Company news in brief

Dam wall collapses at HarmonyOn Saturday, four Harmony Gold employees died at its Kusasalethu mine, near Carletonville in Gauteng.The workers were part of a team who were cleaning an underground mud dam and completing repairs to a pipe in the dam. The mud wall collapsed, killing four people."This is an area that is frequently maintained and was attended to two weeks earlier. The team had inspected the dam prior and it was declared safe," Sihle Maake, Harmony head of communications, told Fin24.The affected area has been closed, and an investigation has been launched.Kusasalethu is Harmony’s deepest mine, with a depth of 3 388m, and extracts ore from the Ventersdorp reef. – Fin24Ramaphosa takes swipe at SibanyePresident Cyril Ramaphosa bemoaned the poor state of labour relations at some mining companies in the country just days after striking Sibanye Stillwater gold miners stormed the stage where he was speaking in the city of Rustenburg. The workers, on strike at South Africa’s biggest precious metals producer for the last two months, were demanding that the company meet their demands. Ramaphosa was forced to abort his May Day speech and was taken to safety by his security detail. Ramaphosa, who founded the country’s biggest mining union in the 1980s and led the largest-ever gold industry strike, urged mining companies to negotiate with workers without mentioning Sibanye by name.“Hostility between employers and employees should belong in the dustbin of history,” he said on Friday in a speech at a mine owned by Anglo American Platinum. “We should not continue to be trapped by the past where there was total hostility between stakeholders.”Sibanye’s workers want a raise of R1 000, while the company is offering R850. They were further angered late last month when Sibanye revealed that its chief executive officer, Neal Froneman, had earned R300 million in the financial year, mainly due to the performance of the company’s shares. – Fin24/BloombergUber to cut costsUber Technologies Inc will scale back hiring and reduce expenditure on its marketing and incentive activities, CNBC reported yesterday, citing a letter from chief executive officer Dara Khosrowshahi.The ride-hailing company becomes the latest to rein in costs to have a lean investment model, after Facebook-owner Meta Platforms Inc said last week it would slow down the growth of its workforce.Khosrowshahi said Uber&#039;s change in strategy was a necessary response to the "seismic shift" in investor sentiment, according to the CNBC report."The least efficient marketing and incentive spend will be pulled back. We will treat hiring as a privilege and be deliberate about when and where we add headcount," the report quoted Khosrowshahi as saying.Uber said last week its driver base is at a post-pandemic high, and the company expects this to continue without significant incentive investments, a sharp contrast to rival Lyft Inc which has said it needs to spend more for labour. – ReutersToyota expected to forecast higher profitToyota Motor Corp is expected to forecast higher profit for the year ahead when it reports earnings this week, helped by solid demand and a weaker yen, even as commodities costs and supply chain woes put pressure on the global auto industry.The forecast, on top of an expected strong profit increase in the year just ended, would highlight the Japanese automaker&#039;s ability to navigate a difficult environment, in part by charging customers more as the chip shortage tightens supplies.The market will be watching closely to see how much of a negative impact higher commodities prices will have on Toyota and other Japanese automakers, as well as their expectations for the currency, said Seiji Sugiura, a senior analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research Institute.Toyota is expected to forecast an 11% increase in operating profit to 3.36 trillion yen (US$25.7 billion) for the year that started on April 1, according to a poll of 25 analysts by Refinitiv.For the year just ended, analysts expect profit increased 37% to 3.02 trillion yen. – ReutersVedanta promises Zambia investmentVedanta Resources has offered to step up investment in Zambia&#039;s Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) and implement several social responsibility programmes if it resumes control of the local firm, a company letter sent to the government showed.Zambia&#039;s previous government put KCM into the hands of liquidator Milingo Lungu in May 2019, triggering an ongoing legal dispute with Vedanta Resources, KCM&#039;s parent company.The government accused Vedanta of failing to honour licence conditions, including promised investment. Vedanta has repeatedly denied KCM broke the terms of its licence.In a leaked letter addressed to mines minister Paul Kabuswe, the authenticity of which was confirmed by a local company executive, Vedanta chief executive Sunil Duggal said the company is committed to investing an additional US$1 billion towards capital mine development and other infrastructure to boost KCM&#039;s output."The above commitments by Vedanta will be included in a Framework Agreement to be entered into between KCM, Vedanta, ZCCM-IH and [the government]," the letter dated May 5 reads. - Reuters

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