Company news in brief

Company news in brief Aspen Pharmacare to supply J&J vaccine

Aspen Pharmacare plans to start supplying Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine doses from its facility in South Africa before the end of June, its chief executive said on Friday.

Stephen Saad told Reuters in an interview that the technology transfer from J&J has "gone very well, and we are now committing [to] commercial supply in our financial year", which ends June 30.

South Africa has signed an agreement for 11 million J&J doses with an option to get another 20 million, its health minister Zweli Mkhize has said, but it is not clear how many of the doses will come from Aspen.

Saad said that will depend on the negotiations between African governments and J&J but said he hoped a chunk of its supply could meet the demand from South Africa and the rest of the continent.

Aspen said the company has a capacity to manufacture 600 million doses of vaccines in South Africa, but there had been no discussions with J&J or any other company to manufacture more Covid-19 vaccines beyond the committed number. – Nampa/Reuters

Shell's oil trading earnings double

Royal Dutch Shell's 2020 earnings from trading crude oil and refined products doubled from the previous year to US$2.6 billion, providing a boost to offset a sharp drop in fuel demand due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Shell's oil trading operations, known internally as Trading & Supply, accounted for 43% of the Oil Products division's total earnings of US$5.995 billion in 2020. Trading earnings totalled US$1.3 billion in 2019.

The unusually high contribution from trading helped Shell weather one of the toughest years in the industry's history, when energy consumption collapsed during the pandemic.

Shell, the world's largest energy trader, experienced a 28% drop in oil sales last year to 4.71 million barrels per day on average, the report said.

Its 2020 profit dropped to its lowest in at least two decades. – Nampa/Reuters

Deutsche Bank CEO's pay rise prompts backlash

Deutsche Bank paid chief executive Christian Sewing 7.4 million euro (US$8.8 million) in 2020, up 46% from a year earlier, prompting criticism from unions and politicians.

The bank's bonus pool was up 29% as it rewarded staff for a pandemic-related trading boom, which helped the German lender to eke out a profit after years of losses.

The disclosure in the bank's annual report on Friday came as Deutsche said revenue would be "marginally lower" this year.

The bank has lost 8.2 billion euro over the last decade.

Its 2020 net profit attributable to shareholders was 113 million euro after a loss of 5.7 billion the year before as a surge in investment banking earnings offset weakness in other businesses. – Nampa/Reuters

Hammerson's loss sparks debt warning

Hammerson lost 1.7 billion pounds (US$2.4 billion) in 2020 as the coronavirus crisis knocked the value of its malls, prompting immediate asset sales and a longer-term debt warning.

The British mall operator said on Friday its net rental revenue had almost halved and it had so far collected 76% of last year's rents as the COVID-19 pandemic hit retail tenants.

While Hammerson said it would meet its liabilities at least for the next 12 months, it warned about the impact of the coronavirus on the retail sector and broader economy.

"More adverse outcomes relative to those assumed in the scenario modelling, could result in breaches in the Group's unsecured gearing and interest cover ratio covenants," the company said in a statement.

Hammerson's combined credit score, a measure of how likely a company is to default in the next year on a scale of 100 (very unlikely) to 1 (highly likely), was "4" as of Friday, data from Refinitiv Eikon showed. – Nampa/Reuters

Daimler to recall 2.6 million Mercs

German luxury automaker Daimler will recall 2.6 million Mercedes-Benz vehicles in China due to a software design issue, the country's market regulator said on Friday.

Software may fail to communicate a vehicle's correct location in the event of a crash, China's State Administration for Market Regulation said in a statement. Daimler declined to comment further on the recall.

Last month Mercedes-Benz USA said it was recalling 1.29 million vehicles sold since 2016 for a similar reason. – Nampa/Reuters