Month: January 2024

© Reuters. A Saudi trader monitors stocks at the Saudi stock market in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, January 8, 2020. REUTERS/Ahmed Yosri/File Photo

By Libby George

LONDON (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund accounted for about a quarter of the almost $124 billion spent by sovereign wealth funds worldwide last year, a report published on Jan. 1 showed.

PIF’s whopping $31.5 billion spend in 2023 compared with $123.8 billion for all sovereign wealth funds, based on a preliminary annual report from industry specialist Global SWF, which tracks the world’s sovereign investment funds.

The strong rally last year in global stocks helped to swell the assets managed by the sovereign wealth funds worldwide to a record $11.2 trillion.

Total sovereign-controlled spending on the energy transition – everything from green hydrogen to lithium mining – also hit a record $25.9 billion in 2023, the report said.

Despite this, total spending by the sovereign wealth funds last year was 21% below 2022.

“This may signal an overly cautious approach, as there is no shortage of capital to put to work among these institutions,” Global SWF managing director Diego López said in the report.

Singapore’s GIC, which led spending by wealth funds for the past six years, invested 48% less in 2023, despite a $144 billion inflow from the country’s central bank.

Gulf funds were able to increase their dealmaking dominance, largely at the expense of Canadian and Singaporean funds, the Global SWF report showed. Gulf funds now account for nearly 40% of the investment value deployed by sovereign wealth funds.

Data provided by groups such as Global SWF is closely watched as not all sovereign funds release annual reports, and five of the top 10 do not reveal an exact total of their assets under management.

GAMING AND SPORT

Global SWF’s report did not break out individual investments by Saudi Arabia’s PIF, but its lavish spending on soccer and golf has made waves across the sporting world.

In June, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced PIF would take control of the country’s four leading soccer clubs, Al-Ittihad, Al-Ahli, Al-Hilal and Cristiano Ronaldo’s Al-Nassr.

In June, Saudi stunned the golf world, with a shock merger agreement between the PGA Tour, DP World Tour and rival LIV circuit, which is backed by the Saudi PIF. That merger is not yet finalised.

Aside from its splurge on sport, the Kingdom’s biggest investments were in other sectors and 42% of this spending was at home.

Big-ticket purchases included $4.9 billion for U.S. gaming company Scopely, $3.6 billion to buy Standard Chartered (OTC:SCBFF)’s aircraft leasing division and $3.3 billion for steelmaker Hadeed.

“The variety of deals shows the unparalleled bandwidth and reach of PIF and its subsidiaries, which are forming a wide net to capture any value-add for Saudi Vision 2030,” López said, referring to the country’s economic transformation plan.

The Global SWR report also highlights PIF plans to launch an airline and its own electric vehicle brand. The report said the fund has an $8.1 billion stake in gaming companies Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ:ATVI), Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:EA) and Take-Two (NASDAQ:TTWO) – part of plans to turn the country into a gaming hub.

Looking ahead to 2024, Global SWF expects assets for all state-owned investors – including sovereign wealth funds, central banks and pension funds — to surpass a previous peak in 2021 of $50.8 trillion in assets under management as they take account of the paper gains of the past year.

© Reuters.

KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) -Pakistan’s consumer price index (CPI) for December rose 29.7% from a year before, data from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics showed on Monday.

The country of 241 million people experienced its highest ever inflation in 2023, with its currency dipping to historic lows until a $3 billion IMF bailout averted an imminent sovereign default in July.

Monthly inflation for December registered a 0.8% rise from the previous month.

Mohammed Sohail, CEO of Topline Securities, said that inflation in Pakistan was showing some signs of slowdown based on month on month inflation data. “With lower local oil prices we may see decline in the year-on-year inflation in January and February,” added Sohail.

The central bank governor said on Friday Pakistan’s inflation rate would ease to around 20%-22% in the 2024 financial year, in a report issued weeks ahead of a national election it is hoped will help restore political and economic stability.

Bank chief Jameel Ahmed also said in his report that CPI surged to 29.2% in 2023, around the upper bound of the bank’s revised projections.

He added that the central bank would keep inflation expectations anchored to achieve its medium-term target of 5%-7%.

© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts speaks during the funeral service for retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, U.S., December 19, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo

By John Kruzel

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Artificial intelligence represents a mixed blessing for the legal field, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said in a year-end report published on Sunday, urging “caution and humility” as the evolving technology transforms how judges and lawyers go about their work.

Roberts struck an ambivalent tone in his 13-page report. He said AI had potential to increase access to justice for indigent litigants, revolutionize legal research and assist courts in resolving cases more quickly and cheaply while also pointing to privacy concerns and the current technology’s inability to replicate human discretion.

“I predict that human judges will be around for a while,” Roberts wrote. “But with equal confidence I predict that judicial work – particularly at the trial level – will be significantly affected by AI.”

The chief justice’s commentary is his most significant discussion to date of the influence of AI on the law, and coincides with a number of lower courts contending with how best to adapt to a new technology capable of passing the bar exam but also prone to generating fictitious content, known as “hallucinations.”

Roberts emphasized that “any use of AI requires caution and humility.” He mentioned an instance where AI hallucinations had led lawyers to cite non-existent cases in court papers, which the chief justice said is “always a bad idea.” Roberts did not elaborate beyond saying the phenomenon “made headlines this year.”

Last week, for instance, Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former fixer and lawyer, said in court papers unsealed last week that he mistakenly gave his attorney fake case citations generated by an AI program that made their way into an official court filing. Other instances of lawyers including AI-hallucinated cases in legal briefs have also been documented.

A federal appeals court in New Orleans last month drew headlines by unveiling what appeared to be the first proposed rule by any of the 13 U.S. appeals courts aimed at regulating the use of generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT by lawyers appearing before it.

The proposed rule by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals would require lawyers to certify that they either did not rely on artificial intelligence programs to draft briefs or that humans reviewed the accuracy of any text generated by AI in their court filings.

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© Reuters. Russian President Vladimir Putin makes his annual New Year address to the nation in Moscow, Russia, in this picture released on January 1, 2024. Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Pool via REUTERS
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By Lidia Kelly

(Reuters) – Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy honoured his people’s resilience in times of bloodshed in a long and lyrical New Year speech, while Russian leader Vladimir Putin stressed his country’s unity in a short and stern message that made only passing reference to the war.

The speeches – traditional Dec. 31 messages in both Russia and Ukraine – came as both countries marked the end of the year with increased air attacks on each other’s territories. But neither side can point to any major frontline achievements in 2023.

“The major result of the year, its main achievement: Ukraine has become stronger,” Zelenskiy said in a televised address interspersed with footage of cities under attack and meetings with leaders of Ukraine’s Western allies.

Mentioning “war” 14 times in his 20-minute message, Zelenskiy also vowed, just like a year ago, that a free Ukraine would prevail.

“No matter how many rockets the enemy launches, no matter how many shellings and attacks – vile, merciless, massive – the enemy carries out in an attempt to break Ukrainians, intimidate, knock Ukraine down, drive it underground, we will still rise,” he said, dressed in his trademark khaki outfit.

Comments by Putin, who faces an election in March, provided a sharp contrast to those of Zelenskiy and also to his own speech last year, when he cast the war as a near-existential fight.

This year, he called Russia’s soldiers “our heroes,” but did not mention Ukraine by name and did not refer to the “special military operation” – his term for the war his invasion unleashed in February 2022.

“We have proven more than once that we can solve the most difficult problems and will never retreat, because there is no force that can divide us,” Putin said in a four-minute speech, dressed in a suit and a red tie against a backdrop of the Kremlin walls.

“We are one country, one big family.”

The war – the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II – is nearing its second anniversary, with no end in sight. Thousands have been killed, millions of Ukrainians displaced and countless cities turned to rubble.

Neither Putin nor Zelenskiy referred to the 1,000-km (600-mile) front line where Kyiv’s counteroffensive had little success and where Moscow has been pushing on with its most recent but slow offensive along the eastern flank aiming to take control of more Ukrainian territory.

And while Zelenskiy spoke of 6,000 or so air raid alerts in Ukraine in the past year, Putin made no mention of any attacks – not even an attack Russia says Ukraine carried out on Belgorod in recent days killing at least 24 civilians.

Both spoke of the strength of their countries and their people, with Putin saying the future common effort will make Russia and its people stronger and Zelenskiy saying the war had already showed the strength of Ukrainians.

“And just like last December 31, today, we say: ‘We don’t know for sure what the New Year will bring us’,” Zelenskiy said. “But this year we can add: ‘No matter what it brought, we will be stronger’.”

(Aditional reporting by Oleksandr Kozhukhar in Kyiv and Ronald Popeski in Winnipeg; Writing by Lidia Kelly in Melbourne: Editing by Neil Fullick)

© Reuters. Apartment blocks are pictured in Beijing, China December 16, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Lee/File Photo

BEIJING(Reuters) – China’s new home prices rose for the fourth straight month in December, a private survey showed on Monday, buoyed by a slew of government support measures.

Prices rose 0.1% on average in December from the previous month after rising 0.05% in November, according to the survey by real estate research firm China Index Academy.

The property sector has stumbled from one crisis to another in recent years in a major blow to consumer and investor confidence.

Authorities have announced several measures to try to revive the housing market. In November, Beijing and Shanghai relaxed home purchase restrictions, including by lowering the minimum deposit ratio for purchases of first and second homes.

Analysts, however, think home buyers’ sentiment is too weak for the measures to have a long-term impact.