Company news in brief

BP to invest US$1bln in South Africa

BP Southern Africa (BPSA) will invest US$1 billion in South Africa in the next five years with more than a quarter of that set aside to upgrade the SAPREF refinery to produce lower sulphur diesel, its chief executive said on Thursday.

The 180,00 barrels per day SAPREF refinery, South Africa’s largest, is a 50:50 venture between Royal Dutch Shell and BPSA, a subsidiary of British oil major BP. The plant is located in the east coast city of Durban.

BP would invest 3.5 billion-4 billion rand (US$252 million-US$288 million) in the refinery upgrade, Chief Executive Priscillah Mabelane told Reuters, adding that about 40% of the total US$1 billion investment would go on retail activities.

She said the upgrade would make “sure the refinery can meet the new specifications in terms of low sulphur and Marpol regulations.”

The plant would shut for maintenance from May to June 2019, she added.

needed to produce cleaner fuel in South Africa, the continent’s most industrialised economy.

-Nampa/Reuters

RioZim demands US$92 mln from Zimbabwe central bank

Zimbabwean miner RioZim is demanding US$92 million from the central bank in a lawsuit brought to force the Reserve Bank to pay for more of its gold purchases from the company in US dollars, court documents showed.

The Miners are struggling as Zimbabwe grapples with an acute shortage of dollars.

Producers sell all their gold to the central bank’s subsidiary Fidelity Printers and Refiners, which then exports it. RioZim, however, says that since 2016 the central bank only paid for 15% of gold it purchased from the company in dollars, breaching its policy to pay for 30% in the US currency.

The central bank has not commented on the lawsuit.

RioZim first announced on Oct. 9 that it would take legal action against the central bank, signalling impatience by miners over the dollar shortages.

In its summons filed with the High Court dated Nov. 14, RioZim says it failed to receive US$48 million due in payments from the central bank for its sales in dollars and suffered losses of US$44 million due to lost production.

“The plaintiff suffered a direct loss of money and the devaluation of the purchasing power of its earnings ...,” RioZim said in the documents seen by Reuters on Thursday.

-Nampa/Reuters

Airbnb faces Israeli class-action lawsuit

Lawyers launched a class action lawsuit in Israel on Thursday against Airbnb, accusing the company of “outrageous discrimination” and demanding monetary damages after it withdrew listings of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The San Francisco-based company said this week it was removing listings of around 200 homes in settlements after hearing criticism from people who “believe companies should not profit on lands where people have been displaced”.

Through her attorneys, Ma’anit Rabinovich from the West Bank settlement of Kida, who offers guest room rentals, said the move “represents especially grave, offensive and outrageous discrimination”.

Rabinovich claimed 15 000 shekels (US$2 573) in personal damages. The class action lawsuit would seek an as yet unspecified sum on behalf of others in the same situation, according to court papers presented at Jerusalem District Court.

“The company’s decision is in effect directed solely against Israeli citizens living in the settlements, the petitioner claims, and this is severe, especially outrageous discrimination,” Rabinovich’s lawyers said in a statement.

“(It is) part of the long war being conducted by organisations (of which a clear majority are anti-Semitic) against the State of Israel in its entirety, and against Israelis living in settlements in particular.”

-Nampa/Reuters

Samsung vows to pay compensation for ill workers

South Korea’s Samsung Electronics on Friday vowed to compensate by 2028 its local chip and display factory workers who have suffered from work-related illnesses.

The move settles a year-long dispute between the world’s top memory chipmaker and an advocacy group representing sickened workers and their families after the 2007 death of a Samsung chip factory worker with leukemia sparked concerns over working conditions at the South Korean company.

“Our effort was insufficient to better understand the pain affected workers and their families went through,” Samsung Electronics chief executive Kim Ki-nam said in a public apology during an event to sign the agreement.

-Nampa/Reuters

Visa, Mastercard offer tourist card fee cut

Visa and Mastercard have offered to trim the fees merchants pay on card payments by tourists in the European Union in an attempt to stave off possible fines after a long-running antitrust investigation, people familiar with the matter said.

Even after the cut, the fees paid by merchants when they accept card payments, a lucrative source of revenue for banks, will still likely be higher than those for EU cards, they said.

The European Commission has battled for more than a decade to reduce so-called interchange costs and encourage cross-border trade and online commerce. US regulators have also frowned on such practices.

Retailers say interchange fees count as a hidden cost and the card companies have paid billions of dollars to settle class action lawsuits.

Visa, the world’s largest payments network operator found itself in the Commission’s crosshairs in August 2017, charged with subjecting the cards of foreign tourists to excessive fees when they were used in the EU.

The case originally concerned Visa Europe which was acquired by Visa Inc in June 2016. The EU said that fees charged to retailers when they accept Visa cards issued outside the EU could raise prices of goods and services for all consumers.

-Nampa/Reuters