Business

LONDON — British retailers faced a slowdown in sales over the crucial Christmas trading period, survey data showed on Tuesday, as shoppers were squeezed by higher prices and stagnating wages.

Retail sales rose 1.4 per cent last month from a year earlier, according to a survey from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and financial group KPMG. That compared with 1.7 per cent expansion in December 2016.

"With inflation outpacing income growth, shoppers continued to see more of their spending power absorbed by essential items, including food, leaving less left over for buying Christmas gifts," said BRC Chief Executive Helen Dickinson.

"That made this year's festive period all the more nail-biting for non-food retailers, many of whom offered deep discounts in the last weeks before Christmas in the hope of something to celebrate".

Capital Economics analyst Finn McLaughlin agreed that consumers simply had less cash to buy goods and services.

"December's BRC retail sales monitor suggested that Christmas trading failed to provide much relief to retailers with spending growth broadly in line with its subdued average over the past year," McLaughlin said.

"The squeeze on real incomes has continued to leave consumers with less room for discretionary purchases."

Workers' wages are still being eroded by Brexit-fuelled inflation, recent official data showed.

Average weekly earnings rose by 2.5 per cent year-on-year in the three-month period to October. That lagged behind Britain's annual inflation rate of 3.1 per cent.

Since Britain voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, a drop in sterling — making imported goods more expensive — has pushed inflation upwards.

Meanwhile, publication of Tuesday's BRC survey comes as Britain's retailers reveal mixed Christmas fortunes.

Department store Debenhams issued a profits warning last week on poor festive sales, sending its share price tumbling.

However, clothing retailer Next reported rising Christmas sales on the back of a strong online performance.

Britain's biggest retailer, supermarket giant Tesco, and food-to-clothing chain Marks & Spencer publish their Christmas figures on Thursday.

STOCKHOLM -  Denmark's Novo Nordisk, the world's leading insulin manufacturer, announced on Monday an offer to buy the Belgian biotech firm Ablynx for 2.6 billion euros ($3.1 billion).

Novo Nordisk said it made an initial offer in December and then raised it, but that it had been rejected by Ablynx's managment. 

"Novo Nordisk encourages Ablynx's Board of Directors to engage in a negotiated transaction for the benefit of all stakeholders," the Danish firm said in a statement.

The initial offer of 26.75 euros in cash was raised to 28 euros per share in cash plus up to another 2.5 euros per share depending on performance.

Ablynx said in a statement that its board "concluded that the proposal fundamentally undervalues Ablynx and its strong prospects for continued growth".

Ablynx specialises in the development of nanobodies: small fragments of antibodies that like larger antibodies can bind onto the antigens that cause an immune system response.

Novo Nordisk said its strong global haematology franchise would make it able to better develop one of those nanobodies, caplacizumab, which aims to treat a certain type of blood clots.

It called its buyout offer a "compelling opportunity and provides the clearest path to realising full potential of Ablynx's portfolio in the best interests of all stakeholders, including patients and physicians".

The offer is the largest ever by Novo Nordisk for another pharmaceutical firm, according to Bloomberg News. The firm accounts for nearly half of the global market for insulin, but is also present in other sectors such as horomone treatments and drugs to control haemophilia. 

Its shares were down a quarter of a per cent in trading on the Copenhagen stock exchange at 339.1 kronor.

Shares in Ablynx were suspended on Monday morning in Brussels at the request of the market regulator.

MEXICO CITY — Mexico's acting attorney general said on Thursday prosecutors were already working to improve investigations and cooperation with other countries following an international report that blasted the country for failing to punish money launderers. 

Alberto Elias Beltran, Mexico's acting attorney general, told Reuters in an interview that the country was seeking to work better with the United States and Colombia to target financial networks of multinational drug gangs. 

Earlier this week, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an international organisation based in Paris that sets global standards for fighting illicit finance, criticised Mexico for not systematically prosecuting money launderers. 

"There are important findings of opportunities for improvement at the attorney general's office," Elias said, noting in particular the room to improve the quality of money laundering investigations and the seizure of assets. 

The FATF report highlighted that Mexico has been slipping in successful convictions. The country already lagged regional peers such as Colombia and Brazil, both of which have made strides in setting up independent prosecutors.

The report also noted the "low level of effectiveness" in prosecutions and seizures and an "extremely low level of effectiveness" in punishing corruption. 

"We are working with the specialised offices [that target money laundering] where we are strengthening protocols," Elias said, adding that government agencies were also working to implement so-called parallel investigations. 

The FATF report underscored that Mexico was largely failing to carry out parallel money laundering investigations to match probes of organised crime, drug trafficking and corruption. 

The FATF recommends such parallel investigations, and its report on Mexico underscored haphazard, uneven results of current investigations, noting low conviction rates and tiny seizures of assets compared with the amount of illicit proceeds that are generated in Mexico.

LONDON — British no-frills airline EasyJet announced on Friday that it carried a record 81.6 million passengers in 2017, despite uncertainty surrounding Brexit.

The number of passengers increased by 9.6 per cent last year compared with 2016, EasyJet said in a trading update.

Low-cost Irish rival Ryanair had revealed on Wednesday that it carried a record-high 129 million passengers last year. 

On Thursday, British Airways owner IAG stated that it had transported a total of 105 million people.

EasyJet has meanwhile activated its Brexit contingency plans.

Back in July 2017, EasyJet applied for a new air operator's certificate in Austria to continue flying across Europe regardless of the final Brexit deal between Brussels and London.

In November, however, the carrier revealed that its annual net profit slumped by almost one third on strong competition and a Brexit-fuelled slump in the pound.

Over the last two decades, Britain's airline industry has soared under the Single European Sky system, which lifted trade restrictions on EU airlines.

Unless British negotiators manage to secure preferential conditions, British airlines could lose this status once the country leaves the European Union in 2019.

DOHA — Qatar has approved legislation allowing 100-per cent ownership for foreign investors in most sectors of the economy in a bid to boost non-energy revenues, the government said on Thursday.

The move comes at a time of political crisis in the Gulf, with Qatar under an economic and diplomatic boycott by neighbouring countries for the past seven months.

It is also an attempt by Qatar, the third largest economy in the Gulf, to secure new revenues to finance a budget deficit due to the slump in oil prices since mid-2014.

Overseas investors will be able to fully own businesses in almost all economic sectors but they are not allowed to purchase real estate or own franchises, according to the ministry of economy and trade.

To invest in the banking and insurance sectors, foreigners need to secure a special permit from the government, the law states.

Currently, foreign investors can own up to 49 per cent of companies listed on Qatar's stock exchange in accordance with a law passed in 2014.

The new law was approved at the cabinet's weekly meeting on Wednesday.

"The draft law aims to increase tax revenues, protect foreign and local investors and boost Qatar's status in global economic indicators," according to a statement by the ministry.

It is not yet clear when the draft law will come into force.

The move is the latest attempt by Qatar, the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, to secure new revenues since the Gulf crisis took hold.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt severed ties with Qatar in June, accusing it of links to extremist groups and being too close to Shiite Iran, Riyadh's regional archrival.

Doha has denied the charges.

Qatar has increased business with existing trade partners outside the region, announced plans to produce more gas and sought new markets, most recently in West Africa.

ISLAMABAD  — Pakistan will allow the Chinese yuan to be used for imports, exports and financing transactions for bilateral trade and investment activities, in a move economists said on Wednesday would simplify a massive Chinese investment project.

Both public and private sector enterprises may use the yuan for bilateral trade and investment, the central State Bank of Pakistan said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

"As per current foreign exchange regulations, Chinese Yuan [CNY] is an approved foreign currency for denominating foreign currency transactions in Pakistan," it said. 

"In terms of regulations in Pakistan, CNY is at par with other international currencies such as USD, Euro and JPY," it added.

The bank said that in light of a massive Chinese infrastructure project in Pakistan, the move would "yield long-term benefits for both the countries".

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a $54 billion project launched in 2013 linking western China to the Indian Ocean via Pakistan, has been hailed as a "game changer" by Pakistani officials.

They hope the power stations and transmission lines built as part of the project will help ease Pakistan's chronic power crisis. 

Economic analyst and former government adviser on finance Salman Shah welcomed the State Bank's move, saying that avoiding dollar transactions in the implementation of CPEC would "simplify matters very considerably".

The Chinese economy is now one of the biggest in the world, he said, justifying the use of the Chinese currency of choice.

WASHINGTON —Last year was the safest year for civil aviation since plane crash statistics were first compiled in 1946, two industry studies have found.

President Donald Trump hailed the results on Tuesday, and credited his "very strict" stance on commercial aviation for the positive data in the United States.

A total of 10 crashes of civil passenger and cargo planes claimed 44 lives, said the Aviation Safety Network in a statement published on Monday.

"The year 2017 turned out to be the safest year ever for commercial aviation," ASN said.

Five of the fatal accidents involved cargo flights and five passenger flights.

The previous year, ASN recorded 16 accidents and 303 lives lost.

No major airline crashed a plane, the To70 agency said in its annual report, also published on Monday.

"The past year has been another exceptionally good year for civil aviation safety," To70 said.

"2017 was much better than could reasonably [and statistically] be expected, and was again better than last year's remarkable performance," said To70 researcher Adrian Young.

The chances of dying in a plane crash are now one in 16 million, Young said, making air travel the safest means of transport even as worldwide air traffic grew by 3 per cent in 2017 over 2016.

The To70 report used data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) which is to issue its own annual report soon.

Accidents involving military planes, including military transport aircraft, were not taken into account in the study.

ASN President Harro Ranter said the low number of accidents was "no surprise", coming after a steady decline of fatalities in recent years.

But "despite the good news, a note of caution needs to be sounded", the To70 report warned.

"Whilst the safety levels of modern civil passenger airplanes remain high, the extraordinarily low accident rate this year must be seen as a case of good fortune," it said.

One worry for the future is the many pieces of electronic equipment that passengers carry in luggage because of the risk of fire or the danger of lithium-ion batteries exploding, the report said.

Trump takes credit

In praising his own efforts on aviation safety, Trump said there were no aviation accident-related deaths in the US last year. 

"Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news — it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!" he tweeted.

But Trump was probably referring only to statistics for turbojets, as there were two deadly US accidents in ASN data last year. Both involved planes with jet propulsion engines.

The first, in Arkansas on May 1, killed one person. Four days later, in West Virginia, two people were killed in another accident.

LONDON — Britain may impose new taxes on tech giants like Google and Facebook unless they do more to combat online extremism by taking down material aimed at radicalising people or helping them to prepare attacks, the country's security minister said.

Ben Wallace accused tech firms of being happy to sell people's data but not to give it to the government which was being forced to spend vast sums on de-radicalisation programmes, surveillance and other counter-terrorism measures.

"If they continue to be less than co-operative, we should look at things like tax as a way of incentivising them or compensating for their inaction," Wallace told The Sunday Times newspaper in an interview.

His quotes did not give further details on tax plans. The newspaper said that any demand would take the form of a windfall tax similar to that imposed on privatised utilities by former prime minister Tony Blair's government in 1997.

Wallace accused the tech giants of putting private profit before public safety.

"We should stop pretending that because they sit on beanbags in T-shirts they are not ruthless profiteers," he said. "They will ruthlessly sell our details to loans and soft-porn companies but not give it to our democratically elected government".

Facebook executive Simon Milner rejected the criticisms.

"Mr. Wallace is wrong to say that we put profit before safety, especially in the fight against terrorism," he said in an e-mailed statement. "We've invested millions of pounds in people and technology to identify and remove terrorist content."

YouTube, which is owned by Google, said it was doing more every day to tackle violent extremism.

"Over the course of 2017 we have made significant progress through investing in machine learning technology, recruiting more reviewers, building partnerships with experts and collaboration with other companies," a YouTube spokeswoman said.

Deadly attacks 

Britain suffered a series of attacks by extremists between March and June this year that killed a total of 36 people, excluding the attackers. 

Two involved vehicles ramming people on bridges in London, followed by attackers stabbing people. The deadliest, a bombing at a concert in the northern city of Manchester, killed 22 people.

Following the second bridge attack, Prime Minister Theresa May proposed beefing up regulations on cyberspace, and weeks later interior minister Amber Rudd travelled to California to ask Silicon Valley to step up efforts against extremism.

"We are more vulnerable than at any point in the last 100 years," said Wallace, citing extremist material on social media and encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp as tools that made life too easy for attackers.

"Because content is not being taken down as quickly as they could do, we're having to de-radicalise people who have been radicalised. That's costing millions. They can't get away with that and we should look at all the options, including tax." 

Facebook said it removed 83 per cent of uploaded copies of terrorist content within one hour of its being found on the social media network.

It also highlighted plans to double the number of people working in its safety and security teams to 20,000 by the end of 2018.

YouTube said that progress in machine learning meant that 83 per cent of violent extremist content was removed without the need for users to flag it.

SEOUL — The crew of a Hong Kong-registered ship have been detained for questioning in South Korea since their tanker was impounded in November for transferring oil to a North Korean vessel and breaching UN sanctions, customs officials said on Saturday.

The Lighthouse Winmore, which was chartered by a Taiwanese company, was impounded by South Korean customs authorities at the port of Yeosu on November 24 following an inspection.

"Since then, inspectors have been coming on board and questioning the crew," a Korea Customs Service official told AFP.

The Lighthouse Winmore has 25 crew members including 23 mainland Chinese citizens and two Myanmar nationals, another customs official at Yeosu said. 

The tanker, chartered by Taiwanese company Billions Bunker Group Corporation, previously visited Yeosu on October 11 and loaded up on some 14,000 tonnes of Japanese refined oil before heading towards its purported destination in Taiwan.

Instead of going to Taiwan, however, the vessel transferred 600 tonnes of oil to the North's Sam Jong 2 in international waters off China before returning to Yeosu, the customs service officials said.

Earlier a foreign ministry official in Seoul had said the ship had been seized briefly by customs authorities who inspected it.

Results of the investigation will be reported to the UN Security Council's sanctions committee, foreign ministry officials said.

The Lighthouse Winmore is one of 10 ships the US has asked the Security Council to blacklist for violating sanctions against North Korea. 

Taipei said the Billions Bunker Group is not incorporated in Taiwan but in the Marshall Islands, and that it would "continue to fully comply" with UN sanctions against North Korea.

Taiwan's transport ministry said it is investigating whether any Taiwanese entities were involved.

The ship is owned by a Hong Kong-registered company called Win More Shipping Limited. There was nobody on Friday at the address given for the firm on Hong Kong's companies’ registry.

Four ships — three North Korean vessels and a Palau-flagged oil tanker — were blocked from international ports by the UN Security Council on Thursday over suspicions of carrying or transporting goods banned by sanctions targeting Pyongyang's weapons ambitions, according to the final list adopted by the world body.

Even though the Sam Jong 2 was not among the four banned vessels, it appears on a list of six other ships suspected of transporting illicit cargo, along with the Lighthouse Winmore.

The US had asked the Security Council to blacklist all 10 vessels, but China objected to the proposal, diplomats said, and only agreed to blacklist four ships on Thursday.

The Security Council has imposed three sets of sanctions on North Korea this year: one on August 5 targeting the iron, coal and fishing industries, another set on September 11 aimed at textiles and limiting oil supply, and the most recent on December 22 focused on refined petroleum products.

Pyongyang has slammed the latest sanctions as an "act of war" and on Saturday, the state-run KCNA news agency said in a commentary that the country would continue to pursue its nuclear ambitions.

"The DPRK, an undeniable new strategic state and nuclear power...declares: Do not expect any change in its policy", it said, referring to the North by the abbreviation of its official name.

"Its entity as an invincible power can neither be undermined nor be stamped out."

PARIS — Airbus is drawing up contingency plans to phase out production of the world's largest jetliner, the A380 superjumbo, if it fails to win a key order from Dubai's Emirates, three people familiar with the matter said.

The moment of truth for the slow-selling airliner looms after just 10 years in service and leaves one of Europe's most visible international symbols hanging by a thread, despite a major airline investment in new cabins unveiled this month.

"If there is no Emirates deal, Airbus will start the process of ending A380 production," a person briefed on the plans said. A supplier added such a move was logical due to weak demand.

Airbus and Emirates declined to comment. Airbus also declined to say how many people work on the project.

Any shutdown is expected to be gradual, allowing Airbus to produce orders it has in hand, mainly from Emirates.

It has enough orders to last until early next decade at current production rates, according to a Reuters analysis.

The A380 was developed at a cost of 11 billion euros to carry some 500 people and challenge the reign of the Boeing 747.

But demand for these four-engined goliaths has fallen as airlines choose smaller twin-engined models, which are easier to fill and cheaper to maintain. 

Emirates, however, has been a strong believer in the A380 and is easily the largest customer with total orders of 142 aircraft, of which it has taken just over 100.

Talks between Airbus and Emirates over a new order for 36 superjumbos worth $16 billion broke down at the Dubai Airshow last month. Negotiations are said to have resumed, but there are no visible signs that a deal is imminent. 

Although airlines such as British Airways have expressed interest in the A380, Airbus is reluctant to keep factories open without the certainty that a bulk Emirates order would provide.

Emirates, for its part, wants a guarantee that Airbus will keep production going for a decade to protect its investment.

A decision to cancel would mark a rupture between Airbus and one of its largest customers and tie Emirates' future growth to recent Boeing orders. European sources say that reflects growing American influence in the Gulf under President Donald Trump, but US and UAE industry sources deny politics are involved.

There are also potential hurdles to a deal over engine choices and after-sales support.