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Qatar has threatened to stop vital gas shipments to the EU if member states strictly enforce a new law that will punish companies that fail to meet set criteria on carbon emissions, rights to people and labor.

Qatar’s energy minister Saad al-Kaabi told the Financial Times that if any EU state imposes sanctions for non-compliance with a measure aimed at the corporate due diligence directive that Doha will stop -export its liquid natural gas to the bloc.

The law requires EU countries to introduce powers to impose fines for non-compliance with an upper limit of at least 5 percent of annual worldwide income.

“If the case is that I lose 5 percent of my generated income by going to Europe, I will not go to Europe. . . I am not bluffing,” said Kaabi. “Five percent of the generated revenue of QatarEnergy means 5 percent of the generated revenue of the state of Qatar. This is the people’s money . . . so I will not lose that kind of money – and no one will accept that lose that kind of money.

The EU adopted corporate due diligence rules in May of this year. They are part of a wider set of reporting requirements aimed at aligning companies with the EU’s ambitious goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2050.

But the directive has prompted a widespread backlash from companies, both inside and outside the EU, which complain that the rules are too onerous and put them at a competitive disadvantage.

Cefic, the chemical industry body, said due diligence rules “create significant litigation risks” and should be fully explored “to identify and address areas for simplification and burden reduction in order to . . . limit exposure to liability.”

Non-EU companies will be liable for penalties under the directive if they earn more than €450 million in net turnover in the bloc.

Qatar is one of the world’s leading LNG exporters and has become an increasingly important supplier of gas to Europe following the turmoil in energy markets caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

As European states seek to wean themselves off Russian gas, QatarEnergy has signed long-term agreements to supply LNG to Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands.

Kaabi suggested that in its current form the legislation – which will be implemented from 2027 – would not work for companies such as state-owned QatarEnergy, of which he is also the chief executive.

He said that this requires the company to do due diligence on the labor practices of all suppliers in the group, with a global supply chain that includes “100,000” companies.

“Perhaps I need a thousand people of my size and the billions we have spent, or (should) drop millions in a service . . . to go and audit every supplier,” he added.

Kaabi said it would also be impossible for an energy producer like QatarEnergy to comply with the EU’s net zero target as set by the directive due to the large amount of hydrocarbons it produces.

The EU directive includes an obligation for large companies to adopt a transition plan for mitigating climate change in line with the 2050 objective of climate neutrality in the Paris Agreement, as well as intermediate target under the European Climate Law.

Kaabi said the legislation would affect all of Qatar’s exports to Europe, including fertilizers and petrochemicals, and could also affect investment decisions by the Qatar Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund.

He said that QatarEnergy will not violate its LNG contracts, but it will look into legal ways if it faces heavy penalties.

“I do not accept that we will be punished,” he said. “I will stop sending gas to Europe.”

However, Kaabi suggested that there might be room for compromise if the sanctions were targeted only at European-generated income rather than global total income.

“If they say the penalty is 5 percent of your revenue from that contract you sold in Europe, I say, ‘OK, I have to check that. Does that make sense?'” he said. “But if you want to come up with my total earnings, come on, it doesn’t make any sense.”

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen promised last month to propose an “omnibus” legislation that would reduce reporting requirements from several of the bloc’s green finance laws, including the directive on due hard work

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Asset manager M&G is suing Royal London over its purchase of a mutual financial adviser platform, claiming some client pension money was invested in “unreasonably risky” products on the left deal and that it is now under pressure from regulators to pay compensation.

M&G agreed in 2020 to buy Ascentrica wealth management platform for advisers with £15.5bn of assets under administration, as part of a push at the time to increase its share of the retail savings market.

But in a lawsuit filed at the High Court in London, M&G claimed that before the deal, the business – also known as Investment Funds Direct Limited (IFDL) – “exposed its customers to undue risk investments, with an inappropriately high percentage of their pension funds in those investments”.

M&G is seeking damages of at least £27 million, plus interest, from each other, saying Royal London failed to properly disclose risks during the claims process.

In court documents, M&G said that before the takeover, the business made products known as CFP Bonds available on its platform. Some advisers allocate client funds to self-invested personal pensions in these bonds.

CFB Bonds with a value of around £27 million were bought by 553 investors, according to the lawsuit, which was filed last month but not previously reported.

M&G claimed in its lawsuit that there was “no liquid market” for the bonds “outside IFDL’s own platform” and some customers complained they could not sell them. It says they meet the definition of “minibonds”, risky investments that usually offer high returns and have drawn scrutiny from regulators.

A customer with £304,000 of their pension invested in bonds complained to IFDL about why it allowed the product to be used on the platform, according to court documents.

Others complained to the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Pensions Ombudsman.

In a decision in March, cited in the lawsuit, the FOS said that “if it (Ascentric) had carried out due diligence in accordance with good industry practice it would have concluded that the CFB bonds were a non-standard and speculative investment “.

A fund manager in particular plans to use the platform to “invest at least 30 percent of each model of the client’s portfolio in bonds, regardless of the type or risk level of the portfolio”, which “means that there is a serious risk of consumer damage”.

Royal London has yet to file a defense in court. Both companies declined to comment on the ongoing legal proceedings.

In the court filing, the M&G added: “IFDL is actively engaging with the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority), and is under pressure to develop a remediation scheme for all IFDL investors in non-standard assets (including CFB Bonds) and customer fees.

“Without active engagement by the FCA, there is a significant risk of formal FCA action being taken.”

M&G said in its half-year results in September that it plans to exit the adviser digital platform market as part of a plan to “focus and rationalize our wealth strategy”.

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A plan to change the rules for qualifying as an accountant in the US could expose companies to discrimination lawsuits and increase barriers to joining the profession, according to the body that represents the largest country audit firm.

In a private comment letter seen by the Financial Times, the Center for Audit Quality – which represents the Big Four and other major firms – condemned the proposed reforms as “unnecessarily complicated”, and said they could they “introduce unconscious bias” into the qualification process.

The CAQ’s intervention puts the big audit firms at odds with the two bodies that set the rules for how to qualify as a certified public accountant – the American Institute of CPAs and the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy – over whether how to prevent the decline of new recruits.

The AICPA and Nasba in September proposed removing a requirement that accountants complete the equivalent of five years of university education, rather than a traditional undergraduate degree, a rule blamed for putting young on entering the profession.

The two bodies proposed an alternative path to qualification: replacing the fifth year of education with a requirement for one year of on-the-job training in companies, which must prove that a recruit has obtained several specific technical and professional skills.

Liz Barentzen, CAQ’s vice-president, wrote in a comment letter submitted last month that “the framework’s extensive list of competencies, performance indicators, and evaluation requirements creates a unnecessarily complex system that would be difficult to implement consistently across jurisdictions”.

And he added: “Qualitative assessment frameworks can introduce subjectivity and unconscious bias into assessment processes, potentially creating work-related issues (eg, claims of discrimination ) that should not exist.”

The shortage of accountants began to appear as a risk factor in some companies’ financial disclosures, and some small accounting firms withdrew from niche businesses such as auditing. local governments. Professional leaders have warned that big companies could face recruitment problems if the trends are not reversed quickly.

The number of people taking the CPA exam has fallen from a peak of more than 100,000 in 2016 to a 17-year low of more than 67,000 in 2022 and, after a slight uptick last year , the AICPA plans to continue their decline in the short term. The pipeline of young people taking accounting courses at university has thinned in recent years, as they gravitate toward higher-paying entry-level jobs in finance or technology.

CAQ argues that tackling the shortage should include widening the appeal of accounting to students from diverse backgrounds, where the cost of a fifth year at university can be particularly problematic.

The AICPA and Nasba have committed to making public comments on their proposals in early 2025.

Sue Coffey, the AICPA’s chief public accounting executive, said it was “getting helpful, diverse feedback” on its proposals.

“It is critical that the license paths are clear and attractive to students. Working with Nasba and various stakeholders, we will know better next month what it looks like,” he said.

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Donald Trump’s transition team is pushing to pull the US out of the World Health Organization on the first day of the new administration, according to experts who warn of its “catastrophic” impact on global health.

Members of Trump’s team have told experts of their intention to announce a withdrawal from the global health body in presidency at the January 20 inauguration. Leaving would remove the WHO’s biggest source of funding, harming its ability to respond to public health crises such as the coronavirus pandemic.

“America will leave a huge vacuum in global health finance and leadership. I don’t see anyone filling the breach,” said Lawrence Gostin, professor of global health at Georgetown Law, adding that the plan to -withdrawal “on the first day” would be “catastrophic” for the health of the world.

The clash in US relations with the WHO comes after Trump has chosen several allies, such as vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedyfor top health jobs in the next administration. Still, Gostin said he’s not sure Trump would place as high a priority on an immediate withdrawal as some on his team.

The US is the WHO largest single donorwhich provides about 16 percent of its funding in 2022-23.

In 2020, Trump began the process of leaving the WHO as Covid-19 spread, accusing the agency of being under Chinese control. But the process was not completed and his successor, Joe Biden relations are restarted with the agency on its first day in office in 2021.

Experts said some in Trump’s team wanted to move faster this time after starting the process so quickly.

Ashish Jha, Biden’s former White House Covid response co-ordinator and dean of the school of public health at Brown University, said the transition team wanted. Trump to withdraw on the first day because of the “symbolism” of reversing his own pace on the day of Biden’s inauguration.

“There are many people who will be part of the inner circle of the administration who do not trust the WHO and want to symbolically show a day without them,” he said.

He added that some of the team wanted to stay in the organization and push to reform it, but another group that believed in cutting ties won the argument.

The bodies are like WHO key to global cooperation in vaccine development and distribution as well as other treatments during health emergencies, Jha said.

“If you don’t join these institutions, you won’t have your ears on the ground when the next explosion happens,” he warned.

Gostin said there will be “very years for the WHO where it will struggle to respond to health emergencies and will have to reduce scientific staff.”

He warned that if the US leaves the WHO, European countries are unlikely to increase funding and China may try to exert more influence. “This is not a wise move because withdrawing would cede leadership to China,” he said.

The Trump transition team did not directly comment on the potential withdrawal. A person familiar with the plans told the Financial Times: “The same WHO we left behind in the first administration? We don’t seem to care much about what they have to say.”

The WHO did not comment. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the body’s director-general, said this month that it was an “unique organization” that hoped to engage with US policymakers.

“From our side, we are ready to cooperate,” he said. “I believe that US leaders understand that the US cannot be safe unless the rest of the world is safe.”

New York, New York–(Newsfile Corp. – December 21, 2024) – WHY: The Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, announces the filing of a class action lawsuit on behalf of the purchasers of securities of Sun Communities, Inc. (the “Class Class”). A class action lawsuit has been filed. If you want to serve as the lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than February 10, 2025.

WHATEVER: If you purchased SUI securities during the Class Period you may be entitled to compensation free of any out-of-pocket fees or expenses through a contingency fee arrangement.

WHAT TO DO NEXT: To join the SUI class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=32347 or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll free at 866-767-3653 or email case@rosenlegal.com for class action information. A class action lawsuit has been filed. If you want to serve as the lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than February 10, 2025. The lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in the conduct of litigation.

WHY ROSEN LAW: We encourage investors to select qualified advisors with a track record of success in leadership roles. Often, the companies issuing the notices don’t have the same experience, resources, or any meaningful peer recognition. Be wise in choosing advice. The Rosen Law Firm represents investors worldwide, concentrating its practice in securities class actions and shareholder derivative litigation. The Rosen Law Firm achieved the largest securities class action settlement against a Chinese Company at that time. The Rosen Law Firm is ranked No. 1 in the ISS Securities Class action (WA:) Services for the number of securities class action settlements in 2017. The company has been ranked in the top 4 every year since 2013 and has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for investors. In 2019 alone the company earned over $438 million for investors. In 2020, founding partner Laurence Rosen was named by law360 as a Titan of Plaintiffs’ Bar. Many of the firm’s attorneys have been recognized by Lawdragon and Super Lawyers.

CASE DETAILS: According to the lawsuit, during the Class, the defendants created the false impression that they presented a complete and accurate picture of SUI’s financial reports and accounting regarding SUI’s expected revenue and expected growth. At no point do the defendants state or refer to the debt owed to DH Bingham Farms LLC, signed by Chief Executive Officer (“CEO”) Gary Shiffman, or the numerous undisclosed loans received by CEO Gary Shiffman, including one from SUI Board Member Arthur Weiss. Defendants misled investors by providing the public with materially false statements of confidence and progress throughout the Class Period, without accounting for these variables. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claimed that investors suffered damages.

To join the SUI class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=32347 call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll free at 866-767-3653 or email case@rosenlegal.com for class action information.

No Class Verified. Until a class is certified, you will not be represented by counsel unless you hold one. You can choose the advice you want. You can also stay out of class and do nothing at this point. An investor’s ability to share in any potential future recovery is not dependent on serving as the lead plaintiff.

Follow us for updates on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-rosen-law-firm or on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rosen_firm or on Facebook (NASDAQ:): https :// /www.facebook.com/rosenlawfirm.

Attorney Advertising. The first results do not guarantee a similar result.

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To view the original version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/234846

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Photos: Alamy, Getty Images, AP Images, Kemka Ajoku, Spencer DeLorenzo and Reuters

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As I pack my bags after nine years in Berlin, I leave a city that seems trapped in a narrative of its own decline.

Veterans say it jumped the shark. Flats are impossible to find. Day care spots are like hen’s teeth. Bureaucracy is an analogue of the mind. Gentrification flattens its anarchic soul. The danger is gone.

Some of this may be true. But it doesn’t reflect my experience. For me, Berlin is at the top of its game, a city that, if it hadn’t been able to hold its own, would have been the capital of Europe.

When I started as an FT reporter here in 2016, everything seemed like a small province. Its people are notoriously cruel and insular. Every day brings a brush with the “Berliner Schnauze”, the famous rudeness of the locals.

In later years its rough edges were smoothed. It has become more international and less dependent on foreigners. And, as English became more widespread, it developed into a kind of global village.

In the past nine years I have seen Berlin welcome tens of thousands of refugees, first from Syria, then from Ukraine. It has drawn a wave of Brexit émigrés, desperate to preserve their ties to Europe. And then, especially since 2022, it has adopted the Russian intelligentsia in exile, the artists, writers and human rights activists who fled Putin’s dictatorship.

It grows while holding on to its — relative — innocence. It’s a capital city, yes, but not like London, which reaches out to the rest of the country. The area is not dominated by banks, as they are all in Frankfurt. The big media conglomerates are in Hamburg, the carmakers in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. Berlin is many things – the seat of government and a thriving tech hub – but it is not a slave to Mammon.

That means public space isn’t privatized like it is in other places, and there are some of the deplorable chains that make London’s high streets look ordinary. The strangers you meet at parties seem less interested in what you do for a living than in your thoughts on a “left-autonomous” technoclub or the latest Schaubühne premiere.

However, those who say the city is changing for the worse have a point. A former mayor described Berlin as “poor but sexy”. Some say rich and boring.

Exhibit A — the Am Tacheles complex on Oranienburger Strasse. It’s a former department store that was half-destroyed in the war and then taken over by a collective of artists after the Wall came down, becoming a symbol of Berlin’s unruly spirit. I remember visits there in the 1990s, the giant murals, the graffiti, the strange sculptures in the grounds, the raw, scuzzy energy of the place. Today it is a complex of offices, luxury apartments and high-end shops, all bright and orderly, with its own private for-profit photography museum.

Then there’s the small matter of the €130 million the Berlin government deducted from the city’s arts budget for next year. The cultural elite, which has long been used to a drip-feed of lavish subsidies, is in turmoil: dozens of fringe theater groups and artist initiatives may close. An act of “self-inflicted cultural subversion”, one prominent director called it.

But something tells me Berlin will pull through. This is, after all, a city that survived the near-death experience of Allied bombing, and was on the frontline of the cold war, divided in two by a 4-meter high wall for 28 years.

Despite all this it is still, in the words of an Irish friend of mine who has lived here for over two decades, the “biggest collection of black sheep” in the world. It is a sanctuary for the rebellious and misfits of all persuasions, who get along well with their more bourgeois counterparts. Citizens neighbors. Despite the rising cost of living here, it seems full of creative people doing God’s work but always looking like they’re having the time of their lives.

And as anyone who has navigated countless construction sites knows, it’s also a place of immense, limitless potential. As the art critic Karl Scheffler famously wrote in 1910: it is a city “damned to continue to be, and never to be”. When I finally boarded the plane from here after nearly a decade in this city, it was the “being-ness” that I missed the most.

Email Guy at guy.chazan@ft.com

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The writer is a novelist

In 1989, we bought a small house in the shadow of the medieval city walls of Carcassonne. This was the beginning of my love for Languedoc — the history, the mysterious mystery hidden in the landscape, the endless blue sky, the light of the mountains at dusk. It will inspire my first historical adventure novel, Labyrinthwhich will go on to be translated into 38 languages ​​and sold in over 40 countries. Its worldwide success is the reason I was able to quit my day job and become a full-time writer.

Imagine my dismay, therefore, to discover that those 15 years of dreaming, researching, planning, writing, rewriting, editing, visiting libraries and archives, translating Occitan texts, finding the original which 13th-century documents, being an expert on Catharism, are obviously important. for nothing. Labyrinth just one of several of my novels that got scrapped The large Meta language model. It was done without my consent, without payment, without notice. This is theft.

I am excited about artificial intelligence and its possibilities. Using technology to develop, improve, experiment and change is part of any artist’s toolkit. We need time to create and, perhaps, AI can give us breathing space to do the things we love. But intellectual property theft is an attack on creativity and copyright, and will undermine the UK’s world-leading economy. The time has come to get together and act.

It’s been a busy month in parliament for AI. On December 3, the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society launched the report “A Brave New World?” at a meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Writers Group. This survey of about 13,500 authors on AI behavior throws a hand-grenade into a one-sided debate about illegal scraping and crawling of authors’ work and the misconceptions that surrounding it.

On December 9, Baroness Beeban Kidron convened creators to discuss three proposed changes to the data (use and access) bill currently going through parliament, which would make UK copyright law enforceable in the age of generative AI.

This comes ahead of a government consultation on how to improve trust between sectors, ensuring that AI developers give rights holders greater clarity on how their material can be used. So far, so good. Furthermore, when the consultation framework was revealed, it became clear that it was an attempt to weaken UK copyright laws in the name of “progress” by suggesting that creators and rights holders should to “opt out” of their work because. used for AI training.

When the House of Lords debated Kidron’s amendments this week, peers were unanimous in their disdain for the government’s plans, with Kidron observing: “The government is selling the creative industries down the river .”

AI companies present creators as opposed to change. We are not. Every artist I know has interacted with AI in one way or another. But a distinction must be made between AI that can be used in good ways – for example, medical diagnosis – and the foundations of AI models, where companies basically steal the work of creative people for their own income. Let’s not forget that AI companies rely on creators to build their models. Without strong copyright laws that ensure creators can make a profit, AI companies will lack the high-quality material that is essential for their future growth.

The UK has one of the most thriving, innovative and profitable creative industries in the world, worth £108bn a year. The publishing industry alone contributes £11bn a year and has the potential to grow by another £5.6bn over the next decade. It supports 84,000 jobs and leads the world in publishing exports, with 20 percent growth predicted in 2033. In the film industry, 70 percent of the top-20 grossing films in 2023 are based on book.

One of the reasons for this worldwide success is because we have strong and fair copyright laws. The UK pioneered this. The Statute of Anne, passed in 1710, aimed to encourage learning and support the book trade, creating a framework in which the writers who created the work retained full rights, making it illegal for publishers to reproduce the work without permission or payment.

It is this robust and fair system that the government will undermine if it pursues an opt-out – or “reservation of rights” in the new parlance – rather than an opt-in model. Why should we writers shoulder the burden of preventing AI companies from stealing our work? If a producer wants to make a film out of it, or a radio show, or a theater piece, they come to us and we make a deal. Although the technology is new and evolving, the principle is the same. AI is no different. It’s not just a matter of fairness, or of acting illegally, but of economic growth. If creatives have to spend time trying to track down AI companies to stop scrapping our work, we’ll have less time to work. This, in turn, will diminish our global creative industries and harm growth.

I fully support the government in its determination to harness the future and become a world leader in AI innovation. Sixty years later, at the Labor party conference in 1963, Harold Wilson spoke of the “white heat of the technological revolution” and a “university in the air”. This Labor government is following forward-thinking measures. But weakening copyright is not the way to do it. Placing the burden on authors and other creators to opt out is not the way to do it. Without original work, there is nothing.