2024-01-05 18:12:57
(Illustration: Camille Charbonneau)
THE ESSENTIAL NEWS
• Slower employment growth in the United States expected in December; the increase in annual salaries should be less than 4%. U.S. job growth appears to have slowed in December, while annual wage growth fell below 4% for the first time in two and a half years, which might bring the Federal Reserve closer to a drop in interest rates. Private payroll employment is expected to increase by 170,000 jobs last month, following an increase of 199,000 jobs in November.
• Brookfield buys American Tower’s Indian operations for $2.5 billion. Brookfield Asset Management will buy American Tower Corp’s loss-making Indian operations for $2.5 billion, it said, becoming the country’s largest telecom tower operator amid booming demand data and wider use of 5G services.
• First Quantum in talks with Jiangxi Copper on the sale of its stake in Zambian mines — source. Canadian mining company First Quantum Minerals is in talks to sell a stake in its Zambian copper mines to Chinese state-owned Jiangxi Copper Corp, in a bid to strengthen the company’s finances, a person at made the file.
• Exxon’s profits will fall due to the abandonment of offshore activities in California and falling prices. Exxon said Thursday it would write down regarding $2.5 billion in California assets in the fourth quarter, and that falling energy prices would reduce its operating profits.
• Rogers Communications restores services following outage in Canada. Canadian company Rogers Communications said its services were restored following users in the Toronto area experienced intermittent service outages Thursday evening.
TRENDS BEFORE OPENING
Futures for Canada’s main stock index slide ahead of the country’s jobs report, as the strengthened U.S. dollar weighs on metals prices. Wall Street futures are falling as investors await the private payroll employment report that might give hope for Fed easing sooner than expected. European stocks fell across the board, poised for their first weekly loss in eight weeks. Chinese stocks ended lower on concerns over a slow economic recovery and signs of deflationary pressure, while Japanese shares gained ground as a weak yen boosted exporters. At the same time, concerns over supply disruptions in the Red Sea continued to support oil prices.
(Re)read all the market news
HEADLINES TO FOLLOW
Transactions
• Brookfield Asset Management: The company said it wants to buy American Tower’s loss-making Indian operations for $2.5 billion, becoming the country’s largest telecom tower operator amid an explosion in demand for more data and information. wider use of 5G services. This acquisition is the largest of three telecommunications-related transactions carried out by Brookfield since its establishment in India approximately four years ago. ATC, for its part, will leave India following almost 17 years. Its situation has deteriorated due to the difficulties encountered by its main customer, Vodafone Idea, and the recent write-down of the value of its activities by $322 million. Brookfield, whose anchor client is Reliance Jio, will be in a “better position to handle the challenge that ATC had with high exposure to Vodafone Idea”, said Vivekanand S, an analyst at Ambit Capital Research.
Others
• First Quantum Minerals: The Canadian miner is in talks to sell a stake in its Zambian copper mines to Chinese state-owned Jiangxi Copper to strengthen its finances, a person familiar with the matter told Archyde.com. Details have not yet been finalized and it is unclear whether the latest talks will result in a transaction, she said. The talks began last month following First Quantum suffered a major blow in Panama, where it was ordered to close one of the world’s largest copper mines, which ratings agency Fitch said might harm the group’s borrowing capacity. In Zambia, First Quantum owns 100% of the Sentinel mine and 80% of the Kansanshi mine, with the remainder owned by the Zambian government. Jiangxi, First Quantum’s largest shareholder, might end up buying one of the two mines or a stake in one of them, this person added. “The Chinese want the Zambian mines…so the company (First Quantum) might sell one of the Zambian mines,” the source said.
• Rogers Communications: The Canadian company said its services were restored following users in the Toronto area suffered intermittent disruptions Thursday evening. “Some customers in the Greater Toronto Area may have experienced a brief degradation of their residential services this evening due to a technical issue,” the company said in a statement. “Services have been restored to all customers. Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from multiple sources, including errors reported by users on its platform, has logged just over 55,000 outage reports users at the peak of the outage, which lasted less than an hour.
Click next to see the recommendations
1704479528
#Market #news #Friday #January
