Sat, Oct 15, 2022 page10

• World Business Quick Take

  • Agencies
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  LABOR

  Royal Mail to lay off 10,000

  Royal Mail yesterday said it would cut 10,000 jobs after projecting a full-year operating loss that it blamed partly on a series of crippling strikes. The UK postal service, whose parent company has been renamed International Distributions Services PLC (IDS), said it expects adjusted operating losses of about ￡350 million (US$394 million), following a ￡219 million shortfall in the first half through September. IDS tumbled as much as 17 percent, the most in two-and-a-half years, after saying it would start the process of consulting on the cuts “in response to the impact of industrial action, delays in delivering agreed productivity improvements and lower parcel volumes.”

  SINGAPORE

  Central bank tightens policy

  The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) yesterday tightened monetary policy settings for a fifth time in the past year, warning of persistent price pressures and a clouded outlook for the global and local economy. The central bank, which uses the exchange rate as its main policy tool, recentered the midpoint of the currency’s policy band up to its prevailing level, it said in a statement. The decision follows better-than-expected economic growth last quarter, which showed signs that elevated prices and tighter financial conditions could damp demand. The economy returned to growth in the three months through September, expanding 1.5 percent from the previous quarter, the Ministry of Trade and Industry said in a statement. That was faster than the median estimate for a 0.7 percent expansion in a Bloomberg survey. On a year-on-year basis, the economy expanded 4.4 percent.

  TECHNOLOGY

  Musk under investigation

  Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk is being investigated by federal authorities over his conduct in his US$44 billion takeover deal for Twitter Inc, the social media company said in a court filing released on Thursday. While the filing said he was under investigation, it did not say what the exact focus of the probes was and which federal authorities are conducting them. Twitter, which sued Musk in July to force him to close the deal, said attorneys for Musk had claimed “investigative privilege” when refusing to hand over documents it had sought. Musk’s attorneys late last month provided a “privilege log” identifying documents to be withheld, Twitter said. The court filing, which asked Delaware judge Kathaleen McCormick to order Musk’s attorneys to provide the documents, was made on Thursday last week — the same day that McCormick paused litigation between the two sides after Musk reversed course and said he would proceed with the deal.

  TRADE

  EU posts record deficit

  The eurozone in August posted its largest trade deficit since it expanded to 19 countries in 2015, as high energy prices boosted its import bill, official estimates released yesterday showed. The EU’s statistics office Eurostat said that the eurozone’s balance for trade in goods with the rest of the world in August was in the red by nearly 51 billion euros (US$49.6 billion), compared with July’s 34 billion euros, marking the 10th consecutive month of a negative balance, in what is a major shift for the trade bloc which has historically recorded large surpluses. For the wider 27-nation EU, payments for energy imports from January to August rose 154 percent to 543.8 billion euros, contributing to an overall trade deficit of 309.6 billion euros.
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