Headlines

Kazakhstan may merge its $23 billion state pension fund with the $57 billion oil fund in order to streamline their management, President Nursultan Nazarbayev said on Monday, Reuters reported. The state pension fund suffered a credibility crisis this year when its former chief executive Ruslan Yerdenayev and other managers were charged with embezzlement over a purchase of bonds issued by a local company in exchange for bribes. The trial started last month. Lawyers have told Kazakh media the executives - who have been sacked by the fund - have denied the charges against them.

Profit growth at Chinese industrial firms slowed in November as producer prices rebound appeared to soften, Bloomberg News reported. Industrial profits rose 14.9 percent last month from a year earlier, compared with previously reported 25.1 percent in October, the statistics bureau said on today. Robust demand and consistent factory inflation have lifted profitability this year. That helps manufacturers pay off their debt and invest more as real corporate borrowing costs decline. Still, as factory-gate prices softens, profit growth may also be due to slow.

Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., the world’s second-biggest shipbuilder, fell by a record following its plan to raise about 1.29 trillion won ($1.2 billion) selling new shares for working capital, Bloomberg News reported. Hyundai Heavy intends to sell 12.5 million new shares before the end of March at an estimated price of 103,000 won each, a discount of about 24 percent to the closing level on Tuesday. The stock fell 28 percent, the most since the company was listed on South Korea’s main board in August 1999, to 97,300 won today.

Economic output in Canada unexpectedly stalled in October—due to a decline in the energy sector—likely curbing expectations of a rate increase from the Bank of Canada in January, the Wall Street Journal reported. The level of Canada’s gross domestic product--the broadest measure of goods and services produced in an economy--was unchanged in October from the previous month at 1.75 trillion Canadian dollars ($1.37 trillion) on a seasonally-adjusted basis, Statistics Canada said on Friday.

Management missteps and tectonic shifts in the pharmaceutical business have battered Teva, which faces declining prices for generic drugs and the loss of a patent on a major branded drug, the New York Times reported. More than $20 billion has been shorn from the company’s market capitalization since 2017 began, cutting Teva’s value roughly in half. Everyone in Israel knew that layoffs and plant closings were coming, but what was expected was something akin to painful trims. Instead, on Dec. 14, Teva announced what amounted to an amputation.

IAG, the owner of British Airways and low-cost carrier Vueling, is one of the four bidders selected for the final stages of talks over the assets of insolvent Austrian airline Niki, Reuters reported. IAG had made an offer for Niki as a whole and was the frontrunner in talks for the carrier, the three sources told Reuters. If no deal is struck with IAG, it is possible that Niki will be carved up among several buyers. British tour operator Thomas Cook and Niki’s founder, former Formula One world champion Niki Lauda, are also among the four, Lauda told German daily Handelsblatt.

As of January 1, 2018, those who file a petition for declaration of bankruptcy of a company will face stricter liability in Slovakia, which could even result in their disqualification to sit on boards of Slovak companies, The National Law Review reported. In addition to the obligation to pay a contractual penalty in the amount of €12,500, an executive or board members who fail to file a bankruptcy petition will be liable for damages incurred by the creditors as a result of breach of such filing obligation.

Israel’s markets regulator will propose regulation to ban companies based on bitcoin and other digital currencies from trading on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, Reuters reported. Shmuel Hauser, the chairman of the Israel Securities Authority (ISA), told the Calcalist business conference he will bring the proposal to the ISA board next week. If approved, it would be subject to a public hearing and then the stock exchange bylaws would need to be amended. “If we have a company that their main business is digital currencies we would not allow it.

The Kremlin said yesterday that it hoped an out-of-court settlement reached between Russia’s largest oil producer Rosneft and the Sistema conglomerate would be implemented smoothly, Reuters reported. In a phone call with reporters, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin hoped the settlement, under which Rosneft will receive 100 billion roubles ($1.72 billion) from businessman Yevtushenkov’s Sistema, will not run into any problems.

The Japanese economy is picking up more and moving toward the central bank’s 2 percent inflation target, though only gradually, government data released today showed, the Wall Street Journal reported. The core consumer-price index, which excludes volatile fresh food prices, rose 0.9 percent in November from a year earlier, a slightly faster pace than an 0.8 percent increase in October. Another index used by the central bank to assess the state of inflation, which excludes both fresh food and energy, rose 0.3 percent from a year earlier, compared with a 0.2 percent rise in October.