WASHINGTON, Jan 27 (Reuters) – Tesla (TSLA.O) Chief Executive Elon Musk met two top White House officials on Friday in Washington to discuss how the car maker and Democratic President Joe Biden could work together to advance electric vehicle production and speed electrification of U.S. vehicle networks.
Musk met John Podesta, a Democratic stalwart who serves as Biden’s senior advisor for clean energy innovation, and Mitch Landrieu, who oversees infrastructure spending, a White House spokesperson told Reuters.
“John Podesta and Mitch Landrieu met with Elon Musk to discuss shared goals around electrification and how the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act can advance electric vehicle production and charging as well as the broader cause of electrification,” the White House spokesperson said.
Musk responded on Twitter to a link to an earlier version of this story with “True.”
A Reuters witness on Friday saw Podesta, Landrieu and Musk entering a downtown building that houses both Tesla’s Washington lobbying operation and the Center for American Progress, a think tank Podesta founded. Landrieu and Podesta left about half an hour later and did not answer questions.
Musk left about 45 minutes after Podesta and Landrieu. He too ignored questions from a Reuters reporter.
BIDEN, MUSK TENSIONS
Relations have often seemed antagonistic between Biden, who has pushed for companies to use union labor, and Musk, who has pushed to keep unions out of his factories.
Musk called Biden “a damp sock puppet in human form” last year after Biden highlighted EV production by GM and Ford in a tweet but left out Tesla.
Biden only publicly acknowledged the role of Tesla in U.S. electric vehicle manufacturing over a year after taking office, after Musk repeatedly complained about being ignored.
In June, Biden compared Tesla unfavorably to Ford and sarcastically wished Musk “lots of luck” on his “trip to the moon” after the billionaire expressed reservations about the economy.
Still, Musk has long-standing important relationships with the U.S. government, and those have continued under the Biden administration.
Tesla has benefited from tax subsidies given to buyers of its electric vehicles while SpaceX, Musk’s rocket company, has contracts worth billions of dollars to deliver astronauts and cargo to and from the International Space Station, and to build a moon lander.
U.S. consumers who bought Teslas became eligible again this month for up to $7,500 in consumer tax credits, under the $430 billion U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed last August. An earlier tax credit for Tesla buyers expired after the automaker sold its first 200,000 vehicles in the United States.
The law imposes requirements that EVs receiving the tax credits must be North American-made. There are also caps on vehicle prices and income for buyers who are eligible for the credits.
The law also sets new battery sourcing restrictions expected to take effect in March. It also includes new U.S. battery production credits that Musk said earlier this week could have significant benefits to the company.
Reporting by Nandita Bose, David Shepardson and Raphael Satter; Editing by Heather Timmons, David Gregorio and Rosalba O’Brien
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
MUMBAI, Jan 27 (Reuters) – Shares of India’s Adani Enterprises (ADEL.NS) sank 15% on Friday as a scathing report by a U.S. short seller triggered a rout in the conglomerate’s listed firms, casting doubts on how investors will respond to the company’s record $2.45 billion secondary sale.
Seven listed companies of the Adani conglomerate – controlled by one of the world’s richest men Gautam Adani – have lost a combined $43.5 billion in market capitalisation since Wednesday, with U.S. bonds of Adani firms also falling after Hindenburg Research flagged concerns in a Jan. 24 report about debt levels and the use of tax havens.
Adani Group has dismissed the report as baseless and said it is considering whether to take legal action against the New York-based firm.
“There were heavy positions in Adani group (shares), the way they have risen in the last couple of years,” said Neeraj Dewan, director at Quantum Securities in New Delhi.
“This is a classic case of panic selling…,” he said, noting the concerns were also spreading to Indian banks with exposure to Adani group’s debt.
The index tracking state-run banks (.NIFTYPSU) was down 4.6%, while the main Nifty Bank index (.NSEBANK) fell 2.7%.
CLSA estimates that Indian banks were exposed to about 40% of the 2 trillion Indian rupees ($24.53 billion) of Adani group debt in the fiscal year to March 2022.
The stunning selloff has cast a shadow over Adani Enterprises’ secondary sale which began on Friday. The anchor portion of the sale saw participation from investors including the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority on Wednesday.
The firm has set a floor price of 3,112 rupees ($38.22) a share and a cap of 3,276 rupees. But by midday on Friday, the stock had slumped to 2,875 rupees – well below the lower end of the price offering.
As of 0700 GMT, investors, mostly retail, had bid for around 200,000 shares, compared with the 45.5 million on offer, according to BSE exchange data. Bidding for retail investors will close on Jan. 31.
Shares of other listed Adani firms also plummetted, with Adani Transmission Ltd (ADAI.NS) Adani Total Gas (ADAG.NS), Adani Green Energy (ADNA.NS) and Adani Ports (APSE.NS) sinking 20% each.
In its report, Hindenburg said key listed Adani Group companies had “substantial debt”, putting the conglomerate on a “precarious financial footing”, and that “sky-high valuations” had pushed the share prices of seven listed Adani companies as much as 85% beyond actual value.
Billionaire U.S. investor Bill Ackman said on Thursday that he found the Hindenburg report “highly credible and extremely well researched.”
Hindenburg said it held short positions in Adani through its U.S.-traded bonds and non-Indian-traded derivative instruments, meaning it is betting that their price would fall.
Adani Group has repeatedly faced and dismissed concern about debt levels. It defended itself in a presentation titled “Myths of Short Seller” on Thursday, saying deleveraging by promoters – or key shareholders – was “in a high growth phase”.
Jefferies in a client note said Adani Group had shared details of debt and leverage levels, and that it does not “see material risk arising to the Indian banking sector”.
Adani has said its debt is at a manageable level and that no investor has raised any concern.
Adani Enterprises’ net profit for the period ended Sept. 30, 2022 doubled to 9 billion Indian rupees ($110.31 million) while its total income nearly tripled to 795 billion Indian rupees, according to its share sale prospectus.
The company’s total liabilities as of September 2022 stood at 869 billion rupees ($10.64 billion), the prospectus showed.
The Adani conglomerate has been diversifying its business interests and last year bought cement firms ACC (ACC.NS) and Ambuja Cements (ABUJ.NS) from Switzerland’s Holcim (HOLN.S) for $10.5 billion. ACC was down 15% on Friday, while Ambuja plunged up to 25%.
Reporting by M. Sriram and Chris Thomas; Editing by Aditya Kalra, Christopher Cushing and Kim Coghill
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Jan 26 (Reuters) – New data from one U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) database shows a possible stroke risk link for older adults who received an updated Pfizer (PFE.N)/BioNTech (22UAy.DE) COVID-19 booster shot, but the signal is weaker than what the agency had flagged earlier in January, health officials said on Thursday.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials said they had not detected a link between the shots and strokes in two other safety monitoring databases.
The new data was presented at a meeting of outside experts that advise the FDA on vaccine policy.
Earlier this month, U.S. health officials said they had detected the possible link to ischemic strokes in people over age 65 who received the newer booster shots in its Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) database. They said at the time it was very unlikely to represent a true clinical risk.
Dr. Nicola Klein of healthcare company Kaiser Permanente, which maintains VSD data for the CDC, said the rate of strokes observed in the database had slowed in recent weeks, but the signal was still statistically significant, meaning likely not by chance.
Most of the confirmed cases had also received a flu vaccine at the same time, which might be a factor, she said.
FDA scientist Richard Forshee said the agency plans to study whether there is any increased risk of stroke from receiving the two shots at the same time.
Both agencies still recommend older adults receive the booster shots, now tailored to target Omicron variants as well as the original coronavirus.
Dr. Walid Gellad, professor of medicine at University of Pittsburgh, said the issue required further investigation.
“Sometimes signals are not clear,” Gellad said in an email. “It makes sense to look into it more, and it doesn’t make sense to change practice given the known benefits (of getting the booster) in this age group.”
(This story has been corrected to fix the name to Nicola from Nicole in paragraph 5)
Reporting by Michael Erman; Editing by Bill Berkrot
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Jan 25 (Reuters) – Donald Trump could learn soon whether he or any associates will be charged or cleared of wrongdoing in a Georgia probe into his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, one of a series of legal threats looming over the Republican former U.S. president:
GEORGIA ELECTION TAMPERING PROBE
On Tuesday, the prosecutor in the state of Georgia spoke to a judge on behalf of a special grand jury empanelled in May to investigate Trump’s alleged efforts to influence that state’s 2020 election results.
Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney and a Democrat who will ultimately decide whether to pursue charges against Trump or anyone else, said the grand jury had completed its task and decisions were “imminent.”
The investigation focuses in part on a phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, on Jan. 2, 2021. Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” enough votes needed to overturn Trump’s election loss in Georgia.
Legal experts said Trump may have violated at least three Georgia criminal election laws: conspiracy to commit election fraud, criminal solicitation to commit election fraud and intentional interference with performance of election duties.
Trump could argue that his discussions were constitutionally protected free speech.
U.S. CAPITOL ATTACK
The U.S. Justice Department has investigations under way into both Trump’s actions in the 2020 election and his retention of highly classified documents after departing the White House in 2021.
Both investigations involving Trump are being overseen by Jack Smith, a war crimes prosecutor and political independent. Trump has accused the FBI, without evidence, of launching the probes as political retribution.
A special House of Representatives committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, assault by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol urged the Justice Department to charge Trump with corruption of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to make a false statement and inciting or aiding an insurrection.
The request is non-binding. Only the Justice Department can decide whether to charge Trump, who has called the Democratic-led panel’s investigation a politically motivated sham.
MISSING GOVERNMENT RECORDS
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith to investigate whether Trump improperly retained classified records at his Florida estate after he left office in 2021 and then tried to obstruct a federal investigation.
Garland also appointed former U.S. Attorney Robert Hur for Maryland to investigate the removal of classified records in President Joe Biden’s possession dating to his time as vice president.
It is unlawful to willfully remove or retain classified material.
In Trump’s case, the FBI seized 11,000 documents from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago Florida estate in a court-approved Aug. 8 search. About 100 documents were marked classified; some were designated top secret, the highest level of classification.
Trump has accused the Justice Department of engaging in a partisan witch hunt.
NEW YORK ATTORNEY GENERAL CIVIL LAWSUIT
New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a civil lawsuit filed in September that her office uncovered more than 200 examples of misleading asset valuations by Trump and the Trump Organization business between 2011 and 2021.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Commerce, Georgia, U.S. March 26, 2022. REUTERS/Alyssa Pointer/File Photo
A Democrat, James accused Trump of inflating his net worth by billions of dollars to obtain lower interest rates on loans and get better insurance coverage.
A New York judge ordered that an independent monitor be appointed to oversee the Trump Organization before the case goes to trial in October 2023.
James seeks to permanently bar Trump and his children Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka Trump from running companies in New York state, and to prevent them and his company from buying new properties and taking out new loans in the state for five years.
James also wants the defendants to hand over about $250 million that she says was obtained through fraud.
Trump has called the attorney general’s lawsuit a witch hunt. A lawyer for Trump has called James’ claims meritless.
James said her probe also uncovered evidence of criminal wrongdoing, which she referred to federal prosecutors and the Internal Revenue Service for investigation.
DEFAMATION CASE
E. Jean Carroll, a former Elle magazine writer, has filed two lawsuits accusing Trump of having defamed her when he denied her allegation that he raped her in New York’s Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in late 1995 or early 1996.
Trump accuses her of lying to drum up sales for a book.
Carroll first sued Trump after he denied the accusation in June 2019 and told a reporter at the White House that he did not know Carroll, that “she’s not my type,” and that she concocted the claim to sell her new memoir.
The second lawsuit arose from an October 2022 social media post where Trump called the rape claim a “hoax,” “lie,” “con job” and “complete scam,” and said “this can only happen to ‘Trump’!”
That lawsuit includes a battery claim under the Adult Survivors Act, which starting last Nov. 24 gave adults a one-year window to sue their alleged attackers even if statutes of limitations have expired.
A U.S. judge on Jan. 13 rejected as “absurd” Trump’s effort to dismiss the second lawsuit.
Trump and Carroll are awaiting a decision from a Washington, D.C., appeals court on whether, under local law, Trump should be immune from Carroll’s first lawsuit over his June 2019 comments.
That lawsuit would likely be dismissed if the court decided that Trump spoke within his role as president, and continue if Trump spoke in his personal capacity as Carroll argues.
Any decision would have no effect on Carroll’s second defamation and battery lawsuit. A trial in the first lawsuit is scheduled for April 10.
NEW YORK CRIMINAL PROBE
Although Trump was not charged with wrongdoing, his real estate company was found guilty on Dec. 6 of tax fraud in New York state. A judge this month sentenced Trump’s namesake real estate company to pay a $1.6 million criminal penalty, the maximum the judge could impose.
Jurors convicted the Trump Organization, which operates hotels, golf courses and other real estate around the world, of paying personal expenses for top executives including former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, and issuing bonus checks to them as if they were independent contractors.
Weisselberg, the company’s former chief financial officer, pleaded guilty and was required to testify against the Trump Organization as part of his plea agreement. He is also a defendant in James’ civil lawsuit.
Reporting by Joseph Ax, Luc Cohen, Karen Freifeld, Sarah N. Lynch, Jonathan Stempel and Jacqueline Thomsen; Editing by Howard Goller
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Jan 25 (Reuters) – Tesla Inc’s (TSLA.O) aggressive price cuts have ignited demand for its electric vehicles, Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Wednesday, playing down concerns that a weak economy would throttle buyers’ interest.
The company slightly beat Wall Street targets for fourth-quarter revenue and profit earlier on Wednesday despite a sharp decline in vehicle profit margins, and it sought to reassure investors that it can cut costs to cope with recession and as competition intensifies in the year ahead.
Deep price cuts this month have positioned Tesla as the initiator of a price war, but its forecast of a 37% rise in car volume for the year, to 1.8 million vehicles, was down from 2022’s pace.
However, Musk, who has missed his own ambitious sales targets for Tesla in recent years, said 2023 deliveries could hit 2 million vehicles, absent external disruption.
Tesla’s sales prospects, as it confronts a weaker economy, are a key focus for investors. The company said it maintains a long-term target of a compounded 50% annual rise in sales.
Musk addressed the issue at the start of a call with investors and analysts.
“These price changes really make a difference for the average consumer,” he said, adding that vehicle orders were roughly double production in January, leading the automaker to make small price increases for the Model Y SUV.
He said he expected a “pretty difficult recession this year,” but demand for Tesla vehicles “will be good despite probably a contraction in the automotive market as a whole.”
Shares rose 5.3% in extended trading.
CYBERTRUCK
The company is relying on older products and Musk said its Cybertruck, its next new electric pickup truck, would not begin volume production until next year. Reuters in November reported that the highly anticipated model would not be produced in volume until late this year.
Tesla will detail plans for a “next-generation vehicle platform” at its investor day in March.
Tesla’s vehicles “are all in desperate need of updates beyond software,” said Jessica Caldwell, Edmunds’ executive director of insights. She said Tesla will largely depend on the cheaper unit as well as Model 3 and Model Y to bring EVs to the masses.
“It’s unlikely that the Cybertruck will attempt to achieve mass-market volumes like the Detroit competitors.”
Reuters Graphics
[1/5] A Tesla supercharging station is seen in the early morning sun, in Kettleman City, California, U.S., January 25, 2023. REUTERS/Mike Blake
Reuters Graphics
Analysts said Tesla’s goal is bullish given the macroeconomic uncertainties.
“I think that you’re going to see some severe demand destruction across consumer spending and I think cars are going to take a big hit,” Edward Moya, senior market analyst at OANDA, said.
Tesla said it does not expect meaningful near-term volume growth from China, since its Shanghai factory was running near full capacity, rebounding from production challenges last year.
“Even a small cooling of demand will have significant implications for the bottom line,” said Sophie Lund-Yates, an analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.
Tesla said that its automotive gross margins, which dropped to a two-year low of 25.9% in the reported quarter, were pressured by the costs of ramping up battery production and new factories in Berlin and Texas, as well as higher raw material, commodity, logistics and warranty costs.
Tesla expected its automotive gross margin to remain above 20%.
Margins generally are expected to be under further pressure from its aggressive price cuts. Tesla, which had made a series of price increases since early 2021, reversed course and offered discounts in December in the United States, followed by price cuts of as much as 20% this month.
Analysts had said Tesla’s profitability gave it room to cut prices and pressure rivals. The company’s $9,000 in net profit per vehicle in the past quarter was more than seven times the comparable figure for Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T) in the third quarter. But it was down from almost $9,700 in the third quarter.
“In severe recessions, cash is king, big time,” Musk said, adding that Tesla is well positioned to cope with an economic downturn because of its $20 billion of cash.
The company’s stock posted its worst drop last year, hit by demand worries and Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, which fueled investor concerns he would be distracted from running Tesla.
Musk dismissed surveys that suggest his political comments on Twitter are damaging the Tesla brand. “I might not be popular” with some, he said, “but for the vast majority of people, my follow count speaks for itself.” He has 127 million followers.
Revenue was $24.32 billion for the three months ended Dec. 31, compared with analysts’ average estimate of $24.16 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
Tesla’s full-year earnings were bolstered by $1.78 billion in regulatory credits, up 21% from a year earlier.
Adjusted earnings per share of $1.19 topped the Wall Street analyst average of $1.13.
It ended the fourth quarter with 13 days’ worth of vehicles in inventory, more than four times higher than the start of 2022, and a record $12.8 billion in value.
Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin in San Francisco and Akash Sriram in Bengaluru, Additinoal reporting by Joe White and Ben Klayman in Detroit and Kevin Krolicki in Singapore
Writing by Peter Henderson
Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila, Matthew Lewis, Sam Holmes and David Goodman
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Jan 25 (Reuters) – Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) said Wednesday it will reinstate former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks, following a two-year suspension after the deadly Capitol Hill riot on January 6, 2021.
The restoration of his accounts could provide a boost to Trump, who announced in November he will make another run for the White House in 2024. He has 34 million followers on Facebook and 23 million on Instagram, platforms that are key vehicles for political outreach and fundraising.
His Twitter account was restored in November by new owner Elon Musk, though Trump has yet to post there.
Free speech advocates say it is appropriate for the public to have access to messaging from political candidates, but critics of Meta have accused the company of lax moderating policies.
Meta said in a blog post Wednesday it has “put new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses.”
“In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation,” wrote Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, in the blog post.
The decision, while widely expected, drew sharp rebukes from civil rights advocates. “Facebook has policies but they under-enforce them,” said Laura Murphy, an attorney who led a two-year long audit of Facebook concluding in 2020. “I worry about Facebook’s capacity to understand the real world harm that Trump poses: Facebook has been too slow to act.”
The Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, Free Press and other groups also expressed concern Wednesday over Facebook’s ability to prevent any future attacks on the democratic process, with Trump still repeating his false claim that he won the 2020 presidential election.
Others said it was the right decision.
Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and a former ACLU official, defended the reinstatement. He had previously endorsed the company’s decision to suspend Trump’s account.
“The public has an interest in hearing directly from candidates for political office,” said Jaffer. “It’s better if the major social media platforms err on the side of leaving speech up, even if the speech is offensive or false, so that it can be addressed by other users and other institutions.”
OTHER REACTIVATIONS?
The decision to ban Trump was a polarizing one for Meta, the world’s biggest social media company, which prior to the Trump suspension had never blocked the account of a sitting head of state for violating its content rules.
The company indefinitely revoked Trump’s access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts after removing two of his posts during the Capitol Hill violence, including a video in which he reiterated his false claim of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election.
It then referred the case to its independent oversight board, which ruled that the suspension was justified but its indeterminate nature was not. In response, Meta said it would revisit the suspension two years after it began.
Meta’s blog post Wednesday suggested it may reactivate other suspended accounts, including those penalized for their involvement in civil unrest. The company said those reinstated accounts would be subject to more stringent review and penalties for violations.
Whether, and how, Trump will seize upon the opportunity to return to Facebook and Instagram is unclear.
Trump has not sent any new tweets since regaining his account on Twitter, saying he would prefer to stick with his own app Truth Social. But his campaign spokesman told Fox News Digital last week that being back on Facebook “will be an important tool for the 2024 campaign to reach voters.”
In a post on Truth Social, Trump responded to his reinstatement on Meta apps, saying: “Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting President, or anybody else who is not deserving of retribution!” He did not indicate if or when he would begin posting on Meta platforms again.
Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat who previously chaired the House Intelligence Committee, criticized the decision to reinstate him.
“Trump incited an insurrection,” Schiff wrote on Twitter. “Giving him back access to a social media platform to spread his lies and demagoguery is dangerous.”
Reporting by Sheila Dang in Dallas and Katie Paul in Palo Alto; additional reporting by Greg Bensinger, David Shepardson, Kanishka Singh, Eva Mathews and Yuvraj Malik; Editing by Kenneth Li and Rosalba O’Brien
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
BUCHAREST, Jan 25 (Reuters) – Divisive internet personality Andrew Tate said on Wednesday there was no justice in Romania and that the case file against him in a criminal investigation for alleged human trafficking and rape was empty.
Tate, his brother Tristan and two Romanian female suspects have been in police custody since Dec. 29 pending an ongoing criminal investigation on charges of forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women, accusations they deny.
On Thursday, a Romanian court extended their detention until Feb. 27. Prosecutors have said the Tate brothers recruited their victims by seducing them and falsely claiming to want a relationship or marriage.
The victims were then taken to properties on the outskirts of the capital Bucharest and through physical violence and mental intimidation were sexually exploited by being forced to produce pornographic content for social media sites that generated large financial gain, prosecutors said.
They also said Andrew Tate, a former professional kickboxer who holds U.S. and British nationality, raped one of the victims in March last year, which he has denied.
“They know we have done nothing wrong,” Tate told reporters as he was brought in for further questioning by anti-organised crime prosecutors, the first comments to the media since his arrest. “This file is completely empty. Of course it’s unjust, there is no justice in Romania unfortunately.”
Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan are escorted by police officers outside the headquarters of the Bucharest Court of Appeal, in Bucharest, Romania, January 10, 2023. Inquam Photos/Octav Ganea via REUTERS
Asked whether he has hurt women, Tate said: “Of course not.”
Earlier this month, Romanian authorities said they had seized goods and money worth 18 million lei ($3.99 million), including luxury cars and properties as a part of the investigation.
“There is no evidence against me,” Tristan Tate told reporters on Wednesday. “The authorities are planning to steal my cars and steal my money. That is why I am in jail.”
Prosecutors have said the seizure was meant to prevent the assets being concealed.
The Tates “are confident in the defence, they are confident in the evidence in their favour, they have given a detailed statement, they have collaborated (with authorities),” their lawyer Eugen Vidineac told reporters after the questioning.
“We believe the defence is starting to take shape.”
Andrew Tate gained mainstream notoriety for misogynistic remarks that got him banned from all major social media platforms, although his Twitter account was reinstated in November after Elon Musk acquired the social media network.
Reporting by Luiza Ilie and Octav Ganea; Editing by Nick Macfie and Daniel Wallis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Outage impacts Microsoft cloud platform Azure for hours
Multiple Microsoft services including Teams and Outlook hit
Microsoft says most customers now have service restored
Shares down 3.2%
Jan 25 (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) said on Wednesday it had recovered all of its cloud services after a networking outage took down its cloud platform Azure along with services such as Teams and Outlook used by millions around the globe.
Azure’s status page showed services were impacted in Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. Only services in China and its platform for governments were not hit.
By late morning Azure said most customers should have seen services resume after a full recovery of the Microsoft Wide Area Network (WAN).
An outage of Azure, which has 15 million corporate customers and over 500 million active users, according to Microsoft data, can impact multiple services and create a domino effect as almost all of the world’s largest companies use the platform.
Businesses have become increasingly dependent on online platforms after the pandemic caused a shift to more employees working from home.
Earlier, Microsoft said it had determined a network connectivity issue was occurring with devices across the Microsoft WAN. This impacts connectivity between clients on the internet to Azure, as well as connectivity between services in data centres, it said.
Microsoft later tweeted that it had rolled back a network change that it believed was causing the issue and was using “additional infrastructure to expedite the recovery process”.
Microsoft did not disclose the number of users affected by the disruption, but data from outage tracking website Downdetector showed thousands of incidents across continents.
The Downdetector site tracks outages by collating status reports from various sources including users.
Microsoft’s cloud business had helped shore up its fiscal second-quarter earnings on Tuesday. It forecast third-quarter revenue in its so-called intelligent cloud business would be $21.7 billion to $22 billion despite worries that the lucrative cloud segment for big tech companies could be hit hard as customers look to cut spending.
Azure’s share of the cloud computing market rose to 30% in 2022, trailing Amazon’s AWS, according to estimates from BofA Global Research.
[1/5] Microsoft Teams app is seen on the smartphone placed on the keyboard in this illustration taken, July 26, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Microsoft joined other big tech companies in turning to layoffs to ride out the weaker economy, announcing last week it was cutting over 10,000 jobs.
Its shares were down 3.2% at $234.41.
Outages of Big Tech platforms are not uncommon as several companies ranging from Google (GOOGL.O) to Meta (META.O) have seen service disruptions. Azure, the second largest cloud services provider after Amazon (AMZN.O), faced outages last year.
During the outage, users faced problems in exchanging messages, joining calls or using any features of Teams application. Many users took to Twitter to share updates about the service disruption, with #MicrosoftTeams trending as a hashtag on the social media site.
Microsoft Teams, used by more than 280 million people globally, forms an integral part of daily operations for businesses and schools, which use the service to make calls, schedule meetings and organise their workflow.
There were few signs of significant disruption at major UK-based financial services firms, where multiple messaging applications offered by providers like Movius and Symphony are used alongside Microsoft Teams to connect bankers with clients, and office-based staff with colleagues working remotely.
Two London-based sources, working at two major global banks, said they hadn’t even noticed a problem.
Deutsche Boerse Group, which operates the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, said there had been no impact on trading. Frankfurt-based Commerzbank AG (CBKG.DE) said in a statement that Microsoft was investigating several issues impacting the bank.
Among the other services affected were Microsoft Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, according to the company’s status page.
“I think there is a very big debate to be had on resiliency in the comms and cloud space and the critical applications,” Symphony Chief Executive Brad Levy said.
Reporting by Akriti Sharma in Bengaluru and Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm, additional reporting by Sinead Cruise in London; Writing by Charlie Devereux, Editing by Elaine Hardcastle
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
BENGALURU, Jan 25 (Reuters) – Hindenburg Research said on Wednesday it held short positions in India’s Adani Group, accusing the conglomerate of improper extensive use of entities set up in offshore tax havens and expressing concern about high debt levels.
The report, which comes days ahead of a $2.5 billion share offering by flagship firm Adani Enterprises (ADEL.NS), sent shares in Adani group firms sliding.
Hindenburg, a well known U.S. short-seller, said key listed companies in the group controlled by billionaire Gautam Adani had “substantial debt” which has put the entire group on a “precarious financial footing”.
It also said that seven Adani listed companies have an 85% downside on a fundamental basis due to what it called “sky-high valuations”.
An Adani spokesperson did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment on the report, which Hindenburg said was based on research that involved speaking with dozens of individuals, including former Adani Group executives as well as a review of documents.
Hindenburg said it held its short positions through U.S.-traded bonds and non-Indian-traded derivative instruments.
Adani has repeatedly dismissed debt concerns. Adani Chief Financial Officer Jugeshinder Singh told media on Jan. 21 “Nobody has raised debt concerns to us. No single investor has.”
In the wake of the Hindenburg report, Adani Ports And Special Economic Zone (APSE.NS) slid 7.3% to its lowest level since early July, while Adani Enterprises dropped 3.7% to a near three-month low.
Reuters Graphics Reuters Graphics
Adani-owned cement firms ACC (ACC.NS) and Ambuja Cements (ABUJ.NS) fell 6.7% and 9.7% respectively.
Hindenburg’s report said that five of seven key listed Adani companies have reported current ratios – a measure of liquid assets minus near-term liabilities – below 1. This, the short-seller said, suggested “a heightened short-term liquidity risk.”
Adani Group’s total gross debt in the financial year ending March 31, 2022, rose 40% to 2.2 trillion rupees.
Refinitiv data shows that debt at all the Adani Group’s seven key listed Adani companies exceeds equity, with debt at Adani Green Energy Ltd (ADNA.NS) exceeding equity by more than 2,000%.
CreditSights, part of the Fitch Group, described the group last September as “overleveraged” and said it had concerns over its debt. While the report later corrected some calculation errors, CreditSights said it maintained its concerns over leverage.
Hindenburg is known for shorting electric truck maker Nikola Corp (NKLA.O) and Twitter though it later reversed its position in Twitter.
Shares in Adani Enterprises surged 125% in 2022, while other group companies, including power and gas units, rose more than 100%.
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WASHINGTON, Jan 24 (Reuters) – U.S. senators slammed Live Nation Entertainment’s lack of transparency and inability to block bot purchases of tickets on Tuesday, in a hearing called after a major fiasco involving ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s upcoming concert tour.
Live Nation Entertainment Inc (LYV.N) subsidiary Ticketmaster, which has been unpopular with fans for years, has drawn fresh heat from U.S. lawmakers over how it handled ticket sales last fall for Swift’s “Eras” tour, her first in five years. Experts say Ticketmaster commands more than 70% market share of primary ticket services for major U.S. concert venues.
“We apologize to the fans, we apologize to Ms. Swift, we need to do better and we will do better,” Joe Berchtold, who is president and chief financial officer of Live Nation, told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday.
“In hindsight there are several things we could have done better – including staggering the sales over a longer period of time and doing a better job setting fan expectations for getting tickets,” Berchtold said.
Republican Senator Mike Lee said in an opening statement that the Ticketmaster debacle highlighted the importance of considering whether “new legislation or perhaps just better enforcement of existing laws might be needed to protect the American people.”
LACK OF COMPETITION
Senators slammed Berchtold for Live Nation’s fee structure and inability to deal with bots which bulk buy tickets and resell them at inflated prices.
“There isn’t transparency when no one knows who sets the fees,” Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar said, responding to Berchtold’s claim that Live Nation fees fluctuate based on “ratings.”
Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn called Live Nation’s bot problem “unbelievable,” pointing out that much smaller companies are able to limit bad actors in their systems.
“You ought to be able to get some good advice from people and figure it out,” she said.
[1/2] Taylor Swift arrives at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, U.S., August 28, 2022. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
“I’m not against big per se, but I am against dumb,” Republican Senator John Kennedy said, referring to Live Nation’s dominance in the ticket sales market. “The way your company handled ticket sales for Ms. Swift was a debacle, and whoever in your company was in charge of that should be fired.
“If you care about the consumer, cut the price! Cut out the bots! Cut out the middle people and if you really care about the consumer, give the consumer a break!”
Jack Groetzinger, cofounder of ticket sales platform SeatGeek, testified that the process of buying tickets is “antiquated and ripe for innovation” and called for the breakup of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, which merged in 2010.
“As long as Live Nation remains both the dominant concert promoter and ticketer of major venues in the U.S., the industry will continue to lack competition and struggle,” he told lawmakers.
Ticketmaster has argued that the bots used by scalpers were behind the Taylor Swift debacle, and Berchtold asked for more help in fighting the bots that buy tickets for resale.
Other witnesses include Jerry Mickelson, president of JAM Productions, who has been among critics of Ticketmaster.
In November, Ticketmaster canceled a planned ticket sale to the general public for Swift’s tour after more than 3.5 billion requests from fans, bots and scalpers overwhelmed its website.
Senator Klobuchar, who heads the Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel, has said the issues that cropped up in November were not new and potentially stemmed from consolidation in the ticketing industry.
In November, Ticketmaster denied any anticompetitive practices and noted it remained under a consent decree with the Justice Department following its 2010 merger with Live Nation, adding that there was no “evidence of systemic violations of the consent decree.”
A previous Ticketmaster dispute with the Justice Department culminated in a December 2019 settlement extending the consent agreement into 2025.
Reporting by Diane Bartz, Moira Warburton and David Shepardson; editing by Jonathan Oatis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Diane Bartz
Thomson Reuters
Focused on U.S. antitrust as well as corporate regulation and legislation, with experience involving covering war in Bosnia, elections in Mexico and Nicaragua, as well as stories from Brazil, Chile, Cuba, El Salvador, Nigeria and Peru.
