Business

SHANGHAI — Chinese regulators hit e-commerce giant Alibaba with a record 18.2 billion yuan ($2.78 billion) fine on Saturday over practices deemed to be an abuse of the company's dominant market position.

Alibaba, the Jack Ma-founded Chinese e-commerce leader and one of the world's most valuable companies, said it accepted the penalty and pledged to outline plans on Monday for bringing its operations in compliance.

The fine appeared to cap a government crackdown on major Chinese tech platforms, and Alibaba in particular, over allegations of anti-competitive behaviour and misuse of consumer data.

The State Administration for Market Regulation said it assessed the fine after concluding an investigation into Alibaba that began in December.

The probe centred on Alibaba's practice of forbidding merchants who wish to sell their wares on its popular online marketplaces from simultaneously offering them on rival e-commerce sites.

"Since 2015, Alibaba Group has abused its dominant position in the market" with the exclusivity requirement, the regulator said. 

The requirement harmed competition, innovation, and the interests of merchants and consumers, it added.

The fine was a record and nearly three times the almost $1 billion levied against Qualcomm in 2015, Bloomberg said.

The size of the penalty was determined after the market watchdog decided to fine Alibaba four per cent of its 2019 sales of 455.7 billion yuan.

Shortly after the decision was announced Alibaba issued a contrite statement that used many of the government's recent talking points on the issue, pledging to make changes to safeguard fair competition.

"We accept the penalty with sincerity and will ensure our compliance with determination," it said.

The company added that it would hold a conference call with investors on Monday to share its "thoughts and plans for the long-term healthy development of our business in the future".

"We are committed to ensuring an operating environment for our merchants and partners that is more open, more equitable, more efficient and more inclusive in sharing the fruits of growth," it said.

AMMAN — The Housing Bank approved the distribution of cash dividends at a rate of 12 per cent of the share nominal value for the year 2020, according to a bank statement.

During a virtual general assembly meeting on Thursday, its general assembly also approved the board of directors report, the financial statements for the year 2020 and the bank’s business plan for 2021.

Deloitte was elected as an external auditor to audit the company’s accounts for 2021.

Housing Bank Chairman of the Board of Directors Abdel Elah Al-Khatib presided over the meeting, which was attended by shareholders holding 94.739 per cent shares of the bank’s capital. 

The meeting was also attended by the general comptroller of companies, representatives of the Central Bank of Jordan and the representative of the bank’s auditing firm Deloitte.

According to Al Khatib, 2020 was a year replete with exceptional challenges and circumstances at the economic, health and social levels as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Nevertheless, the bank continued its effective and pivotal role in the community, providing JD3.1 million of financial assistance to health, educational and social institutions, as well as more than JD500,000 donated by Housing Bank employees in support of the Ministry of Health’s efforts to curb the effects of the pandemic. 

Al Khatib said that despite the difficulties, the Housing Bank achieved strong operational results and recorded sustainable growth in its operational profits and total income, which confirms the bank's ability to adapt and confront challenges with exceptional effectiveness and agility due to the diversity of its sources of income, its operational efficiency, as well as effective cost control procedures. All these factors led to the achievement of JD203.5 million in operational profits, an increase of 8.6 per cent compared to 2019, while the Group’s net profit after provisions and taxes amounted to JD42.5 million compared toJD83.7 million during 2019. This decrease in net profit was a result of booking additional loan loss provisions for the loan portfolio, reached to more than double of the amount booked in the previous year, in order to protect the bank and strengthen its financial position in light of the negative economic conditions resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, according to the bank statement.

WASHINGTON — Warning that the recovery from the pandemic crisis is not yet over, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Thursday called on policymakers to continue to spend money to shore up the global economy and ensure no one is left behind.

Without that aid, and additional financing from both the fund and the World Bank, developing countries and the poor in many countries could struggle to rebound from the downturn caused by COVID-19, the IMF said at the conclusion of its spring meeting.

Continued support is needed to “mitigate and heal economic scars,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told reporters.

“We want to make sure everybody has a fair shot to a better life.”

That means accelerating access to vaccines and taking advantage of the opportunity presented by the crisis to invest in green technology, which can create good paying jobs and address climate change.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen joined the call, urging “significant” new spending to ensure a solid rebound from the damage inflicted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the economic outlook has “improved significantly”, especially due to substantial government support, “the job is not yet done, given high uncertainty and the risk of permanent scarring”, Yellen said.

“I urge major economies to not just avoid removing support too early, but to strive to provide significant amounts of new fiscal support to secure a robust recovery,” she said.

The IMF now projects global growth of 6 per cent this year after the 3.3 per cent contraction last year and credited the $16 trillion in global public spending during the pandemic with keeping the worst peacetime recession in a century from being three times as severe.

Yellen highlighted the $1.9 trillion US aid package President Joe Biden signed last month, as well as his proposal announced last week to spend $2 trillion on infrastructure and jobs.

Boosting resources 

Yellen said that with stimulus already boosting the recovery from the pandemic shutdowns, the US economy “could reach full employment as soon as next year”, but many developing countries do not have similar resources to support their economies.

Georgieva warned about a “dangerous divergence” in low-income countries’ prospects compared to rich nations, which could worsen if advanced economies like the United States raise interest rates sooner than expected.

She also praised the IMF members who agreed to allow the fund to issue $650 billion in new Special Drawing Rights, an additional pool of IMF currency that will add to nations’ reserves and boost their ability to access financing.

The IMF is expected to present a proposal to its board in June, and Georgieva said the fund is working with rich nations to shift some of their share of those reserves to help aid developing nations, which “face a crucial policy transition from crisis to recovery”.

Vaccines as economic policy 

The officials again stressed that ending the health crisis remains central to the economic recovery, and the closing statement from the IMFC, the fund’s steering committee, lamented the “uneven access to vaccines”.

The committee emphasised “the need for strong international cooperation to accelerate vaccine production and support affordable and equitable distribution to all”.

Yellen pledged US support for vaccine rollouts, including efforts to “make sure financing does not become an obstacle for global vaccination... and to work toward ensuring robust, equitable, and transparent vaccination deployment”.

Shift to green 

The crisis offers policymakers a vehicle to capitalise on the need for investments to accelerate green projects that can provide good-paying jobs.

“Government efforts to support the recovery need to take advantage of the opportunity to accelerate the transition towards a low-carbon economy and limit the long-term threat from climate change,” said Angel Gurria, head of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Georgieva said those investments could create jobs in growing industries to replace those lost in sectors that are shrinking.

“Climate risks are growing, and they are substantial for macroeconomic and financial stability, climate action can generate green growth and green jobs,” she said.

The IMF and World Bank have also announced plans to intensify the focus on green investment and climate-friendly aspects of their lending programmes.

LONDON — Royal Dutch Shell forecast on Wednesday that this year's deadly Texas winter storm will cost the Anglo-Dutch energy giant up to $200 million in the first quarter.

That is equivalent to almost 170 million euros.

"The Texas winter storm had an impact on our operations and is expected to have an aggregate adverse impact of up to $200 million on adjusted earnings," Shell said in a statement.

Last year, Shell plunged into a net loss of $21.7 billion as factories shut and planes were grounded owing to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Texas storm was expected to curb production by between 10,000 and 20,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) during the three months to the end of March, the statement said.

Total production is expected to climb to between 2.4 and 2.475 million boepd, up from 2.371 million in the fourth quarter.

February's polar vortex storm killed dozens of people, left millions without electricity and water, caused billions of dollars of damage to the sector and forced several Texas electric firms to file for bankruptcy.

The freezing temperatures also caused outages at energy installations -- natural gas-fired power plants, wind turbines and nuclear plants -- which are not typically insulated as they are in other states with colder climates.

FRANKFURT — New car sales in Germany posted their worst first-quarter performance since national reunification in 1990 owing to the coronavirus pandemic, official data showed on Wednesday.

A total of 656,452 new cars were registered between January and March in Europe's largest car market -- down 6.4 per cent on the same period in 2020 and around 25 per cent lower than in 2019, the KBA transport authority said.

"The first quarter of 2021 was down 16 per cent" on the 10-year average, the VDIK car importers' federation said in a statement.

"There hasn't been a worse first quarter since we started compiling statistics," it added.

Compared with March 2020 when shutdown measures triggered a historic 37.7-per cent plunge in new car sales, registrations climbed last month 35.9 per cent to 292,349 -- still 15 per cent below the pre-crisis level.

"The growth in March only exists on paper," VDIK president Reinhard Zirpel said. 

"We have been confronted with an extremely weak market since the beginning of the year." 

Zirpel said the industry, which is central to the German economy, "did not at all expect the first quarter of 2021 to be even darker than the already extremely bad period the previous year".

Domestic production jumped 29 per cent to 373,900 units in March month-on-month, the VDA said. During the first quarter, it marked an eight-per cent decline.

Exports also decreased by nine per cent during the first quarter compared with the same period in 2020.

BEIRUT — Lebanese medical student Mohammad Sleiman travelled to Belarus to become the first doctor in his family, but he now fears his country’s economic crisis is going to get him expelled.

“I’ve got a future and I’m working towards it,” the 23-year-old said from his bedroom in the capital Minsk, a dream catcher hanging on the wall behind him

“But if they throw me out of university, my future will be lost. And it’ll be the Lebanese state’s fault.”

As Lebanese banks forbid depositors from transferring their own money abroad, thousands of students who went abroad to pursue studies they could not afford at home are among the hardest hit.

Students said they had moved into cheaper accommodation, taken on jobs or even cut back on meals. Some had been forced to fly home to Lebanon, with no idea how to return to their studies.

Sleiman said he was so stressed about money that he could hardly concentrate in class.

Back home, his family’s dollar savings have been trapped in the bank since 2019, and the 23-year-old has no idea how he will pay tuition fees when his father can barely borrow enough to send him rent.

Last month, he says his name appeared on a list with other Lebanese threatened with expulsion if they did not pay up.

Lebanon’s parliament passed a law last year to help students like him, but parents say banks systematically turn them away demanding more paperwork.

‘More debt’ 

In the south of Lebanon, Sleiman’s father said he had been to several protests by parents demanding help from the Lebanese authorities, but to no avail.

Without access to his savings, 48-year-old Mousa Sleiman has to buy $300 for his son each month on the black market at an exorbitant exchange rate.

But his earnings from his toy and cosmetics store, in Lebanese pounds now worth 85 per cent less at street value, cannot even begin to cover it.

“I’ve been so worried,” the father of eight said, with his eldest son’s April rent due. “I’m going to have to go and rack up more debt.”

One student activist said parents had also sold cars and gold jewellery to help their children.

Many pin blame for Lebanon’s worst financial crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war on political mismanagement and corruption.

As the country’s foreign reserves plummet, and amid reports of mass capital flight despite currency controls since 2019, they accuse the ruling class of having plundered their savings.

A law passed last year is supposed to allow parents to access $10,000 per student enrolled abroad in 2019 at the much cheaper official exchange rate. 

But parents say the banks don’t care.

“They take our requests and dump them in drawers because there’s no more money left to send. They stole it,” said Sleiman’s father.

A handful of parents or grandparents have filed lawsuits against their banks and won, the latest last month.

One of them was able last year to transfer funds to his sons in France and Spain so they could graduate.

Sleiman and fellow parents are looking into doing the same.

The International Union of Lebanese Youth, covering students in 20 countries, has started working with volunteer lawyers towards filing dozens more cases.

But lawyer and activist Nizar Sayegh said these cases were still rare and complicated by coronavirus lockdowns and banks filing appeals.

Many families also shy away from legal action for fear the banks would then close their account, he said.

‘Future abroad’ 

In Italy, 20-year-old Reine Kassis said she and fellow cash-strapped Lebanese flatmates were having to delay breakfast till lunch time.

“We eat toast and cheese, then study, study, study until supper,” said the mechanical engineering student in Ferrara.

She says she has received a little help in Italy.

But her brother, 23, had to return from Ukraine to Lebanon to continue studying online because he could not afford the rent.

Their father Maurice Kassis, a retired officer, said he was heartbroken.

“I only had two children so I could spoil them, and educate them properly,” the 54-year-old said in the eastern town of Zahle.

When he retired, he had enough savings stashed away in Lebanese pounds to cover both of them studying abroad.

But today, with the collapse of the Lebanese currency, those pounds would fetch just an eighth of their old value in dollars.

After he has paid off his home loan with his pension each month, he only has the equivalent of $50 left for the whole family.

“How do you educate your children with that?” he asked.

“I’m telling them to find themselves a future abroad.”

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple chief Tim Cook portrayed self-driving cars as an ideal match for the technology giant during an interview released on Monday by The New York Times.

Talk of an autonomous vehicle bearing the Apple brand has long been among rumors swirling around the iPhone maker, which has remained tight-lipped about its plans for the market.

“An autonomous car is a robot and so there are a lots of things you can do with autonomy; we will see what Apple does," Cook said during a Sway podcast with Kara Swisher.

"We love to integrate hardware, software and services, and find the intersection points of those because we think that's where the magic occurs."

Cook hinted that an option could be for Apple to build an autonomous-driving technology platform used by auto makers.

He expressed admiration for electric car maker Tesla, which is among companies developing autonomous driving capabilities in vehicles.

"Tesla has done an unbelievable job of not only establishing the lead but keeping the lead for such a long period of time in the electric vehicle space," Cook said.

Japanese auto maker Nissan and South Korea-based Hyundai in February denied reports of potential alliances with Apple on self-driving cars. Apple’s Project Titan is devoted to electric autonomous vehicles and has been in the works for several years — but details of the venture have been kept under wraps.

Apple first revealed its self-driving tech aspirations in 2016 and Cook has since then said he saw autonomous driving systems as a "core technology" for the future.

The interview with Cook touched on an array of hot topics, including clashes Apple is having with Facebook and Fortnite video game maker Epic about its tight control of the App Store.

US regulators are looking into whether Apple's control of the App Store, where it gets a commission on transactions, is an abuse of power since the shop is the sole venue for digital content for its mobile devices.

Apple has staunchly defended its control of the App Store as integral to protecting users from hackers, snooping, and other dangers.

"I think it's hard to argue that the App Store is not an economic miracle," Cook said.

"Apple has helped build an economy that's over a half-a-trillion-dollars a year, and takes a very small sliver of that for the innovation that it unleashed and the expense of running the store."

By Rob Lever
Agence France-Presse

WASHINGTON — The US Supreme Court on Monday handed Google a major win in a long-running copyright battle with Oracle, ruling that the use of the Java programming language for the Android mobile operating system was "fair use."

The 6-2 ruling had been closely watched as a key test of copyright in the digital era, and allows Google to avoid paying out billions to its technology rival.

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the 39-page majority opinion that even if Google used copyrightable material, "the copying here at issue nonetheless constituted a fair use. Hence, Google's copying did not violate the copyright law".

The case revolved around whether copyright protection should be extended to application software interfaces (APIs), the bits of code that allow programmes and apps to work together, and if so, whether Google's implementation was a "fair use" of copyrighted material.

The case drew interest across the spectrum of technology firms and creative industries, and heated debate on how much copyright protection should be afforded to bits of computer code.

Two separate jury trials ended with a determination that Google's "software interface" did not unfairly use Java code, saving the internet giant from a possible multibillion-dollar verdict.

But an appeals court in 2018 disagreed, saying the software interface is entitled to copyright protection, prompting Google to take the case to the highest US court.

Oracle, which in 2010 obtained the rights to Java when it acquired Sun Microsystems — which had supported Google's use of Java for Android — sought $9 billion in damages in its original complaint.

Threatening innovation? 

Google and many Silicon Valley allies have argued that extending copyright protection to APIs would threaten innovation in the fast-evolving digital world.

According to Google, a win for Oracle would "upend the longstanding expectation of software developers that they are free to use existing computer software interfaces to build new programmes". 

Others said Google would walk away with "intellectual property theft" in a court victory, arguing that it would make it hard to protect any digital property from Chinese misappropriation.

In a dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, wrote that the court should have taken a narrower view of copyright in view of Google's copying of 11,500 lines of code.

"The court wrongly sidesteps the principal question that we were asked to answer: Is declaring code protected by copyright? I would hold that it is. Computer code occupies a unique space in intellectual property," Thomas wrote.

Breyer wrote that new technologies call for a broader view.

"The fact that computer programmes are primarily functional makes it difficult to apply traditional copyright concepts in that technological world."

Breyer wrote that Google "reimplemented a user interface, taking only what was needed to allow users to put their accrued talents to work in a new and transformative programme".

Law professor Steven Vladeck of the University of Texas said on Twitter the ruling was "a win for Google, but the big issue got punted" because the justices failed to decide on whether this type of software code may be copyrighted.

Boston University law professor Tiffany Li meanwhile called the decision a "huge win for fair use and people who understand how coding works!"

HONG KONG — Tokyo's Nikkei led a rally in holiday-thinned trade in Asia on Friday following a record-breaking day on Wall Street with investors buoyed by Joe Biden's huge new infrastructure spending plan and growing optimism over the economic recovery.

With most equity and commodity markets in the region closed for Easter, business was light but the mood remained decidedly upbeat ahead of the release of key US jobs data that is expected to confirm that the world's top economy is getting back on its feet.

Confidence that global growth will soar as vaccines allow economies to open has for now overtaken worries that the rebound will fan inflation and force central banks to wind back their market-boosting monetary policies.

"Before you worry about inflation, there's reflation and I think that's the main theme in the market," Ed Campbell, at QMA, said.

Biden's $2.25 trillion rebuilding package — coming soon after the passage of his $1.9 trillion stimulus — has reinforced the view among investors that the US economy will run hot, with analysts saying its corporate tax implications were also being put aside for now.

With this in mind, and after a strong read on US March manufacturing, the S&P 500 broke the 4,000-point barrier for the first time, while the Nasdaq and Dow also enjoyed healthy gains.

The few markets in Asia that were open followed suit, with Tokyo up 1.6 per cent, Seoul almost 1 per cent higher and Shanghai also in positive territory along with Bangkok.

"The US equity market opened in the second quarter with a sonic boom ushering in a great Good Friday," said Axi Strategist Stephen Innes.

He added that equities likely had further to run higher as vaccines are administered around the world, and despite a pick-up in infections in parts of the world including France, which is facing another lockdown.

"Vaccine rollouts remain the game's name and drive the narrative, even with the EU lagging, as investors view this delay in the context that the catch-up is but a function of time," he said. 

WASHINGTON — Data affecting more than 500 million Facebook users that was originally leaked in 2019, including email addresses and phone numbers, has been posted on an online hackers forum, according to media reports and a cybercrime expert.

"All 533,000,000 Facebook records were just leaked for free," Alon Gal, chief technology officer at the Hudson Rock cybercrime intelligence firm, said Saturday on Twitter.

He denounced what he called the "absolute negligence" of Facebook.

Some of the data appeared to be current, according to a report in Business Insider which AFP was unable to confirm independently. It said some of the leaked phone numbers still belong to the owners of Facebook accounts.

"This means that if you have a Facebook account, it is extremely likely the phone number used for the account was leaked," Gal said. 

But Facebook said the reports were old news.

"This is old data that was previously reported on in 2019," a company spokesperson said. "We found and fixed this issue in August 2019."

Close to 32 million American accounts and 20 million French accounts were among those affected, Gal tweeted in January, when the person holding the data was trying to sell it. 

The data include phone numbers, complete names, birthdates and, for some accounts, email addresses and relationship status.

"Bad actors will certainly use the information for social engineering, scamming, hacking and marketing," Gal said on Twitter.

This is not the first time leaks or use of data from the world's largest social network — with nearly two billion users — has embroiled Facebook in controversy.

In 2016, a scandal around Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm that used the personal data of millions of Facebook users to target political ads, cast a shadow over the social network and its handling of private information.