FOX's Greg Gutfeld's Sunny Take On Climate Change Deserves A Storm Of Pushback

Ron Dicker

HUFFPOST
Thu, September 7, 2023 

Greg Gutfeld of Fox News spouted some dubious “logic” about climate change on Wednesday. (Watch the video below.)

Gutfled, a co-host of “The Five,” appeared to acknowledge that global warming is actually happening: “No one is saying that climate isn’t changing,” he said. (A lot of people are saying that, actually, but they’re wrong.)

However, Gutfeld veered off track when he suggested the gradual cooking of the planet is a good thing.

“More people die from cold weather than warm weather,” he said. “So if you’re going to just use the ultimate variable, which is life span, you would be happy if the planet gets slightly warmer, because that makes areas more livable for people. People don’t live in frozen areas. They live in warm areas.”

And getting warmer. September is capping a record-breaking summer in the Northern Hemisphere. This year is on course to be the second hottest on record.

“Scientists blame ever warming human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas with an extra push from a natural El Nino,” an Associated Press article noted this week.

In short, humanity’s runaway use of fossil fuels is adding too much heat-trapping carbon dioxide to the Earth’s atmosphere (the so-called greenhouse effect), making the planet warmer than it should be and contributing to all manner of deadly extreme weather and destructive environmental loss.

Gutfeld also falsely asserted that scientists who talk about the realities of climate change “never tell you” the ice measurements “around the globe.”

According to a NASA report on two-thirds of the world’s fresh water stored by ice sheets, Antarctica is losing about 150 billion tons of ice mass per year, and Greenland is losing 270 billion tons annually.

Some people on X, formerly known as Twitter, aired their rebuttals to Gutfeld’s claims as well.

Related...

USUALLY YOU GET A COURT MARTIAL

Vietnam pilot who disregarded direct order gets Medal of Honor

Nadine Yousif - BBC News
Wed, September 6, 2023 

U.S. President Joe Biden awards the Medal of Honor to retired Army Captain Larry Taylor for conspicuous gallantry during the Vietnam War, during a ceremony in the East Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., September 5, 2023.

US President Joe Biden has awarded the nation's highest military medal to a Vietnam War helicopter pilot who disregarded a direct order.

Retired Army Capt Larry Taylor, now 81, flew his Cobra helicopter into a firefight to rescue four US troops from near certain death in 1968.

He had been ordered to return to base, but refused when he learned there was no other rescue helicopter being sent.

A Cobra had never before been used for such a mission before, the Army says.

He received the Medal of Honor at the White House.

On the night of 18 June 1968, the long range reconnaissance patrol team that then-1st Lt Taylor saved came under heavy fire and was surrounded by enemy troops outside Ho Chi Minh City.

Running low on fuel and ammunition, he made low-level attack runs as the enemy returned intense ground fire for about half an hour.

Upon realising that the team's escape route was a death trap, he radioed with a new extraction point.

When the men arrived at the location, 1st Lt Taylor landed the helicopter "with complete disregard for his personal safety" to pick up the four troops, the White House said.

The men had to cling to the outside of the two-person aircraft as there wasn't room inside.

President Biden said at Tuesday's medal ceremony: "The rescue helicopter was not coming.

"Instead, Lieutenant Taylor received a direct order: Return to base. His response was just as direct: 'I'm getting my men out. I'm getting my men out.'

"Lieutenant Taylor would perform the extraction himself, a move never before accomplished in a Cobra."

The Tennessee native's aircraft was hit multiple times amid the rescue mission.

"He refused to give up. He refused to leave a fellow American behind," Mr Biden said. "When duty called, Larry did everything to answer. He rewrote the fate of four families for generations to come."

Only 3,515 US military personnel have received the Medal of Honor, out of 40 million who have served since the Civil War.

GM announces new EV feature that will help drivers power their homes during storms and outages: ‘It makes so much sense’

Jeremiah Budin
Thu, September 7, 2023 

Extreme weather events are growing more frequent, as is the adoption of electric cars over traditional gas-powered vehicles.

In an effort that addresses both of those trends, General Motors recently announced that it’s going to equip all of its EVs with the ability to act as backup generators during power outages, as The New York Times reported.

Now, not only are EVs helping to decrease our reliance on dirty energy sources like gas and oil, but they are also helping people deal with the consequences of them.

GM said it will begin rolling out the feature this year. The company plans to have all of its EVs equipped with “vehicle-to-home technology” by the 2026 model year.

That includes everything from its electric pickup trucks to the Chevy Bolt, which was recently discontinued and then abruptly brought back after an outcry from consumers.

GM joins Ford in offering the backup power feature (although Ford currently offers it only in its F-150 Lightning pickup truck). However, as the technology is fairly new and just being rolled out, it’s not as simple as just plugging your car into the wall. In order to use it, customers will often need to shell out extra for integration hardware, as The New York Times noted.

On Reddit, some customers saw this added cost as a reason to criticize car companies.

“[My] brother bought a Ford Lightning only to be told it would cost him an extra 25k to have his house upgraded to charge and be able to power his house from the truck,” wrote one commenter in a Reddit thread about the new technology.

So far, GM and Ford have not yet set a standardized price for installing necessary integration systems, although the average price is likely much less than $25,000.

For example, Tesla sells backup power technology through its Powerwall systems, which start at $8,700, per The New York Times (though prices vary). But the Powerwalls are charged via solar panels (also sold separately by Tesla) or the grid. They can charge Tesla’s EVs but can’t yet be charged by them.

“It makes so much sense, instead of buying those stupid large portable batteries for thousands, you should be able to use the gigantic battery in your car,” another commenter wrote in the Reddit thread.

Southeast Asians wary of new conflicts as big powers join ASEAN summit

Updated Thu, September 7, 2023 

By Kate Lamb and Ananda Teresia

JAKARTA (Reuters) -Indonesian President Joko Widodo called on world leaders on Thursday to step back from confrontation as they met at a Southeast Asian-hosted security and trade summit against a backdrop of big-power rivalries.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, Chinese Premier Li Qiang, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov joined the summit in the Indonesian capital led by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), along with leaders of other partner countries.

Tensions have accompanied the talks on issues from trade and technology, to China's increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea, the Myanmar junta's refusal to cooperate with ASEAN on a peace plan, the war in Ukraine, and suspicion that North Korea plans to supply weapons to Russia.

Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries have warned this week of "destructive" rivalries between major powers, a reference to U.S.-China tensions that they say puts them in danger.

"We all have a responsibility to not create new conflict, new tension, new war and at the same time we also have a responsibility to reduce tensions," Widodo, as chair of the 10-member ASEAN bloc this year, said at the beginning of the East Asia Summit.

Cooperation and multilateralism risked being replaced by "the rule of the strong".

"The world will be destroyed if conflicts and tensions in one place are taken to another place," he said in closing the summit.

On Wednesday, China's Li warned against starting a "new Cold War" and warned countries against taking sides in any conflict.

Harris, attending in place of President Joe Biden, reiterated her country's "enduring commitment" to Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific.

A White House official said earlier the U.S. shared interests with ASEAN in "upholding the rules-based international order, including in the South China Sea, in the face of China's unlawful maritime claims and provocative actions".

Harris underscored U.S. opposition to "unilateral changes to the status quo in the South China Sea and East China Sea" in meetings with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, a White House spokesperson said. China and Japan both claim a tiny group of islands in the East China Sea.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, another staunch U.S. ally, said any attempts to change the status quo by force in the South China Sea could not be tolerated.

China's Li and Japan's Kishida met briefly on the sidelines of the summit on Wednesday and discussed Japan's release into the sea of treated radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant.

An infuriated China has banned on all aquatic imports from Japan in response.

MYANMAR CRISIS

ASEAN leaders are also grappling with a protracted conflict in Myanmar, a member of their grouping beset by violence since the military ousted a government led by Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021.

During Thursday's East Asia Forum, concerns were raised about Suu Kyi's "treatment, status and health and continued, unacceptable detention", according to U.S. state department official Daniel Kritenbrink.

The 78-year-old Nobel laureate, who is serving 27 years in detention, is ailing and the junta has denied requests for an external physician to see her.

ASEAN has tried unsuccessfully to push for peace in Myanmar leading to questions about the influence of their politically diverse group.

Earlier in the week, ASEAN leaders called on the country's armed forces "in particular" to end hostilities. Myanmar said the bloc should stick to its principle of not interfering in each other's affairs.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said Myanmar was facing a "worsening political, humanitarian, and human rights" situation, and repeated calls for the junta to release all political prisoners.

(Additional reporting by Stanley Widianto, Gayatri Suroyo, Stefanno Sulaiman; Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor, A. Ananthalakshmi; Editing by Robert Birsel and John Stonestreet)

China’s Credit Wreck Exposes Governance Failings to the World


Wei Zhou and Pearl Liu
Wed, September 6, 2023 


(Bloomberg) -- For Dhiraj Bajaj, the sudden twists and turns were unlike any he'd ever seen in his two decade investing career.

First, Dalian Wanda Group Co. indicated to bondholders -- including Bajaj -- that everything was fine. The $400 million it owed them would be paid in full. Days later, some creditors were warned that the company was, in fact, $200 million short, a bombshell that triggered a frantic sell-off in the debt.

And then, just as quickly, lenders were informed that there was indeed enough cash, sending the bonds surging once more.

Wanda would ultimately make the July debt payment. But Bajaj, who is Lombard Odier (Singapore) Ltd.’s head of Asian fixed income, says the incident and others like it have left him deeply wary of investing in China going forward.

This is becoming an increasingly common refrain in the financial community. As dozens of debt-saddled property companies, including industry giant Country Garden Holdings Co., struggle to stave off defaults, international money managers say that it’s the weak — and many argue worsening — governance and disclosure practices that are putting them off mainland borrowers longer-term. That could lead to diminished access to financing and higher borrowing costs for years to come, experts warn, further hamstringing China’s already sputtering economy.

“There is a clear deterioration in terms of standards, and this will no longer be tolerated by the global investment community,” Bajaj said. “We are becoming less tolerant of many Chinese high-yield companies due to the lack of disclosure standards and direct, straightforward communication.”

Representatives for Wanda and Country Garden didn’t respond to multiple requests seeking comment.

Of course, China wasn’t exactly a shining example of good corporate governance to begin with. A number of companies have been plagued by hidden debt and accounting errors for years.

But with the nation’s junk-rated dollar bonds returning an average of over 9% annually between 2012 and 2020 — versus less than 7% for comparable US debt — money managers were, by-and-large, more than fine to look the other way.

Those gains are a distant memory now. China’s offshore junk bonds, most of which were issued by builders, have lost more than $127 billion in value since peaking just two and a half years ago, around the time Beijing was introducing the so-called three red lines to slow borrowing by developers.

The policies were intended to help curb years of excessive debt-fueled expansion by builders and property speculation by homebuyers. But they wound up tipping a record number of firms into default as refinancing costs surged, and leading to a string of restructurings.

Numerous global money managers said that while they were aware weak corporate governance was a risk factor when investing in China, standards, especially related to consistent communication with creditors, have been getting worse amid the mounting distress.

Country Garden, after missing the initial due date to make interest payments on two dollar bonds last month, then kept investors in the dark for weeks over whether it intended to pay the obligations before their grace periods expired (it ultimately paid the interest on Tuesday.) Further angering creditors was the fact that the company never clarified when the grace periods actually ended.

Just last month, developer China Aoyuan Group Ltd. submitted a regulatory filing in which it announced that three-quarters of holders of existing notes supported its restructuring agreement. The language led some to believe that the company had passed a key threshold to get the deal approved. But the backing only applied to holders of one particular security, leading to grumblings that the developer wasn’t providing a clear picture of investor support for the plan.

Last year, state-backed real estate firm Greenland Holdings Corp. rocked the market with a surprise request to delay repayment on one of its dollar bonds for a year, only to then pay back separate notes due a few months later.

And in 2021 Fantasia Holdings Group Co. shocked investors by defaulting on a dollar bond just weeks after assuring creditors that it wasn’t having liquidity issues, and days after repaying a privately placed note.

One investor who asked to not be identified speaking about a private matter reached out to Fantasia founder Zeng Jie via the messaging app WeChat after the company reneged on the debt asking about the non-payment. Zeng replied with a GIF of a cat on a litter box with the Chinese words “I’m pooping” superimposed over it.

Representatives from China Aoyuan, Greenland and Fantasia didn’t respond to requests for comment. Bloomberg also asked Fantasia representatives for a comment from Zeng, but none was provided. No contact details for Zeng were given, nor are they publicly available.

“Tapping credit markets is never a one-off deal. Even after distress events emerge or defaults happen, a company should not just run to seed,” said Lawrence Lu, a senior director of corporate ratings at S&P Global Ratings. “It’s time for Chinese issuers to change the mindset if they eventually want to get back to the capital market.”

‘Weak’ Governance

S&P evaluates corporations on the quality of their management and governance as part of its credit assessments. The rating company weighs governance factors including management culture, regulatory or legal infractions, consistency of communication and quality of financial reporting. Companies are assigned overall grades of strong, satisfactory, fair or weak.

Most mainland speculative-grade borrowers are scored as ‘weak,’ Lu said, amid a notable deterioration in performance in recent years that’s coincided with the property sector’s liquidity crunch.

“Communication with different stakeholders should be more frequent, transparent and issuers should give even-handed treatment to all investors,” Lu said. “There is much to do compared to global standards.”

That’s easier said than done, according to a former investors relations professional at a defaulted developer.

Companies’ cash positions are often in flux as they seek to complete projects, and money set aside for interest payments sometimes gets used to fund operations amid liquidity strains, said the person, who asked not to be identified because they didn’t want to jeopardize their future career prospects. Some developers would rather keep a low profile than make commitments to creditors that they can’t keep, the person added.

‘We Can’t Invest’

Nana Li, head of Sustainability and Stewardship for Asia-Pacific at Impax Asset Management Group Plc and a former China Research Director at the Asian Corporate Governance Association, says global bond buyers are already reassessing China credit allocations.

“Foreign money managers still have willingness to invest in China, but how much we invest is in flux,” Li said. “We’re facing a market that’s full of uncertainty, and combined with a lack of transparency, it’s harder to make forecasts. Without forecasts, we can’t invest.”

That could have significant repercussions for companies seeking financing, according to Tommy Wu, a senior economist at Commerzbank AG.

“All companies would have to turn to onshore funding, further pressuring local banks and authorities, who are already busy clearing mounting debts issues,” Wu said. “It will also push up funding costs of Chinese companies and erode their profitability, dampening their willingness to expand business, or even leading to layoffs, all of which would further weigh on the Chinese economy.”

The world’s second-largest economy hardly needs additional challenges. A private survey of China’s services sector showed activity expanded at the slowest rate this year in August, as the outlook darkened and the property turmoil held people back from spending.

Beijing is trying to revive confidence after the latest data showed home sales slumped for a third straight month, adding to deflation pressure. Late last week, China moved to allow its largest cities to cut down payments for homebuyers, and have also encouraged lenders to lower rates on existing mortgages.

Speculative bets that authorities may widen support further sent some ailing developers surging by the most on record Wednesday.

Read More: Why China Is Avoiding Using ‘Bazooka’ to Spur Economy: QuickTake

Lombard Odier’s Bajaj says it falls on Chinese regulators to step up efforts to better ensure high corporate governance standards.

This includes Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission as well as the People’s Bank of China, the National Development and Reform Commission and the China Securities Regulatory Commission.

A representative for the SFC said incidents such as selective disclosure by companies of market moving information could fall under its market abuse provisions and would be taken “very seriously” by the regulatory body.

The PBOC, NDRC and CSRC didn’t respond to requests seeking comment.

“Something has to be done by regulators in China,” Bajaj said. “If not, I’m afraid that the global investor base is going to shrink for Chinese company bonds.”

That would be another hit to an economy already struggling to lure foreign investors. Just last week US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said American businesses consider China increasingly “ uninvestable,” even as Beijing has in recent months promised to treat international investors better.

For Willem Glorie, a portfolio manager at LGT Capital Partners who held Wanda bonds, it will take more than a charm offensive to win back his trust.

He says it wasn’t the conflicting messaging or wild price swings that he found most troubling about the July incident. The more frustrating part for him was how some investors were told of the company’s plans before others.

It’s “not disseminated in an open way to all investors at the same time,” said Glorie. “They’d mention to some investors one thing and the next day if there’s a development, they’d mention something else. It cannot be that investors have to chat with companies everyday to get what the latest issue is.”

--With assistance from Lulu Yilun Chen, Emma Dong, April Ma, Alice Huang and Dorothy Ma.

China Asks Fertilizer Producers to Suspend Urea Shipments

Hallie Gu
Thu, September 7, 2023


(Bloomberg) -- China has asked some fertilizer producers to suspend urea exports after domestic prices jumped, a move that’s likely to restrict supplies and boost costs for farmers in key buyers such as India.

Some major Chinese fertilizer makers halted signing new export deals from early this month following a government mandate, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified as they’re not authorized to speak to the media. The restriction only applies to urea so far, they said.

Urea futures on the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange surged almost 50% over a seven-week period from mid-June to the end of July, but have fluctuated since. Prices slid almost 6% on Thursday, snapping two days of gains.

Low Chinese inventories and higher exports had combined to push urea prices higher, said Chen Li, an analyst with Huatai Futures in Guangdong. “Fertilizer use in crops like soybeans and corn in the first half of the year should have risen due to more top-dressing demand after extreme weather,” she said.

China is the world’s top producer and consumer of urea and any significant decline in exports threatens to tighten supplies and push up global prices. Among the biggest export markets for the nation’s crop nutrient are India, South Korea, Myanmar and Australia.

Shares of China’s urea producers ended the session lower following the report. State-owned China BlueChemical Ltd. fell 1.5% while Sinofert Holdings Ltd. lost 1% in Hong Kong. On the Shanghai exchange, Cangzhou Dahua Co. fell most in almost two weeks while Shandong Hualu Hengsheng Chemical Co. slid 1.4%.

China’s Ministry of Commerce and National Development and Reform Commission did not immediately respond to faxes seeking comment.

At least one producer has already publicly announced plans to reduce fertilizer exports. CNAMPGC Holding Co. said over the weekend that the company will curb shipments to secure supplies and maintain prices at stable levels.

The restrictions add another element of volatility to the global agriculture market, which has been affected by extreme weather across growing regions, export curbs by India and Russia’s war in Ukraine.


--With assistance from Dennis Ting and Sarah Chen.

Battery Boom: $154B invested, 166K jobs planned in US as EV rollout intensifies

Spending from the IRA, Bipartisan Infrastructure Act has fueled EV investments


Pras Subramanian
·Senior Reporter
Wed, September 6, 2023

New data shows the massive impact the electric vehicle buildout is already making on manufacturing and infrastructure spending in America — so far a big win for the Biden administration.

Catalyzed by legislation like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), data from the BlueGreen Alliance Foundation — a progressive nonprofit organization that promotes clean energy investment and solutions to environmental issues — found that EV investment in factories and battery facilities totaled $154 billion since 2010, across 319 facilities. That will add up to 188,000 new jobs when all spending is complete.

The vast majority of this spending came after 2021, when the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act was signed, and in 2022 and 2023 following passage of the IRA. Of the $154 billion of spending announced, $124 billion has come since the start of 2021.

“The EV transition is impacting every aspect of the economy, including the manufacturing of EVs and the EV supply chain,” Tom Taylor, Atlas Public Policy senior policy analyst, said in a statement. Atlas Public Policy co-sponsored the data initiative, dubbed the EV Jobs Hub, with the BlueGreen Alliance Foundation. “The [data] seeks to cut through the noise from large announcements and organize it in a more digestible way,” Taylor said.

Drilling deeper into the data, the organization finds that South Korean electronics and battery giant LG plans to spend the most here in the US ($17.2B), followed by Tesla (TSLA) ($15.7B), GM (GM) ($15.5B), Ford (F) ($11.9B), and SK Innovation ($10.3B), another South Korean company focused on batteries. In terms of industry, battery manufacturing counts for 65% of all spending, the study finds.

The data isn't all rosy, however, as on the labor front the companies that spend the most don’t always hire the most. As seen in EV battery and powertrain manufacturing, fewer workers are needed to do the job. This has led to deep concern on the part of the United Auto Workers (UAW) — currently negotiating with the Big Three (Ford, GM, and Stellantis) on a new labor deal — with job protection in the form of higher wages and ending of tiered employment on the top of the union’s wish list as the EV transition rolls out across North America.

“The UAW supports and is ready for the transition to a clean auto industry. But the EV transition must be a just transition that ensures auto workers have a place in the new economy,” UAW president Shawn Fain said in a statement in late August.

Of the companies hiring the most in the EV space since 2010, Tesla leads the pack with 28,500 announced hires, followed by Ford (13,800), Rivian (RIVN) (13,700), LG (11,300), and Hyundai (11,100). Only Ford and LG (at joint GM/LG Ultium battery plants) use unionized labor.

Indeed, of the facilities built since 2010, only 25% are represented by unionized labor, which is a concern for the White House and Democratic legislators.

The stakes couldn’t be higher for the automakers as well as politicians looking to tout the EV buildout. GM’s head of manufacturing said in a video statement on Tuesday that UAW demands would threaten the automaker’s “manufacturing momentum.” It would also threaten one of the bigger manufacturing wins the US has seen in the last 50 years.

Pras Subramanian is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on Twitter and on Instagram.

Canada's Intact to buy UK-based Direct Line's brokered commercial lines unit

Reuters
Wed, September 6, 2023 at 3:23 PM MDT·1 min read

Sept 6 (Reuters) - Canadian property and casualty insurer Intact Financial said on Wednesday it would buy British insurer Direct Line's brokered commercial lines operations for an initial payment of 520 million pounds ($650 million) to expand its UK unit RSA.

The deal will result in the transfer of renewal rights, brands, employees, and systems to RSA.

"The transaction enhances our position in the UK by doubling down on lines of business where we already outperform," Intact's CEO Charles Brindamour said in a statement.

The deal terms include potential for up to a further 30 million pounds contingent payment linked to the financial performance of the acquired business lines.

The Direct Line unit generated 530 million pounds in written premiums in 2022 and delivered an average combined ratio of about 96% across 2021 and 2022 by offering insurance to small business owners, landlords, and for vans and fleets.

Intact is exploring strategic options for RSA's UK Personal lines business, including a possible sale, the company said.

UK & International account for about a fifth of Intact's underwriting revenue.

($1 = 0.7997 pounds) (Reporting by Jaiveer Singh Shekhawat in Bengaluru and Nivedita Balu in Toronto; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

Nestle goes upmarket with deal for Brazil chocolate maker





Wed, September 6, 2023 
By John Revill

ZURICH (Reuters) -Nestle is buying a majority stake in Brazilian premium chocolate maker Grupo CRM, the Swiss food group said on Thursday, as it seeks to expand into luxury confectionary.

Grupo CRM operates more than 1,000 chocolate boutiques in Brazil under the Kopenhagen and Brasil Cacau brands and has a growing online presence, Nestle said.

Nestle, which is buying the stake from private equity company Advent International, declined to give financial details for the deal, which is expected to close in 2024.

Website Brazil Journal on Wednesday reported that Nestle would pay about 3 billion reais ($602.78 million) for the company, while local newspaper Valor Economico reported the figure at 4.5 billion reais ($904.18 million).

Nestle said Renata Moraes Vichi would continue to lead Grupo CRM's operations as CEO and remain a minority shareholder.

The acquisition is part of a strategy by Nestle - producer of brands such as Kit Kat, Aero and Smarties - to expand its presence in the super-premium chocolate segment where it has a limited offering that includes Italian brand Baci.

During the first six months of 2023 Nestle's confectionary sales increased by 10.8% on an organic basis, which excludes acquisitions and currency movements.

The business has also improved its underlying trading operating profit margin by 70 basis points to 14.5%.

Swiss luxury chocolate maker Lindt & Spruengli has also been doing well recently, increasing its sales by 10.1% in the first half of 2023, while operating profit jumped 38%.

"This acquisition further broadens and strengthens our confectionery presence in Brazil, enabling us to enter the high-end segment," said Laurent Freixe, Nestle's CEO for Latin America.

Chocolate bars under the CRM's Kopenhagen brand sell for 29.90 Brazilian Real ($6.01), while a box of chocolates retails for around 130 reals.

Jon Cox, an analyst at Kepler Cheuvreux, said the deal seemed unusual at first glance given Nestle's focus on its coffee, petcare and nutrition businesses, but made sense.

"Nestlé has a chocolate business in Brazil so it can integrate production, leading to synergies, while the premium chocolate category, as Lindt has shown, is a very, very, decent business if you get it right," he said.

($1 = 4.9784 reais)

(Reporting by John Revill, Editing by Friederike Heine, Janane Venkatraman and Susan Fenton)

G20 To Pursue More Renewables And Carbon CaptureBy Tsvetana Paraskova - Sep 06, 2023, 7:45 AM CDT



The G20 group plans to commit to tripling renewable capacity by 2030 but also give more room for fossil fuel development by seeking increased use of carbon capture technology, sources with knowledge of the talks have told Bloomberg.

At the G20 summit in India, the group of 20 nations, which includes top oil and gas producers the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, as well as major energy importers such as China, India, Japan, and South Korea, plans to call for increased efforts to deploy carbon capture and other technologies that would reduce emissions from oil, natural gas, and coal, Bloomberg’s anonymous sources said.

During a ministerial meeting in July, Saudi Arabia and Russia blocked a planned pledge to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030.

The Saudis and Russia announced on Tuesday they would extend their respective ongoing oil supply cuts through the end of the year, seeking to support higher oil prices.

If a commitment to renewables is made at the summit in India, it could be a boost to the host nation for spearheading such a pledge, and to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a major oil producer and exporter that is also hosting this year’s climate summit COP28.

In the G20, coal-related emissions of carbon dioxide have gone up by 9% since 2015 on a per-capita basis, climate change think tank Ember has said.

Despite emissions reductions in recent years, Australia and South Korea emit more than three times the global average in coal-related CO2 emissions. China was third.

“The G20 accounts for 80% of global emissions. Within the group, however, an individual’s coal emissions in 2022 were notably higher, with per capita figures reaching 1.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide, compared to the global average of 1.1 tonnes of carbon dioxide,” Ember wrote.

Separately, G20 countries spent a record $1.4 trillion since COP26 in 2021 through 2022 on coal, oil and gas, according to think tank the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Data Centers Are Poaching Texas Oil Workers

Editor OilPrice.com

Wed, September 6, 2023 

Recruiters for technology firms are targeting energy industry workers in Texas, offering better pay, career advancement, and better working conditions.

While employment in the oil and gas industry has recovered from the pandemic lows, the overall number of workers in the Texas oil patch has dropped over the past six years. At the same time, the number of jobs in the tech industry has jumped by nearly 40% since 2018, per data from the Texas Workforce Commission cited by Bloomberg.

The computing, engineering, and data center sectors look to attract oil patch workers with higher pay and air-conditioned offices, while some oil workers are looking to escape the boom and bust cycle in oil and gas, attracted by positions in industries that are not prone to sudden mass layoffs when oil and gas prices slump.

Labor Shortages In The Oil Patch

The shortage of skilled workers is driving inflationary pressures on energy projects in the U.S. and in Texas, along with higher interest rates and higher costs of materials. Some major LNG projects in the Gulf area in Texas could struggle to find enough skilled workers to execute the projects on time and on budget.

“Labor availability is a big issue in blue-collar areas. It is hard to find employees, and wage rate requirements continue to increase,” one executive at an oil and gas support services firm said in comments in the latest Dallas Fed Energy Survey for the second quarter.

Another executive, at an exploration and production (E&P) firm, commented,

“Labor is hard to find. Dirty-fossil-fuels stigma drives younger talent away.”

Some of those who are not driven away by the “dirty business” stigma are being poached by technology firms, data centers, Tesla, SpaceX, and other jobs in computing and engineering.

This leaves fewer workers available for the oil and gas industry, driving up labor costs and overall project costs, potentially setting the stage for project delays.

For example, hiring and keeping construction workers and operators for the next wave of U.S. LNG export facilities could be a challenge and raise the costs of the projects, Paul Marsden, president of the Energy global business unit at one of the top contractors in the industry, Bechtel, told Reuters earlier this year.

Contractors for the LNG export terminals are creating training programs and improving coordination of project timelines to avoid losing workforce when one project is completed and before the next one begins, according to analysts and industry professionals.

Labor costs and work scheduling issues could add headwinds to the boom of U.S. LNG projects, which have already faced supply-chain cost inflation and increased competition to secure long-term buyers and financing. Despite the surge in LNG demand and the abundance of natural gas in the United States, America’s next LNG export boom could stall as costs have surged and financing has become more complicated with the higher interest rates.

Even amid concerns about cost inflation, developers of LNG projects in the United States are set to approve a record-high volume of export capacity this year, driven by rising global LNG demand and increased long-term contracting from customers willing to boost energy security.

However, “Labor has grown as an inflationary concern for everyone in the industry. We need to actively forecast and manage labor availability and supply chain like never before,” Marsden told Reuters in an interview in July.

Big Tech Competition

More recently, Marsden told Bloomberg that Bechtel is losing talent who prefer to join SpaceX, Tesla, or some of the technology giants that have recently moved to Texas.

“Big Tech has a lot of buying power,” Marsden told Bloomberg in an interview, adding that the construction and engineering firm did not have that kind of competition from the tech industry in the past. 

“The mission is to go hard, go fast, and that’s been a disruptor for the labor market,” he noted.

In the oil and gas industry, competition for talent comes from other market segments, too, including from the energy sector.

The number of clean energy jobs is increasing in the United States, and rising employment in clean energy led the 3.8% jobs growth in the U.S. energy sector in 2022, when the industry outpaced the overall U.S. rise in employment, the annual report by the Department of Energy showed in June. Clean energy jobs made up more than 40% of total energy jobs in 2022.

The U.S. fossil fuel-based energy sector remains larger than the renewable energy industry, but data shows that renewable energy is gaining ground, according to LinkedIn’s Global Green Skills Report 2023.

“Since March 2020, the LinkedIn hiring rate for the U.S. renewable energy industry has consistently surpassed the LinkedIn hiring rate for US oil and gas. There were 69% more renewable energy jobs posted in the first three months of 2023 than in the first three months of 2022, for example, while oil and gas job postings grew by 57% over the same period,” LinkedIn says.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

Swiss Bank Watchdog Chief Resigns Citing High Stress Level

Jeff Black and Hugo Miller, Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- The head of Switzerland’s banking watchdog has resigned after suffering a deterioration in health partly caused by the crisis surrounding Credit Suisse this year.

Finma Chief Executive Officer Urban Angehrn’s resignation takes effect at the end of September, with deputy CEO Birgit Rutishauser becoming interim head pending a formal appointment process, the regulator said in a statement Wednesday. 

Switzerland’s banking regulator was thrust into the global spotlight this year as Credit Suisse headed toward collapse after years of management failings. While Finma has been criticized for not intervening early or forcefully enough, the regulator has said it lacks the powers to do so, including the ability to fine banks. 

“The high and permanent stress level had health consequences,” Angehrn said in the statement. “I have considered my decision carefully and have now decided to step down.”

In July, Angehrn wrote in an unusually candid newspaper opinion piece that the problems at Credit Suisse exposed the limits of Finma’s oversight capabilities and lawmakers should provide the watchdog with the ability to impose fines. 

An expert panel last week recommended Finma should be able to fine bankers for bad behavior as well as “name and shame” them in a manner common in the US and UK. Right now, Finma can only take back profits deemed ill-gained and the names of those being sanctioned are almost never disclosed. 

Angehrn, 58, had led Finma since November 2021. He worked for 14 years at Zurich Insurance and previously as head of strategy at Winterthur’s asset management division. Before that, he spent 11 years in derivatives marketing at Credit Suisse First Boston and JPMorgan Chase & Co. He earned a Masters degree in physics from ETH Zurich before completing a PhD in mathematics from Harvard.

“Being able to contribute to the sustainable improvement of the quality of the Swiss financial center as CEO of Finma was a unique challenge for me, and one that I tackled with all my might,” Angehrn said. “It is very difficult for me to hand over this task, but this is a step guided by reason.”