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WASHINGTON — After sounding the alarm in recent years about threats to the global economy, International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde said risks had begun to materialise and were slowing growth.

In a speech just hours after the United States, Mexico and Canada announced a revised North American trade agreement, Lagarde said the rise in trade barriers "is hurting not only trade itself, but also investment and manufacturing as uncertainty continues to rise".

She signaled that the IMF would downgrade its global growth forecast next week, urged governments to de-escalate disputes and cautioned that they fail to do so at their peril.

"The stakes are high because the fracturing of global value chains could have a devastating effect on many countries, including advanced economies," Lagarde said a speech meant to preview the IMF's annual meeting in Bali next week.

She called on world leaders to work together to fix the global trading system rather than destroy it, to make sure the benefits were felt throughout society.

Avoid the 'shipwreck' 

"History shows that, while it is tempting to sail alone, countries must resist the siren call of self-sufficiency — because as the Greek legends tell us, that leads to shipwreck," she said.

"My key message today is that we need to manage the risks, step up reforms and modernise the multilateral system."

The IMF is due to release its latest World Economic Outlook, to update forecasts in July that estimated world growth of 3.9 per cent this year and next.

But Lagarde said the "outlook has since become less bright, as you will see from our updated forecast next week".

Prior to the meeting of the Washington-based lender in April, the IMF chief issued a caution about "clouds of risk on the horizon". She now says "some of those risks have begun to materialise" and "there are signs that global growth has plateaued". 

Economies in Europe and Japan have slowed, while China is seeing indicators its economy is experiencing "moderation", she said.

Rising US interest rates and a stronger US dollar are causing outflows of capital from emerging markets.

While these factors have not yet hit financial markets, "if the current trade disputes were to escalate further, they could deliver a shock to a broader range of emerging and developing economies", Lagarde said.

But she repeated the warning about rising debt levels which "reached an all-time high of $182 trillion — almost 60 per cent higher than in 2007".

The new US-Mexico-Canada Agreement
(USMCA) that updates the 25-year-old regional pact could be a positive sign.

But the United States remains enmeshed in a confrontation with China that involves more than $500 billion in annual trade between the nations.

The USMCA does address services trade, which Lagarde highlights as a key element needed to modernise the global trading system.

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook revealed on Friday that up to 50 million accounts were breached by hackers, dealing a blow to the social network’s effort to convince users to trust it with their data.

The social network is investigating the extent of harm done when hackers exploited a trio of software flaws to steal “access tokens”, the equivalent of digital keys that enable people to automatically log back into the social network.

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said engineers discovered the breach on Tuesday, and patched it on Thursday night.

“We don’t know if any accounts were actually misused,” Zuckerberg said. “This is a serious issue.”

As a precaution, Facebook is temporarily taking down the “view as” feature — described as a privacy tool to let users see how their profiles look to other people.

“It’s clear that attackers exploited a vulnerability in Facebook’s code,” said vice president of product management Guy Rosen.

“We’ve fixed the vulnerability and informed law enforcement.”

Facebook reset the 50 million breached accounts, meaning users will need to sign back in using passwords.

Democratic US Senator Mark Warner cited the breach as further proof of the privacy danger of companies such as Facebook and Equifax not adequately protecting the massive amounts of information they gather about people.

“This is another sobering indicator that Congress needs to step up and take action to protect the privacy and security of social media users,” Warner said in a statement.

“As I’ve said before — the era of the Wild West in social media is over.”

The breach is the latest privacy embarrassment for Facebook, which earlier this year acknowledged that tens of millions of users had personal data hijacked by Cambridge Analytica, a political firm working for Donald Trump in 2016.

“We face constant attacks from people who want to take over accounts or steal information around the world,” Zuckerberg said on his Facebook page.

“While I’m glad we found this, fixed the vulnerability, and secured the accounts that may be at risk, the reality is we need to continue developing new tools to prevent this from happening in the first place.”

HONG KONG — Asian markets rose on Friday, tracking a rally on Wall Street where investors were buoyed by the Federal Reserve’s positive outlook for the US economy, and oil added to gains with predictions it could be headed back to $100.

While concerns over the China-US trade row hang in the air, equities continue to be supported by optimism that the global economy and companies are in rude health.

That was reinforced by the Fed on Wednesday as it lifted interest rates and indicated more to come over the next year citing the strong labour market and playing down concerns about vulnerabilities in the financial system.

“One thing that’s telling is the current price action which sees investors continually coming back for more. That suggests the gushing US economy and not trade wars, continues to influence investors’ decisions,” said Stephen Innes, head of Asia-Pacific trading at OANDA.

All three Wall Street indexes ended with gains and Asia followed suit.

Tokyo led the way, ending 1.4 per cent higher as exporters were boosted by the weaker yen, which is at its lowest level against the dollar this year.

Shanghai gained 1.1 per cent, Sydney rose 0.4 per cent and Singapore climbed 0.6 per cent. Wellington added 0.7 per cent while there were also solid performances in Manila, Mumbai and Jakarta.

Hong Kong added 0.3, but property firms were again hit after the city’s banks on Thursday lifted commercial lending rates for the first time in 12 years following the Fed hike. 

Seoul and Taipei ended lower.

While the prospect of higher US rates has lifted the dollar, the upbeat mood is also helping emerging market and high-yielding currencies, which have been swiped in recent weeks by the trade war fears.

The South Korean won, Indonesian rupiah, Thai baht and Mexican peso were all being well bought while the Turkish lira jumped more than 1 per cent, despite ongoing concerns about the country’s economy.

The euro continued to fall further after losing almost 1 per cent on Thursday, as Italy’s government agreed on a budget deficit target of 2.4 per cent of gross domestic product for next year, fuelling fears of a bust-up with Brussels.

On Friday, those fears looked to be coming to fruition when EU Commissioner Pierre Moscovici hit out at the Italian move, which he called “beyond the limits of our shared rules”.

In early trade London shed 0.2 per cent, while Paris and Frankfurt were 0.5 per cent lower as traders were rattled by the brewing row.

Crude prices extended gains on growing concerns about supplies following a decision not to increase output by key producers, just as Iran faces export sanctions and Venezuela continues to be dogged by political and economic crises.

Also, the US energy secretary this week ruled out using the country’s emergency stockpiles to ease prices.

Bloomberg News reported that the chief executive of oil and gas major Total, Patrick Pouyanne, saw prices swinging to the $100 levels last seen in mid-2014. 

“Everyone’s worried about the tightness in supply at the moment and that’s continuing to push up prices,” Will Yun, a commodities analyst at Hyundai Futures, said. “But volatility is coming as we’re still waiting for further response from the US.”

NEW YORK — The US dollar rose to touch a one-week high against a basket of major currencies on Thursday following a hike in US interest rates, while a robust economy and surging shares of Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. boosted the US stock market.

The Federal Reserve (Fed) on Wednesday raised rates for the third time this year, indicating its confidence in the US economy.

That sentiment carried the dollar higher into a second day and dented the euro, which was further pressured by worries about Italy’s budget.

“The Fed is moving faster than most central banks and that’s dollar-supportive,” said Erik Nelson, currency strategist, at Wells Fargo Securities in New York.

The dollar index, tracking it against six major currencies, rose 0.68 per cent, while the euro dipped 0.6 per cent to $1.1668.

The greenback hit a two-week peak against the Swiss franc and Canadian dollar.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 117.28 points, or 0.44 per cent, to 26,502.56, the S&P 500 gained 15.89 points, or 0.55 per cent, to 2,921.86 and the Nasdaq Composite added 68.42 points, or 0.86 per cent, to 8,058.79.

Apple rose 2.5 per cent, the biggest boost to the three main indexes after JP Morgan started coverage of the stock with an “overweight” rating.

Amazon.com rose 1.5 per cent after brokerage Stifel talked up its businesses.

MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe gained 0.17 per cent.

Italy

Reports that Italy’s long-awaited budget was facing delay initially dented European shares, which then recovered. The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 Index rose 0.48 per cent. 

Italy’s main Milan bourse slumped as much as 2 per cent, and was last down 0.6 per cent, with the country’s big banks sinking even more as the country’s borrowing costs hit a three-week high in the government bond markets. 

Rome confirmed that a cabinet meeting over budget targets was still planned for later, dismissing an earlier report in the Corriere della Sera newspaper that it could be delayed.

Still, Italy’s economic ministry was forced to deny that its chief Giovanni Tria, an academic who does not belong to any one party, had threatened to resign.

“It is very fluid and it is changing by the minute it seems,” head of EMEA macro strategy at State Street, Tim Graf, said.

“Even if things get resolved positively today, Italy is not a situation that is going to go away,” he added, pointing to the growing popularity of the country’s fractious anti-establishment coalition government.

Japan’s Nikkei briefly touched an eight-month high as signs that the United States may not impose further tariffs on Japanese automotive products for now lifted carmakers, though the index eventually ended down nearly 1 per cent.

Oil edged higher, driven by the prospect of a shortfall in global supply once US sanctions against major crude exporter Iran come into force in just five weeks’ time.

US crude rose 0.43 per cent to $71.88 per barrel and Brent was last at $81.01, up 0.27 per cent.

HONG KONG — Bitmain Technologies, the world’s largest designer of products used for mining cryptocurrencies, confirmed it was bringing its IPO to Hong Kong in what will be an important test of institutional investors’ interest in the crypto sector. 

Bitmain’s prospectus, investors’ first official look at its financial health, was filed late on Wednesday and revealed that it made a profit of $742 million for the first six months of this year. The bulk of the company’s revenue came from selling hardware to mine cryptocurrencies, the filing said. 

The company said it will use the proceeds of the IPO to invest in research and development and expand its production output.

Bitmain designs different microchips specialised for mining cryptocurrenies and for artificial intelligence applications, as well as manufacturing cryptocurrency and AI hardware, and managing crypto mining farms. 

The IPO comes at a time when the cryptocurrency sector is facing a number of headwinds. 

The price of Bitcoin has fallen 65 per cent since its December 2017 peak, and on Wednesday one Bitcoin was worth around $6,500. This fall has hurt the profitability of mining, and in turn has been weighing on sales of mining hardware. 

In addition, there are regulatory concerns, given the Chinese authorities’ public scepticism about cryptocurrencies. 

Test of confidence 

Bitmain is the third, and largest, Chinese maker of Bitcoin miners hoping to float in Hong Kong this year. It had 85 per cent share of the cryptocurrency mining rig market in 2017, according to Bernstein research. 

Canaan Inc., which had 10 per cent of the market according to Bernstein and smaller rival Ebang filed their listing documents in May and June respectively, but have yet to complete their IPOs. 

As well as testing investor sentiment around Bitcoin, Bitmain’s IPO will be another test of confidence in Hong Kong’s equity market. 

The IPO is expected to be the city’s third largest tech float after Chinese smartphone marker Xiaomi Corp.’s 1810.HK IPO of $5.4 billion, and that of online food delivery-to-ticketing services platform Meituan Dianping, which earlier this month raised $4.2 biilion.

Like Xiaomi and Meituan, Bitmain said in its prospectus that it had adopted a dual class share structure, and that each share held by the company’s founders, Zhan Ketuan and Wu Jihan, would allow them to exercise 10 votes. 

In April, the Hong Kong bourse changed its rules to allow some companies with two classes of shares to list, in a bid to lure listings from large innovative companies. 

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The World Bank warned on Tuesday that the Gaza Strip’s economy is in “free fall” as cuts to aid and salaries add to an already crippling Israeli blockade on the Hamas-run enclave.

The bank’s report will be presented to the international donor group for Palestinians, known as the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, at its meeting in New York on Thursday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

The meeting will coincide with the speeches to the assembly of both Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Already squeezed by the more than decade-long Israeli blockade, Gaza’s economy has been further weakened by US aid cuts and financial measures by Abbas’s Palestinian Authority.

Abbas has been seeking to pressure Hamas, which expelled his loyalists from the territory in 2007, as well as save costs.

According to the World Bank, he has reduced monthly payments to Gaza by some $30 million.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has, meanwhile, cut more than $500 million in aid to the Palestinians, including ending all support for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

“The economic deterioration in both Gaza and West Bank can no longer be counteracted by foreign aid, which has been in steady decline, nor by the private sector, which remains confined by restrictions on movement, access to primary materials and trade,” the bank said.

Gaza’s economy shrunk by 6 per cent in the first quarter of 2018 “with indications of further deterioration since then”, it said.

The bank said one in two Gazans now lives below the poverty line and that unemployment is running at 53 per cent.

More than 70 per cent of young people are jobless, it said.

“Increased frustration is feeding into the increased tensions which have already started spilling over into unrest and setting back the human development of the region’s large youth population,” said Marina Wes, World Bank director for the West Bank and Gaza.

On September 20, UN envoy for the Middle East peace process Nickolay Mladenov told the UN Security Council that “Gaza can explode any minute.”

In recent months, mass protests along Gaza’s border with Israel have triggered repeated deadly clashes with the army, prompting warnings of the risk of a new conflict.

At least 187 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the protests began on March 30. One Israeli soldier has been killed in that time.

Israel says its actions are necessary to defend the border and accuses Hamas of using the protests as cover to attempt infiltrations and attacks.

Palestinians and human rights groups say protesters have been shot while posing no real threat.

NEW YORK — Oil prices jumped more than 2 per cent to a four-year high on Monday after Saudi Arabia and Russia ruled out any immediate increase in production despite calls by US President Donald Trump for action to raise global supply.

The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and non-OPEC states, including top producer Russia, gathered in Algiers on Sunday for a meeting that ended with no formal recommendation for any additional supply boost to counter falling supply from Iran.

“The market’s still being driven by concerns about Iranian and Venezuelan supply,” said Gene McGillian, director of market research at Tradition Energy in Stamford. “The failure of the producers to address that adequately this weekend is creating a buying opportunity.” 

Brent crude hit its highest since November 2014 at $80.94 per barrel, up $2.14 or 2.7 per cent, before easing to $80.62 by 11:05am EDT (15:05 GMT). UD light crude was $1.43, or 2 per cent, higher at $72.21.

OPEC leader Saudi Arabia and its biggest oil-producer ally outside the group, Russia, on Sunday effectively rebuffed a demand from Trump for moves to cool the market.

“I do not influence prices,” Saudi Energy Minister Khalid Al Falih told reporters on Sunday.

Last week, Trump said that OPEC “must get prices down now!”, but Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said on Monday OPEC had not responded positively to Trump’s demands.

“It is now increasingly evident, that in the face of producers reluctant to raise output, the market will be confronted with supply gaps in the next 3-6 months that it will need to resolve through higher oil prices,” BNP Paribas Oil Strategist Harry Tchilinguirian told Reuters Global Oil Forum.

Commodity traders Trafigura and Mercuria said that Brent could rise to $90 per barrel by Christmas and pass $100 in early 2019, as markets tighten once US sanctions against Iran are fully implemented from November.

JPMorgan said US sanctions on Iran could lead to a loss of 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd), while Mercuria warned that as much as 2 million bpd could be knocked out of the market.

A source familiar with OPEC discussions told Reuters on Friday that OPEC and other producers have been discussing the possibility of raising output by 500,000bpd.

“We expect that those OPEC countries with available spare capacity, led by Saudi Arabia, will increase output but not completely offset the drop in Iranian barrels,” said Edward Bell, commodity analyst at Emirates NBD bank.

The market has looked to softening demand from trade tensions between the US and China to offset the production cuts from Iran. 

Absent signs that trade tensions have eroded Chinese demand, the market will continue to surge, Tradition’s McGillian said. “That is one of the reasons we have cruised toward $80,” he said.

US commercial crude oil inventories are at their lowest since early 2015 and although US oil production is near a record high of 11 million bpd, subdued US drilling points towards a slowdown in output.

LONDON — Comcast beat Rupert Murdoch's Twenty-First Century Fox in the battle for Sky on Saturday after offering £30.6 billion ($40 billion) in a dramatic auction to decide the fate of the pay-television group.

The US cable giant bid £17.28 a share for control of London-listed Sky, bettering a £15.67-a-share offer by Fox, Britain's Takeover Panel said.

Buying Sky will make Philadelphia-based Comcast, which owns the NBC network and Universal Pictures, the world's largest pay-TV operator with around 52 million customers.

Chairman and chief executive Brian Roberts has had his eye on Sky as a way to help counter declines in subscribers for traditional cable TV in its core US market as viewers switch to video-on-demand services like Netflix and Amazon.

"This is a great day for Comcast," he said. "This acquisition will allow us to quickly, efficiently and meaningfully increase our customer base and expand internationally."

Comcast's knock-out offer thwarted Murdoch's long-held ambition to win control of Sky, and is also a setback for US entertainment giant Walt Disney which would have likely been its ultimate owner.

Disney has agreed a separate $71 billion deal to buy most of Fox's film and TV assets, including its existing 39 per cent stake in Sky, and would have taken full ownership after a successful Fox takeover. 

Comcast's final offer was a jump on its bid going into the auction of £14.75, and compares with Sky's closing price of £15.85 on Friday.

Comcast believed it needed to deliver a knock-out blow given that Fox's existing stake in Sky gave it a chance of victory if it was a close second to Comcast, two sources said.

Its final offer — more than double Sky's share price before Fox made its approach in December 2016 — quickly won the backing of Sky's independent directors on Saturday.

"We are recommending it as it represents materially superior value," said Martin Gilbert, chairman of Sky's independent committee. "We are focused on drawing this process to a successful and swift close and therefore urge shareholders to accept the recommended Comcast offer."

Fox noted the recommendation, saying it was considering options for its 39 per cent stake and would make another announcement in due course.

"Sky is a remarkable story and we are proud to have played such a significant role in building the incredible value reflected today in Comcast's offer," Fox said.

Fox's holding, which Comcast's offer values at more than $15 billion, stems from Murdoch's role in the creation of the company nearly three decades ago.

His younger son James was pivotal in building Sky into Europe's leading pay-TV operator as its former chief executive and current chairman. 

Comcast, which requires 50 per cent plus one share of Sky's equity to win control, said it was also seeking to buy Sky shares in the market.

Huge price 

One fund manager who holds Sky shares said nobody could complain about the Comcast price. 

"The question now is if Fox actually sells out and if not can Comcast get to 50 per cent," he said. 

One banker involved in the auction said: "Did Comcast pay a lot more than they needed to?"

Sources familiar with the matter said Fox, Disney and Comcast had not been in discussions about the 39 per cent stake.

The auction was a dramatic climax to a transatlantic bidding battle waged since February, when Comcast gate-crashed Fox's takeover of Sky.

It is a blow to 87-year-old Murdoch, who tried to buy Sky eight years ago only for the bid to collapse in the fallout from a phone-hacking scandal at his British newspaper business. 

Some politicians have opposed a deal, citing concerns about the influence Murdoch would wield over the UK's news agenda.

Fox made a string of concessions to assuage those worries and land a company that serves 23 million households in Britain, Ireland, Germany, Austria and Italy.

Sky's Chief Executive Jeremy Darroch said Comcast's victory was the beginning of a new chapter. "Sky has never stood still, and with Comcast our momentum will only increase," he said.

ALGIERS – The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies reduced oil output in August as a drop in Iranian supply due to US sanctions derailed their attempts to raise production to agreed levels, delegates said on Saturday as the energy producers prepared to hold talks in Algiers.

The development further raises pressure on the organisation to boost supply amid calls from US President Donald Trump to lower oil prices.

On Friday, a source familiar with the discussions told Reuters OPEC and its allies led by Russia were considering the possibility of raising crude supplies by a further 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) as US sanctions on OPEC's third-largest producer, Iran, bite into Tehran's exports.

"If an increase in production is proposed, there will be plenty of market counter-argument that it reduces even further the available spare capacity," Olivier Jakob from consultancy Petromatrix said.

"Saudi Arabia has made the mistake of trying to compensate for the loss of Iranian supplies with just-in-time replacement; but the oil market is looking for greater supply security than that. As a result, the strength of oil prices is now putting oil demand growth at risk," he added.

An OPEC and non-OPEC monitoring committee gathering in the Algerian capital this weekend found that oil producers' compliance with a supply-reduction agreement reached 129 per cent in August, two committee delegates said. This compares with a compliance level of 109 per cent for July, indicating that the group over-achieved on its agreed cut.

Seeking to reverse a downturn in oil prices that began in 2014, OPEC, Russia and other allies decided in late 2016 to reduce supply by some 1.8 million bpd. 

In June this year, however, after months of cutting by more than their pact had called for amid involuntary reductions from Venezuela and other producers, they agreed to boost output by returning to 100 per cent compliance. 

That equates to an increase of about 1 million bpd, but the latest figures show they are some way from achieving that target.

Oil reached $80 a barrel this month, prompting Trump to demand again that OPEC bring down prices.

"We protect the countries of the Middle East, they would not be safe for very long without us, and yet they continue to push for higher and higher oil prices! We will remember. The OPEC monopoly must get prices down now!" he wrote on Twitter.

Higher gasoline prices for US consumers could create a political headache for Trump before the November mid-term congressional elections.

OPEC sources said any official action to raise output would require OPEC to hold what it calls an extraordinary meeting — a proposal that is not on the table yet.

But the joint OPEC and non-OPEC ministerial committee known as the JMMC, which meets on Sunday, can still recommend a further increase in output if needed, the sources said. 

BRUSSELS — The EU warned social network Facebook on Thursday to bring its allegedly "misleading" consumer terms of service in line with the bloc's rules by the end of the year or to risk financial penalties.

"My patience has reached its limit," EU Justice and Consumer Affairs Commissioner Vera Jourova said in a statement. "It is now time for action and no more promises."

Jourova said she would call on consumer protection authorities across the 28-country bloc, which requested the changes last year, to act swiftly and sanction the company if Facebook failed to comply.

"While Facebook assured me [it would] finally adapt any remaining misleading terms of services by December, this has been ongoing for too long," she said.

The commission said that proposals made by the Mark Zuckerberg-led company were "very limited", even after the company changed its conditions earlier this year.

These new terms of services "contain a misleading presentation of the main characteristics of Facebook's services", the commission said.

A spokesperson for the social media giant defended the changes and said they were "much clearer on what is and what isn't allowed on Facebook and on the options people have”.

“[Facebook] will continue our close cooperation to understand any further concerns and make appropriate updates."

Under the microscope 

The commission, meanwhile, said that rent-a-room behemoth Airbnb has made the necessary changes to its consumer terms after also being under fire in Brussels.

The bloc's executive arm has been at the forefront of a regulatory crackdown on US tech giants, having also slammed Google with huge anti-trust fines.

The commission has been cracking down on what is sees as risks for European consumers using the services of US internet giants like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Uber and others.

Facebook also came under the microscope after this year's Cambridge Analytica scandal in which the company admitted that up to 87 million users may have had their data hijacked. 

The scandal was the worst public relations disaster Facebook has faced since its launch in 2004.

The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) firmly backed the commission's stand against Facebook.

"When a company doesn't do what the law says, there should be serious and deterrent sanctions," said the group's Augusta Maciuleviciute.