Day: January 1, 2024

© Reuters. A view shows the logo of Chinese automobile manufacturer Geely at a dealership in Moscow, Russia, March 23, 2023. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File photo

By Summer Zhen

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Chinese carmaker Geely Automobile Holdings (OTC:GELYF) Ltd set its sales volume target at 1.9 million units for 2024, up 13% from its total sales last year, according to a Hong Kong stock exchange filing on Monday.

The company also said it increased its sales volume target for new energy vehicles by more than 66% compared with the total sales volume achieved in 2023, without giving a figure.

Geely, China’s second largest automaker by sales, said it sold 1,686,516 vehicles in 2023, up 18% from 2022.

In December, sales volumes rose 3% from the same period in 2022, it added.

© 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.