1 Surprise fall in China trade fuels fear (Katie
Allen in The Guardian) A surprise fall in Chinese exports fanned fears that
global growth is losing momentum and sent ripples through world markets on
Monday. Figures showing the biggest drop in overseas sales from China for a
year and a slump in imports took financial markets by surprise.
The data from China’s General Administration of
Customs showed its export sales shrank by15% in March from a year ago and
imports fell by 12.7% in a third straight month of declines, raising concerns
about faltering domestic demand. Economists had been expecting a 12% rise in
exports. The drop in exports left the trade surplus in March at $3.1bn
(£2.1bn), well below forecasts of $45.4bn in a Reuters poll of economists.
The much weaker than expected figures from such a
major metals consumer had repercussions on financial markets around the world
from UK-listed mining companies to the Australian dollar. On the currency
markets, the data pushed the Australian dollar down almost 1.5% against its US
counterpart.
The gloom around the trade figures was compounded by
the World Bank cutting its growth forecasts for east Asia, with Chinese growth
revised down from 7.2% to 7.1% in 2015. For the wider region, the report
predicted economic growth would “ease slightly in developing countries in east
Asia and Pacific this year, even as the region benefits from lower oil prices
and a continued economic recovery in developed economies”.
2 Shell, BG Group in biggest oil and gas sector deal
(Linda Yueh on BBC) A whopper of a deal comes along just after the FedEx-TNT
merger. Shell's $70bn cash and stock bid for BG Group would make it not only
the biggest deal in the oil and gas sector in a decade but would also rival
last year's Comcast-Time Warner Cable mega deal in size. It is the biggest
merger and acquisition (M&A) deal this year and the 14th biggest ever.
The merged company would become the biggest oil
company by production - though ExxonMobil is larger by market cap - and cement
Shell's dominance in liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Indeed, Shell has produced more gas than oil in
recent years and the purchase of BG would allow them to focus on gas as well as
deepwater production, according to Shell's chief executive Ben van Beurden. It
gives Shell access to key reserves around the world and indeed raises their
proven reserves by a sizeable 25%.
For the oil and gas sector, the halving of oil
prices in the past year and the rise of shale gas has led to a slump in stock
prices that is reminiscent of the late 1990s. That was when BP acquired Amoco
and Arco, Chevron merged with Texaco, and Exxon purchased Mobil.
BG's shares have dropped by about 28% since last
June alongside the decline in global oil prices. BG's slump mirrors the
plummeting share prices of other oil majors. The Big Five - ExxonMobil, Royal
Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, Total - have also piled on record amounts of debt
this year.
Total debt issued by the largest US and European
energy companies jumped to $31bn, taking advantage of low borrowing costs and
helping to cover cash shortfalls. It's the other driver for M&A. It lays
the ground for acquisitions as slumping energy prices hit smaller rivals harder
than the oil majors.
3 Guenter Grass, RIP (San Francisco Chronicle) Guenter
Grass was to Germany what William Faulkner was to the old American South: The
bard, scourge and pathfinder of a society ruined by moral disgrace and
humiliated by military defeat.
For much of his adult life, the Nobel-winning writer
held the rare status in the literary world of both national historian and
inventor. Grass, who died Monday at age 87, often angered his fellow citizens
by reminding them of their shared Nazi past. But through language of renewed
freedom and lyricism and stories that were surreal yet recognizable, he also
assumed the even greater challenge of imagining what they might become.
Grass' first and most famous novel, "The Tin
Drum," came out in 1959 and ranks with Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "One
Hundred Years of Solitude" and Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's
Children" as a modern, international classic and as a mini-encyclopedia of
a country's state of mind.
"My sister and I did not have our own rooms, or
even a place to ourselves," he told The Paris Review in 1991. "In the
living room, beyond the two windows, was a little corner where my books were
kept, and other things — my watercolors and so on. Often I had to imagine the
things I needed. I learned very early to read amidst noise." Grass added,
mischievously: "As a child I was a great liar. Fortunately my mother liked
my lies."
Grass had faulted Germans so often, and for so long,
about not confronting the Nazi era, that his opponents took special delight
when the author admitted to his own slip of memory. He had always acknowledged
being a Nazi supporter in his youth, but in 2006 he revealed in his memoir
"Skinning the Onion" that, as a teenager, he had served in the
Waffen-SS, the combat arm of Hitler's notorious paramilitary organization.
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