By Gianluca Semeraro and Stefano Bernabei

MILAN -Rebel challengers to Generali’s current management pledged to increase earnings by a double-digit percentage and free more cash for takeovers, setting out their plans for Italy’s largest insurer before a showdown next month.

Generali faces a power struggle over its board when shareholders vote on April 29, with investor Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone putting up his own candidates for the top jobs.

Caltagirone’s camp set out their stall on Friday with a plan dubbed “Awakening the Lion”, a reference to Generali’s nickname “The Lion of Trieste”, which features on its logo.

“Awakening the Lion” is based on the observation of Generali’s progressive and inexorable loss of competitiveness compared to its main European competitors,” the plan said.

Caltagirone, who owns more than 9% of the company, wants to replace Frenchman Philippe Donnet, who has been CEO since 2016, and install Generali veteran Luciano Cirina in his place.

Cirina served as the company’s head of Austria and CEE countries until he was suspended this week.

Caltagirone has also proposed former Goldman Sachs banker Claudio Costamagna as chairman.

The challengers aim to boost earnings per share growth, including from acquisitions, to more than 14% over the 2021-2024 period. That compares with Generali’s target of 6-8%. The rebels also want to reduce the cost-income ratio to 55% from 64%.

Another target is to lift the cash available for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) to 7 billion euros ($7.7 billion), aiming for fewer but bigger deals. Generali’s plan aimed for 3 billion euros.

‘AMBITIOUS BUT ACHIEVABLE’

Appearing with Costamagna at a news conference in Milan on Friday, Cirina described the plans as “ambitious but achievable”.

Generali hit back, saying that Donnet led the company to its best performance last year and that his latest plan, announced in December, had been received “very positively” by the financial market.

The outgoing board, backed by leading shareholder Mediobanca, has put forward Donnet for a third term as CEO and nominated Andrea Sironi, a leading international expert in governance and risk management, as new chairman.

Caltagirone and fellow tycoon Leonardo Del Vecchio – Generali’s second and third-largest investors respectively – are opposing the reappointment of Donnet as they challenge the influence of Mediobanca.

About 35% of Generali’s share capital is in the hands of institutional investors while small savers hold 23%, meaning their votes are likely to prove pivotal.

Generali said its slate of candidates would best serve investors.

“The board has presented a very solid list made of excellent and qualified individuals with international experience, who will work in the interest of all stakeholders and not to the benefit of specific shareholders,” Generali said in a statement.

($1 = 0.9085 euros)

(Additional reporting by Claudia CristoferiWriting by Maria Pia Quaglia and Keith WeirEditing by Agnieszka Flak, Jane Merriman and David Goodman)

-Bed Bath & Beyond said on Friday it appointed three new directors to its board as part of its settlement with GameStop’s Ryan Cohen, weeks after the billionaire investor pushed for changes at the home goods retailer.

Shares of New Jersey-based Bed Bath & Beyond rose 5%, after the company added two of the directors would join a committee focused on exploring options for buybuy Baby, selling which Cohen believes would improve the company’s focus.

The shares have surged ~37% since Cohen disclosed his nearly 10% stake in the company, taken through his investment firm RC Ventures LLC, and urged it to explore alternatives including separating buybuy Baby chain or a sale of the entire company.

The activist investor has criticized the retailer for an “overly ambitious” strategy, overpaying top executives and failing to reverse market share losses.

In recent months, the company has buckled under pressure from supply chain issues and competition and seen its sales plunge in two of the three quarters reported last year.

It is the second time the company has come under pressure from activist investors. In 2019, it reached a settlement with three activists and appointed four new directors, after the group criticized it for failing to reshape itself to meet consumers’ growing preferences to shop online.

Cohen noted earlier that Bed Bath & Beyond Chief Executive Officer Mark Tritton, who was hired soon after the 2019 settlement, was paid far more than what top bosses earned at far bigger retailers including Macy’s, Kohl’s, and Dollar Tree.

Bed Bath & Beyond’s board will temporarily expand to 14 members before reverting to 11 following the annual meeting, the company said in a statement on Friday.

Cohen’s investment vehicle RC Ventures did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

(Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON -Tesla Inc is recalling 947 vehicles in the United States because the rearview image may not immediately display when they begin to reverse, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said.

The automaker told the NHTSA the recall covers some 2018-2019 Model S, Model X, and 2017-2020 Model 3 vehicles equipped with Autopilot Computer 2.5 and operating certain firmware releases. The vehicles do not comply with a federal safety standard on rear visibility. Tesla will perform an over-the-air software update to address the issue.

NHTSA said a delayed rearview camera image reduces the driver’s rear view and increases the risk of a crash. This is the latest in a series of recalls Tesla has conducted for software issues in recent months.

Tesla on Dec. 19 https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2022/RCLRPT-22V169-2752.PDF began deploying firmware to a limited number of vehicles and its fleet monitoring tool soon “identified an abnormal frequency of computer resets among Model 3 vehicles” with that update, according to the recall notice dated March 18 but made public on Friday.

Tesla said “over the following week, an engineering investigation into the condition identified a software error as a potential cause for further assessment.”

Starting Feb. 9 after talks between Tesla and NHTSA to review consumer complaints that alleged delayed or unavailable rearview image displays, more than a dozen tests were conducted.

Tesla said that “despite not finding a noncompliance in the tests that Tesla conducted, a recall determination was made out of an abundance of caution to recognize the potential presence of a noncompliance in affected vehicles.”

(Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

By Pushkala Aripaka

-London-listed Petropavlovsk will miss a loan payment due on Friday after Britain froze the assets of its main lender Gazprombank in its latest set of sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russia-focused Petropavlovsk has agreements, including for loans and bullion sales with Gazprombank, which make it difficult for the miner to sell its gold and refinance loans now Britain has frozen assets the bank’s assets.

The company is restricted from paying $560,000 in interest due on Friday on its $200 million term loan with Gazprombank, Petropavlovsk said.

Although Petropavlovsk itself has not been named in any of the Western sanctions to-date, it will be thrown out of FTSE indexes this month after many brokers refused to trade their shares in the miner and in others with Russian links.

Petropavlovsk shares sank more than 30% on Friday, adding to the over 85% loss in stock value since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began on Feb. 24. Moscow has called its actions in its neighbouring country a “special military operation”.

A Petropavlovsk spokesperson, who declined to comment beyond the company’s statement, said the miner’s debt portfolio consists of facilities with Gazprombank, a convertible bond and a eurobond, with no other bank loans at present.

Western leaders have tightened sanctions on Russia as the attack on Ukraine entered its second month. That has had a knock on effect on companies with no apparent direct ties with sanctioned people or companies and hurt investor sentiment.

Petropavlovsk was founded by British businessman Peter Hambro and Russia’s Pavel Maslovskiy in the 1990s. Its top investor is Russian businessman Sergey Sudarikov, who through his REGION brand of businesses disclosed a stake of just over 29% in the miner earlier this month, regulatory filings show.

REGION is also a shareholder in the sanctioned Credit Bank of Moscow, according to Refinitiv Eikon data.

Peel Hunt analysts in a note said the Gazprombank asset freeze also complicated Petropavlovsk’s ability to refinance its bonds due in November.

(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips, Sriraj Kalluvila and Barbara Lewis)

JOHANNESBURG – The World Bank has issued the world’s first wildlife conservation bond, raising $150 million to help efforts to increase the endangered black rhino population in South Africa, the bank said in a statement on Thursday.

The five-year ‘rhino bond’ issued on Wednesday will pay investors returns based on the rate of growth of black rhino populations at South Africa’s Addo Elephant National Park (AENP) and the Great Fish River Nature Reserve (GFRNR), the bank said.

After five years, investors would get a return of between 3.7% and 9.2% if the population increases. They would get no return if there is no change in the black rhino population, it added.

Black rhinos are two-horned species of the endangered rhino family and are found only in Africa. Between the 1970s and 1990s, their population fell by 96% to below 2,500 due to poaching to meet demand for their horns in China and the Middle East, according to Save The Rhino International, a London-based non-profit organisation.

Later, large scale conservation efforts were taken up which led to their increase to between 5,000 and 5,500, according to Save The Rhino’s website.

South Africa accounts for approximately half of the total black rhino population on the continent, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), a global non-governmental organisation says.

“The pay-for-success financial structure protects an endangered species and strengthens South Africa’s conservation efforts by leveraging the World Bank’s infrastructure and track record in capital markets,” World Bank Group President David Malpass said in the statement.

(Reporting by Promit Mukherjee; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

-Restrictions Russia’s central bank imposed in the past month on capital flows out of the country were a tit-for-tat move in response to part of its reserves being frozen by Western countries, the regulator said on Friday.

Western sanctions imposed on Russia for what Moscow calls “a special military operation” in Ukraine have limited the central bank’s ability to support the rouble currency with dollars and euros held in its foreign currency and gold reserves.

“In response to the freezing of part of Russia’s reserves, Russia also introduced restrictions on the movement of funds that could be transferred to unfriendly countries by a comparable amount,” the central bank said in its first detailed explanation of the reasoning behind its decisions.

These included capital flow restrictions, a ban on the sale of securities by foreign investors, a ban on withdrawal of their funds from the Russian financial system, and the need to obtain special state approval to make payments to debt holders from “unfriendly countries”.

The sanctions froze around $300 billion of Russia’s $640-billion gold and forex reserves, its finance ministry said earlier in March.

Russia holds part of the reserves in the Chinese yuan and gold – 73.9 million troy ounces of the precious metal worth $132 billion as of Feb. 1.

In recent years, the central bank has viewed both the yuan and gold as part of its reserves that would protect the economy in case of geopolitical crises and Western sanctions.

Russia “has therefore increased the share of gold and the Chinese yuan to almost half of its reserves in recent years,” it said on Friday.

The United States, however, said on Thursday that gold-related transactions involving Russia could be sanctionable by U.S. authorities, effectively limiting the central bank’s ability to use the gold reserves as well.

The central bank did not comment in detail about its ability to use its gold reserves, but said that they were currently on Russian territory.

(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Jason Neely and Toby Chopra)