LONDON (Reuters) -An investor consortium including Blackstone and Thomson Reuters, the parent company of Reuters News, is selling 1.7 billion pounds ($2.01 billion) worth of shares in the London Stock Exchange Group to trim its joint stake.

Investment banks managing the sale of 23 million LSEG shares had orders for all the stock in the offering, according to bookrunner messages seen by Reuters after close of markets on Tuesday.

The transaction follows the publication of LSEG’s 2022 earnings last week, which showed an increase in total income to 7.74 billion pounds from 6.54 billion pounds the year prior, beating analysts expectations.

Separately, the bourse operator plans to buy back up to 750 million pounds of stock from the Blackstone-Thomson Reuters consortium by April 2024.

U.S. technology giant Microsoft previously agreed to purchase a 4% stake from the consortium as part of a wider strategic partnership with LSEG in December.

Blackstone and Thomson Reuters have been shareholders in LSEG since they sold financial data provider Refinitiv to the UK group in 2021, in a landmark deal valued at $27 billion.

Following the latest stake sale, the consortium will not be able to offload any further shares for a 90-day period, according to a bank term sheet.

Barclays, Citi, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are joint global coordinators on the transaction, with Blackstone’s own capital markets unit acting as co-lead manager.

($1 = 0.8437 pounds)

(Reporting by Pablo Mayo Cerqueiro; Editing by Elisa Martinuzzi and Howard Goller)

By Valerie Insinna and Abhijith Ganapavaram

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A new supplier problem has stymied deliveries of Boeing’s 767 freighter and KC-46 tanker, the company confirmed on Tuesday.

According to a March 6 report by aviation publication The Air Current, Boeing has not delivered any 767-based jets in 2023 due to a quality issue surrounding the center fuel tank made by Triumph Group’s aerospace structures unit, which did not complete cleaning and paint adhesion processes before delivering the items.

In a statement on Tuesday, Boeing acknowledged a “quality issue” had forced the company to rework 767Fs and KC-46s before delivery, but said it had not changed its delivery plans for the year.

Boeing declined to comment on when the issue was first identified and how many aircraft could be affected by the problem, which requires the primer inside the fuel tank to be removed and then repainted.

The Air Current reported that it could impact more than a dozen aircraft in Boeing’s inventory as well as delivered planes stretching back to 2021.

Triumph declined to comment on the matter, saying it had sold its aerostructures unit in July 2022. It is unclear whether the affected fuel tanks were made by Triumph or under the unit’s new ownership of Daher Aerospace Inc.

The U.S. Air Force did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The 767-related issue is the latest evidence of the hurdles facing deliveries and adds further texture to a challenging industrial picture ranging from supply chain pressures to internal snags at both Boeing and Airbus.

On Monday, Leeham News reported a software problem had delayed some 737 MAX deliveries by up to a year. The problem concerns the Option Selection Software used when an aircraft built for one customer has to be reconfigured before being delivered to a different customer.

A Boeing spokesperson told Reuters the issue “does not affect the timing of Boeing airplane deliveries and has no impact to our delivery outlook.” Boeing expects to deliver at least 400 of its bestselling 737 MAX narrowbody planes in 2023.

Boeing characterized the problem as a documentation issue that will not require rewriting software, and which mostly impacts aircraft that have already been delivered.

The story prompted a series of broadly similar analyst notes noting the topic was not new, though it has not apparently previously been reported by media or analysts.

“The potential impact could be delays for 30-40 aircraft,” wrote Jefferies analyst Sheila Kahyaoglu.

Meanwhile, deliveries of the widebody 787 Dreamliner remain paused due to a data analysis error related to the aircraft’s forward pressure bulkhead. Boeing has not changed its delivery target of 70 to 80 Dreamliners this year.

(Reporting by Valerie Insinna, Abhijith Ganapavaram; Editing by Mark Potter and Deepa Babington)

BERLIN (Reuters) – German tourism is gearing up for a bumper year in 2023 following the hardships of the COVID-19 pandemic, as holidaymakers return in droves despite high inflation and the war in Ukraine, businesses said at the ITB travel fair on Tuesday.

“We expect an Easter and a summer business which is not only very stable, but loosely matches that of 2019,” said the head of Lufthansa subsidiary Eurowings, Jens Bischof, on the sidelines of the event in Berlin.

“Tour operators are very bullish about summer,” Bischof added.

German travel giant TUI reported a surge in bookings at the start of the year, with CEO Stefan Baumert saying business in this period had been stronger than the company had seen in a long time.

“We expect a good to very good summer season,” he said, adding that the company expected stronger growth in 2023 than the pre-pandemic year of 2019.

TUI competitor Alltours already exceeded pre-pandemic levels for both guests and sales last year, the company said.

Germany’s fourth-largest travel operator, Alltours said demand for this summer was also strong, reporting a 30% increase in guests for that period compared to summer 2022.

(Reporting by Ilona Wissenbach and Rachel More; editing by Matthias Williams and Bernadette Baum)

HOUSTON – The Biden administration’s climate law, which provides hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy incentives to fight global warming, won’t be fully effective without permitting reform, executives told the CERAWeek energy conference on Monday.

U.S. President Joe Biden last year approved the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which extends tax credits to wind, solar and other clean energy projects, but a parallel effort to speed up environmental permitting – which can take years to complete – has stalled in Congress.

“If the permitting reform doesn’t happen, the IRA may not get its full use and benefit,” Bold Baatar, who runs the copper business at mining giant Rio Tinto Plc, told the Houston conference.

Copper demand is expected to soar on the back of the clean energy transition because it is vital to electrification, but the United States has few existing mines and one of Rio’s proposed copper mines in Arizona faces strong opposition.

Renewable energy companies and utilities have also long complained about the time it takes to secure permits for power generation projects and transmission lines required to move the power to markets.

Sanjiv Lamba, the CEO of industrial gas firm Linde Plc, said he supported the IRA because it provided incentives to find climate change solutions. But “managing the micro-level permitting issues are equally important,” he added.

White House Energy Adviser John Podesta told the conference permitting reform was high on the administration’s agenda. Biden officials are using all available tools to accelerate permitting and are also supportive of legislative efforts to streamline regulation, he said.

“The permitting process for clean energy infrastructure, including transmission, is plagued by delays and bottlenecks,” Podesta said. “To be sure, plenty of delays happen at the state local level and those need to be addressed. But there’s plenty that we can do and must do federally.”

U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan, a Republican from Alaska, said he was pleased with the administration’s comments about permitting reform, but hoped it would extend to fossil fuel projects and not just renewable energy.

The Biden administration is expected to announce a decision within days about ConocoPhillips’ Willow oil and gas drilling proposal in Alaska’s North Slope, a project the state’s government is hoping can help the state reverse declining oil production and revenues.  

“I was a little bit nervous, because when John Podesta kept talking about permitting reform, he only talked about renewables,” Sullivan told the conference. “Well, we need permanent reform for everything: to build a bridge, to build a road, to build a mine, to build an oil rig, to build renewables.”

(Reporting by Richard Valdmanis; editing by Ernest Scheyder and Lincoln Feast.)

By Hannah Lang

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. federal appellate court judges questioned on Tuesday whether the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was correct to reject Grayscale Investment’s application for a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund, since the agency had previously approved bitcoin futures products.

The SEC rejected Grayscale Investment LLC’s application to convert its flagship spot Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into an exchange-traded fund (ETF) last June, arguing the proposal did not meet anti-fraud and investor protection standards.

A panel of judges in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in Washington pressed the SEC on Grayscale’s argument that, because the regulator previously approved certain surveillance agreements to prevent fraud in bitcoin futures-based ETFs, the same setup should also be satisfactory for Grayscale’s spot fund, since both spot and futures funds rely on bitcoin’s price.

Bitcoin futures ETFs track bitcoin futures contracts, or agreements to purchase or sell bitcoin at a certain price on a specified date. A spot bitcoin ETF would track bitcoin’s underlying market price. Proponents say a spot bitcoin ETF would give investors exposure to bitcoin without directly buying it.

“It seems like it’s fine for an agency to say okay, we need some more information, but it seems there’s quite a bit of information here on how these markets work together, and the SEC has not offered any explanation… that the petitioners here are wrong,” said Judge Neomi Rao.

Grayscale’s lead counsel Donald Verrilli Jr., an Obama-era U.S. solicitor general, told the court that a spot bitcoin ETF would “better protect investors” because it would give them the benefit of oversight on the basis of the surveillance agreements set up with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where bitcoin futures trade.

Emily True Parise, senior litigation counsel for the SEC, argued the regulator lacks data to determine whether those surveillance agreements could also pick up potential fraud and manipulation in the spot markets.

“The evidence is just mixed at this point. It’s bi-directional sometimes,” she said, noting that bitcoin futures have only been trading since 2017.

The case comes as the crypto industry has increasingly been at odds with the SEC over the regulator’s crackdown on digital asset products, including those that offer investors returns on certain digital tokens.

The case’s outcome could either vindicate the SEC’s posture or pave the way for other companies to offer spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) if the judges rule in favor of Grayscale.

Other would-be issuers of spot bitcoin ETFs that the SEC rejected include FMR LLC’s Fidelity, SkyBridge Capital and Valkyrie Investments Inc.

Valkyrie’s chief investment officer, Steven McClurg, said in a statement that his company does not believe a spot bitcoin ETF will be approved within the next year. A Fidelity spokesperson said the company looks forward to constructive dialogue with the SEC. A representative for Skybridge declined to comment.

Grayscale’s chief executive officer, Michael Sonnenshein, has said he expects a final ruling in the case this fall, and that he anticipates the court will rule in Grayscale’s favor. He told Reuters in January that Grayscale would appeal the case if the court backed the SEC’s decision to reject its bitcoin ETF proposal.

Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, launched in 2013, has $14 billion in assets under management, according to Grayscale’s website. The GBTC discount to bitcoin is hovering around 45%, having come under pressure after crypto exchange FTX collapsed in November.

(Reporting by Hannah Lang in Washington; editing by Jonathan Oatis, Louise Heavens and Josie Kao)

(The story has been corrected to (i) accurately reflect the names of lawyers and law firms representing NextEra in the last paragraph; and (ii) indicate that the U.S. Department of Justice, not the U.S. Solicitor General, has been asked to weigh in on similar questions previously in the seventh paragraph)

By Clark Mindock

(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday asked the Biden administration to wade into a dispute between Florida-based energy company NextEra Energy Inc. and Texas over a state law that experts say could block the construction of vital interstate electric transmission lines.

The Supreme Court is deciding whether to take up the state’s appeal of a ruling that the 2019 law, which gives electric utilities already operating in the state the right of first refusal to build proposed transmission projects, is discriminatory and presents an undue burden on interstate trade.

Texas argued in its December petition to the high court that regulating public utilities is a key responsibility for states and that it is reasonable for regulators to stipulate a preference for companies that already have a footprint there.

Representatives for the U.S. Department of Justice, NextEra and Texas didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.

NextEra, which owns thousands of miles of transmission lines in multiple states but no such assets in Texas, challenged the law in court in 2019 after it was barred from building a segment of an interstate transmission line near the Texas-Louisiana border. The company argued the law is discriminatory and undercuts competition for contracts from out-of-state developers in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Dormant Commerce Clause.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in August said the state’s law likely violated the clause and sent the case back to a Texas federal court for further consideration.

The Justice Department has been asked twice before to weigh in on disputes over similar state laws and has in both cases urged courts to find Commerce Cause violations, according to Ari Peskoe, the director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School.

The case is Peter Lake et al. V. NextEra Energy Capital Holdings, U.S. Supreme Court, case No. 22-601.

For Texas: Judd Stone of the Texas Attorney General’s Office

For NextEra: Jeffrey Tillotson of Tillotson Johnson & Patton and Stuart Singer, Jason Hilborn and Pascual Oliu of Boies Schiller Flexner.

(Reporting by Clark Mindock)

By Victoria Waldersee and Kate Abnett

BERLIN/BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Germany has declared last-minute opposition to a landmark European Union law to end sales of CO2-emitting cars in 2035, demanding that sales be allowed of new cars with internal combustion engines after that date if they run on e-fuels.

The EU law would require all new cars sold from 2035 to have zero CO2 emissions, making it effectively impossible to sell new fossil fuel-powered cars.

The rules – which Germany, alongside a majority of EU countries and lawmakers, previously supported – would not ban internal combustion engines (ICEs).

But the law is seen as a death knell for the technology because of a dearth of options that could enable ICE cars to operate without producing CO2.

Here’s what you need to know.

WHAT ARE E-FUELS?

E-fuels, like e-kerosene, e-methane, or e-methanol, are made by synthesizing captured CO2 emissions and hydrogen produced using renewable or CO2-free electricity. 

The fuels release CO2 into the atmosphere when combusted in an engine. But the idea is that those emissions are equal to the amount taken out of the atmosphere to produce the fuel – making it CO2-neutral overall.

Germany and Italy want clearer assurances from the EU that sales of new ICE cars can continue beyond 2035, if they run on CO2-neutral fuels.

WHO MAKES THEM?

Most major carmakers are betting on battery-electric vehicles – a technology that is already widely available – as the main route to cut CO2 emissions from passenger cars.

But suppliers and oil majors defend e-fuels, as well as a number of carmakers who don’t want their vehicles weighed down by heavy batteries.

E-fuels are not yet produced at scale. The world’s first commercial plant opened in Chile in 2021, backed by Porsche and aiming to produce 550 million litres per year. Other planned plants include Norsk e-Fuel in Norway, due to begin producing in 2024 with a focus on aviation fuel.

CAN E-FUELS CLEAN UP CARS?

E-fuels can be used in today’s ICE vehicles and transported via existing fossil fuel logistics networks – good news for suppliers of ICE car component makers and companies which transport petrol and diesel.

Supporters say e-fuels offer a route to cut the CO2 emissions of our existing passenger car fleet, without replacing every vehicle with an electric one.

Critics highlight that manufacturing e-fuels is very expensive and energy-intensive. Using e-fuels in an ICE car requires about five times more renewable electricity than running a battery-electric vehicle, according to a 2021 paper in the Nature Climate Change journal.

Even advocates say Europe will not have enough spare renewable power to produce e-fuels at scale and will have to import it from other regions.

Some policymakers also argue that e-fuels should be reserved for hard-to-decarbonise sectors such as shipping and aviation – which, unlike passenger cars, cannot easily run on electric batteries.

WHAT NEXT FOR THE EU LAW?

Days before the final vote on the EU law, which was scheduled for March 7, German Transport Minister Volker Wissing called into question Germany’s support for it, surprising policymakers including the environment ministry led by the Greens.

Free Democratic Party member Wissing said the use of e-fuels should remain possible after 2035, and a promised European Commission proposal on this was still missing.

The EU law says the Commission will make a proposal on how vehicles running on CO2-neutral fuels can be sold after 2035, if this complies with climate goals. But Germany’s transport ministry wants clearer assurances.

Berlin’s last-minute move angered some EU lawmakers and diplomats, who warn that allowing one country to torpedo an already-agreed law would endanger other carefully negotiated deals on EU policies.

For now, the future of one of Europe’s core climate change policies is uncertain.

If Germany’s coalition government cannot agree a position on the law, it will have to abstain in the EU vote. Italy has already voiced opposition, alongside countries including Poland – raising the possibility of enough support to block the law.

EU officials are racing to find a solution. The European Commission said on March 6 it is in talks “at all levels” to conclude the law as soon as possible.

WHAT DO COMPANIES WANT?

Big auto component suppliers in Germany such as Bosch, ZF and Mahle are members of the eFuel Alliance, an industry lobby group, as are oil and gas majors from ExxonMobil to Repsol.

Carmakers such as Piech, Porsche and Mazda are broadly supportive of the technology. Porsche holds a stake in e-fuel producer HIF Global and is the sole buyer of fuel from its pilot project in Chile. 

BMW has invested $12.5 million in e-fuel startup Prometheus Fuels, while also investing billions in battery-electric technology.

Other carmakers including Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz, meanwhile, have made clear that they are betting on battery-electric vehicles to decarbonise.

(Reporting by Kate Abnett, Victoria Waldersee; editing by Jason Neely)

(Reuters) – Chinese short-video sharing app TikTok said on Tuesday it will allow some creators to produce collections of longer videos and charge their audience a premium for access, opening up a new channel of monetization for its users.

Its new offering “Series” will allow eligible creators to put collections of up to 80 videos, each about 20 minutes long behind a paywall. Currently, the allowed length of a video on TikTok is up to 10 minutes.

TikTok, which has disrupted the social media space largely dominated by Meta Platforms Inc’s Facebook and Instagram with its short-form videos and a sophisticated recommendation engine, is now taking a shot at YouTube.

TikTok said its users are increasingly coming to the platform for content like must-know spreadsheet shortcuts, workout routines and recipe guides, areas where YouTube still remains the dominant destination.

It is not clear whether TikTok will take a cut from the creators. The company already offers its creators the ability to receive tips and gifts, as well as manages a fund to incentivize them to grow their audience.

TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, hit 1 billion monthly active users in September 2021 and has not reported its user base since. In comparison, Facebook had nearly 3 billion monthly active users as of December 2022.

(Reporting by Yuvraj Malik in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)