COMPANY NEWS IN BRIEF

Glencore to re-start Congo's Mutanda mine Commodity trader and miner Glencore said on Tuesday it will restart operations at the world's largest cobalt mine, Mutanda in south-east Democratic Republic of Congo, towards the end of this year and return to production in 2022.Glencore put the mine, which is also capable of producing large amounts of copper, on care and maintenance in November 2019 citing falling cobalt prices, increased costs, and higher taxes.On Monday company officials discussed the re-opening of the mine with Congo's mining minister Antoinette N'Samba in Kinshasa, the ministry said in a statement.Mutanda produced 103 200 tonnes of copper and 25 100 tonnes of cobalt hydroxide in 2019 compared with 199 000 tonnes and 27 300 tonnes respectively in 2018. It has five copper production lines and three cobalt hydroxide lines. - Nampa/ReutersBP’s oil prices good for asset salesBP will be in the hydrocarbons business for decades to come, Chief Executive Bernard Looney told Reuters on Tuesday, while high oil prices are set to make its asset sales and transition to lower-carbon energy easier.Referring to worries that its green strategy could hit profits, Looney, in an interview at the Reuters Events: Global Energy Transition conference, said: "As people understand we're going to be in the hydrocarbons business for decades to come, that concern has gone away a little bit.""High oil prices are very good for our strategy and our shareholders will benefit from that, especially through our buyback programme," he said.Looney took office in 2020 with an ambitious plan to rapidly grow BP’s renewable energy business, while cutting oil and gas output by 40% by 2030.But BP’s shares hit their lowest since the mid-1990s late last year, a bigger drop than any of its rivals, amid falling oil prices and investor concerns over its strategy."What we offer investors is a stable, resilient dividend," Looney said. "We're going to grow value from this company over the next five years."- Nampa/ReutersCourt defends Nigerians over twitter useA West African court said on Tuesday that Nigerian authorities could not prosecute people for using Twitter while it considered a suit seeking to overturn a ban on its use, a non-governmental group that initiated the legal action said.The government on June 4 indefinitely suspended Twitter, two days after the social media platform removed a post from President Muhammadu Buhari that threatened to punish regional secessionists, which Twitter said violated its rules.Soci-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), a Nigerian NGO, along with other groups, went to court to fight the ban, arguing that it was a violation of human rights.The Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) said it was restraining the Nigerian government from acting against citizens or media outlets over the use of Twitter, pending a substantive ruling on the core issue, according to a statement from SERAP.Reuters was not immediately able to reach the ECOWAS court, and spokesmen for the Nigeria's president were not immediately available for comment. -Nampa/ReutersGameStop raises more than US$1 bln Videogame retailer GameStop Corp said on Tuesday it had raised about US$1.13 billion in its latest share offering, cashing in further on a social-media-driven surge in its stock price.The company, whose shares are up more than 960% this year, was the spark in January for a battle casting hedge fund short-sellers against a pack of small-time investors organizing online.It remains one of the hottest and most visible "meme stocks" and was up nearly 9% in premarket trading on Tuesday.The company, like others of the social-media hyped stocks that have lit up Wall Street since January, has sold millions of dollars in new stock on the back of what institutional players say are speculative share moves unjustified by their businesses.Cinema operator AMC Entertainment, another meme play, completed two share issues in three days earlier this month, while Torchlight Energy on Monday upsized its own share sale to US$250 million. - Nampa/ReutersVolkswagen sticks to profit forecast A global chip shortage that is hitting carmakers will not impact Volkswagen's profit 2021 forecast, the company said on Tuesday, in response to a media report that the German carmaker expected a production drop due to the bottlenecks.Volkswagen still expects to achieve a 2021 operating profit margin of between 5.5% and 7% for the group and a margin of 3% to 4% for its main brand, a spokesperson for the company said."Fortunately, been we have able to notably limit the negative impact on our customers and thus on delivery figures so far, for example by selling off inventories and other measures," the spokesperson said.Business Insider reported on Tuesday that the Wolfsburg-based firm did not expect to be able to produce more than 800 000 vehicles this year due to semiconductor bottlenecks.The spokesperson declined to confirm that figure and said it was not possible to reliably forecast the impact of the semiconductor shortage on production and deliveries by the end of the year. - Nampa/Reuters

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