10/03/2025

BIZ & FINANCE MONDAY | MAR 10, 2025

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Barrick Gold ‘committed to

US federal workers thrown into uncertain job market

mutually beneficial

Virgin Group aims to raise £700m to fund Eurostar rival, says FT LONDON: British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Group aims to raise £700 million (RM3.9 billion) to fund its bid to launch cross-channel rail services to compete with Eurostar, the Financial Times reported yesterday. Virgin Group intends to raise £300 million in equity and £400 million in debt and plans to be a cornerstone equity investor in the project, the company told the newspaper. Virgin did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The company, which used to run intercity train services in Britain, plans to launch services connecting London with Paris and Brussels, and then to extend to Amsterdam in the future, the FT reported. Virgin’s plans are for a high-frequency service that would be the first direct rival to Eurostar’s 30-year-old network and could launch as soon as 2029, the newspaper reported. Eurostar told the Financial Times it welcomed the development of rail services in Europe, adding that “competition in the high-speed rail sector is another example of the growing demand for rail transport in Europe”. Eurostar did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. – Reuters resolution’ in Mali OTTAWA: Barrick Gold remains “fully engaged and committed to reaching a mutually beneficial resolution” with Mali to end a dispute over its assets there, its chief operating officer for Africa and the Middle East said in a memo seen by Reuters on Saturday. The Canadian miner and Malian government have been locked in a dispute since 2023 over the implementation of the West African country’s new mining code, which gives the state a greater share in Barrick’s Loulo-Gounkoto gold mining complex. Barrick said on Jan 13 that it was obliged to temporarily suspend mining operations in Mali after the government seized around three metric tons of gold stock from its complex. The government had been blocking the company’s gold exports since early November. Reuters reported on Feb 19 that Barrick had signed an agreement to end the dispute, which then went to the state for formal approval. While there has not been any major hiccup since then, the deal is taking some time to be finalised, one person close to the process told Reuters. In the company memo sent to staff on Saturday, Sebastiaan Bock said there are “no major updates at this stage”. “As a reminder, all non-critical operations remain temporarily paused until further notice,” he said. – Reuters

o Experts warn that hiring is low at this time and there could be skills mismatch

WASHINGTON: Unprecedented cuts to the US government overseen by President Donald Trump’s billionaire advisor Elon Musk are sending thousands of federal workers and contractors back to the labour market – but experts warn that hiring is low at this time. Official data released Friday showed federal government employment declined by 10,000 in February, the first full month of Trump’s return to the White House. “We’re trying to shrink government and grow the private sector,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office after the data was released. Analysts say the full effects of his government cuts are yet to be seen, and they warn of a possible mismatch between workers’ skills and the jobs available in the marketplace. For some, like staff in the international development sector, their whole industry has been upended. “I’m grieving, trying to figure out what next to do for a paycheck,” said a 38-year-old contractor for the US

Sojourner points out that 80% of civil servants are based outside this area, however. In states like Wyoming, New Mexico or Oklahoma, they represent more than 2% of total employment. “It could be quite hard to find alternative employment if there’s a big flood of people onto the market at once,” Sojourner warned. The hiring rate is currently low, noted economist Nancy Vanden Houten at Oxford Economics. While some sectors have higher hiring rates, these include less skilled occupations in areas like leisure and hospitality, as well as retail trade. This could prove to be a mismatch for federal workers who “are generally more educated and skilled than the private sector workforce”, she said. Baker noted that highly educated researchers, especially younger ones, may seek employment in other countries. “It’s a fantastic opportunity for them to pick up talent,” he said. – AFP

Agency for International Development (USAID). The Trump administration has sought to dismantle USAID, ending many humanitarian and other support projects globally. The worker, who declined to be named, told AFP: “It’s going to be quite difficult to find alternative jobs, because basically an entire industry has been wiped out in less than a month.” She has been on unpaid leave since mid-February and is living on her savings. She has applied for other jobs but not heard back, and said she cannot afford to live in Washington indefinitely without a job. The US unemployment rate is fairly low, at 4.1%, but how easily workers find new jobs will depend on whether their skills translate to the private sector. The federal government is the

country’s largest employer, with around 2.4 million employees, excluding active-duty military and US Postal Service personnel. While the thousands of layoffs within the federal workforce may not seem large on paper, numbers could balloon once government contractors are included, said Dean Baker, an economist at the Centre for Economic and Policy Research. Economists expect the government layoffs to show up in employment data over the coming months. “We’ll see it unfolding over time,” said economist Aaron Sojourner at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. In the US capital Washington and its neighbouring states Maryland and Virginia, nearly 6% of employees work for the federal government, according to the Pew Research Centre.

Trump delivering remarks at the White House Crypto Summit in Washington. – REUTERSPIC

Trump hosts crypto leaders in summit WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump wooed the cryptocurrency industry’s elite at the White House last week, hosting a first-of-its-kind summit focused on his plans for a government-owned stockpile of digital assets. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and entrepreneur David Bailey. A major focus of the event was Trump’s goal to build a strategic reserve containing bitcoin, which he formalised in an executive order on Thursday that also said there would be a stockpile of other digital assets. government that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings, White House crypto czar David Sacks said in a post on social media platform X. Sacks told reporters at the White House that establishing a bitcoin reserve should have been done a long time ago.

was good to see the administration being collaborative with the industry after years in which some felt they were under attack over security and consumer protection issues. “For the first time, industry leaders feel they’re walking into a collaborative discussion,” said Les Borsai, co-founder of Wave Digital Assets, a crypto investment adviser, who said he did not receive an invitation. Trump was upbeat about the crypto industry’s prospects, telling the summit:“We feel like pioneers in a way.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told the event the US was going to keep the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and use stablecoins to do that. – Reuters

Trump welcomed a wide range of industry players including Zach Witkoff, one of the founders of the president’s own crypto business, World Liberty Financial, his social media posts showed. In addition to top administration officials and lawmakers, guests in the White House’s State Dining Room included MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, Coinbase co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong, investors

That order directed the secretaries of Treasury and Commerce to develop “budget-neutral strategies” for acquiring additional bitcoin that have no “incremental costs” on taxpayers. “We don’t want any cost to the taxpayers,” Trump said at the summit. The reserve will be capitalised with bitcoin owned by the federal

He said taxpayer funds would not be used to acquire digital assets and that there were existing protections in place to safeguard consumers from crypto investments. Officials invited to the summit praised Trump and executives for clearing the way for the industry’s growth. Other industry executives said it