Author: Businessam Staff

On Monday morning (May 29), president Jacob Zuma addressed another political meeting. His voice calm, his signature giggle cropping up when necessary, he reiterated his government’s dedication to addressing South Africa’s economic inequality. There were no outward signs that this was man who had spent the weekend fighting for his political life.

Over the weekend, the Sunday papers were splashed with a new wave of scandals. In one, a trail of what should have been damning emails showing just how much influence the Gupta family held of Zuma’s administration. The Sunday Times investigation detailed how the Gupta’s paid for cabinet ministers’ luxury hotel stays to ensure that their companies were awarded lucrative state contracts. Another newspaper, the City Press, detailed Zuma’s plan to set up a second home in the United Arab Emirates, with the Guptas’ help.

The leaks, mainly emails between Gupta affiliates and government officials, likely came from inside the African National Congress. At the same time, the ruling party held its National Executive Council meeting where senior members of the party tabled a motion of no-confidence against Zuma, the second one within the party since November (there have been several within parliament). For the first time, it seems Zuma got defensive, allegedly threatening ANC members not to “push him too far.” Outwardly, Zuma survived yet another threat to his rule.

For South Africans watching the subsequent press conference, there must be a sense of fatigue setting in. Fatigue at the sheer number of scandals Zuma has faced and even more exasperated at how each of those has done little to remove him from the Union Buildings, South Africa’s seat of power. Even more, it highlighted the sense of powerlessness of ordinary voters.

South Africa is a parliamentary republic where voters elect the party, which in turn elects the president. Party wrangling happens behind closed doors, and as this weekend showed, the public is reliant on leaks, press conferences of interviews with a savvy spokesman. Opposition parties have increasingly turned to the courts (with the opposition again laying charges against Zuma on May 29) to get the ANC to account, but the number of court cases is racking up with little consequence.

The ANC, an old liberation movement that fought its worst wars during the Cold War, is prone to paranoia. That Soviet-era language also allows them to sidestep answering difficult questions, as they did when journalists pressed them about resistance to Zuma from within the party.

Another motion of no-confidence is planned for later this year, this time in parliament. Opposition parties have approached the Constitutional Court to force the speaker of parliament to grant a secret ballot. They hope the veil of secrecy will allow quietly dissenting ANC parliamentarians to stand their ground.

Proving that political power lies in the hands of whoever controls the ANC (for now, that seems to be Zuma), the party has warned any voting away from the party line would be seen as, “acting on behalf of or in collaboration with counter-revolutionary forces” and against the objectives of the ANC.

This would be in line with the ANC’s organizational constitution, irrespective of what the country’s Constitutional Court judges find. This takes the power even further away from the public. They may join opposition party protests, but most likely won’t, fatigued at how the liberation party has limited their own freedoms by doing nothing.

Even as this week’s newspaper exposés seem to offer irrefutable proof of corruption and patronage, the public outcry was quieter than in previous scandals. Whistleblowers have come forward, watchdogs have uncovered networks of “state capture” and the courts have found the president guilty of wrongdoing. Nothing happens, except perhaps another toothless commission of inquiry.

The next time South Africans will feel any real power is during the 2019 elections. By then, Zuma will have completed his term. He may even have ushered in a successor who will ensure that his many scandals will have no consequence once he is no longer protected by the presidency. The courts will likely be clogged by opposition parties seeking judicial backing while they don’t have the numbers in parliament. In short, it will be more of the same and the fatigue may finally have led to complete apathy.

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Courtesy Newsrep

RT: What are the most important issues on the Forum’s agenda?

Ian Colebourne: We are looking at things in terms of the balance between the growth and sustainable growth. So, one of the forum sessions we are sponsoring this year is around sustainable growth. We had our global head of sustainability with us on that panel and I think this is an important kind of consideration for the administration. Clearly we want to see growth, but it’s got to be inclusive growth that brings up all of society.

RT: Global growth or Russia growth?

IC: Russia growth, we are looking at things very much more Russia-prospective.

RT: Is growth in Russia sustainable?

IC: I think we have achieved stability after a period of considerable volatility. I think the administration has steered well. And I think that’s what in terms of international investors is now attractive. The fundamentals for Russia investment have remained the same and I think we are now at the platform where we are looking to what we would put forward as a reform or economic program that stimulates growth.

RT: What about news reports about the risks in Russian financial instruments?

IC: Difficult to comment really on why they are rating it that way. We have been here for 27 years. I think what we see is that Russia and business relationships have been very resilient through some of these challenges. And I think that for us is really the focus. How do we continue to support our Russian clients, our international clients and to maintain that resilience and confidence in business.

RT: How do you make this conclusion that businesses are resilient to the challenges in these hard years for Russia?

IC: I think you would have to look at where we are positioned now. In terms of reduced inflation the overall confidence both in terms of consumers is still a little bit low but increasingly more competitive. I think within business there is an improvement and business confidence and this gives us an opportunity for growth. But I think that there is clearly some need for change to stimulate that growth.

Economic links between Russia & Germany stronger despite politics – Putin https://t.co/bW9Rbp2hBf

— RT (@RT_com) June 1, 2017

RT: Why is it that despite sanctions big money investors come to Russia?
IC: You just have to look at the past twelve months in terms of some of the transactions which have happened. I think clearly energy and resources continues to be a driver for the economy and that’s the area where we have seen a lot of large investment. But outside of that we see investments in the other sectors of the economy. And this is more about the diversification of the economy. Russia has come through a very turbulent period well and I think the economy is stable now. It has opportunity for growth and that’s what appeals to the investors.

SPIEF 2017: Russia-led economic bloc can boost trade with India by 800% https://t.co/u2IlJtAbtR

— RT (@RT_com) June 1, 2017

RT: Do sanctions not matter?

IC: It’s hard to say it doesn’t matter. Business as I say has been resilient throughout this period and are continuing business relationships. We’re somewhere outside the geopolitical arena. We are focused on the business side of the equation.

RT: Is the effect of sanctions fading for the business community?

IC: I am not sure that the effect is fading or otherwise. I think that there would be a preferences in business community for them not to be there. That is just understood. And so people have been focused on how we maintain the relationships, how do we maintain the sort of connectivity. A lot of businesses have been investing in Russia over the past several decades and those businesses are committed and we are among them. We have been here 27 years. We are committed to the market and that just a fundamental.

RT: What are your expectations for Russia?

IC: We are the world’s largest professional services firm and our ability to have an impact with our clients is significant. Clearly what we see with our Russian clients is an appetite for international best practice and there’s something we can bring them. So we’ve been working a lot around operational effectiveness in closing the productivity gap – and that’s an area where we’ve been very busy. Actually this year at the Forum we have our European team who are working with clients in the digital space. That is another area where the global expertise that Deloitte has in abundance as the world leader in that is really something that could have an impact on Russian clients.

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Courtesy Newsrep

South African telecoms operator Vodacom Group said on Friday its second biggest shareholder, the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), will vote in favour of its 34.6 billion rand ($2.67 billion) takeover of Kenya’s Safaricom, Reuters reports.

The PIC, which includes the Government Employees Pension Fund, holds a 15.63 percent interest in Vodacom Group.

UK-based group Vodafone moved to consolidate two of its African interests in May with the sale of a 35 percent stake in Kenya’s Safaricom to Vodacom in exchange for an increased stake in the South African company where it is already majority owner.

“In its letter of support, the PIC has undertaken to vote in favour of the resolutions required to implement the proposed transaction at the general meeting to be convened by Vodacom Group,” the company said in a statement.

Vodacom shares were up 0.23 percent to 164.09 rand at 1033 GMT.

The PIC was not available for immediate comment.

Trade between Russia and Germany has seen a 40 percent rise in the first quarter, and German businesses are localizing production in Russia, said President Vladimir Putin at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF 2017).

“We have agreed and successfully implement a number of projects. German production is quite high, and localization reaches 60 to 70 percent,” said Putin on Thursday.

“Let’s take the auto industry, for example. No German company or any other foreign business has left the Russian market despite political difficulties. They continue working despite the difficult economic situation in Russia, despite the decline in production and GDP in Russia, despite the drop in real income and demand. We try to help such companies on behalf of the government so that this constructive work would continue,” he said.

Putin was referring to a Daimler plant, which is being built in the Moscow region. The plant will be completed by 2019 and will assemble up to 25,000 Mercedes-Benz cars a year and employ over 1,000 people.

In May, the Moscow-based German-Russian Foreign Trade Chamber announced a 43 percent rise in trade to €6.7 billion in the first two months of the year. The German Federal Statistical Office posted a 37.3 percent growth to €9.5 billion in the same period.

According to a survey conducted by the Chamber, 63 percent of German companies actively working in Russia expect sales to rise this year.

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Courtesy Newsrep

Mary Meeker of US venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins presented the firms’s annual Internet Trends survey this week.

Lafferty News is still waiting for someone to invent an app that reduces the 355 slides to a manageable ten or so. For readers of Lafferty News, there’s no big shockers in here, as technology news has become fairly mainstream.

Big Chinese internet firms are climbing into Top Ten lists previously occupied by American firms: it remains to be seen how much software they will roll out which takes a share of software traditionally dominated by the West. Naturally for Kleiner Perkins, there’s an unstated message that technology provides seamless solutions, which remains unchallenged.

Among the takeaways, for instance: voice search is growing, with 20 percent of inquiries on mobile done by voice. There’s no indication of the amount of correct answers delivered by Siri, Echo and so on. Lafferty News suspects about 25 percent of the enquiries yield correct answers. Another interesting tidbit: In India, mobile phones account for about 78 percent of internet usage (thanks in part to the $25 billion investment by Reliance to roll out a new 4G network). Only Nigeria surpasses that, with 80 percent of internet access via mobile.

Of course, it’s the ubiquity of mobile phones that has forced people to reconsider the future of the POS and in particular the PIN.

In the West, Jack Dorsey of micromessaging service Twitter founded Square, which was one of the first devices to take advantage of the connected computing power of the mobile phone to allow small merchants to receive card payments.

In the East, Tencent reconfigured its own micromessaging site into WeChat, out of which emerged mobile-to-mobile payments for merchants. Now, Edgar Dunn asks: is the extinction of POS terminals nearer than we think? Are we in the middle of another ‘software eating the world’ story? “As with the paperless office or the cashless society the retailer without a POS terminal is not likely to happen in the next 20 or 30 years,” says the report.

“Conversely, PIN-on-glass and contactless devices without a PED [PIN entry device] are more likely to be mainstream within the next five years, but retailers will still want the choice to accept cards with and without the PED. Just as we have seen the magnetic stripe reader is still an integral part of the POS terminal its days are numbered because in the next few years the mag-stripe card will fade away entirely as the chip on the card and contactless technology becomes the only standard. The next ten years will see further advancements in the function of the POS terminal, it will not be comparable with anything we see today but software will take the lead not the hardware.”

Barclays Zimbabwe will be acquired by Malawa-based First Merchant Bank, according to reports, as Barclays moves to divest of its African businesses. Barclays has been operating in Zimbabwe for more than a century.

As the FT reports, “Barclays Bank of Zimbabwe, which has $476m of total assets and made $10.9m of net profit last year, is a similar size to First Merchant Bank, which has $450m in assets and made $10m of profit last year. Barclays will transfer all of the bank’s 700 employees, 25 retail branches and five corporate service centres in Zimbabwe to First Merchant Bank.

The UK bank will reduce its risk-weighted assets by £292m.” Barclays is selling down its African business to concentrate on British and American markets. Barclays employees in Zimbabwe had gone to the courts to prevent the sale of the business, arguing that they deserved first refusal.

For some years now, Italian banking has been in need of a little luck. A lot, actually. The start of summer 2017 seems to be providing brief respite. Someday, a historian may judge that Italy’s luck turned this year. “First-quarter expansion was revised up to the fastest in six years, according to a report on Thursday, with a boost from inventories and solid consumer spending,” says Bloomberg. “While investment and net trade proved a drag, and Italy is still lagging its European peers, the news lifted hopes for the health of the economy.” Perhaps the G7 meeting in Sicily convinced Berlin and Rome that they have a common problem, and would do well to work together. So, Monte Dei Paschi (MPS) will be rescued (again) via a bail-in. Junior bondholders and shareholders will be tapped to contribute, private buyers will take MPS’ bad loans, and the state will assist in the recapitalisation of the bank.

Expect, however, that the bail-in will result in a lot of unhappy tales if more mis-selling of bonds emerges. Margrethe Vestager, EU competition commissioner, said she and the Italian prime minister had agreed in principle to allow state aid. “MPS will undergo deep restructuring to ensure its viability, including by cleaning its balance sheet from non-performing loans,” she said. “I hope this will enable MPS to focus on lending to the Italian businesses and support the Italian economy.”

Speaking of which… Lafferty News’s home town was full of vintage Minis last weekend, many featuring themes from The Italian Job, which sealed the reputation of that chirpy automobile as the getaway vehicle of choice for the Cockney tea leaf. As it turns out, Italy is the capital of bank robberies, though in this case it’s good old heists of cash that we’re talking about.

“Economists Giovanni Mastrobuoni and David A. Rivers studied nearly 5,000 bank robberies in Italy between 2005 and 2007. The average heist lasted 4 minutes, 16 seconds and yielded €16,000 (about $19,800 at the exchange rate of the time). Though each additional minute in the bank, on average, leads to about €1,400 more in earnings, the majority of robberies last three minutes or less because the risk of getting caught increases with time.”

German auto giants Daimler and Volkswagen announced plans Thursday to secure pole positions in China’s electric car market as the world’s second-biggest economy ramps up investment in cleaner energy.

Coinciding with a visit to Berlin by Chinese premier Li Keqiang, Daimler and VW were among a string of top German companies to unveil major business deals with China.

China, the world’s biggest carbon emitter, has been investing billions in clean energy infrastructure and is building up an e-car industry, as its leaders battle to clear up the notorious choking pollution enveloping its biggest cities, including Beijing.

Among the agreements signed in the presence of Li and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the automakers agreed to build electric cars in China, which they described as the world’s biggest market for “electromobility”.

Daimler said it would take a minority stake in Chinese carmaker BAIC’s electric car subsidiary.

At the same time, Daimler will also invest in upgrading the current production facilities at its existing joint venture with BAIC, “paving the way for the introduction of New Energy Vehicle production,” the German group said.

“China today is already the world’s largest market for new energy vehicles, and Daimler is committed to contributing to the further development of electric mobility in this country,” said Daimler’s China chief Hubertus Troska.

As for Volkswagen, it announced it would “develop, produce and market electric vehicles as well as mobility services” in a 50-50 joint venture with carmaker JAC.

VW, the world’s largest carmaker, aims to sell some 1.5 million electric cars per year in China by 2025, thanks to its deals with JAC and competitors SAIC and FAW.

Its first vehicles jointly designed with JAC are scheduled to roll off the production line in 2018.

– Trump and trade –

Both China and Germany have found themselves under fire recently from US President Donald Trump who lashed out at their massive trade surpluses.

The meeting between Merkel and Li appeared much more good-natured, and Li emphatically said that China welcomed foreign goods.

“China will continue to provide German companies, particularly automobile firms, with a good environment to sell more cars,” he told a news conference after talks with Merkel.

“Germany has a massive trade surplus with China, but we’re not complaining,” he said.

“We’re happy for Chinese consumers to have more choices and products. If they pick German goods, we’re still happy,” Li added.

The German-Chinese projects came as the world waited to learn whether Trump will take the US out of the Paris climate accords.

For China’s part, it will “steadfastly” stick by its commitments to reduce carbon emissions by 2030, said Li.

In other deals, German car components suppliers Bosch and Continental also both announced they would collaborate with Chinese internet behemoth Baidu in the area of “connected mobility”.

Germany’s DZ Bank is teaming up with the China Development Bank (CDB) to finance business and infrastructure investments and trade in both countries, as well as cooperating on capital markets.

And Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest lender, announced Wednesday that it would work with CDB on investments in the “Belt and Road” infrastructure project, which Beijing hopes will deepen trade links between Asia, Europe and Africa.

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Courtesy Newsrep

The price of raw ivory in Asia has fallen dramatically since the Chinese government announced plans to ban its domestic legal ivory trade, according to new research seen by the Guardian. Poaching, however, is not dropping in parallel.

Undercover investigators from the Wildlife Justice Commission (WJC) have been visiting traders in Hanoi over the last three years. In 2015 they were being offered raw ivory for an average of US$1322/kg in 2015, but by October 2016 that price had dropped to $750/kg, and by February this year prices were as much as 50% lower overall, at $660/kg.

Traders complain that the ivory business has become very “difficult and unprofitable”, and are saying they want to get rid of their stock, according to the unpublished report seen by the Guardian. Worryingly, however, others are stockpiling waiting for prices to go up again.

Of all the ivory industries across Asia, it is Vietnam that has increased its production of illegal ivory items the fastest in the last decade, according to Save the Elephants. Vietnam now has one of the largest illegal ivory markets in the world, with the majority of tusks being brought in from Africa. Although historically ivory carving is not considered a prestigious art form in Vietnam, as it is in China, the number of carvers has increased greatly.

The demand for the worked pieces comes mostly from mainland China. Until recently, the chances of being arrested at the border slim due to inefficient law enforcement. But the prices for raw ivory are now declining as the Chinese market slows; this is partly due to China’s economic slowdown, and also to the announcement that the country will close down its domestic ivory trade. China’s ivory factories were officially shut down by 31 March 2017, and all the retail outlets will be closed by the end of the year.

Other countries have been taking similarly positive action on ivory, although the UK lags behind. Theresa May quietly dropped the conservative commitment to ban ivory from her manifesto, but voters have picked it up and there has been fury across social media.

Another told investigators that “whereas previously it had been easy to carry stuff over into the border into China, now a few people have dropped out of the business completely”.

Illustrating how far prices have dropped, one illicit sale was recently made to Hong Kong of four tusks weighing 204kg for a record low of $400/kg. Dan Stiles, an independent consultant who has been investigating ivory markets for 15 years, received the information via email from an Indian man now living in Canada who had made the sale. “That’s unbelievable,” Stiles said. “Three years ago he [the trader] was offered $650/kg by the Daxin Ivory Carving Factory in Guangzhou and turned it down. He just gave up trying to get a decent price – it was money for his daughter’s education.”

The price of wholesale raw ivory in China dropped by two thirds in the last three years, during the time that China’s government made commitments to cracking down on the trade, according to research released in March by Save The Elephants. It has been seen by conservationists as significant progress for the protection of elephants. Iain Douglas-Hamilton, president and founder of Save the Elephants told the Guardian: “There is now greater hope for the species”.

However, falling prices do not necessarily reflect a reduction in demand. Oversupply could cause the decline in prices, according to Stiles, who suggests there is now so much raw ivory that most people are “not willing to pay higher prices”.

He also believes certain big dealers may be stockpiling the ivory, either because they think the ban will only be temporary, or because they are moving into the illegal trade.

“I think there will be an increase in illegal selling to cover the gap made by the closure of legal markets,” Stiles said.

“As long as the poaching continues at these high rates, it looks like there are still quite high volumes of ivory in spite of the seizures that have been made,” he added. According to according to Cites Mike programme (Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants) poaching levels peaked in 2011 and have since stabilised, at levels that “remain unacceptably high overall”.

However, Stiles is keen to stress that it is still too early to see the full impact on poaching across Africa from China’s domestic ivory ban, which will be fully enforced at the end of this year. “Let’s see where we are at the beginning of 2019. If poaching rates haven’t gone down significantly by then, then elephants are in real trouble.”

Many conservationists believe that the ban is pointing in the right direction for elephants, with Verheij from the WJC saying, “It’s really encouraging”.

Vigne agrees and points out that in the future this ban will have an impact on the big trading networks. “If they have any sense they won’t want to trade if the prices are dropping like that,” she said. But ultimately, she added, the key is law enforcement. “Punishment is the biggest deterrent. That’s what has to be focused, so the illegal markets will slowly become marginalised.”

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Courtesy theguardian.com

Global stocks, including Nigeria’s, have maintained bullish runs, gaining on the average 11 percent so far in the year. This follows currency recoveries in major economies of the world.

The dollar indeed recovered more ground on Friday as upbeat U.S. economic data allayed concerns over growth ahead of payrolls figures due out later in the day.

The Nigerian naira equally increased 19.6200 or 6.45% to 324.0000 on Friday June 2 from 304.3800 in the previous trading session. Historically, the Nigerian naira reached an all time high of 347.25 in August of 2016.

The dollar, coming off its worst fortnight in a year against the euro and the basket of currencies used to measure its broader strength, DXY, on concern about the Trump administration’s ability to deliver a substantial boost to growth, clawed back some of those losses.

The dollar index was little changed although the greenback was up 0.1 percent against the Japanese yen (JPY).

“Good numbers yesterday and the record highs in equities if anything are dollar positive. The data hasn’t done a great deal for the dollar recently, but we’ll certainly be looking at the wage numbers today – that is crucial for inflation and the rate outlook,” said Niels Christiansen, a strategist with Sweden’s Nordea Bank, according reports by Reuters.

Data showing a healthy uptick in private sector hiring and factory activity during May bolstered expectations that the U.S. economy was picking up speed and lifted stocks on Wall Street after two days of losses.

Data showing a healthy uptick in private sector hiring and factory activity during May bolstered expectations that the U.S. economy was picking up speed and lifted stocks on Wall Street after two days of losses.

The gains filtered through to global stocks, lifting the MSCI All-Country World index by 0.3 percent to a record high.

Stocks in Europe joined the party with euro zone blue-chips up 0.9 percent and UK’s FTSE 100 up 0.4 percent and hovering near its highest-ever levels.

In Nigeria, stocks jumped to 11-month high as bulls maintain dominance with
All-share index rising by 2.8%

Market capitalization increased N282.0bn to close at N10.5tn. driven by gains in DANGCEM (+5.0%), NIGERIAN BREWERIES (+4.9%), FBNH (+10.0%) and ZENITH (+2.9%) kept the bears out of the market.

“Despite the sustained market rally and the benchmark index’s 14-Day RSI closing at 85.7 points (indicating that market is in the overbought region) trading multiples show that Nigerian equities remain cheaper and attractive when compared to SSA peers,” say analysts at Afrinvest.

They believe the improvements made in FX management will continue to buoy foreign participation in the market.

In commodities, oil prices resumed their slide with key futures contracts down more than 2 percent amid worries that U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to abandon a global climate pact could spark more crude drilling in the United States, stoking a persistent glut in global supply.

Global benchmark Brent crude futures LCOc1 fell to $49.63 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude CLc1 by more than a dollar to $47.36 per barrel.

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By Business a.m. live staff 

Commodities Update – June 01, 2017

Donald Trump may think tackling climate change is bad for business. But business? Not so much.

Two of the US’s biggest business leaders, Tesla founder Elon Musk and Disney’s Robert Iger, have quit Trump’s high-powered business advisory panel after the president pressed ahead with plans to pull out of the Paris climate accord.

Am departing presidential councils. Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 1, 2017

As a matter of principle, I’ve resigned from the President’s Council over the #ParisAgreement withdrawal.

— Robert Iger (@RobertIger) June 1, 2017

Trump created his business advisory panel shortly after his election as he sought to show how his administration would revamp the US by “drawing on private sector expertise”.

The departures are a disaster for the president. While Trump has claimed an economic rationale for the US’s exit from the most ambitious climate change agreement in history, big business has cried foul.

To make matters worse Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein (who is not on Trump’s business panel but knows a thing or two about making money) chose Thursday to launch his first tweet in condemnation of the move.

Today’s decision is a setback for the environment and for the U.S.’s leadership position in the world. #ParisAgreement

— Lloyd Blankfein (@lloydblankfein) June 1, 2017

The two defections and Blankfein’s message leave a lot of other people on Trump’s high-powered business council in a very awkward position given their own, and their companies’, views on Paris and climate change.

Here’s a sample of Trump’s business team and the conflicts they now face:

Jamie Dimon – chairman, president, and CEO of JPMorgan Chase

The banking titan is no fan of regulation but even he clearly thinks some is necessary, especially when it comes to the environment. “Some regulations quite clearly create a common good (e.g. clean air and water),” he wrote in his 45-page letter to shareholders this year. Trump in the meantime has been frantically signing executive orders to repeal Obama-era air and water protections.

Trump may have missed Dimon’s buried critique but he won’t have missed Dimon’s signature alongside fellow council members Musk and Disney’s Bob Iger who joined a total of 30 other business leaders in sending a letter to the president that begins: “We are writing to express our strong support for the United States remaining in the Paris climate agreement.”

“Based on our vast experience doing business all over the world, we believe there is strong potential for negative trade implications if the United States exits from the Paris agreement,” they wrote.

Trump flanked by Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman and General Motors CEO Mary Barra, both bosses have expressed concern about climate change

Stephen Schwarzman – co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Blackstone

The billionaire founder of investment group Blackstone is literally Trump’s right hand man on the council. He’s a New York player who likes Saudi princes, companies that slash worker benefits and throwing lavish parties that would make an emperor blush so you’d think there would be no tension here.

But Schwarzman too is out of step with Trump and believes climate change is real. His Schwarzman Scholars educational program funds research into the impact of climate change and here’s Blackstone’s vice chairman Byron Wien on climate change in a blog post from last year: “The climate change problem is real, but not immediate and it is hard to get policy makers to focus on it, despite rising temperatures and sea levels … According to some climate experts, in 200 years most major cities will be in danger, but there is not a sense of urgency that will get world leaders to deal with this problem now.”

Indra Nooyi – Chairwoman and CEO of PepsiCo

Pepsi has signed the business world’s own version of the Paris climate agreement. Last year the company’s plans to reduce its emissions were approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative, a program backed by the UN and others that is in alignment with the Paris agreement and has approved similar plans by another 43 of the world’s biggest companies.

“Combating climate change is absolutely critical to the future of our company, customers, consumers – and our world,” Nooyi said in 2014. Trump could switch to Coke but they signed too.
Mary Barra – chairwoman and CEO of General Motors

Barra normally gets to sit to Trump’s left when his business council meets and that’s clearly where she is in relation to his environmental views. “Environmental stewardship and sustainability are part of our business model and core to our operations,” Barra said in GM’s annual sustainability report last year. The company is aiming for a world of “zero emissions, zero congestion and zero crashes”.

Larry Fink – chairman and CEO of BlackRock

BlackRock, an investment manager that overseas $5tn in assets, has become increasingly vocal about its concerns on climate change. Fink has warned CEOs he is losing patience with those that fail to account for how they will address the cost of climate change, both from new regulation and a changing planet.

Exxon, Occidental Petroleum and PPL, a large utility holding company, have all been forced to be more transparent about the impact of climate change on their businesses after pressure from BlackRock.

Ginni Rometty – chairwoman, president, and CEO of IBM

Rometty’s support of Trump caused consternation at IBM where over 2,300 staff members signed a petition, saying the decision undermined the company’s “core values of diversity, inclusiveness, and ethical business conduct”.

In March, IBM was awarded a 2017 Climate Leadership Award by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions and the Climate Registry, its fifth such award in six years.

“As IBM stated 10 years ago, ‘Climate change is one of the most critical global environmental challenges facing the planet.’ That is even truer today,” Wayne Balta, vice-president for corporate environmental affairs and product safety, wrote in a blog post.

Doug McMillon – president and CEO of Walmart Stores

Walmart is another signatory to the Science Based Targets Initiative and McMillon has set ambitious targets for reducing the retailer’s emissions. Working with suppliers it aims to reduce emissions by one gigaton (a billion metric tons) by 2030, “equivalent to taking more than 211m passenger vehicles off of US roads and highways for a year”, McMillon announced last year. Trump probably thinks a gigaton is a new truck. He likes trucks.

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Courtesy theGuardian