Financial Times Europe - 10.10.2019

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Briefing

i hina slams Apple’s Hong Kong map appC

State media have attacked an app that gathers the

real-time locations of police and protesters. The

spat over remarks from US basketball officials has

also intensified.— PAGE 3; EDITORIAL COMMENT, PAGE 8

i wo die in German synagogue shootingT

A shooting in the eastern city of Halle as left twoh

dead after gunmen reportedly targeted a synagogue

filled with people marking Yom Kippur. It comes

amid rising fears over rightwing violence.— PAGE 2

i ikTok caught up in US-China battleT

The owner of the popular viral video platform has

become the latest Chinese tech group to find itself

in US crosshairs after senator Marco Rubio called

for a review of a 2017 acquisition.— PAGE 11; LEX, PAGE 10

i allying cry from outgoing EU trade headR

Cecilia Malmstrom has told the

FT the EU must do more to

stand up for businesses in the

face of an aggressive China and

protectionist US, in a sign of

Brussels’ shifting mood.— PAGE 2

i eijing overture ahead of trade talksB

China has offered to increase purchases of US farm

products ahead of today’s scheduled talks as the

sides seek to stave off a new round of tariff rises.

— PAGE 3; MARIANNE SCHNEIDER-PETSINGER, PAGE 9

i russels toughens stance on 5G securityB

A report drawing on assessments from all EU states

has warned that companies outside the bloc which

bid to build the networks could be “subject to

interference” from their home government.— PAGE 4

i S says Iran tanker delivered oil to SyriaU

Secretary of state Mike Pompeo has said that the

AdrianDarya1, which was seized by British troops

off Gibraltar in July and released weeks later, had

offloaded its cargo via another ship.— PAGE 4

Datawatch

Extinction reaction

Big Oil needs to respond quickly to

climate concerns— JOHN GAPPER,PAGE 9

THURSDAY10 OCTOBER 2019 WORLD BUSINESS NEWSPAPER EUROPE

World Markets

STOCK MARKETS

Oct 9 prev %chg

S&P 500 2915.99 2893.06 0.

Nasdaq Composite 7899.25 7823.78 0.

Dow Jones Ind 26331.69 26164.04 0.

FTSEurofirst 300 1497.02 1490.11 0.

Euro Stoxx 50 3459.41 3432.76 0.

FTSE 100 7166.50 7143.15 0.

FTSE All-Share 3926.97 3918.17 0.

CAC 40 5499.14 5456.62 0.

Xetra Dax 12094.26 11970.20 1.

Nikkei 21456.38 21587.78 -0.

Hang Seng 25682.81 25893.40 -0.

MSCI World $ 2124.15 2151.82 -1.

MSCI EM $ 993.95 994.16 -0.

MSCI ACWI $ 508.42 514.28 -1.

CURRENCIES

Oct 9 prev

$ per € 1.098 1.

$ per £ 1.222 1.

£ per € 0.899 0.

¥ per $ 107.385 107.

¥ per £ 131.186 130.

SFr per € 1.093 1.

€ per $ 0.911 0.

Oct 9 prev

£ per $ 0.819 0.

€ per £ 1.113 1.

¥ per € 117.908 117.

£ index 76.048 76.

SFr per £ 1.216 1.

COMMODITIES

Oct 9 prev %chg

Oil WTI $ 53.51 52.63 1.

Oil Brent $ 59.07 58.24 1.

Gold $ 1505.85 1501.25 0.

INTEREST RATES

price yield chg

US Gov 10 yr 131.54 1.57 0.

UK Gov 10 yr 151.53 0.38 0.

Ger Gov 10 yr -0.55 0.

Jpn Gov 10 yr 120.18 -0.21 0.

US Gov 30 yr 115.04 2.07 0.

Ger Gov 2 yr 101.00 -0.76 0.

price prev chg

Fed Funds Eff 2.04 2.13 -0.

US 3m Bills 1.72 1.75 -0.

Euro Libor 3m -0.44 -0.44 0.

UK 3m 0.76 0.76 0.

Prices are latest for edition Data provided by Morningstar

C L I V E C O O KS O N— LONDON

A 97-year-old scientist has become the

oldest ever Nobel laureate for helping

to lead the development of the

rechargeablelithium-ionbatteriesthat

power everything from mobile phones

tolaptopsandelectricvehicles.

John Goodenough of the University of

Texas at Austin, who is still active in

research, was one of three recipients of

the Nobel Prize in Chemistry yesterday.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sci-

ences said Prof Goodenough, Stanley

Whittingham of Binghamton University

in New York and Akira Yoshino of Meijo

University had laid the foundation of a

wireless and potentially carbon-free

society.

“They don’t make you retire at the

University of Texas at a certain age, so

I’ve had an extra 33 years and I’m still

working every day,” said Prof Goode-

nough, who was visiting London to

receive another award — the Royal Soci-

ety’s Copley Award for outstanding

research. “Other people do the hard

work in the lab and I sit there and enjoy

their interesting experiments.”

The trio will receive equal shares of

the SKr9m ($904,000) prize. Prof

Goodenough was the oldest laureate in

any discipline in the 118-year history of

Nobel Prizes, said Göran Hansson,

secretary-general of the academy.

Prof Whittingham started off the

development of lithium batteries in the

early 1970s as a scientist at Exxon in the

US but the project was discontinued

when the oil company cut back its

research activities in the early 1980s.

By then Prof Goodenough, who

moved from the US to become a chemis-

try professor at Oxford university in the

UK, had picked up Prof Whittingham’s

work and improved the battery’s per-

formance by introducing new materials

for its electrodes.

“This was a decisive step towards the

wireless revolution,” commented the

Nobel citation.

The work was picked up by Prof

Yoshino and colleagues atAsahi Kasei,

the Japanese chemicals company, which

developed the first commercially viable

lithium-ion battery in 1985.

Prof Yoshino — aged 71 and the young-

est of the three winners — said that

though he was working in industry,

“curiosity was the main driving force for

me”. He said lithium-ion batteries

would play a key role in fighting global

warming: “Climate change is a very seri-

ous issue for humankind. The way bat-

teries store electricity makes them very

suitable for a sustainable society.”

Goodenough at 97 to win Nobel Prize

for work on mobile battery technology

© THE FINANCIAL TIMES LTD 2019

No: 40,217★

Printed in London, Liverpool, Glasgow, Dublin,
Frankfurt, Milan, Madrid, New York, Chicago, San
Francisco, Orlando, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore,
Seoul, Dubai, Doha

AnalysisiPAGE 3

Questions swirl around

Biden family business ties

Austria €3.80 North Macedonia Den
Bahrain Din1.8 Malta €3.
Belgium €3.80 Morocco Dh
Bulgaria Lev7.50 Netherlands €3.
Croatia Kn29 Norway NKr
Cyprus €3.60 Oman OR1.
Czech Rep Kc105 Pakistan Rupee
Denmark DKr37 Poland Zl 20
Egypt E£42 Portugal €3.
Finland €4.50 Qatar QR
France €3.80 Romania Ron
Germany €3.80 Russia €5.
Gibraltar £2.70 Serbia NewD
Greece €3.60 Slovak Rep €3.
Hungary Ft1200 Slovenia €3.
India Rup220 Spain €3.
Italy €3.60 Sweden SKr
Latvia €6.99 Switzerland SFr6.
Lebanon LBP7500 Tunisia Din7.
Lithuania €4.30 Turkey TL
Luxembourg €3.80 UAE Dh17.

Japan is the

country most

affected by skills

shortages, forcing

the government

to open up to

more immigration

to combat the

problem. Greece

and Germany

have the biggest

skills shortages

in Europe

Skill shortages

 of companies aected

    

Japan

Turkey

Greece

India

Germany

US

France

Spain

UK

Based on a survey of  employers

across six industries and  countries

Sources: Manpower Talent Shortage

Survey of ; Statista

Counter revolution

Poland’s hardline ruling party heads

for election victory— BIG READ, PAGE 7

Bipolar politics

There are ways to bridge angry

divisions— MIRANDA GREEN, PAGE 8

C H R I S G I L E S— LONDON

The OECD has proposed a global
shake-up of corporate taxation, over-
turning a century of rules that had
allowed digital groups such asFace-
book,Apple,Amazon,Netflix nda
Google o shift profits around the worldt
to minimise their tax bills.
The proposals, unveiled yesterday
after months of behind-the-scenes
negotiations, are aimed at extracting
more corporate tax frombig multina-
tionals whether they are digital or own
highly profitable brands, such as luxury
goods makers or global car companies.
The winners would be large countries
including the US, China, UK, Germany,
France, Italy and developing econo-
mies. These would see an increase in

their rights to levy tax on corporate

income earned from sales in their terri-

tories, while the companies themselves,

tax havens and low tax jurisdictions

such as Ireland would lose.

The aim, the OECD said, was to create

a “stable” global corporate tax system

because “the current rules dating back

to the 1920s are no longer sufficient to

ensure a fair allocation of taxing rights

in an increasingly globalised world”.

The issue has led to tensions between

the US, home of the biggest tech compa-

nies, and Europe, with both France and

the UK pledging to impose unilateral

digital sales tax regimes if a multilateral

deal cannot be agreed.

The OECD had indications over the

summer that its proposals were likely to

win support from the leadingeconomies

and this, it hopes, will persuade coun-

tries not to go down the unilateral route.

Business and governments indicated

backing for the OECD proposals, with

Amazon calling them “an important

step forward”. The French finance min-

istry said they were “promising”.

The Paris-based international organi-

sation is seeking agreement in principle

from the G20 by the end of January.

The main problem it sought to

address was that multinationals —

whetherdigital giants orowners ofprof-

itable intangible brands — could shift

profits to low-tax jurisdictions, leaving

little corporate tax revenue forbig econ-

omies to collect despite most of their

activity taking place in thesecountries.

It has proposed breaking a taboo in

international corporate taxation: that

countries only had a right to tax activi-

ties from companies that had a physical

presence on their soil.

Instead, the OECD proposes that

countries should have a right to tax a

proportion of the global profits of highly

profitable multinationals wherever

these might have been shifted.

It would enable France, for example,

to tax an element of the sales of Google

to French advertisers and the US to have

greater taxing rights over the profits

attributable to the brands of the French

luxury brand companyLVMH elatedr

to the sales in America.

Emerging and developing economies

would gain taxing rights over these com-

panies for the first time.

Broad welcome age 2p

Editorial Comment age 8p

OECD unveils taxation overhaul

to squeeze more from Big Tech

3 Luxury brands also on notice 3 Century of rules face reversal 3 Transferred profits targeted

On offensive

Turkey begins

Syria assault

A Turkish military convoynears the
country’s southern border yesterday as
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
launched an ffensive into the north-o
east corner of Syria. He said the “Peace
Spring” operation would “preserve
Syria’s territorial integrity and liberate
local communities from terrorists”.
The move was in defiance of an outcry
over the threat posed to US-backed
Kurdish forces and the campaign
against Isis jihadis.
Donald Trump, US president, said the
move was a “bad idea” and warned that
he would hold Turkey to its commit-
ments to “protect civilians, protect reli-
gious minorities.. and ensure no.
humanitarian crisis takes place”.
Offensive begins age 4p
Mehmet Ali Dag/ Ihlas News Agency

The OECD said:

‘Current rules

dating back to

the 1920s are no

longer sufficient

to ensure a fair

allocation of

taxing rights

in a globalised

world’