(Reuters) -The top U.S. markets regulator on Wednesday proposed replacing some paper-based forms with digitized disclosures to modernize how broker-dealers, stock exchanges, clearing agencies and others report their activities to the government.

At a public meeting, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s five members unanimously voted in favor of the proposal, which also would allow electronic signatures and machine-readable data for some of the forms to be submitted to the agency’s heavily used EDGAR internet database for securities filings.

SEC staff members told the meeting that the changes would make important data more readily accessible to agency officials and reduce costs for market actors.

The forms include annual compliance reports by securities-based swap dealers and risk assessments by broker-dealers. Under the proposal, securities exchanges could update their websites when they begin trading in new derivatives, something for which the existing form would be canceled altogether.

The proposal is subject to a period of public commentary prior to any vote on its adoption. Republican Commissioner Hester Peirce said she was concerned the volume and intensity of SEC rulemaking might hinder the public from submitting the most helpful feedback.

“We want to get these proposals right and we need commenters’ help but commenters are overwhelmed at the moment,” she said.

Earlier on Tuesday, the SEC had postponed plans for Wednesday’s open meeting to include a vote on adopting a proposal requiring money mangers in the $20 trillion private asset management industry to notify authorities of threats to the stability of the global financial system.

The SEC decided the proposed text was not ready for adoption, a spokesperson said, citing a particularly busy period in prior weeks.

(Reporting by Douglas Gillison; Editing by Richard Chang and Barbara Lewis)

(Reuters) – Shares of First Republic Bank were volatile in morning trading on Wednesday as the regional lender struggled to raise capital amid worries that it may need to downsize or seek government support.

Major banks and private equity firms have so far balked at infusing capital on fear of losses on the bank’s loan book and investment portfolio following a rapid rise in interest rates.

The bank’s shares flitted between gains and losses and were last up 3.6% at 10:31 a.m. ET. Shares have lost roughly 87% of their value so far this month. 

On Tuesday, Reuters reported First Republic is examining how it can downsize and sell parts of its business, including some of its loan book, in a bid to raise cash and cut costs.

“First Republic is one that’s on its way to getting solved, but it is in the eye of the storm,” said Paul Nolte, senior wealth adviser and market strategist at Murphy & Sylvest.

Earlier this month, concerns about First Republic’s health had prompted top power brokers including U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon to put together an unprecedented $30 billion rescue deal.

U.S. authorities have sought to reassure Americans that the overall banking system remains sound and regulators are committed to ensuring that another regional lender does not collapse in the aftermath of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

“First Republic has its own unique situation. There are other banks that are in negotiations right now to take over their deposits or inject more money into the bank so it’s hard to say right now that it (the banking crisis) is over,” Nolte added.

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

By Josh Ye

HONG KONG (Reuters) -Tencent Holdings on Thursday said it would restrict its focus to its core business, while maintinaing cost-cutting and improving efficiencies, as it reported its first drop in annual revenue to date.

The world’s largest video game company and operator of the WeChat messaging platform posted revenue of 554.55 billion yuan ($81 billion) for 2022, down 1% from a year earlier, after China’s economic slowdown due to the pandemic and a long-running regulatory crackdown dented profits.

Analysts on average had expected 555.15 billion yuan, according to Refinitiv.

Profit attributable to equity holders fell 16% to 188.24 billion yuan for the year versus a consensus estimate of 114.19 billion yuan.

Tencent Chair and CEO Pony Ma told reporters on a call the company would focus this year on getting more out of existing core businesses, rather than on “trying to do everything” and on operating in “red ocean markets”, where competition is intense.

“We hope that our entire business management team and technology will be more focused,” he said. “I think this is very important because we can see that focus and making breakthroughs are very key to overall development.”

The business outlook is uncertain in the world’s largest gaming market after two years of regulatory crackdowns, but sector participants are hopeful of a recovery as regulators have resumed granting publishing licences since late last year after a months-long freeze.

Unlike in most other countries, video games need approval from regulators before release in China.

The crackdown has changed the operating environment for China’s tech giants as regulators have tightened scrutiny over monopolistic behaviour and companies’ handling of user information.

Martin Lau, president of the company, told a later call with analysts that regulations are being normalised and support for platform companies should improve this year.

“[Chinese president Xi Jinping recently] mentioned supporting platform companies to show competence, creating employment, driving consumption and international competition,” he said, “The premier also highlighted the private sector would have a significant potential in the China economy.”

ADVERTISING BUSINESS PICKS UP

Helping to offset the losses in domestic gaming and fintech, Tencent’s online advertising business showed a surprisingly strong recovery in the fourth quarter, with revenue for the segment rising 15%, and contributing to a 1% rise in the group’s revenue overall for the quarter ended December.

China’s city lockdowns intensified in the weeks to early December when the country abruptly ended its zero-COVID policy, unleashing a wave of infections, which heavily disrupted the economy and caused many deaths.

Charlie Chai, an analyst with 86Research, said Tencent’s performance as a whole was “lukewarm”, but the advertising segment “shrugged off the COVID challenge and delivered industry-beating growth”.

During the media call, Lau also spoke about the company’s forays into generative artificial intelligence, which has seen a surge in global interest, driven by the popularity of Microsoft-backed startup OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT.

Reuters reported last month that Tencent was working on a ChatGPT-like chatbot named the “HunyuanAide” that will incorporate Tencent’s Hunyuan AI model.

Lau said the company was rapidly advancing its proprietary foundation model Hunyuan and planned to gradually roll out its own AI foundation models.

Tencent’s chief strategy officer James Mitchell said that Tencent was ready to bear the large cost associated with training AI models even though it is focused on cost-cutting in other areas.

The United States in October announced export controls on high-end computer chips to China to try to contain AI development in the country, but Mitchell said Tencent has enough chips ready to develop its AI models.

($1 = 6.8887 Chinese yuan)

(Reporting by Josh Ye; Editing by Himani Sarkar, Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Barbara Lewis)

PARIS (Reuters) -French President Emmanuel Macron, facing protests over an unpopular pension reform, said on Wednesday he wanted the government to take measures ensuring that companies share more of their profits with workers.

Macron, seeking to regain the political initiative after narrowly surviving a no-confidence vote in parliament this week, made the remarks in a rare TV interview.

“We have big companies that are in the process of buying back their own shares… we need to find the right way but they must share (profits) more with their employees,” Macron said.

He said he would ask the government to work on what he called an “exceptional contribution” by companies to the benefit of workers.

Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said that the idea was to spur a “substantial” increase in contributions to profit sharing schemes by companies with more than 5,000 employees that buy back their own shares.

“We could imagine a doubling of the sums paid into profit-sharing schemes,” Le Maire said in the French senate, adding the government would make a proposal to unions and employers as a basis to negotiate an agreement.

(Reporting by Blandine Henault additional reporting by Leigh Thomas, writing by Silvia Aloisi; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

By Paul Sandle and Muvija M

LONDON (Reuters) -Britain’s competition regulator said U.S. chipmaker Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware could make servers more expensive, and it would refer the $61 billion deal to an in-depth inquiry unless its concerns were addressed.

Broadcom agreed to buy the cloud computing and virtualisation company last year to diversify into enterprise software.

Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said on Wednesday the deal could dampen innovation and drive up the cost of computer parts and software for servers.

“Servers are a vital building block, functioning largely thanks to hardware products made by firms like Broadcom, working in unison with virtualisation software from firms like VMware,” said CMA Executive Director David Stewart.

“We are concerned this deal could allow Broadcom to cut out competitors from the supply of hardware components to the server market and lead to less innovation at a time when most firms want fast, responsive, and affordable IT systems.”

The regulator said Broadcom had five working days to address its concerns, after which it would decide within a further five days whether to refer the deal to an in-depth investigation.

Broadcom said it was working constructively with the CMA and it was confident it would address any concerns.

“We will demonstrate that the transaction enhances competition and benefits businesses and consumers through increased quality, innovation and choice,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

“The combination of Broadcom and VMware is about enabling enterprises to accelerate innovation and expand choice by addressing their most complex technology challenges in this multi-cloud era, and we are confident that regulators will see this when they conclude their inquiry.”

The European Union is set to issue an antitrust warning about the deal, Reuters reported last month.

The EU competition enforcer, which declined to comment on the report, will make a decision by June 21.

(Reporting by Muvija M and Paul Sandle; editing by William James and Bernadette Baum)

By Helen Coster

(Reuters) -Digital World Acquisition Corp, a blank-check firm that is set to merge with former U.S. President Donald Trump’s media and technology company, said on Wednesday it had ousted Chief Executive Patrick Orlando.

“Due to the unprecedented headwinds faced by the Company, the Board agreed it was in the best interest of its shareholders to select a new management team to execute an orderly succession plan and set strategic operating procedures for the Company in this new phase,” the company said in a news release.

Orlando did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In October 2021, Trump’s newly formed media company, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), announced a deal to go public by merging with DWAC. The deal is now in doubt amid investigations by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which have delayed its closing.

Late last year, shareholders approved extending the deadline to close the deal to September 2023. Around that time, DWAC’s chief financial officer and two independent directors left.

Challenges for both DWAC and TMTG, which operates the Truth Social app, have continued this year. TMTG’s founders launched the company as a way for Trump to connect with his followers after he was cut off from major social media platforms following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his followers. TMTG’s fortunes are tied to Trump, who the company bills as its chief traffic driver.

But Trump has now returned to the platforms from which he was ousted. He posted to Alphabet Inc’s YouTube and Meta Platforms Inc’s Facebook on March 17, the same day YouTube restored his channel. Meta reinstated Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts earlier this year.

Trump’s Twitter account was reinstated in November by the platform’s new owner Elon Musk, but Trump has yet to post there.

A blank-check firm, also known as a SPAC, is a publicly traded shell company that raises cash to acquire and take public a private company, allowing the target to sidestep the stricter regulatory checks of an initial public offering.

Shares of DWAC were down 3.67% on Wednesday morning.

(Reporting by Helen Coster in New York and Tiyashi Datta in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Jonathan Oatis)

(Reuters) -Amazon.com Inc on Wednesday raised the minimum starting pay for its employees at its UK operations by up to 50 pence to between 11 pounds ($13.50) and 12 pounds per hour, a move that has angered its union that had demanded a bigger hike.

The pay rise comes less than a week after hundreds of workers at an Amazon warehouse in Coventry in central England staged the latest walkout in a dispute over pay this year.

“We’re listening to Amazon workers and the message is very clear: this new pay rate is an insult,” said Amanda Gearing, senior organiser of GMB, the union which represents more than 500 Amazon workers.

“So, in response we will be consulting over the next few days and announcing a new wave of action.”

The union had said the Amazon Coventry workers are demanding 15 pounds an hour to cope with a cost-of-living crisis that has sparked strikes across sectors in Britain over the last several months. 

The new increase, which will depend on locations and start from April, comes after Amazon last year raised UK hourly wages by 50 pence to between 10.50 and 11.45 pounds per hour.

“Over the past seven months, our minimum pay has risen by 10% and by more than 37% since 2018,” Amazon said in a statement.

Amazon, which has 70,000 workers in the UK, in January announced plans to shut three warehouses in Britain this year, in a move that will affect 1,200 jobs, but said workers will be given the chance to transfer to other units.

Those include three older British warehouses in Hemel Hampstead, Doncaster and Gourock.

($1 = 0.8151 pound)

(Reporting by Yadarisa Shabong, Radhika Anilkumar and Prerna Bedi in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Jonathan Oatis)

(Reuters) -A prominent German environmental group said on Wednesday it was suing Facebook’s parent company Meta, accusing the social media firm of failing to clamp down on insults and threats of violence and murder.

Environmental Action Germany (DUH) said in a statement that Meta had failed to shut down Facebook groups in which threats of violence were regularly posted, sometimes remaining visible for weeks without being taken down.

These included threats to poison activists’ food and a picture of six gun cartridges, it said, adding that the case would be heard on March 28 at a regional court in Berlin.

“We no longer accept the persecution and threats in such social media groups,” said DUH chief Juergen Resch. “Instead, we are now taking action against the platform operator who is making the digital space available.”

A spokesperson for Meta said hate speech was unacceptable and that the company took action when it was aware of it.

“We continuously invest in technology and reporting tools, so that it can be found and removed faster. In this case, we have removed the content flagged to us,” said the spokesperson.

A German court last year ruled against a law obliging social media firms to block or delete criminal content and report serious offences to the police, handing a partial victory to complainants Google and Meta.

(Reporting by Matthias WilliamsEditing by Miranda Murray, William Maclean and Bernadette Baum)

By Joey Roulette

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Billionaire Richard Branson’s cash-strapped Virgin Orbit Holdings Inc is nearing a deal for a $200-million investment from Texas-based venture capital investor Matthew Brown via a private share placement, according to a term sheet seen by Reuters.

The space startup did not comment on the likely deal, but said on Wednesday it would resume operations on March 23 and prepare for its next mission by recalling some of its employees, sending its shares up 60% in premarket trading.

Matthew Brown Companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A deal would be a boost of confidence for the satellite launch company that has been grappling with dwindling cash and mounting losses in recent quarters in a highly competitive market.

Virgin Orbit’s market capitalization slumped to a record low of $150 million on Tuesday from more than $3 billion two years ago when it went public through a blank-check deal.

In January, its rocket LauncherOne failed a mission to deploy nine small satellites into lower Earth orbit due to an anomaly during its flight through space.

The company, which received about $35 million of capital injections from Branson’s Virgin Investments in recent months, said last week it was exploring options and was in talks for fresh funding.

Virgin Orbit and Matthew Brown are aiming to close the deal on Friday, according to the term sheet, which is not binding and remains subject to final agreement.

Virgin Orbit’s board agreed to move forward with the deal at a meeting held on Tuesday, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

Under the deal, Matthew Brown will be entitled to convert his $200 million investment in Virgin Orbit’s preferred shares into common shares at the volume weighted average price in the 30 days before the deal is signed.

The converted shares will possess the same voting rights as the common stock. Virgin Investments is currently the largest shareholder with a stake of nearly 75%.

The company booked a loss of nearly $44 million for the third quarter and had cash reserves of about $71, a sharp drop from $122 million as of June-end. It has yet to announce a date for its fourth-quarter results.

Virgin Orbit’s statement on workforce confirmed an earlier Reuters report that said it plans to recall a small team from furlough for rocket upgrades. The company said more employees will be back to work on March 27.

(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Writing by Miyoung Kim; Additional reporting by Tiyashi Datta; Editing by Jamie Freed, Louise Heavens and Arun Koyyur)

By John Revill and Julie Zhu

ZURICH/HONG KONG (Reuters) – Syngenta’s $9.5 billion flotation has moved a step closer after the Shanghai Stock Exchange scheduled a hearing next week for the Swiss agrichemicals and seeds company’s listing plan.

A rival to U.S. company Corteva and German firms BASF and Bayer, Syngenta was bought for $43 billion by ChemChina in 2017 and folded into Sinochem Holdings Corp in 2021.

The Chinese parent plans to keep a majority stake after the initial public offering (IPO), which is set to be one of the world’s biggest this year and expected to value Syngenta at around $50 billion.

The Shanghai Stock Exchange said on Wednesday it planned to conduct a hearing with the company to examine its listing application on March 29. Syngenta has also updated its prospectus with its latest financial figures.

It shows the company aims to raise about 65 billion yuan from the flotation or about $9.44 billion. 

Just over 60% of the proceeds will be used to finance acquisitions and to repay debt.

Around 20% will be allocated towards advanced agricultural technology-related research and development, according to the prospectus.

After Syngenta passes the hearing, the IPO will still require registration with the China Securities Regulatory Commission.

The company aims to launch the offering in June, two sources said, with one adding that it is seeking mainly Chinese investors as strategic shareholders. 

Syngenta declined to comment, citing Chinese market regulations.

The float will likely be the four-year-old STAR board’s biggest – providing a major boost after the scrapping of Ant Group’s blockbuster listing in 2020.

The Nasdaq-style STAR Market topped the global charts for IPO fundraising in 2022 having raised $28.5 billion, Refinitiv Eikon data showed.

Syngenta first filed its listing application in July 2021 and has since gone through three rounds of reviews with the Shanghai bourse.

The company reported its highest ever annual sales and earnings on Wednesday. Its 2022 earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose 20% to $5.6 billion on sales up 19% at $33.4 billion.

Much of the growth came from China, where the company added 136 more Modern Agricultural Platform centres that offer training to farmers and sell its seeds and pesticides, taking its total there to 628.

“All business units saw double-digit growth, benefitting from high demand for products and services designed to promote yield increases and sustainable farming methods,” Syngenta said.

But during the fourth quarter, its earnings fell after being hit by higher raw materials costs. It also spent more on reorganising its business and set cash aside to cover macro-economic uncertainties.

Its EBITDA fell 25% to $900 million on sales up 4% to $7.5 billion driven by its seeds business.

“As previously indicated, farmers accelerated their purchases earlier in the year due to supply concerns, moderating fourth quarter growth,” the company said.

($1 = 6.8830 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by John Revill and Julie Zhu in Hong Kong; editing by Mark Potter and Jason Neely)