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$1.66
The introduction of a national minimum wage of $1.66 an hour in South Africa is be delayed by up to two months as parliament is yet to approve necessary draft legislation, a spokesman for the labour ministry said on Friday. The minimum wage – a policy championed by President Cyril Ramaphosa as an important step to tackle labour instability and wage inequality – was approved by the cabinet in November and meant to be introduced on May 1.
$80
With oil racing towards $80 a barrel on the back of a market rebalancing, Schlumberger, the world’s largest listed oilfield services group, now says the oil market will face growing supply challenges over the coming year, following the steep drop in investment in recent years. Paal Kibsgaard, Schlumberger’s chief executive, said as the company reported first quarter earnings that three consecutive years of “dramatic underinvestment” in oil exploration and production worldwide had resulted in declining production in countries including Angola, Norway, Mexico, Malaysia, China, and Indonesia.
71%
The UK government has appointed a former Credit Suisse banker to manage its stake in Royal Bank of Scotland as it prepares to return the bailed-out lender to the private sector. Charles Donald, currently vice-chairman of UK advisory and corporate broking at the Swiss investment bank, will take over as head of UK Government Investments’ Financial Institutions Group next month. He will work with fellow Credit Suisse alumnus James Leigh-Pemberton, FIG chairman, with a view to starting the process of selling down the government’s remaining 71 per cent stake in RBS later this year.
$1.5bn
US industrial group General Electric has shown that it is still bearing the scars of its financial services ventures, taking a charge of $1.5bn relating to a subprime lender that it shut down in 2007. Despite the additional damage from crisis-era subprime bets, GE shares rose more than 4 per cent in early New York trading after its first-quarter earnings issued on Friday morning beat analyst estimates. But the charge relating to WMC Mortgage is the latest sign of how GE’s financial services operations, which once contributed half the group’s profits but have now mostly been sold, are still leaving a mark.
4.5%
Chipmakers faced a widespread sell-off on Friday after an update from one of Apple’s biggest suppliers, Taiwan Semiconductor, raised expectations of a sharper slowdown in smartphone sales this year. It said in an earnings update that second-quarter revenues would be hit by “weak demand from the mobile sector”, unnerving investors who fear that smartphone sales have entered a structural slowdown after a decade of rapid growth. International chipmakers including Analogue Devices, Cirrus Logic, Dialog Semiconductor, Qualcomm and Qorvo fell between 3 per cent and 6 per cent during Friday trading. Taiwan Semiconductor ended the trading day down 6 per cent at NT$229. Global smartphone sales dropped 4.5 per cent in the last quarter of 2017.
