(Reuters) – Alibaba (NYSE:BABA), China’s biggest e-commerce company, said on Wednesday it has priced both its US-dollar-denominated and yuan-denominated bonds as part of the $5 billion it had aimed to raise in the dual currency bond deal.

The company priced an offering of $2.65 billion aggregate principal amount of U.S. dollar-denominated notes and RMB 17 billion ($2.35 billion) worth of offshore yuan-denominated notes.

The offering of the dollar notes is expected to close on Nov. 26, while that of the yuan notes will close on Nov. 28, subject to conditions, the company said in a statement.

Reuters had earlier reported that the U.S. dollar tranche would consist of 5-1/2-year, 10-1/2-year and 30-year bonds, citing a term sheet. The report said Alibaba was also working on 3-1/2-year, 5-year, 10-year and 20-year offshore yuan tranche.

Alibaba intends to use the net proceeds from the offering of the notes for general corporate purposes, including repayment of offshore debt and share repurchases.

($1 = 7.2385 Chinese yuan renminbi)

Investing.com– The People’s Bank of China left its benchmark loan prime rate unchanged on Wednesday, with Beijing seeking more clarity on U.S. politics before unlocking more support for the economy. 

The PBOC kept its one-year LPR at 3.10% after cutting it by 25 basis points in October. The five-year LPR, which determines mortgage rates, was left at 3.60% after a 25 bps cut in the prior month.

The LPR is determined by the PBOC based on considerations from 18 designated commercial banks, and is used as a benchmark for lending rates in the country.

Analysts had widely expected the LPR to remain unchanged this month, with Beijing seen awaiting more clarity on what a second Donald Trump presidency will entail for Sino-U.S. trade before unlocking more economic support.

China rolled out a slew of aggressive stimulus measures since late September to support growth. But the country held off on outlining more targeted fiscal measures, amid caution over increased trade tariffs under Trump, who has vowed to impose a 60% import tariff on all Chinese goods.

The PBOC was also seen as having limited space to cut interest rates further, especially as the Chinese yuan was battered following Trump’s election. The central bank had steadily cut the LPR further into record-low territory over the past two years to support growth.

But monetary measures have so far provided limited support to the Chinese economy, which is still struggling with persistent deflation and a property market slump.

By William Schomberg

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s official labour market statistics may be failing to count almost 1 million people who are in work, complicating the Bank of England’s task of deciding how quickly to cut interest rates, a think tank said on Wednesday.

The Resolution Foundation said the official methodology – which is being overhauled – might also be overestimating the number of workers who have dropped out of the jobs market.

The BoE has cut rates by half a percentage point since August, less than the European Central Bank and the U.S. Federal Reserve, largely because of its worries about inflation pressures in the job market.

“Official statistics have misrepresented what has happened in the UK labour market since the pandemic, and left policymakers in the dark by painting an overly pessimistic picture of our labour market,” Adam Corlett, principal economist at the Resolution Foundation, said.

The Office for National Statistics, like agencies in other countries, has struggled to get responses to its surveys since the COVID pandemic.

BoE Governor Andrew Bailey has lamented the state of the official data, saying last week it was “a substantial problem”.

The Resolution Foundation said the ONS appeared to be underestimating growth in the number of people in work since 2019 by 930,000.

The think tank used data from the tax office, self-employment figures and new population data to make its estimate which closely tracked official employment numbers until 2020. Since then it has diverged sharply.

Corlett said the employment rate, using the foundation’s approach, probably rose to its pre-pandemic peak in 2023 before edging down in 2024 to broadly the same level as in 2019.

The official data suggests the employment rate is lower than it was in 2019, which is at odds with high vacancy rates and strong wage growth, he said.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer is aiming to get the employment rate up to 80%, up from the official estimate of 74.8% now.

“The government faces a significant challenge in aiming to raise employment, even if the rate is higher than previously thought,” Corlett said. “But crafting good policy is made harder still if the UK does not have reliable employment statistics.”

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia’s official statistician has been overestimating the cost of child care in its consumer price index for the past year, but the error will not result in any changes to overall CPI inflation.

Measures of underlying inflation – the trimmed mean and weighted median – watched closely by the Reserve Bank of Australia were unaffected by the errors, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said.

In a media release on its website, the ABS said it had made an error in estimating the effect of government subsidies for child care, which took effect in July 2023.

As a result, in the September quarter CPI report the published child care index was 5.8%, or 9.5 index points, higher than it should have been at 163.0. Annual growth in care costs should have been 10.7%, rather than 12.1%.

Child care makes up only 0.9% of the CPI basket, so the error meant the level of the overall CPI was just 0.04% higher in the quarter than it should have been.

The series will be corrected in the October monthly CPI due out on Nov. 27 but will make no difference to the already published quarterly inflation rate, the ABS said.

It noted the CPI was widely used for indexation purposes and revisions could create uncertainty and confusion.

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) -A federal judge on Tuesday rejected Pfizer (NYSE:PFE)’s bid to recoup about $75.2 million left over from a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission insider trading settlement with billionaire Steven A. Cohen’s former hedge fund SAC Capital Management.

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in Manhattan said Wyeth, a drugmaker Pfizer bought in 2009, did not qualify as a victim of the securities violations underlying the SEC case, and therefore was not entitled to the funds.

Marrero directed that the money be paid to the U.S. Treasury, which the SEC had requested.

Pfizer and its lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The dispute stemmed from a $602 million civil settlement tied to trading in Wyeth and drugmaker Elan by Mathew Martoma, who worked at an SAC unit and was later convicted, based on a neurologist’s tips about a 2008 Alzheimer’s drug trial.

SAC pleaded guilty to fraud in 2013 and paid $1.8 billion in settlements with the SEC and other authorities.

The SEC had $75.2 million left over after compensating Wyeth and Elan investors for their losses. Pfizer said it deserved that money because the neurologist, Sidney Gilman, breached a fiduciary duty to Wyeth, where he was a consultant.

But the judge said the reputational harm that Wyeth suffered from the scandal did not mean it also suffered financial harm.

“The court certainly agrees that corporations whose secrets are misappropriated for insider trading purposes are generally victims of wrongdoing,” he wrote. “But Pfizer has failed to allege how the insider trading scheme and Wyeth’s subsequent reputational harm qualifies as pecuniary harm for purposes of distributing the disgorged funds.”

Marrero added that a $7 billion decline in Wyeth’s market value following the drug trial had nothing to do with the insider trading scheme, which became public three years later.

Cohen was not criminally charged, but accepted a two-year ban on managing outside money to end an SEC probe into his supervision of Martoma.

He changed SAC Capital’s name to Point72 Asset Management in 2014, and stopped trading for that fund in September. Cohen is worth $21.3 billion according to Forbes magazine.

The case is SEC v CR Intrinsic Investors LLC et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-08466.

(Corrects to show that Yellen became Council of Economic Advisers chair in 1997, after CDFI fund was launched, in paragraph 2)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former President Bill Clinton will return to the U.S. Treasury Department for the first time in nearly 25 years on Thursday to mark the 30th anniversary of a community lending fund launched during his presidency but which could be put at risk by President-elect Donald Trump’s new government efficiency body.

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT

The Treasury Department said that Clinton will join Yellen in a program to underscore the importance of the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund in supporting small businesses and families in minority and underserved communities. The fund was launched in 1994. Yellen became chair of Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers in 1997.

Trump has put billionaire Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of a non-government panel tasked with slashing trillions of dollars in federal spending.

In his first budget plan for fiscal 2018, Trump proposed eliminating the CDFI Fund’s grant money to save $210 million, arguing that the program was no longer needed as community lenders by then had ready access to capital.

A spokesperson for Trump’s transition team could not immediately be reached for comment on whether the program would again be targeted for cuts. By the end of Trump’s term in December 2020, he signed into law some $12 billion in investments into CDFI lenders to help keep small businesses afloat during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic.

BY THE NUMBERS

Since its inception, the CDFI Fund has provided lenders in minority and underserved communities with $8 billion in grants, $3 billion in bond guarantees and $81 billion in tax credits to expand the capacity of some 1,400 community lenders in minority and underserved communities.

Yellen announced in June that the CDFI Fund would provide an additional $100 million over the next three years to support the production of affordable housing.

KEY QUOTE

“As we look back over the last 30 years, it is remarkable how significant a role the CDFI Fund has played in fueling economic development in countless communities across the United States, and we look forward to continuing this important work in the years ahead,” Yellen said in a statement about the program’s anniversary in September.

(This story has been corrected to show that Yellen became the Council of Economic Advisers chair in 1997, in paragraph 2)

By Jamie McGeever

(Reuters) – A look at the day ahead in Asian markets. 

Geopolitical jitters rippled through world markets on Tuesday but subsided as the U.S. trading session progressed, allowing for a more positive tone in Asia on Wednesday as investors gear up for Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA)’s earnings announcement later in the day.

The local calendar on Wednesday sees the release of South Korean producer price inflation and trade figures from Japan and Taiwan. The latter is sometimes seen as a proxy for global demand as export orders include shipments from TSMC, the world’s leading contract chipmaker, and sales to China. 

Monetary policy decisions from China and Indonesia are the main regional events. Both central banks are expected to leave rates on hold as policymakers seek to protect their exchange rates and keep their powder dry ahead of possible protectionist trade policies from the new U.S. administration next year. 

The global backdrop to Wednesday’s Asian session looks relatively constructive, if tense. Investors will be on their guard after the rapid escalation in tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine. 

After two U.S. officials and a source familiar with the decision said on Sunday that the Biden administration allowed Ukraine to use U.S.-made weapons to strike deep into Russia, President Vladimir Putin lowered the threshold for a nuclear strike in response to a broader range of conventional attacks.

This pushed global stocks into the red and sparked a spike in volatility on Tuesday – the S&P 500 VIX ‘fear index’ of implied U.S. equity volatility briefly popped up to its highest level since the Nov. 5 presidential election. 

But the angst subsided. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq ended in the green, volatility and Treasury yields eased, and the U.S. dollar was little changed, making for a much more favorable backdrop for Asia on Wednesday. 

Attention now turns to Nvidia, and analysts are hopeful the world’s largest company will deliver again. 

The firm is expected by Wall Street to report a 82.8% increase in revenue to $33.125 billion in the August-October period, from $18.12 billion a year ago, according LSEG data.

Back in Asia, the People’s Bank of China is expected to leave benchmark lending rates unchanged on Wednesday, as last month’s rate cut squeezes banks’ profits and the yuan comes under fresh pressure with Donald Trump’s return to the White House next year.

All 28 market watchers in a Reuters poll think the PBOC’s one-year and five-year loan prime rates will be left on hold at 3.10% and 3.60%, respectively.

Bank Indonesia will also leave its seven-day reverse repo rate unchanged, at 6.00%, according to 25 of 34 survey respondents. Some of them revised their previous calls for a rate cut, and money markets now only expect a one-in-five chance of a cut next month. 

Here are key developments that could provide more direction to markets on Wednesday:

– China interest rate decision

– Indonesia interest rate decision

– Japan trade (October)

PARIS (Reuters) -Shares in Gucci-owner Kering (EPA:PRTP) rose on Thursday, shrugging off the French luxury goods company’s warning that 2024 operating income would almost halve to its lowest in years due to weak demand in China.

Kering shares were up 0.5% at 0729 GMT, after positive results from rival Hermes helped lift the broader luxury sector.

The owner of fashion brands Saint Laurent, Balenciaga and Bottega Veneta also posted a larger-than-expected 16% drop in third-quarter revenue.

The company’s stock has taken a battering this year, sliding more than 40%, making it the worst performer in the luxury sector. One trading source said the guidance cut did not come as a surprise and bad news was “priced in”.

“Kering are controlling their controllables (e.g. cost control, efficiency focus, store optimisation) in a difficult luxury environment, however relative performance is below

average and FY25E margin visibility is low,” analysts at RBC said.

By Howard Schneider

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – It remains uncertain how far interest rates can fall, though the initial reductions made by the U.S. central bank are a vote of confidence that inflation is returning to its 2% target, Kansas City Fed President Jeffrey Schmid said on Tuesday.

“The decision to lower rates is an acknowledgement of the … growing confidence that inflation is on a path to reach the Fed’s 2% objective – a confidence based in part on signs that both labor and product markets have come into better balance in recent months,” Schmid said in remarks prepared for delivery to the Omaha Chamber of Commerce.

He said that while progress back to the 2% target meant it was a proper time to cut rates, it still “remains to be seen how much further interest rates will decline or where they might eventually settle.”

Schmid, who will have a vote on the Fed’s interest rate policy next year, did not comment on whether he would favor a quarter-percentage-point rate cut at the central bank’s Dec. 17-18 meeting.

The bulk of his prepared remarks focused on issues like demographics and productivity that could influence monetary policy over the long run by changing the underlying dynamics of inflation.

But on the more current issue of federal government spending, Schmid said “large fiscal deficits will not be inflationary because the Fed will do its job” to keep inflation at the established 2% target.

That, however, could mean “persistently higher interest rates,” Schmid said, a reason why it was important for the Fed to remain independent in setting monetary policy.

“Political authorities could very well prefer that deficits not lead to higher interest rates, but history has shown that following through on this impulse has often resulted in higher inflation,” he said.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa will use its G20 presidency to focus on advancing inclusive economic growth, food security and artificial intelligence, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Tuesday at a summit of the Group of 20 major economies in Brazil.

South Africa takes over the G20 presidency from Brazil at the summit in Rio de Janeiro.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva earlier urged G20 leaders to accelerate their national climate targets, calling on them to reach net zero climate emissions five to 10 years ahead of schedule.

“As South Africa, we undertake to advance the work of the G20 towards achieving greater global economic growth and sustainable development. We will work to ensure that no one is left behind,” Ramaphosa said.

He added: “South Africa’s Presidency will be the first time an African country has presided over the G20. We will use this moment to bring the development priorities of the African Continent and the Global South more firmly onto the agenda of the G20.”