Category: Economy and Policy

(Corrects Rodrigo Pitre Mendez’s previous employer to J. Safra Saran (not Morgan Stanley))

By Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi

ZURICH, Feb 6 (Reuters) – Credit Suisse is hiring senior wealth managers from rivals JPMorgan and J. Safra Sarasin as part of a push to grow its business in Latin America as quickly as it grows its Swiss client base.

Switzerland’s second-biggest bank has made five senior appointments in its Geneva and Zurich-based offices to boost business managing money for Latin America’s wealthy, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters.

It plans further hires in coming months, including at local South and Central American offices, a source familiar with the plans said.

“To grow our regional capabilities further we need to not only develop our internal talent… but also attract external talent,” LatAm Head Jorge Fernández Amann told employees in an internal memo.

He added that the bank would have a stronger local presence in Mexico, Chile and Colombia.

Ricardo Castillo will join Credit Suisse as Latin American head of advisory and sales, and also lead the bank’s investment consulting team for Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay (ConoSur), according to the memo.

Castillo previously held the role of global investment specialist covering ultra-high net worth individuals at JPMorgan.

The bank said it had hired Marco Pacheco Romero, Andres Martin Cazenave — also from JPMorgan — and Rodrigo Pitre Mendez — previously of J. Safra Sarasin and, earlier in his career, Morgan Stanley — as senior relationship managers, all based in Geneva.

In January, it hired Maria Vega Ibañez De La Cruz as Zurich-based deputy head of client management for ConoSur.

The bank rejigged its regional organisation at the International Wealth Management unit in August, dividing Southern and Central America into Brazilian and Latin America regions, with Marco Abrahão leading Brazil while Fernández Amann assumed leadership of the remaining markets.

The bank’s business servicing wealthy and ultra-wealthy clients managed 45 billion Swiss francs ($45 billion) in assets in Brazil at the end of September, with 25 billion Swiss francs in assets under management in the remaining LatAm region.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A Silicon Valley venture capital firm said Wednesday that two chip and manufacturing veterans are joining it as partners as an additional funding round brings its total capital to more than $1 billion.

Palo Alto, California-based Eclipse Ventures said that it has added as partners Mike McNamara, the former chief of contract manufacturing firm Flex Ltd, and Sanjay Jha, who led chip manufacturer GlobalFoundries after a career at Qualcomm Inc and leading phone maker Motorola Mobility.

The firm, two of whose other partners came from Tesla Inc’s manufacturing operations, also said it had closed a new $500 million fund, bringing the total it has raised for investment into startups since its founding in 2015 to $1.1 billion.

Eclipse is unusual among venture capital firms because it invests in companies that make hardware technologies as well as software.

Despite Silicon Valley’s name – which derives from the raw material for computer chips – many venture investors prefer to stick to software, advertising and commerce companies. Hardware companies can require huge amounts of capital and face intense competition from both larger rivals and cheaper imitators.

Shares of smart speaker maker Sonos Inc, for example, have declined 34 percent since its initial public offering last year, as Amazon.com Inc, Alphabet Inc and Apple Inc all rolled out competing products.

But Eclipse has funded U.S.-made drones, custom chips to help cameras recognize objects quickly and a startup making robots and software for manufacturing electronics.

Lior Susan, the firm’s founding partner, said today’s tech giants build both hardware and software, so he’s willing to invest in both in hopes of finding the next one. Even Facebook Inc, which many investors think of as an advertising firm, spends billions of dollars on sprawling data centers and is hiring chip designers.

“If it makes sense for [a startup] to open their own factories, we’re not going to say no just because it sounds hard,” Susan told Reuters in an interview.

McNamara in October retired from contract manufacture Flex, which competes against assemblers such as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd’s Foxconn and has built devices for Fitbit among others. He said he is hoping to use his decades in the manufacturing business to help Eclipse-backed startups hit the market at the right time.

“Eventually, you have to know about when to expand production. Everything you do has to come out of the lab, out of the design center and hit scalability at some point,” he told Reuters.

LONDON (Reuters) – IBM Corp. has developed technology to predict and monitor when and where trees and vegetation threaten power lines which could help improve power supply operations and reduce outages, it said on Wednesday.

Vegetation can cause disruption for energy companies, often growing over or obstructing power transmission lines. Energy suppliers usually deal with this by conducting regular inspections and trimming.

IBM’s system uses data collected by satellites, drones, aerial flights, sensors and weather models to help companies monitor the state and maintenance of hundreds of miles of transmission and distribution lines.

As well as identifying and predicting outage threats, the system can also help with grid reliability, wildfire prevention, storm management and assessment, the company said.

“Every business is affected by weather. But for energy companies and their customers, it can mean the difference between whether they can keep the lights on and heat their homes,” said Cameron Clayton, IBM’s general manager of Watson Media and Weather.

“The ability to layer weather data with satellite and sensor data gives utility companies powerful new insights to help them improve operations and minimize impact on their customers,” he added.

LYON, France (Reuters) – A decade-old lawsuit in which a French farmer with neurological problems accuses Monsanto of not providing adequate safety warnings for a weedkiller returns to court on Wednesday, adding to health claims faced by the Bayer-owned firm.

Paul Francois, who says he fell ill after inhaling vapor from weedkiller Lasso in 2004, won rulings in 2012 and 2015 that found Monsanto liable for the intoxication, before France’s top court overturned those decisions and ordered a new hearing.

An appeal court in the southeastern French city of Lyon will hear arguments on Wednesday before giving its verdict at a later date.

Francois, who says he has suffered memory loss, headaches and stammering, blames Monsanto for not giving sufficient warnings on the product label.

“Maybe we’ll lose against Monsanto but the real victory for me is that I have converted my 200-hectare farm to organic production,” 55-year-old Francois told reporters before the hearing.

“This affair made me open my eyes and move towards a different kind of agriculture.”

Lasso was banned in France in 2007 after the product had already been withdrawn in some other countries.

Bayer said it did not wish to comment specifically on the case until the ruling in the latest proceedings.

But it added in an emailed statement that “the use of phytosanitary products does not pose any risk for human health when they are used according to the terms defined as part of the product authorization.”

Monsanto, acquired by Bayer last year, is also facing lawsuits in the United States over alleged cancer links to glyphosate-based weedkillers. Lasso used a different active substance to glyphosate.

Last year, the company was found to be liable for the terminal cancer of a school groundskeeper who had used glyphosate-based products.

It is appealing that verdict but faces another U.S. trial next month relating to a couple suffering from cancer.

In France, a court last month banned a version of Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller range on safety concerns.

Controversy over glyphosate has been fueled by a 2015 conclusion from the World Health Organisation’s cancer agency that the substance was probably carcinogenic.

Glyphosate was originally developed by Monsanto but it is off-patent and marketed worldwide by dozens of other crop chemical makers.

After a heated European Union debate in 2017 that led to a five-year renewal for glyphosate’s license, President Emmanuel Macron said France would aim to phase out the weedkiller in three years.

WARSAW, Feb 6 (Reuters) – Poland’s central bank on Wednesday kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged at a record low of 1.50 percent, in line with the expectations of analysts polled by Reuters.

The central bank, which ended an easing cycle in March 2015, also kept its lombard rate flat at 2.50 percent, the deposit rate at 0.50 percent and the rediscount rate at 1.75 percent.

The bank’s rate-setting Monetary Policy Council will hold a news conference at 1500 GMT. (Reporting by Pawel Florkiewicz; Writing by Agnieszka Barteczko)

Feb 6 (Reuters) – The New York Times Co reported a 4-percent rise in fourth-quarter revenue on Wednesday, as it signed up 265,000 new digital subscribers.

Net income attributable to shareholders was $55.2 million, or 33 cents per share, from a net loss of $56.8 million, or 35 cents per share a year earlier, when the company booked one-time charges related to tax reform and pension settlements.

Total revenue rose to $502.7 million from $484.1 million a year earlier, which included an additional week.

DUBAI (Reuters) – Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways has approached banks to raise over $500 million to finance four Boeing 787 Dreamliners it previously ordered, two sources familiar with the matter said.

The state carrier sent a request for proposals to banks last week for the financing, which is likely to be provided through bilateral loans or loans involving a small club of lenders, they said.

Etihad declined to comment.

It is common for airlines to approach banks to help finance aircraft deliveries.

Loans for 787s generally have a maturity of 12 years, the sources said, adding that the financing would likely be provided by Abu Dhabi banks.

Etihad operates a fleet of 26 787s and had a further 45 still to be delivered as of December 2018, according to Boeing’s website.

DETROIT, Feb 6 (Reuters) – General Motors Co on Wednesday swung to a quarterly profit from a year-earlier loss as profitable pickup trucks and crossovers in the U.S. market, combined with cost-cutting, helped offset lower overall sales.

The No. 1 U.S. automaker reported fourth-quarter net income of $2.1 billion or $1.40 per share, versus a loss of $5.2 billion or $3.65 per share a year earlier. Excluding one-time items, GM earned $1.43 a share. Analysts polled by Refinitiv IBES had expected earnings of $1.22.

LONDON, Feb 6 (Reuters) – Average daily trading volumes across rates, credit, money markets and equities surged by over a fifth to a new record in January, trading platform Tradeweb said on Wednesday.

“While growth was broad-based across all asset classes traded on the Tradeweb platform, some of the sharpest gains were noted in investment-grade and high-yield U.S. credit, mortgage-backed securities, and Chinese bonds,” the firm said in a monthly activity report.

Tradeweb said that average daily volume across all products was $624.5 billion in January, a rise of 20.7 percent year-over-year, representing a new record for the platform.

Average trading volumes in U.S. investment grade corporate credit rose almost 60 percent year-on-year, while high-yield corporate credit trading volumes surged almost 45 percent — both notching up new records.

Investor interest in Chinese markets continued, Tradeweb added. Average daily turnover in Chinese bonds was $0.9 billion in January, a jump of around 56 percent year-on-year. (Reporting by Dhara Ranasinghe; editing by Sujata Rao)