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DETROIT — Tesla Inc.'s move to dismantle its network of high-end showrooms as part of a plan to launch the long-awaited cheaper version of its Model 3 sedan has pushed the electric carmaker into uncharted territory for an industry that has long relied on physical stores to move the metal.

Retailers from Amazon to Apple to traditional automakers have trumpeted the benefits of physical stores, and Apple and automakers also rely heavily on advertising, which Tesla has eschewed, making the electric carmaker an outlier in its dependence on the web.

As Tesla pushes to broaden its appeal and drive up sales with the arrival of the $35,000 Model 3, the impact of the store closings announced on Thursday will play out over time, answering questions about whether a national physical footprint is necessary in an increasingly digital world, analysts and investors said on Friday.

"Customers are becoming increasingly comfortable making purchases online, and that is especially true for Tesla," Chief Executive Elon Musk said in an e-mail to employees, which CNBC posted online. 

However, some analysts and investors question whether Tesla closing most of its 250 stores was the panicked decision of a company seeking to build the lower-cost model profitably. Shares in Tesla closed 7.8 per cent lower to $294.79 on Friday. 

It was only last month that Musk said a $35,000 version that could be sold profitably was perhaps six months away. And in the company's annual report released last month, Tesla talked about growing its network of stores.

"There's a bit of a leap of faith that's required to have confidence that the moving from a physical distribution model to an online distribution model will succeed," Tom Vandeventer, portfolio manager with Tocqueville Opportunity Fund, said in a telephone interview. He has owned Tesla stock in the past and still follows the company closely.

"People like to go to car showrooms and kick the wheels and sit in the car," he added. 

However, Musk pointed out in the e-mail that 78 per cent of all Model 3 orders were placed online and 82 per cent of customers bought such models without ever taking a test drive. He said shifting to an online sales model, cutting jobs and reducing spending on marketing will allow Tesla to offer the lower vehicle price. Tesla also said on Thursday it now expects to record a loss in the first quarter. 

To overcome any remaining hesitation, Musk said Tesla would make it easier for customers to return a car within seven days or 1,609 kilometres for a full refund. 

"Given its seeming abruptness, it does not appear that yesterday's announcement was made from a position of strength," Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi Jr. said in a research note titled, "The $35k Model 3 — Genius or Desperation?" 

Vandeventer still likes Tesla's innovative, forward-thinking nature, but worries about the short term.

"Cutting prices is more often a sign of weakness unless you are Amazon," he said. "And only Amazon is Amazon." 

Adding to the pressure Tesla faces is the growing level of competition from Chinese electric carmakers as well as established players like Volkswagen's Audi and Porsche brands, and Jaguar Land Rover.

Meanwhile, US dealers remain sanguine about their position in the sales chain.

"We still believe that the franchised dealer model is by far the best way to sell, distribute and service new vehicles," National Automotive Dealers Association spokesman Jared Allen said. "The vast majority of consumers want to do some combination of both online and traditional shopping for new vehicles."

Since unveiling the Model 3 in 2016, Musk has been promising a $35,000 version. A lower-priced Model 3 is seen as critical to Tesla's long-term viability as it needs to reach more customers who can afford the vehicles to offset slowing sales of costlier sedans.

The lower price could expand the Model 3 market by about 600,000 cars in the United States alone, based on historical sales figures for similarly priced sedans, Baird analyst Ben Kalo said in a research note. However, the lower-cost model also could squeeze profit margins at a time when Tesla has said it is targeting 25 per cent margins for the vehicle sometime this year.

BARCELONA — Chinese telecoms giant Huawei racked up a slew of deals to sell 5G equipment at the world’s top mobile fair in Spain, despite Washington’s campaign to convince its allies to bar the firm from their next-generation wireless networks.

The famously secretive company launched a media offensive at the Mobile World Congress which wraps up in Barcelona on Thursday against US accusations that its cheap equipment used in telecommunications infrastructure across the globe is a Trojan horse for potential Chinese state spying and sabotage.

The United States considers the matter urgent as countries around the world prepare to roll out fifth-generation, or 5G, networks that will bring near-instantaneous connectivity that can enable futuristic technologies such as self-driving cars.

On Sunday on the eve of the start of the fair, which companies usually reserve to unveil their new devices, top Huawei officials held several press conferences and meetings with reporters where they strenuously rejected Washington’s claims.

“We need to be more transparent, and that means speaking out more often,” Huawei’s president for western Europe, Vincent Ping, told reporters on Monday.

‘No backdoors’ 

The highlight of the media offensive came on Tuesday when one of Huawei’s rotating chairmen, Guo Ping, delivered a keynote speech where reiterated the company’s position that there are no “backdoors” in its 5G tech that could allow Beijing to spy on countries.

“The US security accusation against our 5G has no evidence. Nothing. The irony is that the US cloud act allow their entities to access data across borders,” he told a packed auditorium, speaking in English.

This argument was echoed by several telecoms operators and government delegations at the trade fair.

“Security is a matter of concern if it has been proven. But for now, we just hear speculations from the US about Huawei over questions of security,” Malawi’s minister for communications technology told AFP.

“Huawei is quite aggressive in this industry and they are a step ahead of the other players. We just want to appreciate all the questions of security as a matter of concern but we need that countries as US show us the problems in order to help us.”

Nick Read, the head of Vodafone, the world’s second largest mobile operator, said Washington “clearly needed” to share the evidence it has against Huawei with European authorities so they can decide whether or not to use the Chinese firm’s tech.

Washington sent a large delegation of its own to the trade fair, which draws some 100,000 people from across the telecoms industry, to press its case with industry executives and its foreign counterparts.

‘Insult to our industry’ 

But it appears to have failed to dissuade other countries. 

Huawei announced it had signed 10 commercial contracts or partnership agreements for 5G with 10 telecoms operators, including Switzerland’s Sunrise, Iceland’s Nova, Saudi Arabia’s STC and Turkey’s Turkcell.

“This is an insult to our industry. We do know how to run tests and protect our networks, we always have,” Turkcell Chief Executive Officer Kaan Terzioglu told AFP when asked about Washington’s campaign against Huawei.

“I am very happy with what Huawei is providing us and I don’t differentiate where tech is coming from. We never work with a single provider, we use mainly Ericsson and Huawei and we are very happy with those vendors.”

Huawei’s 5G equipment is seen as being considerably more advanced than that of its rivals such as Sweden’s Ericsson or Finland’s Nokia.

The company won eight awards at the fair from industry association GSMA for its contributions to the mobile industry.

Huawei, however, has not managed to convince US operators to use its equipment.

Three of the biggest US telecoms operators are involved in major deals that require regulatory approval, which will make it hard for them to defy Washington’s opposition to the use of Huawei equipment, a telecoms specialist who asked not to be named said.

Sprint has launched a bid to buy Time Warner, while Sprint and T-Mobile are trying to merge and do not want to anger the US administration, the source added.

HANOI — Vietnamese carriers signed $21 billion in aviation deals with US firms on Wednesday as US President Donald Trump met with top leaders in Hanoi ahead of his summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.

Trump has urged Hanoi to narrow its gaping trade gap with Washington as part of his “America First” clarion call, urging Vietnam to buy more made-in-USA goods.

The communist country’s aviation sector has boomed in recent years, thanks to a rapidly expanding middle class with growing appetites — and budgets — for air travel.

Three of Vietnam’s top airlines signed several deals for planes, engines and maintenance contracts on Wednesday as Trump met with the country’s top leaders in Hanoi ahead of his much-anticipated second summit with Kim later on Wednesday.

Budget carrier Vietjet — famed for its bikini-clad air hostesses — signed an agreement for 100 Boeing 737 jets worth $12.7 billion, along with training and support contracts, the airline said. 

“We are pleased to expand our partnership with Vietjet and to support their impressive growth with new, advanced airplanes,” Boeing CEO Kevin McAllister said in a statement from the airline.

A senior White House official said the budget carrier will also buy 215 engines made by CFM, a joint venture between America’s GE Aviation and France’s Safran Aircraft Engines.

Startup Vietnamese carrier Bamboo Airways, which made its inaugural flight only last month, will buy 10 787 Dreamliners from Boeing as it looks to grow its nascent fleet and expand its routes to international destinations.

“Vietnam and the US economic and trade relations have seen rapid expansion. Non-stop air routes between the two countries are of essence accordingly,” said Trinh Van Quyet, the chairman of FLC Group, the airline’s parent company.

Bamboo said on Wednesday it wants to start flying to the US later this year or early in 2020.

Direct US routes 

There are currently no direct flights between Vietnam and the US, though the US Federal Aviation Administration has granted Vietnam a “category 1” ranking, paving the way for nonstop travel between the two countries. 

Meanwhile, state carrier Vietnam Airlines signed a $100 million maintenance contract with Sabre Corporation. 

The bundle of deals was praised by the White House, which under Trump’s direction has also been urging its former wartime foe to buy more military equipment.

“These deals will support more than 83,000 American jobs and provide increased safety and reliability for Vietnamese international travellers,” a senior White House official said after the deals were signed.

Vietnam’s aviation sector has soared in recent years, with passenger numbers jumping from 25 million in 2012 to 62 million last year.

But growth is expected to start tailing off, analysts say, in the face of increasingly squeezed airport capacity and tough competition across the region, in particular from budget airlines such as AirAsia and TigerAir. 

Wednesday’s aviation deals came ahead of Trump’s summit with Kim, with the leaders set to meet at the historical Metropole hotel.

LONDON — The Bank of England (BoE) on Tuesday said it was preparing to give lenders greater access to cash borrowing in its latest move to help bring financial stability ahead of Brexit.

"The Bank will increase the frequency of existing market-wide sterling [cash loans]... from monthly to weekly over the weeks surrounding the planned EU withdrawal date," the BoE said in a statement.

"This change will apply from March and will run until end April."

The BoE added: "This is a prudent and precautionary step, consistent with the bank's financial stability objective, to provide additional flexibility in the bank's provision of liquidity insurance in the coming months."

Updating a panel of cross-party British MPs on Tuesday on BoE forecasts and policy, BoE Governor Mark Carney insisted that the liquidity announcement was "part of normal contingency planning" and that commercial banks were functioning well.

"We are not seeing any liquidity stresses in the market," Carney said.

The central bank carried out the same measure ahead of and following Britain's referendum on leaving the EU in June 2016.

Britain is on course to leave the European Union on March 29, although there has been increasing talk of a possible delay.

"The Bank of England is today announcing a temporary amendment to its liquidity insurance facilities," the BoE said on Tuesday. 

"The Bank will increase the frequency of existing market-wide sterling operations, Indexed Long-Term Repos [ILTRs]."

In ILTR operations, financial institutions can offer assets to the BoE in return for six-month cash loans. 

This helps banks and the wider financial industry keep ticking over during periods of market turbulence. 

Similar lending was also carried out in 2008 during the global financial crisis.

Tuesday's announcement comes a day after the BoE said that authorities in Britain and the United States had agreed to maintain how multi-trillion dollar financial transactions are carried out between the two countries after Brexit.

The agreement concerns trades of derivatives — securities whose value is based on an asset such as currencies, stocks and commodities.

Meanwhile also on Tuesday, Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May faced mounting pressure from her own government to delay Brexit after the main opposition Labour Party raised the prospect of a second referendum.

May has steadfastly argued that she must keep the prospect of Britain crashing out the bloc without an agreement on March 29 on the table in order to wrest essential concessions from Brussels.

But her talks with European leaders on Sunday and Monday in Egypt achieved no breakthrough and the 46-year relationship is approaching a messy breakup that could wreak havoc on global markets and create border chaos.

NEW YORK — General Electric (GE) announced on Monday it will sell its Biopharma unit to Danaher for $21.4 billion in cash as it reduces debt amid an ongoing corporate turnaround effort.

The transaction allows the company to slim down further, and covers instruments and software that support research and development of biopharmaceutical drugs, a business that comprises about 15 per cent of the revenues of GE’s health sector.

Shares of GE rocketed higher after the announcement. The industrial giant was thrown out of the benchmark Dow Jones stock index in 2018 amid a prolonged slump in its power business that badly hit share price.

“Today’s transaction is a pivotal milestone,” said GE Chief Executive Lawrence Culp. “It demonstrates that we are executing on our strategy by taking thoughtful and deliberate action to reduce leverage and strengthen our balance sheet.”

“A more focused portfolio is the right structure for GE, and we have many options for maximising shareholder value along the way,” Culp said.

Culp, who served as chief executive of Danaher from 2001 to 2014, was tapped to lead GE in September.

GE’s Biopharma business — under GE Life Sciences — garnered revenues of about $3 billion in 2018, compared with about $17 billion for GE health assets not included in the deal, which includes radiology and other diagnostic imaging systems.

GE had previously planned to monetise about half its healthcare business, perhaps through a publicly-floated spin-off. Some analysts expressed concerns that divesting healthcare could harm the company’s cash position.

Culp told Bloomberg the company was shelving a plan for a public offering, at least for now with the Danaher deal.

Washington-based Danaher said it plans to run GE Biopharma as a stand-alone unit within its life sciences business. It will finance the transaction with $3 billion from an equity offering.

“We expect GE Biopharma to advance our growth and innovation strategy,” said Danaher Chief Executive Thomas Joyce, adding that the assets will bolster “end-to-end bioprocessing solutions that help enable breakthrough development and production capabilities”. 

Shares of GE jumped 15.1 per cent to $11.71 in early trading, while Danaher gained 8.5 per cent to $123.08. 

WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump on Sunday raised hopes that the United States and China would settle their trade dispute ahead of a March 1 deadline as negotiators met to wrap up the latest round of talks.

The US president said in a Tweet that the trade talks on Saturday were “very productive”.

Talks were extended through the weekend in a bid to iron out differences on changes to China’s treatment of state-owned enterprises, subsidies, forced technology transfers and cybertheft.

The two sides have had no agreement on an enforcement mechanism. Washington wanted a strong mechanism to ensure that Chinese reform commitments were followed through to completion, while Beijing insisted upon what it called a “fair and objective” process.

On Sunday, top officials including US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He arrived for talks at the Winder Building, which houses the headquarters of the United States Trade Representative, an hour later than usual.

Both Mnuchin and Liu went inside without commenting, with Liu smiling when asked if the two sides would have a deal by the end of the day.

Trump said on Friday there was a “good chance” a deal would emerge, and that he might extend the March 1 deadline and move forward with a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Extending the deadline would mean putting on hold a scheduled increase in tariffs to 25 per cent from 10 per cent on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports into the United States.

An extension would hold off a worsening of the trade war that has already disrupted commerce worth hundreds of billions of dollars of goods, slowed global economic growth and riled financial markets.

On Friday, Trump and Mnuchin said US and Chinese officials had reached an agreement on currency issues, but did not give details. US officials have long argued that China’s yuan is undervalued, giving it a trade advantage and partly offsetting US tariffs.

China has committed to buying an additional 10 million metric tonnes of US soybeans.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that both sides were drafting memorandums of understanding (MOUs) on cybertheft, intellectual property rights, services, agriculture and non-tariff barriers to trade, including subsidies.

But Trump said he did not like MOUs because they are short-term, and he wanted a long-term deal.

Trump said the biggest decisions could be reached when he meets with Xi, probably in Florida next month, and that their talks may extend beyond trade to encompass Chinese telecommunications companies Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp.

NEW DELHI/MUMBAI — India outlined a new draft policy for its burgeoning e-commerce sector on Saturday, focusing on data localisation, improved privacy safeguards and measures to combat the sale of counterfeit products.

The proposed overhaul, which would likely increase operating costs for the sector, comes two months after the country modified regulations governing foreign direct investment in e-commerce.

That forced retail giants Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart-owned Flipkart to restructure their Indian operations, and the latest reforms spell further upheaval.

“In the future, economic activity is likely to follow data,” the widely expected draft policy document said. “It is hence vital that we retain control of data to ensure job creation within India.”

The new rules call for the housing of more data centres and server farms locally, amid a broader push for data localisation by the South Asian nation, which is one of the world’s fastest-growing online markets. 

India’s central bank in 2018 forced payments providers such as Mastercard and Visa Inc to store Indian users’ data locally.

“Steps will be taken to develop capacity for data storage in India,” the draft e-commerce rules said. “A period of three years would be given to allow industry to adjust to the data storage requirement.”

Flipkart and Amazon said they were going through the draft rules and will share their inputs with the government.

The proposed rules also seek the creation of a “legal and technological framework” that can help impose restrictions on the cross-border flow of data generated by users, moves that may affect not just e-commerce platforms but also social media firms such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and rival Facebook Inc.

India also plans to mandate all e-commerce firms to provide access to their data stored abroad whenever official requests are made. The rules, which come at a time New Delhi is working on a broader data privacy law, also forbid companies from sharing data stored abroad with other businesses even with user consent.

Other proposals include mandating all e-commerce websites or apps operating in India to have a locally registered business entity, and increasing liability of e-commerce players to ensure products sold on their platforms are not counterfeit or pirated.

“Lot of issues covered, bold decisions,” the All India Online Vendors Association, which represents more than 3,500 online sellers, said in a Tweet.

New Delhi has invited comments on the proposed rules by March 9, after which the rules are likely to be formalised.

SAN FRANCISCO — Google has a new cloud computing boss and big ambitions to someday produce more revenue from that business than from advertising.

Now comes the hard part: winning over big-spending customers.

Alphabet Inc.'s cloud computing division remains a distant third behind Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in terms of global revenue, according to analysts' estimates. A few major companies manage their data on Google's servers. But Google has nowhere near the vast customer base of Amazon, according to a new Reuters analysis of company regulatory filings.

Businesses generally are not required to disclose their cloud vendors. Reuters found 311 out of about 5,000 worldwide that did so in 2018. While not comprehensive, the data provide a window into Google's challenge.

Thirty five of those companies named Google as a cloud provider. The largest by market capitalisation were oil major Total SA and bank HSBC Holdings Plc. 

Amazon Web Services led with 227 clients, including travel company Expedia Group Inc. and industrials giant Siemens AG. Microsoft's Azure cloud had 69 firms, among them weapons maker Axon Enterprise Inc. and business data firm Dun & Bradstreet Co.

Thirty four of the companies cited multiple clouds. 

The previously untracked data show the work ahead for Thomas Kurian, who is weeks on the job as senior vice president of Google Cloud. Kurian has vowed to double down where Google has seen promising results. Specifically, he plans to target governments and top companies in retail, manufacturing, healthcare, media and finance.

"A lot of our focus as we go forward is making sure that our sales organisation has the background and the ability to sell to large, more traditional companies," Kurian said at a Goldman Sachs investor conference last week. "There's enormous appetite in those companies to consider Google."

Google declined to comment or make Kurian available for an interview.

People familiar with his plans said he is looking to reshape his division's culture. A key part is developing or acquiring easy-to-use, industry-specific corporate applications, an area that Amazon and Microsoft do not dominate. 

"It's about the on-ramp onto their cloud," said Daniel Ives, a New York-based financial analyst following the cloud industry for Wedbush Securities. "The main way to get that is through applications."

A 22-year veteran of Oracle Corp., Kurian gave the database company fresh life as the product leader behind its move to selling cloud services. His hire is already making potential customers reconsider Google, said Ray Wang, founder of Constellation Research, a Monta Vista, California-based firm that helps businesses negotiate cloud deals.

"They've worked with him," Wang said. "There's a trust factor that wasn't there before."

Kurian also must reassure some investors bewildered by Google's cloud ambitions: diversifying revenue beyond advertising is a plus, but it is not coming cheap.

Google, Microsoft and Amazon combined spent nearly $53 billion on capital expenses last year, driven by data centre projects to house their clouds. 

With gross margins of 20 per cent or less, selling cloud storage or tools for which customers need specialised staff is less lucrative for a small vendor, industry experts said. But margins on the type of software Kurian likely wants to offer can top even the 60 per cent of Google's ad business.

"The next wave of growth is going to have to come from the heavy hitting applications," said Kerry Liu, chief executive at Rubikloud, which helps retailers with cloud projects.

'Geeky, techy platform'

Google got serious about the cloud around 2016, five years after Amazon Web Services had become a multibillion-dollar behemoth. But Google's reputation for limited customer support has attracted mostly newer businesses or those with significant tech know-how.

Mike Fisher, Etsy Inc.'s chief technology officer, said Google's superior AI tools helped win over the New York-based crafts marketplace. Fisher expects data-crunching algorithms to account for 25 per cent of its server use this year, up from 10 per cent last year.

"We've been more pleasantly surprised than we thought," Fisher said of the cloud's benefits. 

Advertising software company OpenX recently agreed to spend at least $110 million on Google Cloud over five years. The Pasadena, California firm bet its clients would benefit from transacting on the same infrastructure as Google's ads system. 

"It's a bit more of a geeky, techy platform, but we're that kind of company," said Chief Technology Officer Paul Ryan. 

Kurian’s plan 

To attract more traditional corporate clients, Google Cloud will need to do some handholding, executives at its partners and rivals said. 

Kurian is well-suited to the role. Two of his former colleagues said his follow-up and candid disclosures about product limitations helped seal deals at Oracle. An early riser, Kurian impressed staff with his meticulous preparation for morning meetings as well as his recall of the tiniest details of clients' systems from years before.

Kurian also managed billions of dollars in acquisitions at Oracle, including the purchases of software firms BEA Systems and Taleo. 

Applications could come through similar deals and internally: Google is testing product recommendation software for shopping apps, a person familiar with the project said, to add to its small set of specialised tools.

Kurian told the investor conference that "you will see us continue to expand our footprint there".

BENGALURU — European aircraft maker Airbus deliveries of its A320neo aircraft are back on track in India with fewer problems being seen with the narrowbody jet's Pratt & Whitney engines, a senior company executive said on Wednesday.

"Pratt has informed Airbus that engine issues have come down by a factor of four in the last 12 months," said Airbus' India head Anand Stanley, on the sidelines of the Aero India airshow in Bengaluru.

Last month, India's aviation safety watchdog forced airlines to make extra checks on their Airbus A320neo aircraft fitted with Pratt & Whitney engines, as part of new safety protocols after temporary grounding orders affected the planes last year.

IndiGo, India's biggest carrier by market share, and its low-cost rival GoAir, both fly the A320neos.

The aircraft, which entered service in early 2016, boasts significant fuel efficiency benefits, but it has been plagued by teething issues with its engines that have forced Interglobe Aviation-owned IndiGo and Wadia Group-owned GoAir to regularly ground a number of the planes.

This caused a backlog in deliveries of the planes by Airbus.

IndiGo has over 60 A320neos in its fleet and is one of Airbus' biggest global customer with over 400 more A320neo and A321neo jets on order. GoAir has about 30 A320neos in its fleet and over 100 more of the jets ordered.

Stanley said that the reliability rate on A320neo engines is now 99.6 per cent and that it has retrofitted engines of about 95 per cent of the A320neos in service. It expects to finish work on the remainder in the next two months. 

PARIS — A consumer boycott on Danone products in Morocco contributed to the French food giant's profits and sales sinking last year, it said on Tuesday.

The world's largest yoghurt maker said in a statement that its net profit fell by 4.1 per cent to 2.35 billion euros ($2.65 billion) in 2018.

Sales dropped by 2.1 per cent in the last three months of the year, driven by a 35 per cent plunge in Morocco, where there has been unprecedented boycott campaign over high prices against Danone milk and two other well-known brands since April.

The boycott's impact in 2018 "on total net sales was a decrease of -178 million euros (-$201 million) versus 2017 net sales, of which around two thirds come from losses in milk sales, and one third from losses in dairy products", the company said in a statement.

Chief financial officer, Cecile Cabanis, said in a conference call that there was still a market share for Danone's products in Morocco, but she did not expect to return to growth there before the end of 2019.

The boycott campaign against the high cost of living in Morocco spread like wildfire online last year, calling on Danone milk, Afriquia service stations and Sidi Ali water — the leaders in their sectors — to lower their prices.

Despite the boycott, the company said its full-year reported sales were down just 0.7 per cent.

It benefited from sales of dairy products stabilising in Europe, growing strongly in the CIS region that includes most ex-Soviet countries and also improving in Latin America.

In North America, sales in the "essential dairy and plant-based" food products division surged by 12.2 per cent to five billion euros.

Sales of infant formula products fell in China, but Cabanis said the decline was slowing, dropping from 20 per cent in the third quarter to 10 per cent in the fourth.

Looking ahead to the current year, Danone is aiming for like-for-like sales growth of 3 per cent and an operating margin above 15 per cent. 

Following the announcement, the company's share price bumped upwards by 0.3 per cent in morning trading in Paris.