Colombia deploys military to protest epicenter

Sat, May 29, 2021, 2:32 AM

A month into the violent anti-government demonstrations across the country, Colombia will begin deploying its military to the western province of Valle del Cauca, after four protesters there died on Friday.

The provincial capital Cali has been an epicenter of the protests.

Demonstrations against a controversial tax reform kicked off across the country in late April, with tens of thousands of marchers taking to the streets every week.

They've since expanded their demands, including basic income and an end to police violence.

Colombian President Ivan Duque announced the quote "maximum deployment" of military assistance to Valle del Cauca on Friday, adding that over 7,000 personnel, including members of the navy, will be sent to lift road blockades.

The governor of Valle del Cauca also declared a curfew starting at 7pm.

Despite the government and protest leaders reaching a "pre-agreement" for ending demonstrations this week, strike organizers said Thursday the government had not signed the deal and accused it of stalling.

The government said it had not signed the deal because some protest leaders would not condemn road blocks, calling the issue non-negotiable, and adding that talks will resume on Sunday.

They added over a dozen civilians have died in connection with protests as of Thursday.

Human rights groups said dozens more have been killed by security forces.

Two police officers have also reportedly been killed.

Colombia's defense ministry did not immediately respond to questions.

Colombia's finance ministry estimates protests and roadblocks have cost the country over $2.6 billion, leading to shortages of food and other supplies, boosting prices, and disrupting daily business operations.
Video Transcript

- A month into the violent anti-government demonstrations across the country, Colombia will begin deploying its military to the western province of Valle del Cauca after four protesters there died on Friday. The provincial capital Cali has been an epicenter of the protests. Demonstrations against a controversial tax reform bill kicked off across the country in late April with tens of thousands of marchers taking to the streets every week. They've since expanded their demands including basic income and an end to police violence.

Colombian President Ivan Duque announced the, quote, "maximum deployment of military assistance to Valle del Cauca" on Friday. Adding that over 7,000 personnel, including members of the Navy, will be sent to lift road blockades. The governor of Valle del Cauca also declared a curfew starting at 7:00 PM.

Despite the government and protest leaders reaching a pre-agreement for ending demonstrations this week, strike organizers said Thursday, the government had not signed the deal and accused it of stalling. The government said, it had not signed the deal because some protest leaders would not condemn roadblocks, calling the issue non-negotiable. And adding that talks will resume on Sunday.

They added that over a dozen civilians have died in connection with protests as of Thursday. Human rights groups said dozens more have been killed by security forces. Two police officers have also reportedly been killed. Colombia's Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to questions. Colombia's Finance Ministry estimates protests and roadblocks have cost the country over $2.6 billion, leading to shortages of food and other supplies, boosting prices, and disrupting daily business operations.

In photos: Thousands rally across Brazil against Bolsonaro to protest his COVID response

Rebecca Falconer
Sun, May 30, 2021

Tens of thousands of people rallied in over 200 cities and towns across Brazil Saturday to protest President Jair Bolsonaro's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed some 460,000 people in the country, per the Guardian.

The big picture: Bolsonaro has frequently downplayed the pandemic despite soaring cases, with hospitals overstretched. Saturday's protests, organized by leftist groups, remained peaceful in most cities, but police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at demonstrators in Recife, northeast Brazil, Reuters notes.


A protester kicks a papier mache head depicting Bolsonaro at a rally in Rio de Janeiro. Photo: Fernando Souza/picture alliance via Getty Images


Demonstrators gather during a protest on Avenida Paulista in Sao Paulo on May 29. Photo: Cristina Szucinski/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images


Members of opposition parties and social movements participate in a protest while displaying a large inflatable caricature of the president in the country's capital, Brasilia, on May 29. Evaristo Sa/AFP via Getty Images


Anti-Bolsonaro protesters in Belo Horizonte, the capital of southeastern Brazil’s Minas Gerais state, on May 29. Photo: Douglas Magno/AFP via Getty Images


A demonstrator wears a protective face mask that states in Portuguese: "Bolsonaro out" during a rally May 29 in Rio de Janeiro. Photo: Buda Mendes/Getty Images


A demonstrator holds a sign stating that oxygen has became a privilege during a protest a at the Praca da Liberdade in Belo Horizonte on May 29. Photo: Douglas Magno/AFP via Getty Images

Former Trump advisor Michael Flynn said the US should have a coup like Myanmar, where the military overthrew the democratically elected government


Anti-coup protesters march with homemade air rifles as one of them holds sign showing support for a civilian-formed federal army during a protest march in Yangon, Myanmar, Saturday, April 3, 2021. AP 

Kelsey Vlamis
Sun, May 30, 2021,

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn spoke at a QAnon conference in Dallas this weekend.


When asked about the coup in Myanmar, Flynn said that "it should happen here."


Myanmar's military overthrew the democratically elected government and has killed hundreds of people.


Michael Flynn, who served as President Donald Trump's national security adviser, told a crowd at a QAnon conference in Dallas, Texas, this weekend that the US should have a coup like the one in Myanmar.

On February 1, Myanmar's military overthrew its democratically elected government and arrested its leaders. The coup immediately sparked protests across the country, prompting the junta to launch a campaign against its own citizens.

Upwards of 800 Burmese people, including at least 40 children, have been killed, according to Myanmar's Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. More than 4,000 people have been arrested.


Flynn, who has become a prominent figure in the QAnon conspiracy theory, was a main attraction at the event, held at the Omni Hotel in Dallas.

In a video shared on Twitter, an attendee asks Flynn: "I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can't happen here."

The crowd immediately cheers, followed by Flynn's response: "No reason. I mean, it should happen here."

QAnon communities have praised the Myanmar coup and endorsed the idea that it should happen in the US, according to Media Matters for America.

In 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russia. He later accused the Justice Department of entrapment and moved to withdraw his guilty plea. In November, Trump pardoned him.

Rebekah Jones’ whistleblower win against DeSantis administration could be a win for all of us | Editorial

the Miami Herald Editorial Board
Sat, May 29, 2021,

Rebekah Jones

The DeSantis administration has worked long and hard to discredit Rebekah Jones, fired last year from her job as a data analyst after she accused state health officials of pressuring her to manipulate certain coronavirus numbers. She has stood her ground for a year, and last week, the Florida’s Office of the Inspector General firmed up the earth beneath her feet.

Friday, the IG’s office told Jones’ attorneys that she is a whistleblower, officially. This will afford her certain protections, plus the possibility of reinstatement or compensation. The former health department staffer said that she was asked to skew data analysis to better mesh with administration policy and also to screen other statistics from public view.

In a world that likes a clear, bright line between the heroines and the villains, Jones, like her nemesis DeSantis, is not perfect. In January, she was arrested and charged with allegedly hacking into a state messaging system and encouraging people to “speak up.” Trumped-up charge? Who knows? She also has a cyberstalking charge in her past, but no convictions.
- ADVERTISEMENT -


Of course, the governor, who seemed to care not one bit about the health and well-being of most Floridians as the pandemic raged, has a soft spot for the environment. Go figure.

So far, DOH emails reviewed by the Miami Herald show Jones was asked to remove data from public view after receiving questions about it from the news organization. In addition, she has gone up against an administration that has shamelessly concealed vital COVID information during the past year. Unfortunately, the possibility of DOH manipulating information is not a stretch.

An investigation continues, and with the cover of whistleblower status. Jones will need to vigorously back up her allegations and the state, its defense.

For now, Jones’ whistleblower victory stands to be a win over state secrecy for the rest of us.

AUSTRALIA

COLUMN-Eight kids and a nun may have doomed coal's future: Russell

Clyde Russell

Sun, May 30, 2021, 

(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.)

By Clyde Russell

LAUNCESTON, Australia, May 31 (Reuters) - A court ruling that Royal Dutch Shell must speed up plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions rocked the global oil and gas industry, but another decision in a case brought by eight school-aged teens and a nun may end up being more significant.

The order by a Dutch court that Shell must drastically deepen its planned emission reductions raised fears in the industry of similar legal actions against other oil and gas majors, and concern that companies will be held liable for meeting court imposed climate change targets.

The decision against Shell, coupled with shareholder rebukes against U.S. oil majors Exxon Mobil and Chevron, made it a bad week for an industry that is grappling with how to deal with the challenge of operating profitably and sustainably in what is likely to be a carbon-constrained future.

An Australian court added fuel to the fire on May 27, ruling that the country's environment minister has an obligation to children to consider the harm caused by climate change when deciding whether to approve a coal mine expansion.

The Federal Court of Australia made the ruling in a class action suit brought by eight teenagers, aged between 14 and 17, and an 86-year-old nun acting as their litigation guardian. In the suit, the teens argued that the expansion of Whitehaven Coal's Vickery mine in New South Wales state would contribute to climate change and endanger their future.

Australia is the world's largest exporter of coking coal used to make steel and second-biggest in thermal coal for power generation, and the industry - domestically and abroad - has become a political battleground.

The court ruling was only a partial victory, though, as the judge didn't grant an injunction to prevent Environment Minister Sussan Ley from approving the mine.

The ruling does mean the minister will have to consider her duty of care to future generations, with Justice Mordecai Bromberg saying the minister can foresee the possibility of the climate damage from the coal mine.

The judge said there is evidence of the "severe harm" climate change can cause future generations.

"It will largely be inflicted by the inaction of this generation of adults, in what might fairly be described as the greatest intergenerational injustice ever inflicted by one generation of humans upon the next," Bromberg said, according to a report in the Financial Times.

WIDER IMPACT

Australia's federal government said it will study the judgment, and it's likely the implications go well beyond a 10 million-tonnes-per-year coal mine.

The obvious end point of the case is that citizens will be able to sue the government for damages caused by climate change, using the argument that the government was well aware of the risks but still took actions that contributed to increasing carbon emissions.

If the government deems the risk of being sued by its own citizens to be high, it may have to concede that approving more coal will be challenging.

For its part, Whitehaven Coal welcomed the decision not to grant the injunction against its planned mine expansion, and will work to get a final approval from the federal government.

The company also made the curious statement that it foresees a continuing role for what it termed "high-quality coal" in contributing to "global CO2 emissions reduction efforts".

The only way burning coal from Whitehaven's mine could be deemed to be helping reduce emissions is if it were replacing even dirtier, lower-quality coal, or perhaps if the end user was capturing all the emissions and storing them.

There is no evidence to support either assertion and Whitehaven's stance is at odds with a recent paper from the International Energy Agency that called for an end to the funding and development of fossil fuel projects.

The one factor in common in the Dutch and Australian rulings is that for companies and governments the risks of legal actions and being held accountable on climate change-related issues are not only very real, but also increasing.

Environmental activists have finally realised that hitting companies and governments with potentially massive liabilities is a far more effective strategy than having protesters chain themselves to mining equipment or staging similar high-profile but ultimately low-impact demonstrations. (Editing by Tom Hogue)

Exxon Mobil’s Last-Ditch Attempt to Stave Off a Climate Coup

Scott Deveau, Saijel Kishan and Joe Carroll

Sat, May 29, 2021, 

(Bloomberg) -- It was a stunning moment for Exxon Mobil Corp. and the wider corporate world: a tiny activist fund had succeeded in changing the company’s board.

But in the hours leading up to this week’s annual shareholders meeting, Exxon went to extraordinary lengths to head off the threat from a campaign about which it had been largely dismissive months earlier.

Exxon telephoned investors the morning of the ballot -- and even during an unscheduled, hour-long pause during the virtual meeting -- asking them to reconsider their votes, according to several of those who received calls. Some said they found the last-ditch outreach and halt to the meeting unorthodox and troubling.

“It was a very unusual annual general meeting,” said Aeisha Mastagni, a fund manager at the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, a major Exxon investor that backed the activist campaign from the beginning. “It didn’t feel good as an investor.”

The May 26 meeting concluded with Exxon stating that two of the dissident’s four director nominees had been elected, a coup for Engine No. 1, a little-known investment firm calling for the company overhaul its strategy, cut costs and come up with a plan to address climate change. Its victory is widely seen as a warning to the rest of the industry that investors will now hold energy companies to account for environmental concerns.

The full results of the vote still haven’t been disclosed; a third Engine No. 1 nominee is still in the running to fill one of the two remaining board seats. While there’s no suggestion Exxon broke any rules during Wednesday’s meeting, such tactics are unusual for a blue-chip company.

In response to questions about the meeting, the company said it’s been “actively engaged” with investors and welcomes the newly elected directors.

Net Zero

Exxon opposed Engine No. 1 from the outset. The fund holds a stake in Exxon of just 0.02%, valued at about $54 million. The oil company described the fund’s four candidates as unqualified and said its proposals would imperil Exxon’s dividend.

Still, the company made a concession in March to another investor, D.E. Shaw & Co., appointing two new directors, including activist investor Jeff Ubben. But Exxon still refused to meet with the Engine No. 1 candidates.

A significant hurdle faced by the company was winning support of large institutions including its top three investors, Vanguard Group Inc., BlackRock Inc. and State Street Corp., which collectively hold a stake of more than 21%. BlackRock has been vocal about its voting guidelines on climate change.

Discussions with many large investors in the run-up to the vote were primarily focused on Exxon’s strategy to get to net zero emissions by 2050, and not the company’s financial performance, according to people familiar with the talks. Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods got down in the trenches during the proxy fight and made commitments to keeping the dialog going after the meeting, the people said.

But Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street ultimately supported a partial slate of nominees from Engine No. 1.

An indication the fight might be tilting in Engine No. 1’s favor came mid-May with the partial backing from two leading proxy advisory firms. Two days before the vote, Exxon said it would appoint two new directors, one with “climate experience” and another with industry expertise.

‘Banana-Republic Feel’

On the morning of the meeting, Engine No. 1 issued a statement alerting shareholders that Exxon may try, “in a targeted manner,” to persuade them to change their vote.

Sure enough, by the time the virtual meeting began at 9:30 a.m. Dallas time, Exxon representatives were ringing investors. In some cases, those calls entailed cajoling holders to at least reduce their support to one or two dissident nominees rather than all four, according to people familiar with the conversations, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private.

At about 10:15 a.m., investor relations head Stephen Littleton announced proceedings would be paused for 60 minutes, citing the volume of votes still coming in. As classical music played on the webcast, emails started flying between investors left bewildered by the halt.

One executive at a major Exxon shareholder said they were contacted during this hiatus and pushed to change their vote. The person, who has decades of experience dealing with boardroom elections, said that while such appeals a day before a vote are commonplace, it was the first time they’d fielded such a request during a meeting.

Meanwhile, Engine No.1 released another statement saying shareholders should “not be fooled by ExxonMobil’s last-ditch attempt to stave off much-needed board change.” Charlie Penner, head of active engagement at Engine No. 1, went on television to complain.

“They’re doing a tactic called the whittle-down, where they tell a shareholder to draw down your votes for this person, they tell another shareholder they’ll draw down their votes for this person, and they gradually try to whittle people down,” he told CNBC. “It has a very banana-republic feel.”

The pause was something that Anne Simpson -- the California Public Employees’ Retirement System’s managing investment director for board governance and sustainability -- had never seen before in her three-decade career.

Simpson didn’t get a call from Exxon about altering her votes. But the practice still disturbed her. “If the comments are true, this raises the question about the sanctity of the ballot box and whether companies should have privileged access,” she said.

The meeting didn’t conclude until almost three hours after it first began, with Littleton reading out a summary of the preliminary tally of votes.

“We welcome the new directors Gregory Goff and Kaisa Hietala to the board,” Woods said in his concluding remarks, “and look forward to working with them constructively and collectively on behalf of all shareholders.”

BOURGEOIS ECONOMICS

’Contagious unemployment’ — a controversial theory why companies have difficulty hiring workers

Published: May 30, 2021 
By Quentin Fottrell

‘Unemployed workers send over 10 times as many job applications in a month as their employed peers, but are less than half as likely per application to make a move’


Some states are offering return-to-work bonuses of up to $2,000 to incentivize workers to get reemployed. GETTY IMAGE

Companies are struggling to find recruits, and economists, lawmakers and businesses big and small are wondering why. The latest hypothesis, proposed in a new working paper, is “contagious unemployment.”

Some states, including Arizona, Montana and Ohio, are offering return-to-work bonuses of up to $2,000 to incentivize workers to get reemployed. Arizona is providing funds to cover three months’ worth of child-care costs for those who return to work and earn less than $25 an hour.

The backdrop: Businesses reported a record 8.1 million jobs to fill last month, up from 8 million in March, according to Labor Department data. There were 7.5 million open jobs in February. And yet the unemployment rate ticked up to 6.1% in April from 6% the month before.

Employers and lawmakers have speculated that enhanced unemployment benefits have given people less of a reason to take a job. President Biden in March approved $300 in extra federal benefits each week to unemployed workers until September. (Some 22 Republican-led states will end them early.)

‘During periods of high unemployment, it consequently becomes harder for firms to assert who is a good fit for the job.’— Niklas Engbom, assistant professor at New York University Stern School of Business

There is also a host of other theories on why people are not taking jobs, among them lack of transportation, low wages, the cost of child care, caring for an elderly relative, recovering from COVID-19 or caring for a relative who has the coronavirus, and inability to work due to a disability.

But a new paper looking at job hunting after a recession has another — perhaps more controversial — theory, described by its author as “contagious unemployment.”

The ways in which workers search for jobs have been shown to have critical implications for the macroeconomic propagation of labor-market shocks, Niklas Engbom, an assistant professor at New York University Stern School of Business, wrote in his paper distributed Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

“Unemployed workers send over 10 times as many job applications in a month as their employed peers, but are less than half as likely per application to make a move,” he wrote. “I interpret these patterns as the unemployed applying for more jobs that they are less likely to be a good fit for.”

“During periods of high unemployment, it consequently becomes harder for firms to assert who is a good fit for the job,” he added. “By raising the cost of recruiting, a short-lived adverse shock has a persistent negative impact on the job finding rate.”

Workers also pivot to other industries, which also may contribute to scattershot applications and “greater idiosyncratic volatility,” Engbom argued. “For instance, the construction sector contracted in the Great Recession, necessitating the reallocation of workers to other sectors,” he added.

What the News Means IB

Engbom floated one controversial solution to this “contagious unemployment” problem: “The findings in this paper suggest that firms may want to charge applicants a fee in order to discourage workers from applying for jobs that they think they would be unlikely to be a good fit for.”

He wrote, “Firms may worry that such fees would particularly discourage poor but suitable candidates from applying,” later adding, “scam firms would have an incentive to charge fees but never hire, such that no worker would be willing to apply to a job that required a fee.”

Hiring managers share the responsibility

Leaving the myriad logistical and ethical issues charging for applications would raise, other research squarely points out that “contagious unemployment” works both ways, and both applicant and company share the responsibility of finding the right position and person.

Large companies frequently outsource the hiring process. Approximately 75% of recruiters and talent managers use at least some form of recruiting or applicant-tracking software. That leaves applicants at the mercy of A.I., meaning the right candidate may not make the digital cut.

Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Peter Cappelli, the George W. Taylor professor of management at the Wharton School and a director of its Center for Human Resources, advises companies to track the percentage of openings filled from within and require that all openings be posted internally.

He says companies should take more responsibility for the hiring process from start to finish, including designing jobs with realistic requirements, reconsidering their focus on “passive” candidates (those, in other words, who are not currently seeking a job) and understanding the limits of internal referrals.

Willis HR, a South Carolina human-resources consulting and recruiting company, recommends companies follow a five-step plan when hiring new employees: align process with brand values, move quickly and efficiently, structure your interviews, boost your candidate sourcing, and don’t leave people in the dark.

Core values define what an organization is all about, the company says: “For existing employees, it can help keep you and your team members working consistently with one another. For new and prospective employees, it’s an indication of whether they fit with your corporate culture.”

Ultimately, the hiring industry pays too much attention to ‘the funnel’ of job posting, résumé tranche and interview process, Cappelli wrote. “Unfortunately, the main effort to improve hiring — virtually always aimed at making it faster and cheaper — has been to shovel more applicants into the funnel.”

“Employers do that primarily through marketing, trying to get out the word that they are great places to work,” he added. “Whether doing this is a misguided way of trying to attract better hires or just meant to make the organization feel more desirable isn’t clear.”

Fed Admonishes Deutsche Bank for Ongoing Compliance Failure

Robert Schmidt and Jesse Hamilton
Sat, May 29, 2021, 




(Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve has privately told Deutsche Bank AG that its compliance programs aren’t up to snuff, signaling that the scandal-plagued bank is failing to adhere to a number of past accords with U.S. regulators, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Fed’s recent warning came in an annual regulatory assessment that said Deutsche Bank hadn’t improved its risk management practices despite being under confidential agreements with the central bank to fix the issues, the people said. The assessment letter has the German bank’s leaders bracing for potential sanctions, including the possibility of a large fine, said one person briefed on the matter.

The Fed’s latest admonishment is a setback for Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewing, who has been working diligently to repair Deutsche Bank’s relations with banking supervisors following a tumultuous period in which the lender stumbled from one crisis to the next. He now has a new hurdle to overcome -- and it’s likely a big one.

Deutsche Bank spokesman Dylan Riddle said the firm doesn’t comment on any communications it has with regulators. A Fed spokesman also declined to comment.

Deutsche Bank has had multiple dust-ups with U.S. regulators -- including foreign-exchange violations and ties to money-laundering cases. The lender has also been the subject of numerous Fed orders on how the company manages risks, and the firm’s efforts to overhaul its controls haven’t convinced the agency that the bank’s problems are behind it, the people said.

In a move that showed the firm is focusing on compliance issues, Deutsche Bank last week elevated Joe Salama, who had been general counsel for the Americas, to be global head of anti-financial crime and group money laundering officer. He succeeded Stephan Wilken, who had been in the post since October 2018.

While discussions with the Fed over Deutsche Bank’s ongoing missteps are in their early stages, the bank has faced similar rifts with the agency in recent years and been fined for them. The punishments include a $137 million settlement over allegations that traders rigged currency benchmarks and a $41 million penalty for money-laundering vulnerabilities.

Despite the Fed scrutiny, there are signs that Deutsche Bank has improved its risk management, at least in some areas. The firm emerged from the March collapse of Archegos Capital Management unscathed, while other banks that did business with Bill Hwang’s family office lost more than $10 billion combined.

The turn of fortune after years of gloom has lifted Deutsche Bank’s share price to outperform rivals as Sewing’s revamp has taken hold, and are up 38% this year.

Still, more trouble remains a possibility, as the Fed taking aim at the bank’s compliance systems shows. The stock is still trading at one of the steepest discounts to book value among European lenders with shares still far below their peak, and the bank has lost money in five of the past six years.

(Updates with share performance in ninth paragraph.)

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©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

Huge Canadian Pension Cuts AT&T Stake. It Bought Tesla, McDonald’s, and One Chinese Stock.

By Ed Lin

Updated May 29, 2021
BARRON'S NEWSLETTERS

A Canadian pension fund more than halved its AT&T stake in the first quarter. It also tripled its holdings of Tesla stock, and bought more McDonald’s and NIO shares.

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

One giant public pension made major investment changes in the first quarter.

The Public Sector Pension Investment Board of Montreal halved its AT&T (ticker: T) stake in the first quarter, and nearly doubled its investment in electric-vehicle giant Tesla (TSLA). The agency also bought more shares of burger giant McDonald’s (MCD) and Chinese EV maker NIO (NIO).

The investment board disclosed the trades, among others, in a form it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. As of March 31, the investment board managed more than $140 billion in assets.

The agency sold 963,848 AT&T shares to end March with 677,727 shares of the telecom giant.


AT&T stock rose 5.2% in the first quarter, just behind the S&P 500 index’s 5.7% rise. So far in the second, however, shares have slipped 2.8%, while the index has gained 5.8%.

AT&T shocked investors earlier this month when the company announced that its dividend would be reduced in the course of restructuring. AT&T is leaving the media business, and will focus on telecom. CEO John Stankey said the lowered dividend “will still be incredibly attractive relative to other dividend opportunities in the market.” Shares slipped after the announcement, but Stankey bought AT&T stock on the open market.

The investment board bought 44,860 more Tesla shares to end the first quarter with 104,410 shares.

Tesla stock has been rolling downhill so far in 2021. Shares slipped 5.3% in the first quarter, and so far in the second they have lost 6.4%.

A string of unfavorable headlines have weighed on Tesla stock as of late. Still, shares are liable to rise sometimes on no apparent news. Tesla’s large position in Bitcoin could have dipped into the red with the cryptocurrency’s drop. In any case, CEO Elon Musk has said Bitcoin would no longer be acceptable for payment for Tesla vehicles, citing environmental reasons.

McDonald’s stock rose 4.5% in the first quarter, and so far in the second, it has gained 4.3%.

The fast-food-giant crushed estimates when it reported first-quarter earnings in late April. McDonald’s in May said it was increasing wages in company-owned stores.

The investment board bought 57,450 more McDonald’s shares in the quarter to end with 430,251 shares.

The agency bought 69,077 more NIO American depositary receipts to raise its investment to 192,337 ADRs.

NIO ADRs tumbled 20% in the first quarter, and have slipped 1.0% so far in the second.

NIO faces the chip shortage that is hurting several industries, and increased competition. NIO has noted that it expects the semiconductor issue to ease over June and July.

Canada’s Largest Pension Funds Stick To Lucrative Oil Sands Bets











Editor OilPrice.com
Sun, May 30, 2021


Canada’s oil sands industry is too carbon-intensive for the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) targets of some of the world’s largest institutional investors. But not for Canada’s own pension funds.

The five largest Canadian pension funds, which manage US$1.2 trillion in total assets, saw their combined investment in the U.S.-listed shares of the major oil sands producer surge by 147 percent in the first quarter of 2021, to a total of US$2.4 billion, according to a Reuters analysis of filings to the SEC.

Most of the jump in the value of investments of the pension funds merely reflected the rise in share prices of stock already held. Yet, the funds also bought more shares in the largest Canadian oil sands producers, according to the Reuters analysis.

Regardless of the way in which the pension funds boosted investment in oil sands in the first quarter, the fact remains that unlike other pension funds and some of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, Canada’s pension funds have not pledged or made divestments in one of the most emissions-heavy way of producing oil.

The funds, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP), British Columbia Investment Management Corp (BCI), and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP) collectively increased the value of their investments in Canadian Natural Resources, Suncor Energy, Cenovus Energy, and Imperial Oil, according to the Reuters analysis.

Some of Canada’s pension funds have committed to carbon-neutral portfolios by 2050. Commenting on the analysis for Reuters, a PSP Investments spokeswoman said many of the fund’s investments were in passive portfolios tracking stock indexes. Representatives of other funds told Reuters that their exposure to fossil fuels as a whole is a tiny percentage of total assets held.

Nevertheless, the funds have been criticized by activists for not doing enough to account for climate risk in their portfolios by divesting from the oil sands business.

Related: Biden Defends Alaska Oil Project

Commenting on this week’s high-profile case in which a Dutch court ordered Shell to slash emissions, holding it directly responsible for contributing to climate change, pension activist group Shift said: “Pension funds take note: This case highlights the growing climate-related legal risks faced by oil and gas companies amidst a wave of litigation against the fossil fuel producers most responsible for the climate crisis.”

“We have a big problem with pension funds saying we believe in engagement, not divestment, but there’s no sign of this engagement,” Shift’s director Adam Scott told Reuters.

Other institutional investors and pension funds have already dumped their stakes in oil sands companies.

In May last year, Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, the world’s largest sovereign fund which has amassed its enormous wealth from Norway’s oil, decided to exclude Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus Energy, Suncor Energy, and Imperial Oil over “unacceptable greenhouse gas emissions.” Even the Public Investment Fund (PIF), the sovereign wealth fund of the world’s largest oil exporter Saudi Arabia, has recently sold all the 51 million shares it held in Suncor.

Among pension funds, the New York State Common Retirement Fund said last month it would divest its US$7-million investment in Canadian oil sands firms after determining that seven companies “failed to show they are transitioning out of oil sands production.”

The evaluation of the fund’s oil sands holdings are part of a broader review of climate risk in energy investments, and the fund will next evaluate shale oil and gas companies, it said.

The Bank of Canada also warned in its latest Financial System Review (FSR) from earlier this month that climate-related vulnerabilities are first among “ongoing issues that we all need to take seriously now to protect our financial system and economy in the future.”

“The potential impact of climate risks is generally underappreciated, and they are not well priced. That means the transition to a low-carbon economy could leave some investors and financial institutions exposed to large losses in the future,” Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com