2024-03-24 04:17
March 23 (Reuters) - U.S. forces engaged six Houthi unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) over the southern Red Sea after the group launched four anti-ship ballistic missiles toward a Chinese-owned oil tanker, the U.S. Central Command said on Saturday. Iranian-backed Houthis launched the missiles in the vicinity of M/V Huang Pu, a Chinese-owned oil tanker, the Central Command said in a post on X. A fifth missile was fired toward the oil tanker, which issued a distress call, the Central Command said, adding that no casualties were reported in the incident and a fire on board was extinguished. U.S. forces then engaged six UAVs, five of which crashed into the Red Sea, and one flew inland into Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, the Central Command said. The Reuters Daily Briefing newsletter provides all the news you need to start your day. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-forces-engage-six-houthi-unmanned-aerial-vehicles-over-southern-red-sea-2024-03-24/
2024-03-24 02:11
March 23 (Reuters) - The World Bank will publish more of its proprietary data, including on debt defaults, starting next week as part of a push to attract more private sector investment to developing countries, World Bank President Ajay Banga said. Banga, speaking at the China Development Forum early Sunday, China time, said the World Bank Group had mobilized $41 billion of private capital for emerging markets and raised another $42 billion from the private sector for bond issuance last year, with both totals to be eclipsed this year. But he said more progress was needed, and the bank was taking action on a number of fronts to overcome barriers holding back private sector investment to developing economies. Economic growth has slowed in developing countries, with growth falling to barely 4% from 6% in two decades, Banga said, noting that each lost percentage point dragged 100 million people into poverty, while debt levels were rising. Banga noted that developing countries also faced an "unimaginable" gap between 1.1 billion young people expected to enter the workforce in the next decade and expected job creation of just 325 million jobs. To better understand the issues, the bank convened a focus group with 15 chief executives of asset management companies, banks and operators who identified concerns such as regulatory certainty, political risk insurance and foreign exchange risk, he said. The bank last month already announced reforms that will consolidate its loan and investment guarantee structure and triple its annual guarantees to $20 billion by 2030. Starting next week, Banga said, the bank and a consortium of development institutions would also start publishing private sector recovery data by county income level, as a step to inspire investor confidence. The World Bank would also publish private sector default data broken down by credit rating, as well as sovereign default and recovery rate statistics dating back to 1985, he said. "All this work contributes to one goal: getting more private sector capital into developing economies to drive impact and create jobs," Banga said. The former Mastercard CEO said the bank was also working on a longer-term effort to build a securitization platform that will make it easier for pension funds and other institutional investors to bring their $70 trillion to emerging markets. Bundling large standardized investments in one package would encourage meaningful investment at scale, overcoming the current patchwork of small, bespoke loans that each had their own documents, risk and pricing, he said. China's "remarkable journey" in the past five decades was a testament to what is possible, Banga said, noting China had created hundreds of millions of jobs, sharply reduced poverty and cut emissions. Once a major World Bank borrower, China is now one of the bank's biggest donors, he added. Get a look at the day ahead in U.S. and global markets with the Morning Bid U.S. newsletter. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/world-bank-share-more-data-attract-private-investors-developing-countries-2024-03-24/
2024-03-24 00:56
QUITO, March 23 (Reuters) - Operations for Ecuador's privately operated OCP heavy crude pipeline were halted and transportation valves were shut following a leak, the company said on Saturday. OCP detected a leak in Napo province in central Ecuador and immediately activated its emergency response plan which led to the shutdown, the company said in a statement. OCP is "actively working" to control the situation, it said, without specifying the size of the leak. The 485-kilometer (301.37-mile) pipeline, the country's second largest, can transport about 450,000 barrels per day, though it has been operating below capacity. OCP's contract to operate the pipeline had been due to expire in January. The company said then it was in talks with the government to transfer the pipeline to state control. The pipeline construction required $1.4 billion in private funding, OCP data showed. Get a look at the day ahead in U.S. and global markets with the Morning Bid U.S. newsletter. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/ecuadors-ocp-pipeline-halts-operations-after-leak-2024-03-24/
2024-03-23 14:52
NEW YORK, March 23 (Reuters) - While the increase in interest rates engineered by the Federal Reserve over the last two years put a damper on the overall U.S. housing market, it took a sledge hammer to home flippers from small contractors to reality TV stars. Just ask Tarek El Moussa, star of HGTV’s "The Flipping El Moussas" and former co-host of the real estate and renovation focused channel's mainstay, "Flip or Flop." “How do I account for [interest rates]? I got my ass kicked last year. I lost a lot of money. And that's just the reality of the business,” said El Moussa. Indeed, house flipping - or investing in, and often renovating, a single-family home with the intent to sell for a profit - has fallen from heights seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of Americans acting as investors in the housing market dived 38.85% between 2021 and 2023’s fourth quarter, according to property data provider ATTOM Data Solutions. Through the fourth quarter of 2023, the share of homes purchased by investors fell 11% on a year-over-year basis, a report from real estate and mortgage firm Redfin said. Even so, housing investors spent $32.3 billion on homes in the U.S. in 2023, compared with $33.6 billion a year earlier, and flippers bought 26% of the lowest-priced homes during 2023's fourth quarter, Redfin said. FRENETIC MARKET HGTV's El Moussa bought 91 homes in 2021 - garnering him a $600,000 average monthly mortgage payment. Then mortgage rates surged, home sales in southern California plunged, and he found himself with inventory he could not offload. Home flipping does best in a frenetic “buyer’s market,” with prices rising amid increased transactions, said Chen Zhao, Redfin’s senior economist. After the Fed began hiking rates in March 2022 to lower inflation, buyers and sellers held off, creating gridlock in the housing market. Rates eventually reached a two-decade high near 8% in October, and the resulting market has presented investors with the same issue home-buyers face – limited inventory and lukewarm demand. Rates have eased somewhat: Freddie Mac said on Thursday the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 6.87%. Still, the current scene is a striking departure from the onset of the pandemic when sub-4% mortgage rates and heightened demand could promise a juicy profit. LOWER MARGINS, LABOR TROUBLES For Elisa Covington, an investor based in the San Francisco Bay Area, a return on investment during 2021 often swung between 60% and 70%, she said, occasionally hitting 100%. "In 2021 and early 2022, my projects were getting much higher returns," Covington said. "But this year the profit margin for most of my projects have been in line with my expectations" of 30% to 40%. Lack of homebuyer demand would make it easier on investors looking for single family homes, but reduced inventory has largely outweighed that, cutting into acquisition trends. Julio Martinez, co-owner and broker at JATS Properties in Los Angeles, said "2023 was kind of weird." He acquired just six homes last year and even that was due to several of the properties being in foreclosure. If not for that, "we probably would’ve only done one or two." Some construction companies say cooling home investment has cut into new business activity. Ghulam Mustafa, owner of New-York based Sahara Builders, said the decline in his firm's full-gut renovation projects since the pandemic has caused a 40% decline in profit since 2021 through the end of 2023. Last year “was much slower than the pandemic,” Mustafa said. For contractors who don't build new homes, steady project supply in the absence of gut-renovations is replaced by smaller-ticket refurbishing projects for existing home-owners, RedFin's Zhao said. For house flippers, meanwhile, lower profits have reduced the labor they can hire for renovations, which can decelerate sales. JATS Properties' Martinez had to let go of a full-time handyman, he said. In addition to property flipping, his family-owned company operates as brokers and property managers, so that labor loss meant less attention to home-flip projects. "We had to slow [workers] down on our projects, and lend them out to our clients," said Martinez. "Typically we take first priority because they're our employees. But when we don't have the funds to cover our own projects, we have them work on our clients' homes. It's taking the burden of expense of those employees off our backs." FADING STARS Amid the slow turnover, flippers are diversifying their activities. Martinez, who saw transaction volume in 2023 fall by half from 2021, began making property-secured loans to aspiring investors. And El Moussa, who needed to gird for losses he knew were coming from unsold flipper projects, shifted to buying home purchase contracts wholesale and selling to investors, deals that typically net smaller margins but are less risky than traditional flipping. "In order to get prepared for those losses that were coming, I stopped buying houses to flip and I only focused on wholesaling," he said. The story has changed for the house flipper reality TV landscape as well. HGTV ad revenue slid from a four-year high of $42.7 million in 2021 to $32.6 million in 2023, according to data from iSpot.TV, a television ad measurement company, though it continues to hold dominant share in its market segment. Shows like The El Moussas have increasingly incorporated discussions on rates, slow turnover, and price acceleration in Southern California to keep viewers engaged, said Loren Ruch, head of home content at HGTV. Show development focus has turned to standalone secondary homes, for example a guest house, and multi-generational living. "People might not be spending huge amounts of money on design or renovation projects, so we're also looking into a variety of shows that are more approachable price points that are maybe based on not doing as much demolition, but actually focusing on the space and the configuration," said Ruch. Get weekly news and analysis on the U.S. elections and how it matters to the world with the newsletter On the Campaign Trail. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-home-flipping-malaise-pinches-reality-tv-stars-contractors-2024-03-23/
2024-03-23 12:52
FRANKFURT, March 23 (Reuters) - The German Offshore Wind Energy Foundation said the government's decision to help fund the expansion of an offshore terminal is important to achieve expansion goals for wind energy at sea. In a statement late Friday, the foundation said it welcomed a government move to contribute to the costs of expanding the terminal at the port of Cuxhaven, on the North Sea coast. The government has agreed to finance the 30-hectare (74 acres) expansion of the offshore terminal, together with the state of Lower Saxony and the private port industry, at a cost of around 300 million euros ($324.15 million), a government spokesperson said on Saturday. "The expansion of the Cuxhaven port is a central project for the expansion of renewable energies," said Stefan Wenzel, parliamentary state secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. Germany's BWE power association on Wednesday called for the government to take expansion costs into account in its national ports strategy to meet the country's energy transition plans. Transport Minister Volker Wissing this week said the federal government was committed to its responsibility for ports, including financially. The German Offshore Wind Energy Foundation estimates that up to 200 hectares of additional heavy-duty area will be required by the end of the decade just for the construction of new offshore wind farms. This corresponds to 270 football fields, it said. ($1 = 0.9255 euros) The Reuters Power Up newsletter provides everything you need to know about the global energy industry. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/german-wind-power-sector-welcomes-government-offshore-terminal-funding-2024-03-23/
2024-03-23 11:35
NEW DELHI, March 23 (Reuters) - The Indian navy handed over 35 Somali pirates to the police in Mumbai on Saturday, after 100 days of anti-piracy operations east of the Red Sea, where piracy has resurfaced for the first time in nearly a decade. India, the largest national force in the Gulf of Aden and northern Arabian Sea region, captured the pirates from the cargo ship Ruen last week, three months after it was hijacked off the Somali coast. Taking advantage of Western forces' focus on protecting shipping from attacks in the Red Sea by Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi militants, pirates have made or attempted more than 20 hijackings since November, driving up insurance and security costs and adding to a crisis for global shipping companies. With the attacks by the Houthis, who claim solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza during Israel's war against Hamas, and the surge in piracy, commercial traffic through the region has halved since November as ships take the longer route around southern Africa, India's navy said. The pirates seized by Indian commandoes face up to life in prison as the first to be prosecuted under India's 2022 anti-piracy law, which enables the navy to apprehend and arrest pirates on the high seas. The Somalis were using the Ruen as their "mother ship" to launch attacks on other vessels, navy Chief Admiral R Hari Kumar told a press conference marking the 100th day of the operations. The commandoes rescued all 17 crew members. India has responded to 18 incidents, deploying 21 ships and 5,000 personnel in rotation, boarding and investigating over 1,000 vessels, the navy said. Its unprecedented presence has deployed more than a dozen warships some days. "The task is to ensure that there is safety, security and stability" in the region, Kumar said. "We are able to live up to the requirement of being a first responder and a preferred security partner... to ensure that the Indian Ocean region is safe, secure and stable." During its mission since mid-December, there have been 57 drone or missile attacks or sightings. India's navy has helped some of the attacked ships, recovering debris from drones launched by the Houthis, whom Kumar said "we really have no quarrel with". One recovered plywood drone was capable of travelling 1,600 km (1,000 miles) with a four-stroke engine and "elementary" electronics, Kumar said. "It doesn't require any very complicated tools to develop or manufacture these drones." The Reuters Daily Briefing newsletter provides all the news you need to start your day. Sign up here. https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-brings-back-35-somali-pirates-part-operations-near-red-sea-2024-03-23/
