Company news in brief

Judgement deferred between Old Mutual, fired CEOA South African court yesterday deferred judgement in a contempt of court case between the country's No.2 insurer, Old Mutual and the CEO it sacked, Peter Moyo, with the judge outlining a number of steps the parties should take before a decision is made.Old Mutual fired Moyo in June in a dispute related to a conflict of interest, but he was later reinstated by a judge. The insurer however did not allow him to return to work and took further measures to prevent this, prompting Moyo to apply to have it declared in contempt of court.It was not immediately clear how long the additional steps required by the court to make a ruling will take.Verallia to list in ParisFrench glass bottle maker Verallia said yesterday it could raise up to 1.11 billion euro (US$1.22 billion) in an initial public offering in Paris later this month, in the country's biggest stock market flotation so far this year.Verallia, which supplies containers to brands like chocolate spread maker Nutella, said the funds raised would give it scope to make acquisitions and provide liquidity to selling shareholders.They include US private equity firm Apollo, which bought control of the company in 2015.Verallia will potentially be the largest IPO on Euronext's Paris stock market since June 2017 when Societe Generale floated a stake in its car leasing arm ALD Automotive that valued the firm at more than 5 billion euro.Verallia, the world's third largest maker of glass bottles and jars, also supplies brands such as Dom Perignon champagne.Mitsubishi lost millions in unauthorised tradesMitsubishi Corp, Japan's biggest trading house by revenue, said on Friday a trader at its Singapore-based unit has lost US$320 million through unauthorised transactions in crude oil derivatives, and the matter has been reported to the police.The announcement is a blow for the Japanese trading company, which invests in everything from salmon to natural gas and trades many commodities around the world.It is the first loss of its kind in Mitsubishi's history, a company spokesman told Reuters. It could be the biggest loss in oil markets since China's Sinopec Corp said last year it had lost about US$700 million on crude hedging.In what will be a reminder of the collapse of Barings Bank after Nick Leeson's trades in Singapore in 1995, and the huge losses at Societe Generale by rogue trader Jerome Kerviel in 2008, the trader that Mitsubishi has alleged carried out a series of unauthorised trade this year disappeared in August.While trying to locate the trader who had not returned to its Petro-Diamond Singapore (PDS) oil unit after a holiday, Mitsubishi discovered the losses, a spokesman told Reuters. – Nampa/ReutersGovernment to sell Air India, other firmsIndia aims to sell two or three state-owned firms to local or foreign firms to raise up to 600 billion rupees (US$8.5 billion) by March 2020, a senior finance ministry official said yesterday.The government planned to sell Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd, logistics firm Container Corp of India Ltd and debt-laden Air India before the end of the 2019/20 financial year, the official, who asked not to be named, told reporters.The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) had voiced reservations about the finance ministry's past sales of stakes in one state entity to another, which was the case when refiner Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd was sold to Oil and Natural Gas Corp Ltd, the official said."The PMO is very clear that we cannot be selling government companies to another government company and then call it privatisation," the official said. – Nampa/ReutersHyundai, Aptiv to set up JVSouth Korea's Hyundai Motor Group and Dublin-headquartered auto technology firm Aptiv said yesterday they are creating a 50:50 autonomous driving joint venture valued at US$4 billion.This marks the biggest bet made by Hyundai Motor Group, which is widely seen as a latecomer to the field of future mobility technology.Hyundai Motor Group companies Hyundai Motor, Kia Motors and Hyundai Mobis will collectively contribute US$1.6 billion in cash and US$0.4 billion in vehicle engineering services, R&D resources and access to intellectual property, the two partners said in a joint statement.Aptiv will contribute its autonomous driving technology, intellectual property, and approximately 700 employees focused on the development of scalable autonomous driving solutions.The joint venture will begin testing fully driverless systems in 2020 and have a production-ready autonomous driving platform available for robotaxi providers, fleet operators and automakers in 2022. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close early in the second quarter of 2020. – Nampa/Reuters

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