TJ Strydom | JOHANNESBURG
South African life insurer Liberty Holdings has appointed Standard Bank&#8217;s head of investment banking as its new chief executive with immediate effect following the resignation of Thabo Dloti, the company said on Tuesday.
David Munro, Standard Bank&#8217;s head of corporate and investment banking, will take the reins, following the the departure of Dloti, chief executive for the past three years, after a disagreement with the board.
Standard Bank has a 53 percent stake in Liberty and has been working on a turnaround plan at the insurer, which has been struggling to increase profits.
<blockquote>&#8220;Thabo is leaving Liberty following a difference of opinion with the board on the immediate focus of the company at a time when the organisation is facing tough operational and environmental challenges,&#8221; Liberty said in a statement.</blockquote>
Standard Bank&#8217;s joint-chief executive Sim Tshabalala said in a separate statement that Liberty remained a fundamentally sound business and that the majority shareholder was confident of the insurer&#8217;s long-term profitability.
<blockquote>&#8220;Our ongoing priority is to enable [Liberty] to achieve its growth by focusing on a short-term recovery plan and a longer-term strategy to reinforce its competitiveness,&#8221; Tshabalala said.</blockquote>
Standard Bank has appointed Kenny Fihla, the deputy chief executive of corporate investment banking, to take Munro&#8217;s place at the bank.
(Reporting by TJ Strydom; Editing by Greg Mahlich)
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Liberty Holdings’ chief executive quits, replaced by Standard Bank executive

Pete Johnston&#8217;s plan to build &#8220;the world&#8217;s most badass recruitment engine&#8221; could put a dent in Microsoft&#8217;s plans to wring money from LinkedIn&#8217;s 500 million users.
Johnston, a former designer for Google and ad giant M&#038;C Saatchi in London, and his backers, including PayPal co-founders Max Levchin and Peter Thiel, are betting that managing contract workers will one day become as valuable to corporations as hiring and paying their own staff.
The start-up, formerly known as Lystable and now renamed Kalo, charges 3 percent of what its customers pay to contractors they hire through the platform. It&#8217;s a bet on the growth of the freelance economy.
A report out this month from consulting firm McKinsey suggested that the gig economy will be here sooner than later. The study said 20 to 30 percent of workers in the U.S. and Europe already do &#8220;independent work.&#8221;
For his part, Johnson said that &#8220;we know who they are, what they worked on and have access to their financial data.&#8221;
But before he and his 50-person start-up take on the world&#8217;s largest software maker, Johnston first has to get used to a new name for the company, which until last week was called Lystable.
That name had an air of exclusivity — as in, you needed special qualifications to be &#8220;listable&#8221;—and Johnston wanted to move away from that. So the company asked the 50,000 freelancers registered on its website to come up with ideas. Johnston also hired a consulting firm that came up with another 30 names.
Yet the company&#8217;s new moniker came not from either of those sources, but from a much more serendipitous process.
Johnston earlier this month looked out onto San Francisco Bay, and saw two ships passing each other. As they crossed, the name of one was truncated to Kalo — and the proverbial light bulb went on.
&#8220;It was an emotional decision,&#8221; says Johnston.
Managing freelancers is a mess
He got the idea for the company while sitting in his Dublin apartment in 2014. He&#8217;d been working for a Google design unit in London that had just seven staff employees, but used more than 150 freelancers per year.
The process, run on a platform made by &#8220;a large enterprise software company&#8221; he declined to name, was worse than cumbersome.
Workers often were not paid quickly — and thus not exactly happy when Johnston and his co-workers asked them to come back for another project.
At first, the software was designed to identify workers and assign them tasks.
But those two steps weren&#8217;t enough, Johnston said, as &#8220;the (freelance) process would then go into this dark place&#8221; when it came time to pay them.
So the company, then based in London and still called Lystable, built a payment module, started charging a fee, and began signing up customers including Google, Airbnb, Expedia and The Economist.
Soon Johnston, a native of Belfast in Northern Ireland, moved to San Francisco, convinced two marquee investors to back him, and opened a new office in this city&#8217;s Financial District early this year. 
 
Microsoft&#8217;s LinkedIn deal as validation
&#8220;This is the sweet spot,&#8221; Johnston told CNBC, while pointing to a group of silos he&#8217;s drawn on the white board of the only conference room in Kalo&#8217;s new headquarters.
The silos represent various back-office functions now run largely by software from tech giants like SAP, IBM and Microsoft.
Putting together back-office data on contractors &#8220;is the key to building the world&#8217;s most badass recruitment engine,&#8221; said Johnston.
His talk of silos echoed one of the rationales given by Microsoft when the software giant acquired the professional social network LinkedIn for $26 billion last year.
&#8220;Today, all the information a professional needs to be successful are in silos,&#8221; according to a presentation Microsoft prepared to explain the deal.
&#8220;By connecting all these apps and data, we can create more connected, intelligent and productive experiences,&#8221; Microsoft said.
Yet Johnston believes that managing contract workers will become more valuable as their ranks grow, and that &#8220;any company that tries to manage them like staff workers is going to run into problems&#8221; like those he saw at Google&#8217;s London office.
He added that Microsoft&#8217;s LinkedIn&#8217;s deal validates his business model, but is confident Kalo can measure up.
&#8220;Do I think they&#8217;ll attack the freelance market and build a module as fast as us? No,&#8221; Johnston said.

This ex-Googler is building a LinkedIn killer

Problems at one of its suppliers has forced German carmaker BMW to halt production in Leipzig and some of its plants in China and South Africa.
German magazine Focus reported in its online edition that production in Munich was also reduced for two days last week.
In a statement from BMW Group, South Africa the car manufacturer said its supplier BOSCH is not currently able to provide it “with a sufficient number of steering gears for the BMW 1 Series, 2 Series, 3 Series and 4 Series.
“This means that only limited vehicle production is currently possible at various BMW Group plants in Germany. Plant Tiexi in China and Plant Rosslyn in South Africa have extended or pulled-forward planned interruptions to production. The situation is unlikely to change this week.
“MINI production and production of BMW X models and our larger model series, the BMW 5 Series, 6 Series and 7 Series, is not affected.
“The relevant purchasing and production departments are doing everything possible to find a solution as quickly as possible. We are taking advantage of the flexibility of our processes to minimise economic damage”. 
Focus said the disruptions would cost BMW double-digit millions of euros a day, without saying where it got its information from.

Supply problems hit production at BMW, these are the BMWs impacted

London&#8217;s Heathrow Airport said early on Monday that there were still some disruptions to British Airways flights from the airport following a global computer system failure at the airline.
BA said on Twitter it would run a full schedule at London&#8217;s Gatwick on Monday and intended to operate a full long-haul schedule from Heathrow along with a high proportion of short-haul service.
The airline resumed some flights from Britain&#8217;s two biggest airports on Sunday, but hundreds of passengers were still waiting for hours at London Heathrow.
&#8220;We have mobilized additional Heathrow colleagues to assist passengers at the terminals and give out free water and snacks,&#8221; Heathrow said in a statement on Twitter.
The airport said earlier that further delays and cancellations of BA flights were expected on Sunday and told passengers not to travel to the airport unless they were rebooked on other flights.
BA canceled all its flights from Heathrow, Europe&#8217;s busiest airport, and Gatwick on Saturday after a power supply problem disrupted its flight operations worldwide and also hit its call centers and website.
(Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Britain’s Heathrow says BA still experiencing some disruptions

Giselda Vagnoni and Steve Scherer | TAORMINA, Italy
Leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy nations met African heads of state on Saturday, the final day of their annual summit which has been marked by discord over climate change, but unity on tackling terrorism.
Italy had hoped to make Africa the major focus of the annual G7 gathering, holding the discussions on the island of Sicily that has taken in hundreds of thousands of migrants over the past four years as they flee war and poverty back home.
However, the two-day meeting got overshadowed by a suicide bombing in northern England on Monday that killed 22 people, and also got bogged down by lengthy discussions on the merit of free trade and the 2015 Paris Agreement to tackle climate change.
U.S. President Donald Trump has yet to decide whether to honour a U.S. commitment to greenhouse gas emissions and has pushed back against a lattice of international trade accords that he says have hurt American economic interests.
&#8220;We are having to talk about things settled years ago,&#8221; said a top level member of one G7 delegation, frustrated by the U.S. position.
Diplomats from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States worked late into the night to agree on the final communique, which was expected to be little more than six pages long, against 32 pages last year.
A French presidential source said substantial progress had been made on the question of trade, particularly in the area of multilateralism, suggesting Trump may have bowed to pressure for a more collaborative approach to international commerce.
Italy had hoped to emphasise the positive impact migration can have and to call on industrialised nations to open up more legal channels for immigration to try to slow the flow of people risking their lives to reach Europe on flimsy boats from Libya.
That idea was shot down ahead of the meeting.
&#8220;There was very strong opposition by the Americans and British who wanted to refocus on security and water down the expansive language on freedom of movement,&#8221; said a European diplomat, who declined to be named.
AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT
Security questions dominated initial G7 discussion on Friday and the leaders issued a statement telling internet service providers and social media firms to &#8220;substantially increase&#8221; their efforts to rein in extremist content.
The leaders of Tunisia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Niger and Nigeria&#8217;s acting president joined the talks on Saturday morning, along with the heads of the African Union, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
&#8220;Perhaps the choice (to be in) Taormina and Sicily says much about how important our relations are with Africa,&#8221; Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said in opening remarks.
&#8220;Today our discussion on Africa will focus on the need for a partnership across all sectors &#8230; with innovation and development our core objective,&#8221; he said, speaking in Italian.
Unlike other leaders, Trump, who was sitting between the heads of state of Tunisia and Niger, did not put on headphones to listen to a simultaneous translation.
The U.S. president will return to Washington later on Saturday at the end of a nine-day tour of the Middle East and Europe &#8212; his first foreign trip since taking office.
Unlike other G7 leaders, he is not due to give a closing press conference before flying out.
U.S. officials said he had enjoyed &#8220;robust&#8221; conversations with his allies in Sicily and had also learnt a lot &#8212; especially in the debate on climate change, which he has previously dismissed as a hoax.
&#8220;He came here to learn. He came here to get smart. His views are evolving which exactly as they should be,&#8221; Trump&#8217;s economic adviser Gary Cohn said on Friday.
(Additional reporting by Steve Holland, Giselda Vagnoni, John Irish, and Andrea Rinke; Writing by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Noah Barkin and Toby Chopra)

G7 leaders turn gaze to Africa, climate harmony elusive

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<div id="player_0_104489338_0" class="asset cnbcvideo imgasset desc_size600_400 featuredPromo theplatform-video__docked" data-autoplay="1" data-dockable="1">Bitcoin has more than doubled in price this year alone, but it has been outperformed by its closest rival Ether, which is up over 2,300 percent.</div>
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On January 1, bitcoin was trading at the day&#8217;s high of $1,003.25. On Wednesday, it broke through the $2,300 barrier for the first time to hit a fresh record high of $2,377.32, according to CoinDesk, marking a year-to-date rise of 137 percent. <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/19/bitcoin-price-record-high-japan-fork.html" target="_self" rel="noopener">To find out what&#8217;s driving bitcoin&#8217;s rally, read more here</a>.
Meanwhile, bullishness around bitcoin has stoked appetite for other cryptocurrencies. One in particular known as ether is getting traction. Ether has risen from $8.24 on January 1, to a high of $203.30, according to data from Coinmarketcap.com. This represents a 2,367 percent rise year-to-date.
<div id="inline_movable_ad">What is Ether?</div>
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Ether runs on an underlying technology called Ethereum, which is a different blockchain to the one that underpins bitcoin.
While ether does have digital &#8220;coins&#8221; like bitcoin, companies are more focused on how the Ethereum blockchain could be used in real-world applications.
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<div class="pro-video-chapters fall dyperf dyMonitor" data-adid="535383||1594|||">Ethereum has been designed to support so-called smart contract applications. A smart contract is a computer program that can automatically execute the terms of a contract when certain conditions are met, potentially taking a lot of the human involvement out of completing a deal. <a class="inline_quotes" href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/BARC-GB" target="_self" data-gdsid="10720" data-inline-quote-symbol="BARC-GB" rel="noopener">Barclays</a> for example, have <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/19/barclays-used-blockchain-tech-to-trade-derivatives.html" target="_self" rel="noopener">used a form of this technology</a> to trade derivatives.</div>
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<h4 class="subtitle">How is it different to bitcoin?</h4>
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Firstly, Ethereum is a lot younger having only been started in 2014, whereas bitcoin began in 2009. Ether&#8217;s market cap is at $18.6 billion versus bitcoin&#8217;s $39.2 billion, according to Coinmarketcap.com.
Ethereum is also <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/14/ether-ethereum-cryptocurrency-hits-all-time-high-and-2-billion-market-cap-bitcoin.html" target="_self" rel="noopener">focused on smart contracts</a>, while bitcoin is very much about payment technology.
http://cnbc.africa/news/2017/01/02/bitcoin-three-year-high/
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<h4 class="subtitle">Why has ether rallied so much?</h4>
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While bitcoin has been getting support from certain governments and investors, the Ethereum blockchain has been backed by corporates wishing to use the technology for smart contract applications.
A group called the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) was recently founded to connect large companies to technology vendors in order to work on projects using the blockchain. Companies involved in the launch include JPMorgan, Microsoft and Intel.
<a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/23/bigger-than-bitcoin-enterprise-ethereum-alliance-grows-in-size.html" target="_self" rel="noopener">On Tuesday, the EEA announced</a> another 86 firms joined the alliance, which is adding growing legitimacy to the cryptocurrency.
At the same time, the rally in bitcoin has seen investors turn to alternative digital currencies as well as attracting a broader investment base. A year ago, over 83 percent of ether buying happened with bitcoin, according to data from CryptoCompare, showing that it was mainly crytocurrency enthusiasts interested in it. As of Wednesday, bitcoin accounted for just over 32 percent of trade while fiat currencies such as the U.S. dollar and Korean won have risen sharply.
&#8220;Yes the direct fiat flow options are a fleshing out of the ethereum ecosystem and show its broad appeal,&#8221; Charles Hayter, CEO of CryptoCompare, told CNBC by email.
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<h4 class="subtitle">Will the rally last?</h4>
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Not all in the market are convinced that the ether rally will last. Bitcoin trader Jason Hamilton is worried that products like Ethereum could be cloned.
&#8220;People are buying a specific blockchain, but the big interests are in the technology. They&#8217;ll probably make their own clones and the ether tokens everyone is buying won&#8217;t be used for much except trading. Who knows, though,&#8221; Hamilton told CNBC via a direct message on Twitter.
&#8220;I don&#8217;t usually trade ether. I&#8217;m afraid of that bubble bursting, but it could go on bubbling up for a long time still.&#8221;
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Bitcoin may have more than doubled this year, but this rival is up 2,000 percent. Here’s why

Ken Dilanian, Peter Alexander and Courtney Kube
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<div class="caption">White House senior advisor Jared Kushner (C) sits alongside U.S. President Donald Trump (L) and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross (2nd L) as they prepare to meet with Saudi Arabia&#8217;s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and the Saudi delegation at the Royal Court in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia May 20, 2017.</div>
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<a href="http://www.cnbc.com/jared-kushner/" target="_self">Jared Kushner</a>, <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/donald-trump/" target="_self">the president</a>&#8216;s son-in-law and one of his senior advisers, has come under FBI scrutiny in the Russia investigation, multiple U.S. officials told NBC News.
Investigators believe Kushner has significant information relevant to their inquiry, officials said. That does not mean they suspect him of a crime or intend to charge him.
The FBI&#8217;s scrutiny of Kushner places the bureau&#8217;s sprawling counterintelligence and criminal investigation not only on the doorstep of the White House, but on the cusp of the Trump family circle. The Washington Post first reported last week that <a class="inline_asset" title="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/19/a-white-house-official-close-to-trump-is-a-significant-person-of-interest-in-russia-probe-wapo.html" href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/19/a-white-house-official-close-to-trump-is-a-significant-person-of-interest-in-russia-probe-wapo.html" target="_self">a senior White House official close to Trump was a &#8220;person of interest,&#8221;</a> but did not name the person. The term &#8220;person of interest&#8221; has no legal meaning.
<a class="inline_asset" title="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jared-kushner-now-under-fbi-scrutiny-russia-probe-say-officials-n764826" href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jared-kushner-now-under-fbi-scrutiny-russia-probe-say-officials-n764826" target="_self">Read the full NBC News report here.</a>
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Jared Kushner Now Under FBI Scrutiny in Russia Probe, Say Officials: NBC

Ed Stoddard | THE CRADLE OF HUMANKIND, South Africa
An exhibit of the largest collection of fossils of close human relatives ever to go on public display opened on Thursday in South Africa, not far from the caves where they were unearthed.
Launched on &#8220;Africa Day&#8221; in an area named &#8220;The Cradle of Humankind,&#8221; the exhibit coincides with the publication of a controversial paper that questions the widely-held view that humanity&#8217;s evolutionary roots lay in Africa.
The displays contain more than 1,000 original fragments of Homo naledi, named in 2015 after a cache of its fossils was discovered in caves near the Sterkfontein and Swartkrans dig sites about 40 km (25 miles) northwest of Johannesburg.
<div class="teads-inread"> Initially believed to be about 2.5 million years old, subsequent dating showed Homo naledi was roaming the African bush between 236,000 and 335,000 years ago, around the time that modern humans were emerging.</div>
<blockquote>&#8220;Today going on display is a significant portion of all the Homo naledi fossils. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the public,&#8221; Lee Berger, a professor at Johannesburg&#8217;s University of the Witwatersrand who has lead excavations of the fossils, told Reuters.</blockquote>
Called &#8220;Almost Human,&#8221; the exhibit is housed in the Maropeng Centre, about 15 km from the dig sites that yielded the fossils. Visitors will only be allowed to spend 10 minutes with the fossils, which are encased in glass.
The scientific consensus for decades has held that humanity&#8217;s ape-like ancestors evolved in Africa, a view first raised by the 19th century English naturalist Charles Darwin.
That view was challenged this week with the publication of a paper detailing fossils from Greece and Bulgaria of an ape-like creature that lived 7.2 million years ago.
The authors said the creature, known as Graecopithecus freybergi and known only from a lower jawbone and an isolated tooth, may the oldest-known member of the human lineage that began after an evolutionary split from the line that led to chimpanzees, our closest living cousins.
They found dental root development that possessed telltale human characteristics not seen in chimps and their ancestors, placing Graecopithecus within the human lineage, known as hominins. Until now, the oldest-known hominin was Sahelanthropus, which lived 6 million-7 million years ago in Chad.
The findings in no way call into question that our species, Homo sapiens, first appeared in Africa about 200,000 years ago and later migrated to other parts of the world, the researchers said.
But Berger said their assertions about our more distant evolutionary past could not be made based on such a scant body of evidence.
&#8220;That is not enough evidence to make such an extraordinary claim. The headlines overstated the facts,&#8221; Berger said.
&#8220;I think on Africa Day, it&#8217;s still safe to say that humanity owes its origins to this continent,&#8221; he said.
(Editing by Angus MacSwan)
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Biggest exhibit of human-like fossils goes on display in South Africa

Gemma Acton | Sam Meredith
Oil prices fell on Thursday morning as traders reacted to comments from OPEC delegates ahead of a widely anticipated extension of the OPEC-led production cut agreement.
&#8220;Nine months with the same level of production that our member countries have been producing at is a very safe and almost certain option to do the trick,&#8221; Khalid Al-Falih, Saudi Arabia&#8217;s energy and industry oil minister told CNBC.
Saudi Arabia&#8217;s delegate explained while all options had been considered ahead of the announcement &#8211; including deeper cuts and a possible six-month extension &#8211; he suggested reaching an agreement to curtail oil production by a further nine months appeared the &#8220;safe bet&#8221;.
This is a breaking news story, please check back later for more.
A nine-month extension of the deal is the most likely outcome to be announced at OPEC&#8217;s post-meeting press conference due to be held at 5:00 p.m. local time in Vienna, according to analysts at Barclays.
A key risk to OPEC only agreeing a six-month extension is that it would expire shortly ahead of the seasonally weak first quarter in 2018, bringing idle capacity back online at a time of poor market demand, said the Barclays&#8217; note.
The international crude oil <a class="inline_asset" href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/lcocv1" target="_self" data-nodeid="100583837">Brent</a> benchmark was trading around 1 percent higher at $54.51 a barrel just after 09:00 a.m. London time with the U.S. <a class="inline_asset" href="http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/@CL.1" target="_self" data-nodeid="100279044">West Texas Intermediate</a> (WTI) benchmark edging up by nearly the same amount to sit at $51.84 a barrel.
Brent and WTI futures prices have tracked 13 percent and 14 percent higher respectively since this month&#8217;s lows were reached on May 4, as hopes for a nine-month extension have risen on the back of increasingly supportive comments from Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq for such a result.
<div id="attachment_113526" style="width: 970px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-113526" class="size-full wp-image-113526" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Oil-2-Pixabay.jpg" alt="" width="960" height="540" />Photo: Pixabay.</div>
However, even a nine-month extension would be woefully insignificant, according to Johannes Benigni, chairman of JBC Energy Group, who claims market observers have always been too optimistic and that oil supply and demand will not be balanced before the end of 2019.
&#8220;OPEC now giving a signal they&#8217;re going to 2018 is great but you will see they have to roll on with their cuts. They will have to go to the end of next year and beyond,&#8221; said Benigni, talking to CNBC outside of OPEC&#8217;s Vienna headquarters ahead of the cartel&#8217;s meeting on Thursday.
Reading through Benigni&#8217;s predictions to get a sense of potential prices, the oil industry veteran warns that given the market is unlikely to be tight even as far out as 2020, forecasts for a $60 or $70 per barrel oil price are overly optimistic.
Furthermore, the reaction of U.S. shale producers will be a key factor in establishing price levels, said Benigni, adding &#8220;this supply response is a little bit of a risk for OPEC so if prices go really up it may not be in their interest.&#8221;
The U.S. shale market is currently in the process of rebalancing, according to the JBC chairman, who says that the era of falling production costs has now been replaced by stability but could soon turn to a climate of rising costs.
<div id="attachment_91202" style="width: 970px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-91202" class="size-full wp-image-91202" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Oil-Pixabay.jpg" alt="" width="960" height="639" />Photo: Pixabay.</div>
Turning to the question of compliance with the agreement, which is key to its success, Benigni warns that Kazakhstan may not be hugely interested in demonstrating discipline. With regards to Russia, he believes that domestic oil companies will fall in line with President Vladimir Putin&#8217;s wishes. Therefore, provided Putin is on board, Russia should co-operate – however, the price the president and his compatriots will pay for participation is rising.
&#8220;Up to now, Russia managed very well with maintenance of their fields to basically make a natural cut but going forward they have much more potential. For them now not to produce as much as they can is very difficult to do,&#8221; Benigni explained.
Turning to other key deal participants, Benigni highlights that Iran and Iraq are coming from very different starting points.
&#8220;The Iranians don&#8217;t yet have more volume to offer so they must be very happy with this on the table. For the Iraqis it is more of a question mark because they could do much more &#8211; so for them not to do it is like – really?&#8221;

Saudi energy minister says 9-month extension is the ‘safe bet’ which should do the trick

Africa&#8217;s third-biggest oil producer, Equatorial Guinea, has been accepted as a new member of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), a source close to the country&#8217;s oil minister told a Reuters on Thursday.
Equatorial Guinea said in January it was seeking to become OPEC&#8217;s 14th member and the sixth from Africa, an addition that would help raise the continent&#8217;s influence and profile in the corridors of global oil production and pricing. [nL5N1FD2KP]
(Reporting by Wendell Roelf; Editing by James Macharia)
&nbsp;

Equatorial Guinea approved as latest OPEC member: source close to oil minister

TJ Strydom | JOHANNESBURG
South African retailer The Foschini Group (TFG) has agreed to buy Australia&#8217;s Retail Apparel Group (RAG) for a maximum of 302.5 million Australian dollars ($226.78 million), the company said on Thursday.
TFG, which owns British fashion retailers Phase Eight and Whistles, said it would pay cash for RAG and would retain the company&#8217;s current management.
RAG, established in 1987, has 400 stores which sell mostly mid-range to low-price menswear.
The price will be the lower of 302.5 million Australian dollars or seven times the company&#8217;s earnings for the year to end-June, TFG said in a statement.
($1 = 1.3339 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by TJ Strydom. Editing by Jane Merriman)
&nbsp;

South Africa’s TFG buys Australian menswear retailer

Katharine Houreld | NAIROBI
Djibouti has formally opened one of four new ports designed to cement the tiny Horn of Africa nation&#8217;s position as a continental hub, a statement from the ports authority said on Wednesday.
Doraleh Multipurpose Port has been substantially upgraded as part of a Chinese-backed plan to establish Africa&#8217;s largest free-trade zone that can handle $7 billion of goods a year.
&#8220;The port of Djibouti is a gateway to one of the fastest growing regions of the world with 30,000 ships transiting the port each year,&#8221; the statement said.
&#8220;Located on two of the three busiest shipping routes in the world, the port provides a strategic platform for maritime activity connecting Asia, Africa, and Europe.&#8221;
Tiny Djibouti, with a population of 876,000, has long punched above its weight. It hosts large U.S. and French naval bases; China is also building a naval base. Djibouti also handles roughly 95 percent of the inbound trade for neighbouring Ethiopia, population 99 million.
Doraleh&#8217;s bulk terminal can handle 2 million tons of cargo a year, and offers space to store 100,000 tons of fertilizer, 100,000 tons of grain, and warehouses for other goods.
The break bulk terminal can handle 6 million tons of cargo annually, the statement said, and there are 40,000 slots for vehicles at the RO-RO terminal.
Two other ports designed to export salt and potash will open next month.
Djibouti mainly handles goods from Asia, representing nearly 60 percent of traffic, the statement said. In 2015, overall traffic to Djibouti increased 20 percent to 5.7 million tonnes.
(Reporting by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
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Djibouti opens new port as part of $7 bln/year free-trade zone plan

Camillus Eboh | ABUJA
Nigeria&#8217;s government is seeking approval from lawmakers to borrow $1.3 billion from international lenders to fund the newly licensed Development Bank of Nigeria, a spokesman for the lower chamber of parliament said on Wednesday.
The bank aims to support small businesses with loans of varying lengths at lower interest rates than are currently available as Africa&#8217;s largest economy contends with its first recession in 25 years.
The loan money is made up of $500 million from the World Bank, $450 million from the African Development Bank, $200 million from German state bank KfW and $130 million from France&#8217;s state development agency.
The cabinet last month approved the loans for the bank, but the loan facility is still subject to approval by the National Assembly.
A letter seen by Reuters stated that the loan facility was &#8220;inadvertently omitted&#8221; from an external borrowing plan that requires approval by lawmakers.
&#8220;It has been referred to the relevant committee on foreign loans. This is an addendum to the earlier requests by the president for loan approval,&#8221; said Abdulrazaq Namdas, a spokesman for the House of Representatives.
&#8220;It&#8217;s an addendum to be accommodated in the 2016 to 2018 borrowings that are awaiting the approval of the National Assembly,&#8221; he said.
The finance ministry has previously said that 50 percent of the gross domestic product in Nigeria&#8217;s economy is made up of small companies.
The central bank approved the development bank&#8217;s licence in March.
(Reporting by Camillus Eboh; Writing by Alexis Akwagyiram; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Nigeria seeks lawmakers’ approval for $1.3 bln loan for development bank

The European Union is poised to impose sanctions against more Congolese officials, sources in Brussels said, amid worsening violence in the resource-rich country since President Joseph Kabila overstayed his mandate and pushed back elections.
One source said the EU will add nine names to its Congo blacklist of people subjected to asset freezes and travel bans. They join seven others, including members of the Congolese army and police, the bloc put on its list in December citing &#8220;serious violations of human rights&#8221;.
The bloc&#8217;s 28 member states are expected to approve the enlarged sanctions list at a meeting in Brussels later on Wednesday, the source said.
Kabila, in power since 2001, struck a deal in December with Congo&#8217;s main opposition bloc to stay on after his mandate expired provided he held elections by the end of 2017. But talks to implement the deal broke down in March when Kabila refused to commit to the bloc&#8217;s choice of prime minister.
Political tensions are high after security forces killed dozens during protests over election delays last year. Worsening militia violence in recent months has also raised fears of a backslide toward the civil wars of the turn of the century that killed millions.
The Congo government has repeatedly denounced earlier sanctions imposed by the EU and United States as unjustified and illegal, and has threatened diplomatic retaliation.
Congo mines significant amounts of cobalt, gold, diamonds, copper and tin but remains one of Sub-Saharan Africa&#8217;s poorest countries.
On Tuesday, the EU said separately it would help transport aid workers and medical supplies to a remote north-eastern region of Congo, which is fighting an Ebola outbreak.
(Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska; editing by Richard Lough)

EU to impose sanctions on more Congo officials: diplomats

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<li>The average expense ratio for mutual funds and exchange-traded funds hit a record low in 2016, according to Morningstar.</li>
<li>Fees paid fell amid a major shift for investors from active funds to passive funds.</li>
<li>Vanguard, the firm Jack Bogle founded, has been a major beneficiary of the shift.</li>
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Jeff Cox | @JeffCoxCNBCcom
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<div class="headline">Investors are paying the lowest fees ever for funds in which they invest, a testament to the growing universe of lower-cost alternatives.</div>
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The average expense ratio paid by investors — operating expenses divided by assets — in 2016 fell to 0.57 percent, down from 0.61 percent in 2015 and 0.65 percent in 2014, according to a study released Tuesday by Morningstar.
But it wasn&#8217;t because the funds themselves were getting cheaper. Instead, investors took advantage of the growing array of options available to them and shifted cash to lower-expense exchange-traded funds.
Indeed, the top 2,000 funds in terms of asset size carried an average expense ratio of 0.72 percent, the same as in the previous two years.
&#8220;This indicates that the decline in average mutual fund fees paid by investors stems largely from investors&#8217; migration to lower-costs funds and not from fee cuts by the fund management industry,&#8221; Patricia Oey, senior analyst at Morningstar, said in the report.
The record low in fees paid comes amid a massive shift in investor money <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/24/why-chasing-high-flying-investment-managers-is-usually-a-really-bad-idea.html" target="_self">from mostly actively managed mutual funds to passively managed exchange-traded funds</a>. The key differences are that active funds employ managers who pick individual stocks and can move in and out of positions while ETFs track market indexes and carry substantially lower fees.
In 2016, the average active fund carried a 0.75 percent expense ratio, while passive funds averaged 0.17 percent, according to Morningstar. What&#8217;s more, fewer than 1 in 5 active managers beat the basic market index they are measured against. Active fund fees have declined 19 percent over the past three years while active funds have seen fees drop just 6 percent despite the intense competition.
In all, passive funds attracted a net $563 billion from investors during 2016 while active funds gushed $325.6 billion. The flows haven&#8217;t been quite as dramatic this year as about half of large-cap managers have been beating their benchmarks.
Investors have gotten considerably more picky when it comes to choosing funds.
In 2015 and 2016, active funds that Morningstar considers the most expensive saw outflows of $627 billion, while the cheapest 20 percent of funds saw inflows of $41 billion.
In terms of individual firms, investors have flocked to <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/02/charles-schwab-just-fired-the-latest-shot-in-the-passive-investing-price-war.html" target="_self">Vanguard and BlackRock amid a price war</a> among asset managers.
Vanguard founder <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/jack-bogle/" target="_self">Jack Bogle</a> was one of the pioneers of index fund investing, though he is not as big a fan of ETFs. Over the past three years, Vanguard has raked in $739 billion of inflows while BlackRock has taken in $262 billion.
No other firm is close. Overall, BlackRock has $1.13 trillion in ETF assets while Vanguard is next with $711.5 billion and State Street has $521.3 billion, according to ETF.com. The latest data from the Investment Company Institute put total ETF assets at $2.77 trillion while the mutual fund industry excluding money market funds, has $14.3 trillion.
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Winning! Investing costs have never been this cheap

Britain has increased its security threat level to &#8220;critical&#8221; from &#8220;severe&#8221; following a suicide attack in Manchester that killed 22 people, including children, Prime Minister <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/theresa-may/" target="_self">Theresa May</a> said on Tuesday.
May also said members of the armed forces would boost security at key sites and military personnel might be deployed at public events such as concerts and sports events.
May said the independent body which sets the threat level had recommended it be raised after a man named by police as Salman Abedi set off an improvised bomb on Monday night as crowds streamed out of a concert.
&#8220;It is now concluded on the basis of today&#8217;s investigations that the threat level should be increased for the time being from severe to critical,&#8221; she said in a televised statement following a meeting of the government&#8217;s crisis response committee.
&#8220;This means that their assessment is not only that an attack remains highly likely but that a further attack may be imminent.&#8221;

UK Prime Minister May raises threat level to critical

Eustance Huang | CNBC
Once known as the next frontier for tech investments, <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/india/" target="_self">India</a> has seen many of its top start-ups seem to be going through a bit of a rough patch lately.
According to News Corp VCCEdge&#8217;s quarterly deal report for 2017&#8217;s calendar year first quarter, the value of start-up deals in India faced the worst quarterly performance since the third quarter of 2013 — with 165 deals made at a value of $237 million.
<blockquote>&#8220;Unicorns in India are facing issues related to profitability and (a) slowdown in funding,&#8221; said Satish Meena, senior forecast analyst at Forrester Research.
<div id="attachment_122356" style="width: 650px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-122356" class="wp-image-122356 size-large" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/start-up-shutterstock-1024x738.jpg" alt="" width="640" height="461" />Photo: Shutterstock.</div></blockquote>
Meena told CNBC that most of the companies, especially those in online retail, are struggling to bring profitability into their business as a result of over-expenditure on customer acquisition following Amazon&#8217;s entrance into the Indian market in 2013.
Furthermore, Meena said, the problem has been exacerbated by an increasingly challenging regulatory environment — with more rules on discounts — and the government&#8217;s push for demonetization in November 2016, making it difficult for start-ups to realize aggressive targets.
Echoing Meena&#8217;s statements, Marcelo Ballvé, research director at CB Insights said &#8220;several of India&#8217;s prominent e-commerce and food delivery unicorns have not fared well recently.&#8221;
As a result, multiple high-profile unicorns have faced a reduction in valuation and fund raising efforts and the sector has seen an increase in consolidation.
For example, Ballvé cited the recent fundraising round for India&#8217;s largest e-commerce retailer Flipkart, in which the company&#8217;s overall valuation slid despite raising more than $1 billion.
Just a month before, its rival Snapdeal announced that it was laying off up to 600 employees due to over-expansion and diversification. In recent weeks, rumors have even started spreading about the possibility of an acquisition between the two companies, <a class="inline_asset" title="https://www.vccircle.com/snapdeal-flipkart-may-ink-merger-next-week/" href="https://www.vccircle.com/snapdeal-flipkart-may-ink-merger-next-week/" target="_self">with VCCircle reporting</a> that the deal could happen as early as this week.
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Ballvé also added that food delivery unicorn Zomato was &#8220;losing millions every year and has not raised in nearly 600 days.&#8221;
On the transportation front, a recent Economic Times article reported that transportation application company Ola suffered losses of Rs 2,313.66 crore (about $356 million) in the financial year of 2016 — nearly 3 times what it lost in the last previous financial year. The losses were a result of fierce competition from a foreign rival — Uber.
CNBC has reached out to Flipkart, Snapdeal, Zomato and Ola for comments regarding their recent performance, but has yet to receive a reply.
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<h4 class="subtitle">The uncertain way ahead</h4>
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As with start-ups in many countries, India&#8217;s unicorns are fighting to survive in a rapidly changing environment after enjoying years of venture capital funding.
&#8220;The reality is that India is by no means an immature market for VC,&#8221; Ballvé said. &#8220;It may soon be time to put up or shut up as the market has not done a great job generating venture-level exits.&#8221;
There have only been four exits valued at more than $500 million in the last 2 years in India, and none of them came from VC-backed companies, he said.
Ballvé did, however, offer some signs of hope, suggesting that investor sentiment remains positive as Flipkart&#8217;s down round was backed by big names like Tencent, Microsoft and eBay. Flipkart even folded eBay India under its umbrella.
Ballvé also highlighted bootstrapped software as a service company Zoho, an Indian company officially headquartered in the U.S. which he said was &#8220;reported to be doing $310 million per annum in revenue.&#8221; Also of note was payments unicorn One97 Communications, which was &#8220;seemingly doing very well,&#8221; Ballvé added.
At present, only two out of India&#8217;s 10 known unicorns have achieved profitability.
<div id="attachment_121636" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-121636" class="size-full wp-image-121636" src="http://cnbc.africa/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Innovation_Flickr.jpg" alt="" width="1024" height="683" />Photo: Flickr.</div>
They are data analytics firm Mu Sigma — which was the county&#8217;s first unicorn to achieve profitability and has been profitable for a number of years — along with InMobi, the mobile advertising platform which announced to the Times of India last month that it has been profitable since June 2016.
Despite the struggles of many Indian start-ups, some observers say the sector is simply getting started. On the mobile front, smartphone penetration in India lags well behind fellow unicorn-incubator China.
The latest research by the Pew Research Center reported that in 2016, smartphone ownership in India stood at 18 percent — up from its 12 percent figure in 2013. China, meanwhile, has smartphone ownership of about 68 percent and has been growing at a steady rate from 37 percent in 2013.
&#8220;The e-commerce market in India has a lot of room to grow as the market is still in the early stages with low penetration and not well-established online shopping behavior,&#8221; said Sandy Shen, research director at Gartner.
Sounding positive on the future of e-commerce in India, Shen said consumers were likely to benefit in the form of better services as a result of increased competition. She added that competition from global players was likely to import the latest technologies and best practices from abroad, hastening the learning process for India&#8217;s startups.
&#8220;The market is big enough to accommodate at least three major players. Of course, e-commerce is a scale game, so whoever gets bigger faster will also win big.&#8221;
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