World

The boss of cryptocurrency exchange Binance told AFP on Thursday that he had pledged $500 million to fund Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter to support free speech. 

Changpeng Zhao, who goes by CZ, said he used Twitter more than he used his own trading platform and was keen to support it.

“Twitter is probably the most important free speech platform in the world,” he told AFP at the VivaTech trade show in Paris.

In April, Tesla boss Musk formulated a plan to buy Twitter for $44 billion, saying he wanted to promote free speech on the platform. 

In particular, he said he was ready to reinstate former US president Donald Trump, who was expelled from the network for inciting his supporters before the Capitol riots in Washington on January 6 last year.

At the beginning of May, Musk said he had raised more than $7 billion to finance the deal from investors including Oracle founder Larry Ellison, Sequoia Capital and Binance. 

But Musk has since cast doubt on his ambitions, threatening to withdraw his offer if he does not get reliable data on the number of fake accounts in circulation on Twitter.

Zhao, who has 6.4 million followers on Twitter, said he would stand behind Musk’s decision, whichever way he goes.

“He’s taking the lead, we’re following,” he said.

“If Elon commits to it, we’re committed. If Elon calls it off, then most likely we’re off.”

Musk is due to meet Twitter employees on Thursday for a question and answer session, the first since his takeover bid. 

Sometimes described as the “Elon Musk of cryptocurrencies”, Zhao said the comparison was too flattering. 

“Elon is a much stronger entrepreneur. Also, he is a genius,” said the Binance boss, who said he exchanged with the Tesla boss via the Signal app but has not yet met him in person. 

Talks at the World Trade Organization were going deep into overtime on Thursday with countries trying to thrash out an over-arching deal encompassing food security, fishing and combating Covid-19.

With ministers struggling to conclude agreements on each separate topic, countries were going round the clock making tit-for-tat trade-offs which, they hope, could see several measures go through as one package.

Ministers from the global trade body’s 164 members have been talking since Sunday at the WTO’s headquarters in Geneva, in their first conference since December 2017.

They added a fifth day of talks to try to break the deadlock — and prove the organisation has a role in tackling big global challenges.

But despite working on through Wednesday night, even Thursday’s negotiations were going past their scheduled deadline.

All the delegation chiefs were set to meet from 5:00 pm (1500 GMT) to try and finalise a conclusion based on progress made in Thursday’s frantic talks.

“We are still optimistic that we can have some really positive outcomes,” New Zealand’s trade minister Damien O’Connor told AFP as the daytime sessions started.

“There is a lot of commitment to try and move things forward and it’s encouraging.

– ‘On the march’ –

EU trade commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis tweeted he was “on the march” towards a final agreement that was now “getting closer”.

Honduras’s WTO ambassador said ministers were “working towards a result not seen in many years in the WTO”, adding: “success is mandatory”.

“We’ll be in there until the last hour,” another Geneva-based diplomat told reporters.

“We remain committed to seeing what we can deliver from this.”

The WTO only takes decisions by consensus among all its members, making deals all the harder to hammer out.

Ministers have been trying to secure deals on curbing harmful fishing subsidies; temporarily waiving Covid-19 vaccine patents; food security; agriculture; e-commerce; the WTO’s response to pandemics; and reform of the organisation itself.

Countries hit a brick wall late Wednesday trying to secure each separate deal on its own merits, so they spent the night horse-trading to try to keep them all afloat in some format.

US Trade Representative Katherine Tai and others tweeted pictures of first light emerging over Lake Geneva.

Giant trays of sandwiches kept delegates going through the night after they finished all the fruit juice in the building.

“They’re looking at a broad package: what can be achieved, trade-offs in different areas,” a Geneva trade official told reporters.

“We’re into the real bargaining part of the meeting. This is where all the action is happening.”

– Fisheries exemption –

WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who took over in March 2021, has hinged her leadership on breathing new life into the sclerotic organisation.

The former foreign and finance minister of Nigeria is hoping to pull off a coup by finalising a long-sought deal on curbing harmful fishing subsidies.

Negotiations towards banning subsidies that encourage overfishing and threaten the sustainability of the planet’s fish stocks have been going on at the WTO for more than two decades.

But India has been pushing for a 25-year exemption — far longer than many countries are comfortable with.

Some diplomats have accused India of being intransigent across the board.

“India has always been a reluctant trading partner,” said Harsh V Pant, an international relations professor at King’s College London university’s India Institute.

“India feels that it has more room today than it had in the past. It has a greater future potential and feels that it is in a geopolitical sweet spot where everyone wants to befriend it — and it can use that as leverage,” he told AFP.

– E-commerce wrangle –

Ministers have been arguing over whether to extend the moratorium on imposing customs duties on electronic transactions, in place since 1998.

But India and South Africa say it has a negative impact, with Pakistan, Indonesia and Sri Lanka also sceptical.

WTO deputy director-general Anabel Gonzalez said there were “intense negotiations” going on in a packed room.

“It’s difficult, but I am hopeful,” she said.

The United States told an earlier e-commerce meeting that the moratorium had supported the growth of digital commerce, which had provided an “economic lifeline” during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a Geneva trade official.

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Qatar Airways on Thursday posted a record net profit of $1.54 billion for the 2021-2022 financial year, a result it attributed to a “successful strategy” during the coronavirus pandemic.

The state-owned airline said the profit result was “200 percent above its highest annual historical profit” and achieved on the back of $14.4 billion in overall income.

It said that the revenue figure was “a remarkable two percent higher than the full financial year pre-Covid” in 2019-2020.

Gas-rich Qatar is among several governments that stepped in to support their national carriers through the coronavirus shutdown, which pummelled global travel and the aviation industry.

Qatar Airways, the Middle East’s second biggest airline after Emirates, had reported in September last year an overall loss of $4.1 billion in the 2020-2021 financial year.

The flag carrier said at the time that it had received $3 billion in state aid to weather the coronavirus travel downturn and to offset the losses blamed on the cost of grounding aircraft.

Its chief executive, Akbar Al Baker, praised the “strength, resilience, and commitment” of Qatar Airways Group in the past year.

“In the most difficult period ever in the global airline industry, the airline credits its positive results to its agility and successful strategy,” the airline said in a statement.

Qatar Airways said it “continued to focus on customer needs and evolving market opportunities, as well as efficiency and the commitment of its worldwide employees”.

“This profit is not only a record for Qatar Airways Group, but also a record among all other airlines that have published financial results for this financial year worldwide,” the airline said.

– New routes –

The Qatari airline said it carried 18.5 million passengers in 2021-2022, an increase of 218 percent over the previous 12-month period.

It said its cargo division remained the “leading player in the world”, with growth of 25 percent in revenues and an identical figure for cargo capacity.

“Against the backdrop of the pandemic disruption, Qatar Airways Cargo transported more than three million tonnes of air freight and securing eight percent share in the global market,” it said.

The airline said it had also “transported more than 600 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines over the course of the pandemic to date”.

“Despite the challenges of Covid-19, the national carrier of the State of Qatar grew to more than 140 destinations” in 2021-2022, the airline added.

New routes were opened to destinations across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, including Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, and Almaty, Kazakhstan.

The carrier has maintained “strong performance and growing profitability,” Al Baker said.

“We have pursued every business opportunity and left no stone unturned as we aimed to meet our targets,” he said.

“Whilst our competitors grounded their aircraft and closed their routes, we adapted our entire commercial operation to respond to ever-evolving travel restrictions and never stopped flying, operating a network our passengers and customers could rely on,” he said.

The Bank of England on Thursday hiked its main interest rate for a fifth straight time, as it forecast British inflation to soar further this year to above 11 percent.

BoE policymakers agreed at a regular meeting to increase the cost of borrowing by a quarter-point to 1.25 percent, the highest level since the global financial crisis in 2009.

The pound slumped one percent against the dollar following the announcement, one day after the Federal Reserve hiked US interest rates far more aggressively to fight runaway consumer prices in the world’s biggest economy.

The BoE’s latest rise was in response to “continuing signs of robust cost and price pressures… and the risk that those pressures become more persistent”, said minutes of the UK meeting.

A minority of BoE policymakers had voted for an increase to 1.5 percent.

– BoE lags Fed –

The Bank of England is avoiding “shock and awe tactics being employed across the Atlantic”, said Laith Khalaf, head of investment analysis at AJ Bell.

“Despite the UK starting to tighten monetary policy first, interest rates are now higher in the US.”

The US Federal Reserve on Wednesday announced the most aggressive interest rate increase in nearly 30 years — and said it is prepared to do so again next month in an all-out battle to drive down surging consumer prices.

The Fed’s rate hike of 0.75 percentage points comes after US inflation rocketed to 8.6 percent in May, the highest level in more than four decades.

In the UK, inflation stands at nine percent, the highest level in 40 years.

Prices are soaring worldwide as economies reopen from pandemic lockdowns and amid the Ukraine war that is pushing already high energy costs even higher.

– ‘Slow poison’ –

British economic output declined for a second month in a row in April, weighed down by rocketing prices that are causing a cost-of-living crisis for millions of Britons, while increasing the risk of a UK recession this year.

The BoE on Thursday forecast the UK economy to contract by 0.3 percent in the second quarter that ends on June 30 and after growth in the first three months of the year.

A recession is two quarters in a row of negative growth.

“Inflation risks being a slow poison for the economy, so the Bank of England is trying to take an antidote now by raising interest rates,” said Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.

“However, it can only take a small dose at a time given the ailing nature of the economy… with more hikes to follow.”

Higher interest rates, while boosting returns for savers, ramps up loan repayments for businesses and households.

Data this week also revealed the first rise in the UK unemployment rate since the end of 2020 — although at 3.8 percent it remains at a near 50-year low point amid record-high job vacancies.

At the same time, the value of average UK wages is falling at the fastest pace in more than a decade.

Fearing fallout from surging inflation, the BoE began to raise its key interest rate in December, from a record-low level of 0.1 percent.

Almost two years earlier, as the Covid-19 pandemic began to take hold, the BoE slashed the rate to just above zero and decided to pump massive sums of new cash into the economy.

In the neighbouring eurozone, the European Central Bank is next month set to raise interest rates for the first time in more than a decade.

Switzerland’s central bank hiked its rate Thursday for the first time in 15 years.

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