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☆ GM, VW face idled capacity risk in China without faster EV transition -Greenpeace
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-11 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

REUTERS/Rebecca Cook/File PhotoSHANGHAI/BERLIN, May 11 (Reuters) - Automakers including Volkswagen and General Motors could have considerable unused production capacity for conventionally powered vehicles in China by 2030 if they do not speed up their transition to electric vehicles (EV), Greenpeace said on Thursday. By the end of 2021, China had total annual production capacity for 40.89 million passenger vehicles of all fuel types with a utilisation rate of 52.5%, showed data from the China Passenger Car Association. If the sales rate reaches 70%, the average unused capacity utilisation rate for ICE production would rise to two thirds, Greenpeace said, basing its estimates on public information about planned capacity and projected sales. GM and Volkswagen will face the largest pressure with over 3 million units of idled capacity for ICE cars in China, presenting a major risk for those automakers, Greenpeace said. Volkswagen pointed to its rising sales in China and said it expects to profit from the country's growing demand for cars.

☆ Volkswagen, Bosch give up joint venture plans for battery cells
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

[1/2] A Volkswagen logo is seen during the New York International Auto Show, in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., April 5, 2023. REUTERS/David 'Dee' DelgadoMay 4 (Reuters) - Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) and Bosch (ROBG.UL) have cancelled their plans to create a joint venture to equip battery cell factories, Bosch said on Thursday. "We are not setting up a joint venture," Bosch Chief Executive Officer Stefan Hartung said, adding that the partnership with the German carmaker to digitise its battery factories would continue. The joint venture, announced at the beginning of 2022, was designed to deliver battery production systems, as well as assisting battery cell manufacturers in scaling up and maintaining their production sites. "Volkswagen and PowerCo are sticking to their plan to get involved in equipping battery cell factories in the future.

☆ Labour market 'churn' ahead with a quarter of jobs changing by 2027, survey shows
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-30 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Some 69 million jobs will be created and 83 million eliminated by 2027, it said, resulting in a net decrease of 2% of current employment, according to the Future of Jobs report. The survey is based on input from some 800 companies employing more than 11 million workers and uses a dataset of 673 million jobs. Technology and digitalisation is both the driver of job creation and of destruction, a summary of the report said. "Advancing technology adoption and increasing digitization will cause significant labour market churn," it said. Reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by Hugh LawsonOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Russia plans electronic call-up papers in crackdown on draft dodgers
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-11 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

"(This plan) is not connected to mobilisation," he said, repeating previous assurances that there were no plans for a second wave of mobilisation. Under the current system, men targeted by military recruiters are sent paper summons to their registered addresses. Under the new proposals, summons would be sent electronically to a potential draftee's personal account on the main government portal. Once the electronic summons is received, under the legislation, citizens who fail to show up at the military enlistment office would be automatically banned from travelling abroad. Reporting by Andrew Osborn and Caleb Davis Editing by Gareth Jones and Andrew OsbornOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's administration is determined to oust current CEO Francesco Starace, several sources told Reuters. OPPORTUNITYWith almost 60 Gigawatt (GW) of installed capacity, Enel is one of the world's biggest players in renewable energy. The company, which has been hit by soaring gas prices and government measures capping bills to shield consumers, saw net profit slip to 5.4 billion euros last year, from 5.6 billion euros in 2021. In November Enel unveiled its updated strategy to 2025, pledging to cut net debt by 21 billion euros via asset disposals, while at the same time investing 37 billion euros and increasing installed renewable capacity by 21 GW. You can't have an Italian only Enel, it would be such a step back," de Lamaze said.

REUTERS/Thomas White/IllustrationMUMBAI/NEW DELHI, April 3 (Reuters) - A surge in India's services exports, which hit a record high in the October-December quarter, is expected to shield the economy from external risks as a slowing global economy will likely weigh on the country's merchandise exports. Services exports will likely surpass goods exports by March 2025, he said. Reuters Graphics Reuters GraphicsIT services still accounted for 45% of India's total services exports in April-December. EXTERNAL SHIELDThe continued rise in services exports is likely to help rein in India's current account deficit. There is room for further growth with India's share in world commercial services exports currently just at around 4%."

☆ How Modi can grab India’s geopolitical “moment”
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-03 | by ( Hugo Dixon | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +7 min

India is in a geopolitical sweet spot because of growing tension between the United States and China. The hard-nosed realpolitik view is that this doesn’t matter as India and the United States have a common threat. This matters for India’s economic future, as geopolitical considerations are increasingly driving global commerce. The United States is encouraging this process through what it calls “friendshoring”. Modi can do a lot to make the most of India’s geopolitical opportunity.

☆ Volkswagen invests in batteries, raw materials in race for affordable EV
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( Victoria Waldersee | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Over two-thirds of the company's five-year investment budget announced on Tuesday is allocated to electrification and digitalisation, including up to 15 billion for batteries and raw materials. Volkswagen, Europe's top carmaker, is striving to close a gap with electric vehicle (EV) pioneer Tesla (TSLA.O) by expanding its slice of the growing market for battery-powered cars. Buzz EV car, on the day of the annual news conference of the Volkswagen Group at DRIVE.Volkswagen Group Forum, in Berlin, Germany March 14, 2023. Volkswagen met analysts' expectations in 2022 on revenues but missed the consensus estimate for earnings before interest and taxes by 3%. The most likely actual stock market candidate is battery unit PowerCo.

☆ Volkswagen to invest $193 billion over 5 years to hit EV target
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( Victoria Waldersee | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

[1/2] The logo of carmaker Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles is pictured at the IAA Transportation fair, which opened its doors to the public on September 20, 2022, in Hanover, Germany, September 19, 2022. The investments come as Volkswagen, Europe's top carmaker, tries to close a gap with electric vehicle (EV) pioneer Tesla (TSLA.O) by expanding its slice of the growing market for battery-powered cars. In the latest investment plan, up to 15 billion euros is ringfenced for battery plants and raw materials. VW outperforms EU rivalsThe investment decisions are targeted towards fulfilling a 10-point plan developed by Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume after he took the helm in September. The most likely actual stock market candidate is battery unit PowerCo.

☆ Volkswagen to invest $193 bln over 5 years to help meet EV target
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( Victoria Waldersee | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Companies Volkswagen AG FollowBERLIN, March 14 (Reuters) - Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) plans to invest 180 billion euros ($192.76 billion) over the next five years in areas including battery production and its North American operations, it said on Tuesday, with spending on combustion engines to decline from 2025. In the latest plan, 15 billion euros is ringfenced for battery plants and raw materials and 2 billion euros will be put toward a plant in North Carolina for its Scout brand. Later on Tuesday, Volkswagen is also expected to share the results of a 'virtual equity story' exercise instigated by Blume. On Monday, Volkswagen announced its first battery cell plant outside of Europe would be in Canada, with production to start from 2027. ($1 = 0.9338 euros)Reporting by Victoria Waldersee, Editing by Rachel More and Jamie FreedOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Chief Financial Officer Lutz Meschke, however, warned that supply chain issues, geopolitical strains and rising inflation still presented a challenge for the industry. Porsche AG, historically a huge money spinner for the Volkswagen Group (VOWG_p.DE), which owns 75% minus one ordinary share of the group, is targeting a margin of 17-19% this year with a long-term goal of 20%, it said in a statement. Porsche reported a 27.4% rise in annual operating profit to 6.8 billion euros on revenue of 37.6 billion, slightly undershooting a consensus 6.86 billion in earnings and 38.3 billion in revenue expected by 19 analysts polled by Refinitiv. The logo of German carmaker Porsche AG is seen before the company's annual news conference in Stuttgart, Germany, March 17, 2017. He also said the company was investing 20 billion euros in digitalisation in the next five years.

A DB spokesperson told Reuters that under current IT security legislation it did not have to run network components by Germany's cybersecurity office, the BSI, unlike public telecoms network operators. A BSI spokesperson said it was not aware of any law that determined the DB IT systems as "critical components". A Huawei spokesperson said the firm would never harm any nation or individual. The December contract with Deutsche Telekom Business Solutions, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, is for Huawei tech like switches and routers. A government source said it had detected some operators had already built in Huawei critical components without waiting for a BSI green light and could be required to replace those.

☆ Poland says Russian hackers attacked tax website
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Western officials say the Russian government is a global leader in hacking and uses cyber-espionage against foreign governments. "Russians are responsible for yesterday's attack, it must be made clear. We have information that makes it very likely that this was the adversary," Janusz Cieszynski, an official responsible for digitalisation, told broadcaster Polsat News. Cieszynski said the attack had consisted of distributed denial of service but that there had been no leaking of taxpayers' data. "This is an attack that blocks access to the site, but does not block security and put our data at risk," he said.

☆ Telenor CEO: See resilience in the business as connectivity remains key amid inflation
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailTelenor CEO: See resilience in the business as connectivity remains key amid inflationTelenor CEO Sigve Brekke tells CNBC how his industry is considering key themes such as the green transition, digitalisation, and security at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

☆ Russian 2023 budget deficit to widen as price caps take effect - Scope
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

BERLIN, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Lower revenues from oil and gas exports will significantly widen Russia's budget shortfall this year, according to an analysis from the European ratings agency Scope obtained by Reuters on Friday. Scope expects the deficit to rise to 3.5% of gross domestic product (GDP), significantly wider than the government's forecast of 2% of GDP, according to the analysis. Another way to plug the deficit is to issue domestic bonds to state-owned banks, backed by liquidity provided by the Bank of Russia. Western countries want caps on the price of Russian oil to reduce income for the Kremlin's war chest for its invasion of Ukraine, which entered its second year on Friday. Reporting by Rene Wagner; Writing by Friederike Heine; Editing by Rachel More and Kevin LiffeyOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Teleperformance full-year revenue tops guidance
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Feb 16 (Reuters) - French office services and call centre company Teleperformance (TEPRF.PA) posted full-year revenue slightly above its previous guidance on Thursday, helped by a drive towards digitalisation among clients. The company posted 12.5% like-for-like revenue growth to 8.15 billion euros ($8.7 billion), slightly above its 12% growth estimate provided in November. Teleperformance came under pressure in Colombia last November over work practices in its content moderation business. Teleperformance targets recurring organic or self-generated growth of about 10.0% and an EBITA margin increase of 20 basis points in 2023. It had also confirmed its 2025 financial targets of at least 10 billion euros in revenue and an EBITA margin of 16%.

"They fire, we hire," said Rainer Zugehoer, Chief People Officer at Cariad, the software subsidiary of automaker Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE). Spooked by inflation and the prospect of recession, Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL.O), Microsoft (MSFT.O) and Facebook owner Meta (META.O) have announced a combined almost 40,000 job cuts. Germany, with one of the world's oldest populations, has gaping holes in its labour force: according to IT industry group Bitkom, 137,000 IT jobs are unfilled. Gerlach added, adding Munich's famed beer festival to the strong labour protections that might prove attractive to the newly jobless. "Bureaucracy in Germany is utterly crippling for most highly-qualified workers when they first encounter it, especially if they don't speak German," said Diana Stoleru of Berlin startup Lendis.

☆ Germany's education advantage over European peers at risk - IW Study
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-21 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

BERLIN, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Germany is well positioned in education levels when compared with its European peers, but a study conducted by the IW economic institute showed that this privileged position could be at risk. Having a strong education and vocational training system is important to Germany's economy, Europe's largest, which relies on skilled labour to support its high-end products and services. "Germany has been left behind to a certain extent in the strong expansion of education that has taken place throughout the European Union in recent years," according to the study of the IW, to which Reuters had access on Saturday. "This should be seen against the background of the very special position of vocational education and training in Germany," the IW said. If one looks at the segment of young professionals with tertiary and secondary vocational training together, Germany has a significantly higher share of 77.0% of educated professionals than the 73.4% for the European Union.

☆ Carlyle sees big in Japan auto industry as EV shift shakes supply chains
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-22 | by ( Makiko Yamazaki | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

TOKYO, Nov 22 (Reuters) - U.S. private equity firm Carlyle Group Inc (CG.O) aims to enlarge its footprint in the Japanese automotive sector as the global shift to electric vehicles (EVs) shakes the industry's supply chain, its executives said. With the world quickly moving to EVs, Japanese auto parts suppliers are reviewing strategies that were traditionally tailored for combustion-engine cars, Reiji Terasaka, who heads Carlyle's Japan industrial team, told Reuters in an interview. The Japanese auto industry used to draw strengths from its decades-old keiretsu system - a hierarchical pyramid of equity-interlocked suppliers with automakers sitting atop and ensuring business security. Automakers might not be able to support all kinds of keiretsu companies anymore, Terasaka said, adding that he anticipated changes to how the keiretsu system operated. The private equity industry "has evolved over the last 10 to 20 years from where there was more of a focus on costs," Bernasek said.

☆ Don't like Musk? Work for us! Tech firms woo ex-Twitter staff
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-22 | by ( Martin Coulter | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

That's the pitch being used by talent-starved technology firms trying to lure thousands of former Twitter Inc employees laid off by the social media company under its new owner. Twitter has fired top executives and enforced steep job cuts with little warning following Musk's tumultuous takeover of the social media platform. Other big U.S. tech firms including Meta (META.O) and Amazon (AMZN.O) have also laid off thousands of staff in recent weeks due to the uncertain economic environment. But the public criticism of Musk highlights strong demand in parts of the industry for highly skilled digital workers. Mass job cuts and public resignations at Twitter have prompted worries the firm is shedding vital staff and fears the social media "town square" could face technical troubles.

☆ Russia's Lavrov says West tried to 'politicise' G20 declaration
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

NUSA DUA, Indonesia, Nov 15 (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that Western countries had tried to "politicise" a joint declaration at the Group of 20 (G20) summit, accusing them pushing to include a line condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine on behalf of all participating countries. A draft declaration by leaders of the G20, seen by Reuters on Tuesday, said "most" members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine, highlighting Russia's strong opposition to any language seen to criticise its actions. "Yes, our Western colleagues tried in every way to make that declaration politicised and tried to push through language that implied condemning the actions of the Russian Federation on behalf of the entire G20, which includes us," Lavrov said. "But let's do this in a fair way and let's make it clear that, on this topic, we have differences," Lavrov said. "Yes, there is a war going on in Ukraine, a hybrid war that the West has unleashed and been preparing for years," Lavrov said.

☆ Japan companies hold firm on capex plans with focus on tech: Reuters poll
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-09 | by ( Rocky Swift | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Among 400 companies polled, 52% said digitalisation and information technology would be a focus for capital investment in fiscal 2023, a trend particularly strong among non-manufacturers. It marked an increase from January 2019 when 42% of companies said tech would be an investment focus. The yen plunged to a 32-year low against the dollar last month, making imported inputs more costly. Even so, more than 90% of respondents said the weakening of Japan's currency had not affected their capital spending. The Reuters Corporate Survey, conducted for Reuters by Nikkei Research between Oct. 25 and Nov. 4, canvassed 495 big, non-financial Japanese firms on condition of anonymity, allowing them to speak more freely.

☆ Germany's Bosch partners with IBM in quantum computing
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-09 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

[1/2] The logo of Bosch is seen at an office building in Kyiv, Ukraine July 6, 2020. REUTERS/Valentyn OgirenkoFRANKFURT, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Germany's Bosch (ROBG.UL) is partnering with IBM in the field of quantum computing, hoping to use simulation technology to find surrogates for precious metals and rare earths in carbon-neutral powertrains within the next decade. "We share our experience in simulating materials for very specific application areas with IBM, and in return we gain deeper insights into the power and applicability of quantum computing including hardware," Bosch Chief Executive Stefan Hartung said. Overall, Bosch is investing 10 billion euros ($10 billion) in digitalisation and connectivity by 2025, with new technologies focused on sustainability and mobility accounting for two-thirds. ($1 = 0.9927 euros)Reporting by Christoph Steitz; Editing by Jan HarveyOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ UAE sovereign wealth fund ADIA to launch new data lab
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-18 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

DUBAI, Oct 18 (Reuters) - The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), the largest sovereign wealth fund in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), plans to open an advanced data research centre, an independent entity within the fund with goals not linked to investment applications. ADIA Lab will formally launch on Dec. 2 and is part of moves across the government to promote digitalisation and advanced technological applications. It will be headed by Simon Horst as director, who was previously at Berkeley Lab and at the U.S. Department of Energy. The UAE is trying to diversify its economy away from hydrocarbons and investing in increasing the contribution of digital innovation and advanced technology to overall economic growth. It is also seeking to attract high skilled professionals globally in these and other data science-led sectors.

☆ Siemens signs deal to supply equipment for gigafactories JV
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-13 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Gigafactories is a generic term referring to facilities that produce batteries for electric vehicles on a large scale. Under the deal, Siemens will become ACC's preferred supplier for automation, digitalisation and electrification technology. Terms of the partnership, which is part of the Siemens Xcelerator open digital platform launched earlier this year, have not been revealed. "ACC uses virtually the entire spectrum of Xcelerator - from factory construction to production automation to building services," Siemens managing board member Cedrik Neike told Reuters. Siemens on Thursday also announced a deal with electric vehicle company Volta Trucks to deliver electric charging infrastructure for truck customers, to help the transition to electrified vehicles.

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