BBC News - North Sea oil summit announced by Aberdeen City Council

A plan for a summit to look at the challenges facing the North Sea oil industry has been announced by Aberdeen City Council.

Council leader Jenny Laing said the UK and Scottish governments, trade unions and industry bodies needed "to get round the table as soon as possible".

The Labour councillor said a "strategic plan" was required to save jobs as the price of oil continued to fall.

Labour called on Nicola Sturgeon and David Cameron to attend the summit.

It comes after a warning that the UK's oil industry is in "crisis".

On Thursday, Robin Allan, chairman of the independent explorers' association Brindex, told the BBC that the industry was "close to collapse".

He claimed almost no new projects in the North Sea were profitable with oil below $60 a barrel.

However, Sir Ian Wood, another leading industry figure, said Mr Allan's warning was "well over-the-top and far too dramatic".

Sir Ian predicted conditions would begin to recover next year.

'Undermine confidence'

Ms Laing said Aberdeen was the oil capital of Europe and as such it was her job, as leader of the city council, to work with the governments in Edinburgh and Westminster and the oil industry to ensure jobs in the city were protected and companies remained based there.

She said: "I have today instructed Angela Scott, our chief executive, to arrange a summit between senior politicians, government officials, industry representatives, trade unions, and local politicians.

"The aim will be to ensure an agreement to develop a strategic plan to ensure job losses are either avoided or kept to a minimum.

"It must concern us all that the price of oil has dropped so heavily in such a short space of time and we need to agree a strategy to deal with fluctuations that undermine confidence in the North Sea."

Ms Laing said the council chief executive would write to various politicians within both the UK and Scottish governments, as well as UK Oil and Gas, other industry leaders and trade unions to encourage them to take part in the summit.

Scottish Labour has pledged to send its new leader Jim Murphy.

Fiscal changes

A Scottish government spokesman said it was continuing to do all that it can to support Scotland's oil and gas sector.

He added: "As we have long said, what the industry requires is a stable predictable fiscal regime, and that substantial tax incentives are needed to achieve the objective of maximising recovery.

"Unless the UK government acts to bring in further measures, the likelihood is some fields will cease production early."

The UK government's Department of Energy and Climate Change said it was important to highlight that there was "very little evidence of new projects being cancelled or deferred in reaction to lower oil prices".

A spokesman added: "The government recognises the challenges currently faced by the oil industry and that's why earlier this month the Treasury announced a package of fiscal changes and initiatives to stay on the front foot in dealing with them.

"We understand the particular concerns recent sharp reductions in oil prices have raised for companies active in the North Sea and will continue to engage with the Scottish government on this issue, including at this summit."

Bloomberg News - Russia Forcing Swiss Hand Depletes Arsenal to Fight ECB Stimulus

Photographer: Gianluca Colla/Bloomberg

Lights illuminate the facade of the Swiss National Bank's headquarters in Bern.

The Swiss National Bank’s resort to negative interest rates leaves President Thomas Jordan wielding a weaker hand when the European Central Bank ramps up stimulus.

Swiss central bank officials are now bracing for a month of currency speculation as the Russian crisis simmers on and a potential ECB quantitative easing decision on Jan. 22 threatens further pressure on the franc. While the SNB can toughen its response, any further action will probably lack the shock factor unleashed with yesterday’s deployment of a charge on deposits.

“The SNB’s arsenal has been reduced significantly,” said Julien Manceaux, an economist with ING Bank NV in Brussels. “On rates it can’t go too low, as this would cause imbalances in the domestic market, and a significant increase of the balance sheet would probably be politically difficult.”

The SNB, which created the franc ceiling in 2011, has dramatically stepped up its policy defense with a tool not used in Switzerland since the 1970s after the Russian crisis reached its borders with a deluge of investment inflows. In addition to the 0.25 percent deposit charge, officials ended a two-year hiatus on currency purchases to shield the 1.20-per-euro cap.

While the franc plunged 0.7 percent against the euro on the SNB’s announcement in Zurich yesterday, it reversed more than half the drop within hours. Jordan, renewing his pledge to defend the minimum exchange rate with “utmost determination,” insisted markets simply need time to understand what happened.

Think About it

“I don’t think the national bank used up its ammunition too early,” he told reporters in Zurich. “Many market participants have yet to fully comprehend the measures -- how strong and how drastic they will be, and what a burden they will pose on large account holders.”

Aside from further currency purchases to defend the franc, Swiss officials can tweak the deposit charge by either increasing it or by enforcing it more strictly.

“It’s hard to see what more they can do apart from using both instruments further,” said ING Bank’s Manceaux.

With negative rates not coming into force until Jan. 22, banks don’t need to react at once. Even so, Jordan’s pledge on additional measures if needed might be tested on the same date the deposit charge kicks in, as it coincides with the ECB’s first rate meeting of 2015.

Euro Storm

That day, the euro zone’s policy makers are likely to consider a large-scale purchase program forgovernment bonds to meet their ambition to swell the ECB balance sheet by 1 trillion euros ($1.2 trillion). Such a stimulus flood weakening the single currency might raise the prospect of renewed pressure on the Swiss franc.

“The SNB is at the mercy of the ECB and is bracing for a euro storm with all measures,” said Janwillem Acket, chief economist at Julius Baer Group Ltd. in Zurich. “The fact that the SNB chose Jan. 22 tells me that they would have liked to wait but were put under pressure because of Russia. They knitted the two things together quite elegantly.”

The date also falls in the middle of the World Economic Forum in Davos, when all eyes will be on Switzerland anyway.

“The SNB said repeatedly that it was ready to act immediately if needed,” said Maxime Botteron, an economist at Credit Suisse Group AG. “By setting negative rates, policy makers are simply following through on what they’ve pledged.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Zoe Schneeweiss in Zurich atzschneeweiss@bloomberg.net; Jana Randow in Frankfurt at jrandow@bloomberg.net

Bloomberg News - Swiss National Bank Starts Negative Interest Rate of 0.25% to Stave Off Inflows

Photographer: Gianluca Colla/Bloomberg

The Swiss National Bank is imposing a charge of 0.25 percent on sight deposits, the cash-like holdings of commercial banks at the central bank, it said in a statement today. It is expanding its target range for the three-month Libor to minus 0.75 percent to plus 0.25 percent

Switzerland imposed its first negative deposit rate since the 1970s and threatened further action to stem a tide of money flowing from Russia’s financial crisis.

Swiss National Bank President Thomas Jordan cited the Russian turmoil as a “major contributory factor” for the surprise decision to introduce a charge of 0.25 percent on sight deposits, the cash-like holdings of commercial banks at the central bank. The SNB also lowered its target range for the three-month Libor in an attempt to push the rate below zero. It fell to minus 0.046 percent today.

The SNB move hints at the investment pressures that resulted after Russia’s surprise interest-rate increase this week failed to stem a run on the ruble. Swiss officials acted as the turmoil, along with the imminent threat of quantitative easing from the ECB, kept the franc too close for comfort to its 1.20 per euro ceiling.

When Interest Rates Go Negative

“What happens from here will depend in part on how the Russian crisis develops,” Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist at Capital Economics Ltd. in London. “We suspect that the SNB will soon have to follow up the rate cut with further bouts of currency intervention.”

Jordan said today the SNB resumed purchases of foreign currencies in the past few days after a two-year hiatus. Should additional measures be needed to protect its cap, the central bank will consider increasing the deposit charge or enforcing it more strictly, Jordan said, affirming policy makers’ commitment to defend the minimum exchange rate.

Franc Weakens

The franc weakened after the announcement, trading at 1.2041 per euro at 12:20 p.m. in Zurich. Against the dollar it fell to 97.64 centimes.

The Swiss currency was “experiencing renewed upward pressure vis-a-vis the euro in the last few days,” Jordan said. “Rapidly mounting uncertainty on the financial markets has substantially increased demand for safe investments. The worsening of the crisis in Russia was a major contributory factor in this development.”

The SNB said it expanded the target range for three-month Libor to a 100 basis-point band of minus 0.75 percent to 0.25 percent, with the aim of taking the rate into negative territory.

“The wide range of the new target for the policy rate is a clear hint that the policy rate could be pushed even further below zero if needed,” said Michael Saunders, an economist at Citigroup Inc. in London.

Charge Exemptions

The sight-deposit charge is subject to exemptions that will be set individually for each account holder. For banks subject to minimum reserve requirements, including UBS Group AG and Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN), that will be 20 times the statutory minimum reserve requirement. Institutions without such obligations will be granted an allowance of 10 million francs ($10.2 million).

Negative rates will be imposed as of Jan. 22. The timing has caused speculation among central-bank watchers that the measure could be linked to the European Central Bank’s monetary-policy meeting scheduled for that day. Policy makers there are set to consider expanding debt purchases beyond covered bonds and asset-backed securities to prevent a deflationary spiral.

Jordan played down a potential link, saying that changes to terms and conditions on sight deposits required a 30-day notice period. An ECB spokesman declined to comment.

Switzerland last charged for deposits in the 1970s, when the government imposed negative interest rates on assets held by foreigners. The measure wasn’t very effective and can’t be compared to today’s decision, Jordan said.

“The SNB has responded to renewed crisis-induced capital inflows to Switzerland, while at the same time preparing for expected additional ECB measures,” said Christian Lips, an economist at NordLB in Hanover, Germany. “It should give the SNB some breathing space in its defense of the minimum exchange rate -- no more, no less.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Zoe Schneeweiss in Zurich atzschneeweiss@bloomberg.net; Jan Schwalbe in Zurich at jschwalbe6@bloomberg.net

BBC News - Rouble regains ground as trading remains nervous

Russia's rouble has regained ground from Tuesday's all-time low, although trading remains edgy and volatile.

It opened 4% lower on Wednesday, but then edged up. In early trading,one US dollar bought 66 roubles, far fewer than the record low of 79 on Tuesday.

The falls were sparked in part by fears of new Western sanctions against Russia for its stance on Ukraine.

Russia revealed it spent almost $2bn on Monday trying to intervene in the currency market.

The Russian Finance Ministry said on Wednesday it had begun selling off stocks of foreign currency in an attempt to stop a further slide in the value of the rouble.

It said the currency was "undervalued" but its words and actions have had little apparent impact.

A drastic 6.5 percentage point rise in Russian interest rates to 17% early on Tuesday also failed to halt the slide.

The rate rise, which was meant to strengthen the currency. helped it hit 58 to the dollar early on Tuesday. In later trading, however, the dollar at one stage bought as many as 79 roubles.

The rouble has lost more than half its value against the dollar this year, hit by cheaper oil and Western sanctions which have both weakened the Russian economy.

Reuters News - Fed faces big decision over a few choice words

U.S. Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen delivers her welcoming remarks before the European Central Bank, Federal Reserve Board and Federal Reserve Bank of New York Conference at the Federal Reserve in Washington November 13, 2014.

CREDIT: REUTERS/GARY CAMERON

(Reuters) - Federal Reserve officials will decide this week whether to make a critical change to their policy statement that would widen the door for interest rate hikes next year and effectively bet the United States will continue to shine in a gloomy global economy.

In one of the last major wild cards for financial markets in 2014, the U.S. central bank's policy-setting committee is to issue the statement and fresh economic forecasts on Wednesday at 2 p.m., following a two-day meeting. Fed Chair Janet Yellen will then hold a news conference at 2:30 p.m.

The U.S. economy has strengthened and jobs have been created at a faster-than-expected clip since the Fed's last meeting in October, when it repeated that benchmark rates were unlikely to rise for a "considerable time." Officials will have to decide whether to replace that phrase despite below-target U.S. inflation and economic weakness in Europe and Asia.

Top Fed officials have suggested mid-2015 is a reasonable time to start tightening monetary policy after six years of near-zero rates, and financial markets generally agree.

As investors search for clues on when and how aggressively the Fed might move, here are the key things to watch:

THE LIFT-OFF LANGUAGE

The Fed has been toying with dropping the "considerable time" phrase since at least September. In October, it restated the pledge but made clear that rates could rise sooner if economic data were strong, and later if they weren't.

If the phrase is dropped, as many Wall Street economists expect, the Fed could replace it with a pledge to be "patient" in an effort to prevent an abrupt market reaction that could throw off the economy's momentum.

If it is kept, as centrist Fed policymakers Dennis Lockhart and John Williams suggested last week, Yellen would have to explain the need for such caution in the face of falling unemployment and signs that wage growth is edging up.

HITTING THE INFLATION TARGET

There is no question the Fed is approaching its goal of full employment after years battling the recession and its aftermath, so it will need to somehow acknowledge that in the statement. Unemployment is at a six-year low of 5.8 percent and monthly job growth has averaged more than 250,000 over the last six months.

More troubling is the elusiveness of the Fed's other goal of 2 percent inflation. The Fed's preferred inflation measure stands at just 1.6 percent, and with global oil markets tanking, the dollar soaring, and the economies of Europe, Japan and China weakening, the threat is that it will slip further.

"To some at the Fed that's a chasm, to others it's a crack," said Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust.

Many Fed officials expect any downward pressure on U.S. prices to prove temporary. The question is where Yellen stands.

FRESH FORECASTS FOR RATES, ECONOMY

The clearest hint of the Fed's plans could come in policymakers' fresh projections of how high rates should rise over the next few years. In September, they suggested the overnight federal funds rate could rise to about 1.25 percent by the end of 2015, and about 2.75 a year later.

Given U.S. economic growth in the last two quarters was the strongest in more than a decade, policymakers will also probably nudge up their GDP expectations for the next two years, and lower forecasts for inflation and unemployment.

(Reporting by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)

BBC News - US House passes $1.1tn budget bill to avert shutdown

The US House of Representatives has passed a $1.1tn budget, hours before government was due to shut down at midnight on Thursday.

The House vote came hours before a midnight deadline

The Republican measure was passed by 219 votes to 206 after President Barack Obama had urged Democrats to support the budget.

It will fund most of the government until September 2015, but some areas will only receive short-term funding.

Republicans won control of both House and Senate in elections last month.

A relieved John Boehner, the Republicans' House leader, said: "Thank you and Merry Christmas."

Fifty-seven Democrats voted for the bill, but others were angry about the president's call for support of the Republican bill, with Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi saying she was "enormously disappointed" at Mr Obama's position.

John Boehner: `"Thank you and Merry Christmas"

Immigration issue

The Republicans strongly oppose President Obama's immigration reforms and so the bill only funds the Department of Homeland Security until February.

Republicans hope that when the new Congress meets at the start of next year, they can force changes to the president's immigration plans.

The budget bill must now be passed by the Senate and sent to the president to sign into law.

A two-day extension of government funding was approved by the Senate on Thursday to give it time to pass the main budget.

Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi criticised Mr Obama for supporting the bill

Senate Majority leader Harry Reid said that his chamber would begin looking at the legislation on Friday.

The bill funds the government at the same levels that were negotiated last December.

It also adds emergency funding requested by President Barack Obama, including funds to fight Ebola in West Africa and money for US air strikes against militant group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

As presented earlier in the week, the 1,600-page bill also includes a number of provisions intended to gain votes from both parties, including:

• increasing the amount an individual person can contribute to a national political party from $32,400 to $324,000
• blocking the District of Columbia from using its own funds to set up regulatory systems for marijuana legalisation
• measures that would significantly weaken financial regulations in the Dodd-Frank law, including restrictions on derivatives trading
• blocking certain Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations
• cuts in the budgets of the EPA and the US tax agency
• increases in the budget for Wall Street regulation agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A number of Democrats were unhappy at what they saw as unnecessary concessions made to Republicans in order to pass the bill.

"We don't like lobbying that is being done by the president or anybody else that allows us to... give a big gift to Wall Street," Democrat congresswoman Maxine Waters said.

For their part, several Republicans argued that the deal did not go far enough in putting curbs on President Obama's plan to grant work visas to millions of workers who had entered the US illegally.

The US government entered a partial shutdown during October 2013, after the two houses of Congress failed to agree a new budget.

That shutdown left more than 700,000 employees on unpaid leave and closed national parks, tourist sites and government websites.

Bloomberg News - China Deflation Risk Deepens Signaling Room for Easing: Economy

Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg

Shoppers walk along a shopping street in Beijing, China.

China’s factory-gate deflation deepened and consumer prices climbed at the slowest pace since 2009, signaling room for further monetary easing.

The producer-price index dropped 2.7 percent in November from a year earlier, a record 33rd-straight decline and the biggest fall since mid last year.Consumer prices rose 1.4 percent, compared with the 1.6 percent increase in October.

Falling oil and metals prices have cut costs for China’s factories, leading to lower export prices and adding to dis-inflation threats across the world. The rising risk of deflation drives up real borrowing costs, making it harder for China’s indebtedcompanies to service debts and increasing pressure on the central bank to follow up last month’s surprise interest-rate cut with further monetary easing.

“China has entered into a rapid dis-inflation process, and faces the risk of deflation,” said Liu Li-Gang, chief Greater China economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. in Hong Kong. “As the PBOC has exhausted its newly invented and ineffective policy tools, we believe the next move will have to be a RRR cut in order to regain policy effectiveness and credibility.”

Chinese stocks rebounded from the biggest loss in five years amid speculation the government will provide further economic stimulus.

Factory-gate prices of coal products fell 11.6 percent from a year earlier, oil and gas products slumped 13 percent and ferrous metal products declined 16.6 percent, according to a statement on the National Bureau of Statistics website.

“The major driver of the recent decline in headline inflation readings is the slump of global oil and other major commodity prices,” said Lu Ting, Bank of America Corp.’s head of Greater China economics in Hong Kong.

Oil Slump

Oil’s slide also helped push China’s trade surplus to a record in November after an unexpected decline in imports. Lower oil prices could boost economic growth and help keep inflation slow enough to give scope for further easing after last month’s surprise interest-rate cut.

“The risk of deflation in China has risen significantly,” China International Capital Corp. economists Liang Hong and Bian Quanshui wrote in a note. It will “lift the level of real interest rates, further curbing aggregate demand and in turn reinforcing deflation expectations.”

As such, the People’s Bank of China needs to relax monetary policy, including cuts in interest rates and banks’ RRR, they wrote.

China is forecast to lower banks’ required reserve ratio to 19.5 percent in the first quarter of 2015 and to 19 percent in the second quarter, according to a survey by Bloomberg News.

Global Risk

As lower commodity costs fuel the drop in factory prices, that’s in turn pushing down China’sexport prices, feeding deflation risks globally.

While most major central banks view inflation of about 2 percent as the yardstick for price stability, more than one-fourth of 90 economies monitored by researcher Capital Economics Ltd. are below 1 percent, the most since 2009. Almost half of those are already in deflation.

The moderation in China’s consumer prices reflects tepid domestic demand. Non-food inflation was 1 percent from a year earlier, while food prices increased 2.3 percent.

“Without a question, deflation has become the main risk of prices,” Xu Gao, chief economist at Everbright Securities Co. in Beijing, wrote in a note. “The root cause of this is the weak real economy.”

The job market is showing signs of stress that may trigger a second wave of economic weakness next year driven by slowing consumption, wrote Standard Chartered Plc economists led by Shanghai-based Li Wei in a note.

Wages Freeze?

“While the manufacturing sector has been losing jobs for three years, until recently growth in services jobs was enough to offset this,” wrote the economists. “This has now changed. More worryingly, our recent discussions with companies suggest that many plan to freeze wages in 2015 as a result of the slowing economy and already-squeezed profit margins.”

China’s top leaders started a meeting yesterday to map out economic plans for 2015. Economists expect the government to lower next year’s economic growth target to 7 percent from about 7.5 percent this year as it adapts to the “new normal” of a slower expansion pace.

“In the near future, the PBOC will likely remain at the forefront of the global central banks’ battle against ’low-flation’,” said Morgan Stanley analysts led by Helen Qiao in a note ahead of today’s release. The analysts said they expect more flexibility in combining interest rate and reserve requirement cuts with targeted easing measures to maintain macro stability and address structural imbalances.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Xiaoqing Pi in Beijing at xpi1@bloomberg.net