Friday, October 18

Tag: C&E Industry News Filter

Biden’s $3.1 Billion Train Ticket to Nowhere
2Jan By adminNo Comments
Health

Biden’s $3.1 Billion Train Ticket to Nowhere

It didn’t get a lot of attention, but last month the White House awarded $3.1 billion to the California High-Speed Rail project. This was supposed to be a bullet train connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles in less than three hours. Instead, its costs keep rising even as the state scales back the plan. Since 2008, when California voters authorized a $10 billion bond issue for the train, they’ve been sold a bill of goods.The original total estimated construction cost to taxpayers was $33 billion. That’s risen to at least $100 billion. The authority decided to offer service between San Francisco and Los Angeles in Phase I, then eventually extend the train service north to Sacramento and south to San Diego. Phase I was to have been completed by 2020. Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company...
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Chevron Warns of Billions in Charges From California Challenges, Gulf of Mexico Assets
2Jan By adminNo Comments
World

Chevron Warns of Billions in Charges From California Challenges, Gulf of Mexico Assets

Chevron said it will book $3.5 billion to $4 billion in charges for the fourth quarter, citing challenges tied to regulations in California and previously sold oil and gas production assets in the Gulf of Mexico.Chevron said it will impair a portion of its U.S. upstream assets, mostly in California, due to regulatory challenges in the state that have led to “lower anticipated future investment levels in its business plans.” Chevron said it will continue to operate the affected assets for many years.Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Iberdrola’s Avangrid Ends $4.3 Billion Deal With PNM Resources
2Jan By adminNo Comments
World

Iberdrola’s Avangrid Ends $4.3 Billion Deal With PNM Resources

Updated Jan. 2, 2024 3:55 am ETIberdrola’s U.S. renewables subsidiary Avangrid has ended a merger agreement with power company PNM Resources after rejecting a bid to extend the deadline of the $4.3 billion deal reached in October 2020.The Spanish energy company said Tuesday that Avangrid—which is 81.5%-owned by Iberdrola and houses its U.S. renewable-energy assets as well as electric and natural-gas utilities—terminated the deal after conditions for closing it weren’t met in the timeframe the parties agreed to.Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Double Dipping in Opioid Lawsuits
2Jan By adminNo Comments
Health

Double Dipping in Opioid Lawsuits

The plaintiffs bar never met a business it wouldn’t sue, and now the lawyers are using government authority to pursue private interests. In their latest business model, trial lawyers are hired by state attorneys general to help prosecute public lawsuits then use it to the advantage of their private lawsuits. Kudos to one company for pushing back. In December pharmacy benefit manager OptumRx filed a motion in federal court in Ohio to disqualify Motley Rice, a South Carolina plaintiffs firm suing the company in multidistrict opioid litigation. Motley has been retained by state attorneys general and city prosecutors in Washington, D.C., Hawaii and Chicago to handle the government’s litigation, but it continues to represent private clients in related litigation.Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones &...
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Baidu Terminates $3.6B Deal to Buy JOYY’s China Live-Streaming Business
2Jan By adminNo Comments
Technology

Baidu Terminates $3.6B Deal to Buy JOYY’s China Live-Streaming Business

Baidu has called off a $3.6 billion deal to buy JOYY’s video-based entertainment live-streaming business in China.As of the end of December, the closing conditions for the share purchase agreement had yet to be fully satisfied, Baidu said in a filing late Monday.Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Chinese State-Owned Firms Establish $1.4 Billion Fund
2Jan By adminNo Comments
World

Chinese State-Owned Firms Establish $1.4 Billion Fund

Two Chinese state-owned companies will establish a 10 billion yuan ($1.41 billion) fund to invest in companies with real estate project assets.Under the agreement, New China Life Insurance will be the limited partner providing CNY9.9 billion in capital and China International Capital Corp.will act as general partner that will manage the fund, New China Life said late Monday.Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Tariffs and the Common Man
2Jan By adminNo Comments
Business

Tariffs and the Common Man

With Donald Trump leading the 2024 polls while calling for a 10% universal tariff, the new GOP protectionists are trying to sell this idea as a boon for the working class. The evidence exposes this folly: Trade wars invite painful retaliation, prop up politically favored industries at the expense of others, and raise prices on consumers like an invisible tax. They hurt the average worker.The economic literature on this point is voluminous. To pick one place to start, here was the conclusion of a study of Mr. Trump’s last trade wars, written in 2019 by two Federal Reserve economists: “We find that U.S. manufacturing industries more exposed to tariff increases experience relative reductions in employment as a positive effect from import protection is offset by larger negative effects from r...
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Xenophobia Drives Foes of Nippon Steel’s Deal
1Jan By adminNo Comments
Health

Xenophobia Drives Foes of Nippon Steel’s Deal

Election-year jitters have the Biden administration and a few swing-state members of Congress from both parties parroting union concerns about Nippon Steel’s takeover of U.S. Steel. The United Steelworkers union favored Cleveland-Cliffs’s offer, which was almost 50% lower than Nippon’s $14.1 billion bid. There is no real cause for concern other than xenophobia and the damage it could do to Cleveland-Cliffs’s position as the sole U.S. producer of electrical steel for transformers and electric vehicles. The rest is imported.Nippon’s steelmaking is at least as advanced as U.S. Steel’s, so technology export control isn’t an issue. National security could be a concern if American mills were shutting down due to unfairly subsidized Japanese exports to the U.S. But Nippon never used gimmicks to ...
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Big Tech Braces for Wave of Antitrust Rulings in 2024 
1Jan By adminNo Comments
Technology

Big Tech Braces for Wave of Antitrust Rulings in 2024 

U.S. antitrust cases against tech giants Google and Meta Platforms are expected to come to a head in 2024, likely producing long-awaited rulings that could shape the legacies of top Biden administration regulators.Silicon Valley and its critics have seen their patience tested on some of these cases. A U.S. antitrust case brought against Alphabet’s Google unit in 2020 went to trial in 2023 and now heads to closing arguments in May.Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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Western Anxiety About Chinese EVs Could Prove Self-Defeating
1Jan By adminNo Comments
World

Western Anxiety About Chinese EVs Could Prove Self-Defeating

Updated Jan. 1, 2024 12:06 am ETChina hawks have the upper hand in the political battle over electric vehicles. They should be wary of overplaying it.The rules for getting a tax credit on EV purchases in the U.S. changed recently. One difference will help stimulate sales: The credit, worth up to $7,500, is now available at the point of sale rather than at the end of the tax year, meaning it can be used as part of a down payment. Other changes will have the opposite effect. Among new sourcing requirements designed to foster a North American supply chain, battery components manufactured in China, the world’s largest supplier, now make models ineligible.Copyright ©2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
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