By Khanh Vu and Phuong Nguyen

HANOI (Reuters) -Vietnam’s smartphone production and exports fell in November in the run up to Christmas sales season, according to official data, a new sign the country’s largest manufacturer, Samsung Electronics, is adapting to dwindling global demand.

The South Korean electronics giant has for years produced about half of its smartphones in Vietnam and accounts for nearly a fifth of the country’s overall exports.

The fall in output is in line with what industry and government sources as well as Samsung employees have told Reuters that the company had recently cut its smartphone production in Vietnam for a second time this year.

It is unclear if the cuts in Vietnam reflect Samsung’s general drop in production or a shift to other manufacturing countries.

Samsung, which has invested around $18 billion in six factories in Vietnam, with at least two of them focussed on smartphones, declined to comment.

The Southeast Asian country, a regional manufacturing powerhouse, reported a 9.3% decline in smartphone output to 20.6 million units in November from a year earlier, the General Statistics Office (GSO) said.

Smartphone output in the first 11 months of the year fell 6.1%. The GSO also said the value of Vietnam’s smartphone exports in November fell 1% on the month and 0.7% from a year earlier.

The wider category of consumer electronics manufacturing dropped nearly 20% on the year in November, GSO data showed, with monthly output slipping for the third straight month.

Most smartphones produced in the country are destined for Western markets, with output usually increasing in the weeks before Christmas. But expectations of lower consumer demand this year is pushing firms to limit production.

However, if demand remains sustained, the production cuts could exacerbate inflation in Europe and other importing regions.

SAMSUNG CUTS

Earlier this month, an industry source familiar with the matter said Samsung “has cut production significantly” once again after it scaled back its activities in Vietnam in the first half of the year amid the coronavirus pandemic.

A Vietnam government source confirmed Samsung cut production in the country twice this year, with the latest move likely to limit Vietnam’s contribution to the company’s global output of smartphones to 40% from the typical share of 50%.

Three company employees in Vietnam confirmed the cuts, with one noting workers were allowed to take seasonal leaves despite the approaching Christmas, in contrast with previous years.

As the country faces headwinds from a global slowdown, its overall exports in November fell 8.4% from a year earlier to $29.18 billion, according to the GSO.

Imports also fell by 7.3%, signalling possible further production cuts because components and materials used for exported products are often imported for assembly in Vietnam.

(Reporting by Khanh Vu and Phuong Nguyen; Additional reporting by Joyce Lee in Seoul; Editing by Francesco Guarascio and Arun Koyyur)

(Reuters) – Spain’s consumer prices in the 12 months to November rose 6.8%, a slower pace than the previous 7.3% figure marked in October, preliminary data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) showed on Tuesday.

The reading was the lowest since January and below the 7.4% forecast by analysts polled by Reuters.

Core inflation, which strips out volatile fresh food and energy prices, was 6.3% year-on-year, slightly higher than the 6.2% recorded in October, the INE data showed.

Spain’s European Union-harmonised 12-month inflation was 6.6%, down from 7.3% in October and below the 7.5% expectation from analysts polled by Reuters.

INE attributes CPI’s evolution mainly to lower fuel and electricity prices as well as a more moderate increase in the prices of the new season of clothing and footwear as compared to 2021.

Euro area inflation is unlikely to have peaked, ECB president Christine Lagarde said on Monday, with high wholesale energy prices not yet fully costed into retail energy costs.

(Reporting by Joao Manuel Mauricio and Jakub Olesiuk in Gdansk, editing by Inti Landauro, William Maclean)

By Heekyong Yang and Joyce Lee

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group has signed an agreement to source electric vehicle (EV) batteries in North America from battery maker SK On, the companies said on Tuesday.

The partnership follows the signing in August of the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, which will require automakers to source a certain percentage of critical minerals for their EV batteries from the United States or a U.S. free-trade partner to qualify for new U.S. EV tax credits.

In a statement, SK Innovation Ltd’s battery unit SK On said that under the terms of the memorandum of understanding (MOU), it will provide its batteries to the auto group’s plants in the United States after 2025 for electric vehicle production.

It said the partnership will allow the two firms to better meet the U.S. tax credit qualifications required by the Inflation Reduction Act.

From next year at least 40% of the value of critical minerals for batteries will have to come from the United States or a U.S. free-trade partner in order to receive U.S. EV tax credits of up to $7,500 per vehicle, a threshold set to rise to 80% in 2027.

“We expect the stable supply of EV batteries from SK On will also enable us to contribute to emissions reduction and meet climate goals in the market,” Hyundai said in a statement.

As the new law requires EVs to be assembled in North America to qualify for the tax credits, Hyundai Motor Co and its affiliate Kia Corp, as well as major European automakers, were excluded from the subsidies as they do not yet make the vehicles there.

South Korea’s trade ministry said on Tuesday that Hyundai Motor was considering building EVs at its existing factories in the United States to qualify for U.S. federal EV tax credits.

In October the auto group broke ground on a new EV and battery plant in Georgia, aiming to begin commercial production in the first half of 2025 with an annual capacity of 300,000 units.

(Reporting by Heekyong Yang and Joyce Lee; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Jan Harvey)

NAIROBI (Reuters) -Kenya’s Centum Investment plans to buy back up to 10% of its issued shares, it said on Tuesday after reporting a wider first-half loss.

The group, which invests in listed firms and private companies, said it planned to buy the shares from the market over a period of 18 months at a maximum of 9.03 shillings per share and a minimum of 0.50 shillings.

Centrum’s shares were trading at 8.00 shillings by 0723 GMT, up 1.3% on the day.

“The share buyback is expected to provide liquidity to shareholders who may not have been able to trade due to the current depressed market conditions,” said James Mworia, Centum’s chief executive officer.

Centum’s performance is keenly watched by investors as it offers exposure to opportunities such as shopping mall developments and companies across East Africa.

The group’s pretax loss widened to 1.24 billion shillings ($10.14 million) in the six months to end-September from a loss of 697 million shillings in the same period a year earlier.

“This performance was primarily driven by the impact of unrealised foreign exchange losses on U.S. dollar liabilities and currency translation losses on Uganda shilling,” Mworia said.

The Kenyan shilling has fallen 7.6% versus the dollar so far this year and 2.7% versus the Ugandan currency.

Unrealised foreign exchange losses rose to 517 million shillings from 48 million shillings in the same period of 2021, the company said in a presentation.

Group results include the performance of Centum’s subsidiaries, associates and joint-venture investments.

Centum said company net asset value per share, a key measure of performance for investment firms, fell to 59.77 shillings from 62.10 shillings.

It said it expected the sale of its 83.4% stake in Kenya’s Sidian Bank to Nigeria’s Access Bank, for 4.3 billion shillings, to be completed in December.

($1 = 122.3500 Kenyan shillings)

(Reporting by George Obulutsa; Editing by Alexander Winning, Kirsten Donovan)

(Reuters) -The Australian Federal Court has dismissed proceedings initiated by the country’s securities regulator against top lender Commonwealth Bank of Australia over alleged incorrect charging of monthly fees to customers, the regulator said on Tuesday.

Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) had alleged that between June 2010 and September 2019, CBA incorrectly charged about A$55 million ($36.86 million) in monthly fees to nearly a million customers and over 800,000 accounts, despite their entitlement to fee waivers under a contract.

The court, however, found that the bank had not breached its general obligation to ensure that financial services were provided efficiently.

The court found that CBA’s terms and conditions acknowledged that sometimes the bank “can get things wrong, and when this happens” the bank is “determined to make them right again”, ASIC said, citing the judgement.

ASIC Deputy Chair Sarah Court said the regulator “pursued this case because we believed CBA did not have robust compliance systems to ensure customers were being correctly charged”.

It added that as of Sept. 13, 2021, CBA had paid about A$64 million in remediation to almost one million customers who were overcharged, but clarified that some customers had yet to be paid.

CBA in a statement acknowledged the court order as well as “errors” in charging monthly account fees to some customers.

“We confirm that CBA has completed the customer remediation program in relation to the issues in the proceedings,” the bank said.

ASIC did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for clarification on the bank’s outstanding payments to some customers.

In September, another ASIC proceeding against CBA over allegations of improperly collecting commissions was dismissed by the federal court, dealing a blow to consumer advocates seeking tougher regulations.

($1 = 1.4923 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Sameer Manekar in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D’Souza and Dhanya Ann Thoppil)

(Reuters) – Australia’s Fortescue Metals Group on Tuesday appointed former Woodside Energy executive Fiona Hick as its chief executive officer, effective February 2023, as Elizabeth Gaines made way for a new boss in August.

Hick joins Fortescue at a time when the iron ore giant is delving into mining of critical minerals and rare-earths and is also striving to transition into a green energy firm through its unit Fortescue Future Industries (FFI).

Hick spent more than two decades at Woodside, most recently as the executive vice-president of Australian operations, part of the team that led the company through its $40 billion merger with global miner BHP Group’s petroleum arm.

She will lead Fortescue Metals’ mining arm, culminating a year-long search by the company’s billionaire-founder and chairman Andrew Forrest.

Hick will help the company “step beyond fossil fuels”, said Forrest.

Gaines, who oversaw a tripling in the share price of one of the world’s biggest iron ore miners in the past four years, remains on Fortescue’s board as a non-executive director.

Last week, former Reserve Bank of Australia deputy governor Guy Debelle stepped down as the finance chief of FFI. Mark Hutchinson, a former president of General Electric’s European operations, is slated to helm FFI by 2022-end.

(This story has been refiled to correct the spelling of Fiona Hick’s surname in paragraph 5)

(Reporting by Harshita Swaminathan and Savyata Mishra; Editing by Uttaresh.V and Sherry Jacob-Phillips)

By Hannah Lang, Niket Nishant and Manya Saini

(Reuters) -Cryptocurrency lender BlockFi has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, it said on Monday, the latest industry casualty after the firm was hurt by exposure to the spectacular collapse of the FTX exchange earlier this month.

The filing in a New Jersey court comes as crypto prices have plummeted. The price of bitcoin, the most popular digital currency by far, is down more than 70% from a 2021 peak.

“BlockFi’s Chapter 11 restructuring underscores significant asset contagion risks associated with the crypto ecosystem,” said Monsur Hussain, senior director at Fitch Ratings.

New Jersey-based BlockFi, founded by fintech executive-turned-crypto entrepreneur Zac Prince, said in a bankruptcy filing that its substantial exposure to FTX created a liquidity crisis. FTX, founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, filed for protection in the United States this month after traders pulled $6 billion from the platform in three days and rival exchange Binance abandoned a rescue deal.

“Although the debtors’ exposure to FTX is a major cause of this bankruptcy filing, the debtors do not face the myriad issues apparently facing FTX,” said the bankruptcy filing by Mark Renzi, managing director at Berkeley Research Group, the proposed financial advisor for BlockFi. “Quite the opposite.”

BlockFi said the liquidity crisis was due to its exposure to FTX via loans to Alameda, a crypto trading firm affiliated with FTX, as well as cryptocurrencies held on FTX’s platform that became trapped there. BlockFi listed its assets and liabilities as being between $1 billion and $10 billion.

BlockFi on Monday also sued a holding company for Bankman-Fried, seeking to recover shares in Robinhood Markets Inc pledged as collateral three weeks ago, before BlockFi and FTX filed for bankruptcy protection.

Renzi said BlockFi had sold a portion of its crypto assets earlier in November to fund its bankruptcy. Those sales raised $238.6 million in cash, and BlockFi now has $256.5 million in cash on hand.

In a court filing on Monday, BlockFi listed FTX as its second-largest creditor, with $275 million owed on a loan extended earlier this year. It said it owes money to more than 100,000 creditors. The company also said in a separate filing it plans to lay off two-thirds of its 292 employees.

Under a deal signed with FTX in July BlockFi was to receive a $400 million revolving credit facility while FTX got an option to buy it for up to $240 million.

BlockFi’s bankruptcy filing also comes after two of BlockFi’s largest competitors, Celsius Network and Voyager Digital, filed for bankruptcy in July, citing extreme market conditions that had led to losses at both companies.

Crypto lenders, the de facto banks of the crypto world, boomed during the pandemic, attracting retail customers with double-digit rates in return for their cryptocurrency deposits.

Crypto lenders are not required to hold capital or liquidity buffers like traditional lenders and some found themselves exposed when a shortage of collateral forced them – and their customers – to shoulder large losses.

BlockFi’s first bankruptcy hearing is scheduled to take place on Tuesday. FTX did not respond to a request for comment.

CREDITOR LIST

BlockFi’s largest creditor is Ankura Trust, which represents creditors in stressed situations and is owed $729 million. Valar Ventures, a Peter Thiel-linked venture capital fund, owns 19% of BlockFi equity shares.

BlockFi also listed the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as one of its largest creditors, with a $30 million claim. In February, a BlockFi subsidiary agreed to pay $100 million to the SEC and 32 states to settle charges in connection with a retail crypto lending product the company offered to nearly 600,000 investors.

Bain Capital Ventures and Tiger Global co-led BlockFi’s March 2021 funding round, BlockFi said in a press release issued at the time. Both firms did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a blog post, BlockFi said its Chapter 11 cases will enable the company to stabilize its business and maximize value for all stakeholders.

“Acting in the best interest of our clients is our top priority and continues to guide our path forward,” BlockFi said.

In its bankruptcy filing, BlockFi said it had hired Kirkland & Ellis and Haynes & Boone as bankruptcy counsel.

BlockFi had earlier paused withdrawals from its platform.

In a filing, Renzi said Blockfi intends to seek authority to honor client withdrawal requests from its customer wallet accounts, in which crypto assets are held in custody. However, the company did not disclose plans for how it might treat withdrawal requests from its other products, including interest-bearing accounts.

“BlockFi clients may ultimately recover a substantial portion of their investments,” Renzi said in the filing.

ORIGINS

BlockFi was founded in 2017 by Prince, currently the company’s chief executive officer, and Flori Marquez. Though headquartered in Jersey City, BlockFi also has offices in New York, Singapore, Poland and Argentina, according to its website.

In July, Prince had tweeted that “it’s time to stop putting

BlockFi in the same bucket / sentence as Voyager and Celsius.”

“Two months ago we looked the ‘same.’ They shut down and have impending losses for their clients,” he said.

According to a profile of BlockFi published earlier this year by Inc, Prince was raised in San Antonio, Texas, and financed his college education at the University of Oklahoma and Texas State University with winnings from online poker tournaments. Before starting BlockFi with Marquez, he held jobs at Orchard Platform, a broker dealer, and at Zibby, a lease-to-own lender now called Katapult.

Marquez previously worked at Bond Street, a small business lending outfit that was folded into Goldman Sachs in 2017, according to Inc.

(Reporting by Hannah Lang in Washington, Niket Nishant and Manya Saini in Bengaluru and Elizabeth Howcroft in LondonAdditional reporting by Dietrich Knauth, Editing by Megan Davies, Conor Humphries, Matthew Lewis, Anna Driver and Richard Chang)

(Reuters) -Crypto exchange FTX and its affiliated companies, which have filed for U.S. bankruptcy court protection, said on Monday most subsidiaries would resume ordinary course payment of salary and benefits to employees worldwide.

The relief includes cash payments with respect to both pre-petition and post-petition periods, subject to limits established by the orders of the Bankruptcy Court.

“With the Court’s approval of our First Day motions and the work being done on global cash management, I am pleased that the FTX group is resuming ordinary course cash payments of salaries and benefits to our remaining employees around the world,” Chief Executive John Ray said in a statement.

Last week, at the troubled crypto exchange’s first bankruptcy hearing attorneys said FTX was run as a “personal fiefdom” of former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and detailed on going challenges such as hacks and substantial missing assets.

FTX on Nov. 11 filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection, along with its U.S. unit, crypto trading firm Alameda Research and nearly 130 other affiliates.

The collapse has fanned fears about the future of the crypto industry and several crypto firms have since been bracing for a fallout.

Earlier on Monday, BlockFi filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, after the crypto lender was hurt by exposure to FTX.

(Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

By Soyoung Kim and Jack Kim

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea will offer “tailored” incentives to encourage Tesla to set up an electric vehicle gigafactory in the country and will minimise any risks posed by militant unions, President Yoon Suk-yeol told Reuters.

Yoon held a video call with Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk last week and Yoon’s office cited Musk as saying South Korea is among the top candidate locations for a new Tesla factory.

“If Tesla, Space X or other companies are considering more investment in Korea including constructing a gigafactory, the government will do our best to support the investment,” Yoon told Reuters during a broader interview in his office on Monday.

Yoon said South Korea offers highly skilled workers and his government would ensure regulations align with international standards so that foreign firms do not face unexpected financial or regulatory hurdles.

“We are preparing a tailored approach to grant some advantages to these specified companies,” Yoon said through an interpreter, when asked about what advantage South Korean can offer to Tesla over other locations being mentioned.

Tesla has said it would consider building another gigafactory. Canada, Indonesia, India and Thailand have also been mentioned in media reports as possible locations, but analysts noted that those countries do not have the kind of automotive supply chain that South Korea does, although some are abundant in natural resources like nickel.

Yoon credited his government’s tough response to labour union strikes this year for starting the process of establishing a rule of law in industrial relations for both management and labour.

Yoon’s government is taking steps to use an administrative order to force unionised truckers to go back to work after talks aimed at ending their strike ended on Monday without an agreement.

About 9,600 truckers have joined the strike organised by the truckers’ union, demanding a permanent guarantee of a minimum freight rate to protect against rising and unpredictable fuel costs and overwork.

“The militant union culture is a serious problem in South Korean society,” Yoon said. He said he told Musk the goal of his labour policy is to establish the rule of law to eliminate the risks of unfair labour practices.

South Korea saw an average of 39 days of work stoppage annually due to labour disputes over the past 10 years, nearly five times higher than that of the United States’ eight days and nearly 200 times higher than Japan’s 0.2 days, according to the Korea Enterprises Federation.

Yoon blamed frequent compromises made by previous governments with powerful labour unions for creating a vicious cycle of illegal strikes leading to more severe strikes and unlawful action by labour unions.

(Reporting by Jack Kim, Soyoung Kim, Josh Smith, Heekyong Yang and Joyce Lee; Editing by Susan Fenton)