it was prompted by her chance discovery in 2017 that her own great-great-grandfather, Harry Garrett, had been a Metropolitan Police sergeant at Leman Street Police Station, headquarters of the Ripper investigation. He was posted there from January 1888 – the murders’ fateful year – until 1896.

Sergeant Harry Garrett, who worked on the Jack the Ripper case

Ms Bax Horton, who read English and modern languages at Oxford University, is a retired civil servant who volunteered with the City of London Police for almost two decades until 2020. She had no idea of her ancestor’s history until she began researching her family and found herself studying the Ripper case.

She will now present her extensive evidence in a forthcoming book, titled One-Armed Jack: Uncovering the Real Jack the Ripper, to be published by Michael O’Mara Books next month.

It is written in tribute to her ancestor and his police colleagues.

Paul Begg, a leading Ripper authority, has endorsed it. “This is a well-researched, well-written, and long-needed book-length examination of a likely suspect. If you have an idea of the sort of man Jack the Ripper might have been, Hyam Hyams could be it,” he said.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Ontario men allegedly behind $3 million investment scam face string of charges after years-long probe

Police believe there are more victims, after investors were scammed in respect to projects that involved the installation of electrical generators.


Corné van Hoepen
·Contributor, Yahoo News Canada
Sat, July 15, 2023 

Instances of fraud continue to rise at an alarming rate across Canada.

 (Credit: Richard Buchan/The Canadian Press)

Two Ontario men have been arrested and face multiple charges after a three-year police investigation revealed the duo had allegedly been running an investment scam, pocketing over $3 million in the form of loans from private investors.

Halton Police said an investigation was launched by their Fraud Unit after receiving reports from 20 complainants who had invested in Oakville-based "OOM Energy," also known as "MCS Energy."

"OOM Energy misled victims to believe that their investments were guaranteed by an insurance program, and were also supplied with forged insurance documents," Halton Police said in a press release.

Investigators say over $3 million was loaned to OOM Energy by private investors in respect to projects that involved the installation of electrical generators.

Oakville-resident Craig Hugh Clydesdale, owner of OOM Energy, and Markham-resident Thomas Craig McBeath, who worked as an insurance broker for the business, were arrested on June 16, 2023.

Both men have been charged with multiple counts of fraud over $5,000 and forgery related offences.

"It is believed that there may be more victims and witnesses in the community," said the Halton Police statement. "Anyone with further information is asked to contact D/Cst. Ed Spence of the Halton Police Regional Fraud Unit at (905) 465-8746."

How can you protect yourself against similar scams?

As Canadians spend an increasing amount of time online to shop, work or communicate, data released by the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC) reveals that fraud, identity crimes and associated cybercrime are growing at an alarming rate.



During 2022, CAFC received fraud reports totalling a staggering $531M in victim losses — a drastic increase from the $379 million reported during 2021 by the same agency.

So what are some steps you can take to determine if a business or organization you want to invest into is a scam or legitimate?

CAFC defines an investment scam as the "solicitation for investments into false or deceptive investment opportunities. These opportunities falsely promise higher-than-normal returns. However, investors lose most or all their money."

Some examples of these include:

Cryptocurrency


Fixed income


The "pump and dump"


Initial coin offerings


Pyramid


Franchise/business opportunity

If you are offered unsolicited investment opportunities (even from friends and family), higher-than-normal returns, websites that appear to be fake or requests for cryptocurrency payments, your suspicions should be raised.

To protect your assets from potential scammers, CAFC warns if you choose to invest or partner with a business you are not familiar with, do the research yourself and look for possible scam alerts about the investment being offered. You can also report any fraud, even if it resulted in no money lost, to the CAFC.

India’s JSW Steel Said to Mull Bid for Stake in Teck Coal Unit

Vinicy Chan and Swansy Afonso
Sat, July 15, 2023 


(Bloomberg) -- JSW Steel Ltd., India’s largest producer, is considering a bid for as much as a 20% stake in Teck Resources Ltd.’s steelmaking coal business, people with knowledge of the matter said.

JSW has expressed preliminary interest, said the people, who asked not to be named because the information is confidential. Mumbai-based JSW also is in discussions with banks over potential financing for the acquisition, which may total about $2 billion, they said.

Deliberations are at an early stage, and details such as price and timing could change, the people said.

JSW didn’t immediately respond to queries sent outside normal business hours. Teck declined to comment.

India Plans More Steel Products in Manufacturing Incentive Plan

The Vancouver-based miner had planned to carve out its coal business but was forced back to the drawing board after canceling a shareholder vote on a spinoff in late April because of a lack of support.

Rival Glencore Plc subsequently proposed buying the unit for cash. Teck confirmed it was engaging with Glencore on the preliminary, nonbinding proposal, among others.

Those talks come after Teck rejected Glencore’s unsolicited $23 billion takeover bid. The commodity giant has said its offer remains on the table.

--With assistance from Jacob Lorinc.

Chevron opted to buy vs build US LNG processing - gas executive

Curtis Williams
Fri, July 14, 2023 


By Curtis Williams

(Reuters) - Chevron Corp is comfortable with buying U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) on long-term contracts rather than constructing its own U.S. domestic export facility, said Freeman Shaheen, the company's head of global gas.

The second largest U.S. oil and gas producer in June 2022 signed agreements with LNG developers Cheniere Energy and Venture Global LNG for a combined 4 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) of the super-chilled natural gases. The deals will give it more gas and diversify its risk, he said.

Chevron owns stakes in LNG projects in Angola, Australia and has taken early steps with partners to advance a floating LNG project off the coast of Israel that would process gas from the Leviathan field.

The Cheniere and Venture Global LNG deals will provide an outlet for natural gas flowing from its Permian Basin shale holdings in West Texas and New Mexico. The company holds about 2.2 million acres in the largest U.S. shale field.

As Chevron's production in the Permian has grown, it has had to decide how much gas output would stay in the U.S. and how much should be exported, said Shaheen. It opted not to build an export terminal in the U.S., where several major plants are already under construction.

The company had to balance the investment needed to build an LNG facility in the U.S. against drilling more oil and gas wells in the Permian, or investments in the Eastern Mediterranean, Argentina or West Africa, Shaheen said.

Shaheen said startup problems at Venture Global LNG's Calcasieu Pass plant that sparked disputes with other major gas producers over the delays in receiving their commercial cargoes has not unduly worried Chevron.

"That is always a concern with any project that you do. ... So we have to weigh that in the balance in terms of how we manage our sales and our portfolio," Shaheen told Reuters at the LNG 2023 conference this week.

Top LNG traders Shell (SHEL.L) and BP (BP.L) separately filed for arbitration against Venture Global LNG for failing to supply contracted cargoes, even as it sold to non-contract customers as prices soared last year.

(Reporting by Curtis Williams in Houston; Editing by Josie Kao)

WORKERS CAPITAL
JAPAN
World’s Biggest Pension Fund GPIF Boosts Its Treasuries Holdings

WHO HOLDS U$ DEBT?!

Masaki Kondo and Yumi Teso
Fri, July 14, 2023 




(Bloomberg) -- Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund boosted its holdings of Treasuries to a three-year high as the dollar’s strength against the yen offset losses on the securities.

Resilient demand from GPIF, as the world’s biggest pension fund is known, suggests that elevated yields and a weak yen may support Japanese appetite for Treasuries, even if US interest rates are coming off recent highs as the Federal Reserve’s monetary tightening campaign nears its peak.

GPIF holds ¥200 trillion ($1.4 trillion) worth of assets — a hoard about as big as Spain’s economy — and what it does has huge ramifications for Japanese portfolio flows, given that many of the nation’s other funds follow its lead. And investors from the Asia nation are the biggest foreign holders of Treasuries, with $1.1 trillion of the securities as of April.

The fund increased US government bonds and bills to 43.3% of its foreign debt holdings in the 12 months through March from 40.8% previously, according to an analysis by Bloomberg of the latest data released this month. That’s the highest since the allocation reached 47.4% in March 2020, and also came despite currency-hedging costs hovering around the highest in more than two decades.

While easing inflation in the US means that Treasury yields may start to fall sooner than rates in other bond markets, they are likely to remain attractive to Japanese investors, according to Kiyoshi Ishigane, chief fund manager at Mitsubishi UFJ Kokusai Asset Management Co. in Tokyo. “As long as the yen doesn’t strengthen, Japanese investors will benefit both from income and capital gains in Treasuries,” he said.

Rebalancing flows resulting from fluctuations in exchange rates should continue to partly offset both depreciation and appreciation pressures on the yen, strategists at Barclays Plc, including Shinichiro Kadota, wrote in a research note.

To be sure, the yen has rebounded recently and there are plausible scenarios that could extend the rally and affect flows into Treasuries: Signs of long-awaited inflationary pressure in Japan could trigger an earlier-than-expected shift in the Bank of Japan’s loose monetary policy, the Federal Reserve appears to be nearing the peak of its rate-hiking cycle, and global recession risks highlight the yen’s value as a haven.

In the 12 month’s in question though, the dollar jumped 9.2% against Japan’s currency while Treasuries lost 4.5%. GPIF’s holdings of US government bonds and bills increased 8.2% in yen terms to ¥21.6 trillion.

It should also be noted that GPIF’s asset allocation doesn’t directly reflect its market view. The fund outsources investment to managers such as BlackRock Inc. and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Asset Management Co., with 86% of foreign bonds passively invested to track benchmarks. GPIF’s assets are also equally divided into foreign and local equities as well as bonds.

Saudis Expand Grasp on Global Food With BRF’s $1.1 Billion Deal

IMPERIALISM; HIGHEST FORM OF CAPITALI$M

Vinícius Andrade
Fri, July 14, 2023 



(Bloomberg) -- BRF SA, Brazil’s biggest poultry producer, has raised 5.4 billion reais ($1.1 billion) in a share offering that lured investors including Saudi Arabia’s state-owned fund Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Investment Co.

The company said it sold 500 million new shares at 9 reais apiece, a 5.7% discount to Thursday’s closing price, confirming an earlier Bloomberg report. An additional allotment of 100 million new shares was also sold.

The deal, Brazil’s biggest equity offering so far this year, also drew interest from beef producer Marfrig Global Foods SA. Salic bought 180 million shares, while Marfrig scooped up roughly 200 million shares, maintaining its stake in BRF at around 33%, according to a regulatory filing.

Salic’s investment marks the latest in a series of moves by Saudi Arabia to secure food supplies and also diversify its economy. The fund has purchased stakes in companies from Singapore-based agricultural trader Olam Agri Holdings to Indian rice producer LT Foods Ltd.

For Marcos Molina dos Santos, the meat tycoon who founded Marfrig about two decades ago, the transaction was an opportunity for him to take another step toward the combination of the protein producers, which he called “sister companies” in an interview with Bloomberg News earlier this year.

BRF, one of the world’s biggest poultry exporters, is selling assets to reduce leverage amid a business overhaul that started after Molina became its biggest investor. The share sale will accelerate attempts to reduce its net debt, which stood at 15.3 billion reais as of last March.

After the deal, the company’s net debt-to-adjusted Ebitda ratio may drop to 2.2 times, down from 3.4 times in the first quarter, Lucror Analytics credit analyst Josseline Jenssen wrote in a note, reaffirming a buy recommendation for the company’s dollar bonds.

BRF’s notes due in 2030 gained about 2 cents to 85 cents on the dollar, while the company’s stock fell as much as 6% in Sao Paulo Friday.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. was the leading coordinator for the transaction. Other underwriters were Banco Bradesco BBI, Banco BTG Pactual, Citigroup, Banco Itau BBA, Banco Safra, UBS BB and XP Investimentos.

--With assistance from Gerson Freitas Jr. and Lisa Wolfson.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

Credit Suisse Offers Rare Example of Bank Disclosing EM Debt

Natasha White
Fri, July 14, 2023 


(Bloomberg) -- Credit Suisse is one of a handful of global banks publicly disclosing some loans to poor countries, as most of the rest of the industry instead clings to secrecy, according to a fresh study.

The Swiss bank, which was absorbed by UBS Group AG in a government-engineered takeover earlier this year, stands out for its relative transparency around such lending, according to research by UK nonprofit Debt Justice, which looked at multiple data sets spanning the past half decade and through the first half of 2023. The only other bank found to provide similar disclosures was Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, the analysis showed.

Since 2021, global banks have kept a lid on about $37 billion of loans to sovereigns in the developing world, according to researchers at Debt Justice. The lack of visibility follows 2019 guidelines, known as the Voluntary Principles for Debt Transparency, which were backed by global banks and ushered through by the Institute of International Finance.

The goal of the principles was to help monitor the link between poor countries and their creditors, in order to help support sustainable lending and fight corruption. In all, however, global banks have only disclosed a total of $2.9 billion in loans since the voluntary principles were agreed, Debt Justice said.

“It’s a shocking failure of this voluntary approach that banks have been able to sign up for these principles and ignore them for the last four years,” said Tim Jones, head of policy at Debt Justice.

The study comes as the overall debt burden of developing countries swells. The portion of external public debt owed to private creditors stood at 62% of the total in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available, according to research by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. African debtor nations now pay more in interest than they do on education or health programs, UNCTAD said.

The growing dominance of private credit in some of the world’s most vulnerable sovereign debt markets has led to calls for a recalibration. That’s as many of the world’s poorest countries face increasingly heavy financial burdens to deal with the fallout from climate change.

The bulk of loan contracts are struck under UK or New York law, and the UK government has donated almost half a million pounds to the debt transparency initiative. “We recognise that transparency practices need to be improved - including more private financial institutions contributing their data - and we continue to urge creditors to publish their data,” a UK government spokesperson said.

IMPERIALISM; HIGHEST FORM OF CAPITALI$M

Debt Justice said its research indicates that about 19 banks are withholding information on loans to vulnerable nations, including Standard Chartered Plc, Societe Generale SA and Deutsche Bank AG. The estimates are based on those banks’ involvement in syndicated lending to low-income governments, according to Debt Justice’s analysis of figures from Loan Radar, a data provider.

Spokespeople for Credit Suisse, MUFG, Societe Generale and Deutsche Bank declined to comment. Shaun Gamble, executive director of group media relations at Standard Chartered, said “our participation in any transaction, or relationship with a client, remains confidential.”

Sonja Gibbs, head of sustainable finance at the Institute of International Finance, said the institute and its members have “championed the principles of greater debt transparency” and have a “vested interest in supporting debt sustainability.” But without public sector creditors and borrowing countries being “fully on board,” greater transparency is “simply not possible,” Gibbs said.

Greater transparency won’t solve existing debt crises, but it can help prevent new ones, Debt Justice said. Full disclosure of borrowing and lending “enables money to be tracked, loans to be held to account, and also hopefully delivers lower interest rates for governments as well,” Jones said.

Banks, governments and other lenders have been stung in the past by hidden loan contracts. Credit Suisse is still dealing with the legal aftermath of its role in the so-called tuna-bond scandal in Mozambique. This month, the bank lost its bid to block an impending trial over allegations of wrongdoing, after a UK high court judge ruled that the $2 billion case should proceed.

In 2017, Republic of Congo saw its debt-to-GDP ratio soar by over 50% overnight as the International Monetary Fund learned of previously hidden loans from commodity traders, impacting the country’s credit rating and access to fresh funds.

“The only way banks will disclose loan information is if they are made to by legislation or regulations,” Jones said. “It’s time for governments to realize they need to actively regulate the banks to make them disclose this information.”