NewzIntel.com

Category: Economy

  • MIL-OSI New Zealand: Federated Farmers – Lend, don’t lecture – Feds support Shane Jones’ banking crackdown

    Source: Federated Farmers

    Federated Farmers welcomes Resources and Regional Development Minister Shane Jones’ efforts to hold banks accountable when they stray from their core function – lending money.
    Jones is spearheading a member’s bill seeking to ensure financial institutions focus on their legal and social responsibility to provide credit rather than engaging in selective lending based on ideology.
    “We’re right behind that. Banks exist to lend, not to lecture,” Federated Farmers banking spokesperson Richard McIntyre says.
    “It’s the job of elected governments to determine which businesses are lawful -not a handful of banking executives imposing their own moral compass.
    “Yet we’re seeing banks decline credit to legal businesses simply because they don’t align with corporate PR strategies.”
    One threat identified by Federated Farmers is to petrol stations, a vital lifeline for rural communities and isolated parts of New Zealand.
    Internal BNZ documents provided to Federated Farmers in late 2024 clearly state there is to be no new lending to petrol stations, and all existing debt needs to be repaid by 2030.
    “If banks are unwilling to provide lending to pay for things like upgrades, expansion or compliance, petrol stations will just disappear,” McIntyre says.
    “It’s ideologically driven nonsense. Do they not think farmers and rural communities will still need petrol in five years?
    “If a business is lawful, creditworthy, and can service a loan, then why should it be blacklisted by bank officials who jetted off to Glasgow together to sign an agreement on joint lending criteria?”
    Banks hold a social licence, and with that comes an obligation to serve their customers fairly, not to dictate how they should run their businesses, McIntyre says.
    Federated Farmers has been at the forefront of the fight against banking overreach in recent years.
    The farming advocacy group has led the charge for a government inquiry into banking competition, and has been working with Ministers to push for a review of bank capital requirements that penalise the agriculture sector.
    The federation also laid a complaint late last year with the Commerce Commission about the Net Zero Banking Alliance and its potential anti-competitive behaviour.
    “We continue to monitor and put pressure on banks to be fair to their customers, and we’re pleased to support Minister Jones’ proposal.
    “Banks should focus on banking, so farmers can focus on farming.
    “We expect this Bill to include provisions ensuring lending decisions are based on financial criteria rather than emissions targets,” McIntyre says.
    “Federated Farmers will continue to advocate for rural businesses and fair access to credit, so banking policies support the economy rather than ideology.”

    MIL OSI New Zealand News –

  • MIL-OSI Australia: Off the plan contract laws under review to provide greater certainty to buyers

    Source: New South Wales Premiere

    Published: 31 January 2025

    Released by: Minister for Customer Service and Digital Government

    Developers could face financial penalties for failing to deliver homes and unfairly profiting off buyers under reforms being considered by the NSW Government.

    Feedback is being sought on stronger protections for consumers in off the plan contracts for homes and land in NSW, to guide the delivery of new housing and prevent lengthy delays that leave people out of pocket.

    An off the plan contract is an agreement for the sale and purchase of a property that is yet to be developed or constructed. These contracts can apply to the sale of a proposed lot in a strata or community land scheme or to the sale of land in a conventional subdivision.

    The reforms are being designed to help increase housing supply by providing greater certainty and clearer deadlines for home buyers and to free up land for development faster by removing outdated restrictions on development sites.

    The reforms are intended to help more people achieve the Australian dream of home ownership and build greater confidence in the housing market by improving protections for buyers and preventing developers from delaying homes they have been contracted to deliver.

    About five per cent of 180,000 residential purchases in NSW last financial year were off the plan contracts which allow a buyer to commit to purchasing a property before the complex is built or land is subdivided.

    Potential reforms being released for comment aim to tighten contract rules to give buyers a clearer understanding of when they can expect to move into their new home, reducing uncertainty and the risk of being left behind in the market when a contract is cancelled.

    This could include scrapping the ability for developers to draw the contract out with indefinite sunset clauses which give buyers no clear path forward, or ability to exit the arrangement.

    Other proposed changes the NSW Government is considering include:

    • Making sunset clauses mandatory in contracts so that buyers can withdraw if sunset events do not occur by a set time
    • Requiring developers to disclose the status of the development against construction milestones so buyers have a better understanding of timeframes and potential risks
    • Limiting a developer’s ability to extend sunset dates only for certain reasons beyond the developer’s control such as weather or supply issues, and imposing time limits on extensions
    • Requiring developers to take reasonable steps to meet dates by potentially introducing penalties for inaction.

    The Government is also looking at unlocking potential development sites by making it easier to remove private, outdated agreements from land titles (known as obsolete restrictive covenants) which can limit how land is used or developed.

    Covenants can continue to bind future landowners indefinitely, even if they become outdated – for example, an obsolete covenant may prevent more than one property from being built on the land or ban the use of certain building materials.

    To support the reforms, the Office of the Registrar General has released a discussion paper called ‘Contracts and Covenants: Reforms to support development of land’ outlining the options.

    The community is invited to respond to survey questions or upload a submission on the reform proposals and share their experiences on the NSW Government’s Have Your Say platform.

    The consultation will lay the groundwork for legislation to be developed in 2025.

    The Contracts and Covenants consultation is open until 7 March 2025.

    To have your say, visit: https://www.haveyoursay.nsw.gov.au/offtheplan-contracts-covenants 

    Minister for Customer Service and Digital Government Jihad Dib said:

    “Buying a home is one of the most stressful experiences for an individual, these proposals are designed to provide greater certainty and consistency. This review is about making sure home buyers have the right protections and information they need to make informed decisions.”

    “Off the plan contracts play a crucial role in supporting essential housing supply initiatives in NSW. They allow buyers to purchase property early in the development process, while giving developers the confidence and financial security to build.”

    “We know that most developers do the right thing, but we don’t want situations where businesses try to run down the clock on a contract to sell to a higher bidder or mislead consumers by unfairly changing the goalposts for when they can move into their dream home.”

    “These reforms are designed to provide greater transparency as well as encourage the delivery of new homes. These proposals are about encouraging developers to be upfront about timelines and challenges to assist homeowners.”

    “We encourage people to have their say on these proposals which aim to boost consumer confidence in the off the plan contract process and help NSW achieve our housing targets.”

    Registrar General Danusia Cameron said:

    “Off the plan buyers need more information and support than buyers of established homes because they are not able to inspect a property before committing to buy it.”

    “It is important that the laws governing off the plan contracts also arm buyers with appropriate safeguards, meet the needs of the community and address emerging issues in the sector to ensure there is continued confidence in the process.”  

    MIL OSI News –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Government launches “national conversation” on land use

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments 2

    The Government has launched a consultation on a new approach to Land Use empowering decision makers with the toolkit to protect the most productive agricultural land and boost food security.

    • New sophisticated data on how land is used will underpin the Government’s Plan for Change, supporting economic growth through building 1.5 million homes and delivering critical infrastructure, securing clean power, protecting farmland and restoring the natural world.     

    • The consultation will seek views from farmers, landowners, businesses and nature groups across the length and breadth of the country.      

    The Government is today (Friday 31 January) launching a consultation on a new strategic approach to managing land use in England to give decision makers the data they need to protect our most productive agricultural land, boosting Britain’s food security in a time of global uncertainty and a changing climate.   

    This will support the Government’s missions under the Plan for Change, including delivering new housebuilding, energy infrastructure and new towns.    

    Using the most sophisticated land use data ever published, the Land Use Framework will provide the principles, advanced data and tools to support decision-making by local government, landowners, businesses, farmers, and nature groups to make the most of our land. This will help deliver the different objectives we have for England’s finite land, including growing food, building 1.5 million homes this parliament, and restoring nature.      

    As part of a national conversation, there will be workshops across the country, bringing farmers and landowners to the table, to put the insights of the people who manage our landscapes at the centre of our work to develop a final Land Use Framework.     
         
    Protecting UK food security and pursuing our mission for economic growth go hand-in-hand – with the highest quality agricultural land already protected for food production whilst kickstarting the economy by building new housing and rolling out renewable energy to make the UK a clean energy superpower.     

    Local planning will benefit from data outlined in the Land Use Framework, combined with the energy and housing spatial plans and a new food strategy. This will ensure we build 1.5 million new homes over five years, a generation of new towns, and the energy infrastructure needed to achieve Clean Power by 2030, while protecting food security and our natural world.    

    Speaking at the launch at the Royal Geographical Society, the Secretary of State for the Environment Steve Reed will set out how we will protect farmland and unlock growth.   

    He is expected to say:    

    Today is the start of a national conversation to transform how we use land in this country. It’s time for policy to leave the chambers of Westminster and reflect the actual lived experiences of farmers, landowners and planners on the ground.    

    Using the most sophisticated land use data ever published, we will transform how we use our land to deliver on our Plan for Change. That means enabling the protection of prime agricultural land, restore our natural world and drive economic growth.   

    This framework will not tell people what to do.    

    It is about working together to pool our knowledge and resources, to give local and national government, landowners, businesses, farmers and nature groups the data and tools they need to take informed actions that are best for them, best for the land, and best for the country.

    Speaking about farmland, he will go on to say:    

    This Government has a cast-iron commitment to maintain long-term food production.

    The primary purpose of farming will always be to produce food that feeds the nation.

    This framework will give decision makers the toolkit they need to protect our highest quality agricultural land.

    This vision for land is one in which we guarantee our long-term food security and future-proof our farm businesses, support new housebuilding and energy infrastructure, and reduce conflicts that hold up development by creating land with multiple benefits – supporting economic growth on the limited land we have available.       

    The Framework will help farm businesses to maximise the potential of multiple uses of land, supporting long-term food production capacity and unlocking opportunities for businesses to drive private finance into the sector. It will support the need to incentivise multi-functional land use that includes food production.     

    We will also consult on how data can be used in some planning decisions to improve the resilience of our food system to flooding risk. 

    Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary, Angela Rayner said:

    Today marks an important step forward in our journey to build the 1.5 million new homes that we desperately need.   

    This new approach will make better use of our land and grasp the opportunities to deliver new homes and infrastructure in the areas most in need, achieving win-win results for both development and the environment.          

    Our Plan for Change is going even further to dismantle the barriers holding back growth, so we can raise living standards, get more families onto the property ladder, and deliver a better future for our children and grandchildren.

    Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said:   

    The biggest threat to nature and food security is the climate crisis, which threatens our best farmland, food production and the livelihoods of farmers.  

    As we deliver our mission for the UK to become a clean energy superpower as part of the Plan for Change, we will ensure a proper balance between food security, nature preservation and clean energy.  

    We can roll out renewables in a way that is both positive for our energy security and our environment.

    Sue Pritchard, Chief Executive, Food, Farming and Countryside Commission said:   

    With so many of the government’s missions reliant on good land use decisions, Steve Reed’s announcement today could not be more timely. Setting out clear principles, and working across government departments, we’re pleased to see that the land use consultation focuses on mechanisms for delivery. Our work in Devon and Peterborough and Cambridgeshire proves that farmers and land managers, communities, local authorities, green groups and businesses are keen to work together to help shape a Land Use framework.

    The next stages of development will involve extensive sector engagement in a collaborative process as we design a final Land Use Framework – informed by the views of landowners, businesses, farmers, and nature groups. This evidence will also feed into the wider reform that we are delivering in the sector through the Farming Roadmap and Food Strategy.       

    The consultation will run for 12 weeks with the final Land Use Framework published later in the year. This will deliver a key manifesto commitment as part of our Plan for Change.       

    Notes to editors:          

    Quotes pack:  

    Tim Hopkin, Chief Executive of the Land App:   

    The Land Use Framework offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enhance national resilience, drive sustainable economic growth, and position the UK as a global leader in land management. By uniting all stakeholders with a clear, consistent approach, it ensures taxpayer money is spent efficiently — optimising Defra resources, empowering land managers to deliver impactful outcomes, and securing long-term prosperity in the face of growing climate uncertainty. 

    Lydia Collas, head of natural environment at Green Alliance, said:  

    With weather extremes having a major impact on harvests, it’s an important step to clearly set out how we’ll secure our food supply, tackle climate change, and restore nature in a Land Use Framework. Reforms to farming policy are at a critical stage, and we need a framework to support evidence-based decisions about how the farming budget is spent. This should help direct farm payments to those that have the biggest part to play in restoring nature, while ensuring we continue to produce high-quality food and don’t export more of the environmental costs of what we eat.

    Forestry Commission Chair Sir William Worsley said:  

    There has never been a more crucial time to invest in domestic woodland creation.  

    The Land Use Framework will provide principles that promote this and outline the many benefits of woodland creation, including for climate change mitigation, nature recovery, timber production, water quality and quantity, as well as the multiple social benefits.  

    This will play a key role in meeting statutory tree cover and biodiversity targets as well as helping to address the urgent need for improved timber security.

    Tony Juniper, Chair of Natural England, said:   

    Too often the health of the natural environment, farming and ambitions for the built environment are presented as competing interests, with protecting Nature portrayed as a barrier to development and food security. The fact is though that we can and must do all these things, and by taking a more strategic view of how we use land, we can deliver against government’s stretching legal targets to halt and reverse nature decline, while also enabling the new homes and infrastructure the country needs, including renewable power and reservoirs, while at the same time protecting food security and building resilience to climate change impacts.   

    The Land Use Framework is a vital step forward, offering opportunities to move beyond tired old binary choices, between housing and greenspace or Nature and food, and onto the more integrated thinking that we must embrace in meeting multiple pressing challenges all at once. This is a key policy that will unlock prospects for the restoration of Nature at larger scale, while at the same time meeting the country’s needs for housing, energy, water and food.

    Alan Lovell, Chair of the Environment Agency, said:    

    The Land Use Framework is hugely welcome as an important tool for making smarter decisions about how we use our land. It starts a vital national conversation about the scale of change needed over time to meet and reconcile environmental goals for water, climate and nature with food production, housing and development.  

    For example, by utilising low-grade agricultural land for natural flood management, we can reduce flood risk, enhance biodiversity, and create more sustainable landscapes. This kind of approach will help us meet the challenges of a changing climate while delivering real benefits for communities and the environment.

    Land in England is precious. We know that the way we use our little island must change to meet the challenges of the nature and climate crisis. For too long, competing land uses have been left to solve the jigsaw puzzle of England, without a picture on the front of the box to guide them. Ministers have an opportunity to ensure that the right players have all the pieces they need to make more space for nature, alongside sustainable food production and green infrastructure.  

    The Land Use Framework can help ensure all new development is wilder by design, expanding space for our wildlife to recover, and building nature into the heart of development. The test will be whether the final framework can actually influence the thousands of daily decisions that matter for nature, from big strategic development plans and Local Plans, right down to individual choices from chicken sheds to targeted incentives for nature-friendly farming.

    Becky Pullinger, head of land use planning at The Wildlife Trusts, says: 

    There’s never been a proper plan for managing the competing demands on land and the way that land is given over for development, for biofuels or for food production is haphazard at best. 

    The only way we’ll tackle climate change, nature loss, health problems and housing shortages is by thinking ahead about what land is used for and how it is used – because we can’t afford to solve one crisis at the expense of another.

    Done well, a Land Use Framework could provide a significant reset opportunity to meet all these challenges and deliver wins for nature recovery, the economy, a nature-friendly food supply and green energy.

    Beccy Speight, RSPB chief executive, said:

    The joined-up approach being taken to create this framework is exactly what’s needed to determine how we make best use of the limited land available in England. Delivering a future that safeguards nature, tackles climate change, ensures food security and resilient farm businesses, and enables sustainable development is the only sensible path. It’s possible to do all of this.

    The last year has seen record levels of flooding impacting farmers and land managers across the country, largely due to extreme weather. To tackle this, we must ensure this framework is aligned with the necessary incentives to support the adoption of more nature-friendly and climate resilient practices. This is only the start of what must be a national conversation, but the ambition to reconcile competing pressures and allow strategic decision making on how land is used will benefit everyone.

    Updates to this page

    Published 31 January 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Two tailored tax reliefs to help grow the alcohol sector take effect tomorrow

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments 3

    A package of support to help the alcohol sector to grow will tomorrow (1 February) take effect.

    • Draught relief increase worth £85m comes into force tomorrow – cutting 1p duty off draft pints
    • Increase to small producer relief to help small breweries innovate will support economic growth
    • Follows announcement of future consultation to improve access to guest beers to support sector growth mission

    Draught relief has increased to knock 1p off duty on draught products whilst small producer relief – a measure to encourage craft brewers to innovate – is becoming more generous.

    Together these tax cuts are worth £85 million and are tailored to support the alcohol sector to innovate and grow.

    The increase to draught relief, first announced at Autumn Budget, will affect around three in five of all alcoholic drinks sold in pubs, and represents the first duty cut on a pint of beer in 10 years.

    This is part of the Prime Minister’s Plan for Change that will rebuild Britain for the future by boosting economic growth.

    Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, James Murray said:

    Our pubs and brewers are an essential part the fabric of the UK and our brilliant high streets. Through draught relief, small producer relief, and expanding market access for smaller brewers, we will help boost sector growth and deliver our Plan for Change to put more money in working people’s pockets.

    Richard Naisby, Chair of the Society of Independent Brewers and Associates (SIBA) said:

    The Government’s increased investment in Draught Relief means that draught beer sold in our community pubs has a lower rate of alcohol duty than beer sold in supermarkets and should encourage more people to support their local. At the same time by going further on Small Producer Relief, the Government can help small breweries to compete and grow their businesses.

    While these support schemes have kick started innovation and enabled small breweries to set up, many breweries struggle to get access to the vital pubs market so they can expand. The Government’s review will examine ways to address these access issues and ensure that landlords can access the beers their customers want and small breweries can grow.

    Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, James Murray visited the Queen Edith pub in Cambridge to welcome the incoming tax relief alongside Andy Slee, Chief Executive of the Society of Independent Brewers and Associates (SIBA) and Richard Naisby, Chair of SIBA and Founder and Managing Director of the Milton Brewery.

    The Minister discussed during his visit in depth various growth measures to help the sector, including an increase in the generosity of small producer relief. This cuts duty for the UK’s smallest, most innovative breweries and cider makers by up to more than 90%, further supporting growth.

    James Murray also discussed how the government will consult in the future to encourage small brewers to retain and expand their access to UK pubs, maximising drinkers’ choice and supporting local economic growth, including through provisions to enable more ‘guest beers’.

    Fees charged by the Spirit Drinks Verification Scheme will be reduced in the future and mandatory duty stamps for spirits will come to an end from 1 May 2025. This will help distilleries, including Scotch whisky makers, badge their products, increasing their chances to sell their products through pubs and supermarkets.

    As announced at the Autumn Budget, alcohol duty has today also been increased in line with inflation. This helps sure up public finances and helps to fund the investment needed to grow the economy and fund public services.

    More information:

    • Draught relief means alcohol duty on draught products below 8.5% ABV will be cut by 1.7% in cash terms (5.1% compared to the baseline RPI uprating). This is the equivalent of a 1p duty reduction on an average 4.58% pint.
    • Small producer relief (SPR) is available for products
    • At the Autumn Budget, the government agreed to achieve parity in SPR discount for draught and non-draught products by increasing the generosity of the relief for non-draught products.

    Updates to this page

    Published 31 January 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Regulator to investigate two charities over repeated failure to submit accounts

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government Non-Ministerial Departments

    The Charity Commission has launched two separate statutory inquiries into SharedImpact and SharedImpact Foundation (UK) Limited.

    The two charities were set up to improve the financial efficiency and effectiveness of charities by offering grants, financial services and advice. 

    The charities have a trustee in common and both have persistently and repeatedly failed to meet their accounting requirements. 

    SharedImpact and SharedImpact Foundation (UK) Limited were previously placed in the Charity Commission’s double defaulter class inquiry in March 2021. That inquiry investigates charities that have defaulted twice or more over the past 5 years on submitting required accounting information. 

    The Charity Commission has escalated its engagement with the charities to two separate statutory inquiries due to both charities failing to file accounts on time for financial years ending 31 March 2022 and 31 March 2023.  

    The inquiries will examine the administration, governance, and management of the individual charities including:  

    • the trustees’ compliance with their statutory accounting and reporting responsibilities 

    • whether the charities have appropriate and robust financial controls in place 

    • whether the charities are being managed in accordance with their governing document 

    • whether the charities are operating in accordance with their stated objects and for the public benefit

    Additionally, the inquiry into SharedImpact will examine whether the charity has a sufficient number of trustees. 

    The Commission may extend the scope of the inquiries if additional regulatory issues emerge. 

    ENDS 

    Notes to editors 

    1. The Charity Commission is the independent, non-ministerial government department that registers and regulates charities in England and Wales. Its ambition is to be an expert regulator that is fair, balanced, and independent so that charity can thrive. This ambition will help to create and sustain an environment where charities further build public trust and ultimately fulfil their essential role in enhancing lives and strengthening society.

    2. On 22 March 2021, the Commission placed SharedImpact and SharedImpact Foundation (UK) Limited into the ‘Double Defaulter’ inquiry for charities that are in default of their statutory obligations to meet reporting requirements by failing to file their annual documents (annual returns, reports and accounts) for two or more years in the last five years.  

    3. On 13 December 2024, the Charity Commission opened two statutory inquiries into SharedImpact and SharedImpact Foundation (UK) Limited under section 46 of the Charities Act 2011.  

    4. A statutory inquiry is a legal power enabling the Commission to formally investigate matters of regulatory concern within a charity and to use protective powers for the benefit of the charity and its beneficiaries, assets, or reputation. An inquiry will investigate and establish the facts of the case so that the Commission can determine the extent of any misconduct and/or mismanagement; the extent of the risk to the charity, its work, property, beneficiaries, employees or volunteers; and decide what action is needed to resolve the concerns. 

    Press office

    Email pressenquiries@charitycommission.gov.uk

    Out of hours press office contact number: 07785 748787

    Updates to this page

    Published 31 January 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI New Zealand: 98 per cent of potholes repaired within 24 hours

    Source: New Zealand Government

    The Government’s commitment to get New Zealand’s roads back on track is delivering strong results, with around 98 per cent of potholes on state highways repaired within 24 hours of identification every month since targets were introduced, Transport Minister Chris Bishop says.
    “Increasing productivity to help rebuild our economy is a key priority for our Government, and boosting pothole repairs and prevention will deliver a safe and efficient state highway network that will support this growth.
    “One of the reasons this Government was elected was because people were fed up with the degradation of our roads under Labour. They could see it in their day-to-day lives, with record numbers of potholes peppering highways across the country. Our Government promised change to Kiwis and the freight sector, and we are delivering on that promise. 
    “To sort out the potholes, we established a $3.9 billion Pothole Prevention Activity Class over three years, ringfenced for resealing, rehabilitation, and drainage maintenance works to ensure these funds are used entirely on preventing potholes. The NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) is now delivering a significant programme of works, including a record increase in road rehabilitation, which involves rebuilding entire sections of road rather than just resealing.
    “The Government’s Pothole Prevention Fund is delivering a total of 285.6 lane kilometres of rehabilitation work over the summer months – a 124 per cent increase compared to last year. This record level of rehabilitation work will help prevent potholes from forming in the first place.
    “The previous government showed Kiwis that throwing more money at a problem is lazy, expensive, and ineffective. Funding must be paired with increased expectation and accountabilities, and that is what we’ve introduced to drive better results. Faster pothole repairs are improving the safety and maintenance standards on our roads.”
    In July last year, the Government introduced targets for NZTA contractors to repair 95 per cent of potholes on main state highways and 85 per cent of potholes on regional state highways within 24 hours of identification. 
    “The results speak for themselves. Since our targets were introduced, NZTA has delivered every month with greater use of new innovations to ensure that temporary pothole repairs last longer before a permanent reseal can take place, instead of simply placing cold mix in potholes,” Mr Bishop says. 
    “Achieving these targets month after month shows the significant progress we’ve made in tackling the pothole issue. Kiwis can now travel more safely and efficiently on our roads, with fewer disruptions and safety hazards.
    “If you see a pothole on the state highway network, report it immediately by calling 0800 4 HIGHWAYS. Together, Kiwis are ensuring that potholes are identified and repaired as quickly as possible.”
    Notes to editor: 
     

    NZTA has delivered on the Government’s 24 hour pothole repair targets each month since they were introduced, exceeding the targets set in July. 

    Month
    Total Potholes Repaired
    % Repaired Within 24 Hours

    Jul-24
    7,114
    95%

    Aug-24
    6,303
    98%

    Sep-24
    5,030
    98%

    Oct-24
    4,809
    98%

    Nov-24
    3,200
    99%

    Dec-24
    1,697
    98%

    Potholes tend to be formed in wet conditions, which is why there are a higher number requiring repair in winter months.

    The Pothole Prevention Activity Class includes $2 billion of funding for State Highway Pothole Prevention over three years, and $1.9 billion for local road Pothole Prevention over three years.
    The number of kilometres of rehabilitation work on state highways as part of the 2024/25 summer maintenance programme compared to the previous programme: 
    The summer maintenance programme began in October 2024 and will be completed by March 2025.

    MIL OSI New Zealand News –

  • MIL-OSI New Zealand: Greenpeace – Jones reveals Govt’s actual climate policy – expanding fossil fuel extraction

    Source: Greenpeace

    The Government’s true climate policy, which is to increase fossil fuel extraction, was revealed today in the release of the finalised mining policy, says Greenpeace.
    “Just a few hours after the Government released an updated Paris Climate Target, their actual climate policy was revealed by Shane Jones in the policy to increase fossil fuel extraction,” says Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Russel Norman.
    “The Luxon Government wants to fast track coal mining and restart oil and gas exploration, which is a complete contradiction to the objectives of the Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse emissions.”
    The Government’s announcement went one step further with a threat to introduce regulations that will force banks to finance fossil fuel expansion.
    “Shane Jones, acting as an agent of foreign mining companies, is attempting to force fossil fuel extraction on New Zealanders, most of whom want a responsible climate policy,” says Norman.
    “Overseas-based fossil fuel companies will walk away with profits while New Zealanders will be left to pay the clean-up costs.
    The offshore oil company Tamarind Oil left New Zealanders with a $400m clean-up bill when they went bankrupt.
    “The Government’s true climate policy must be judged by their actions not their words – and their actions are more fossil fuel extraction.”

    MIL OSI New Zealand News –

  • MIL-OSI: Mountain America Credit Union and BYU Athletics Team Up for $10,000 Donation to Local Charities

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    SANDY, Utah, Jan. 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Mountain America Credit Union, in collaboration with BYU Athletics, recently presented donations totaling $10,000 to Utah Crisis Food Response (UCFR) and Special Olympics Provo United. The organizations were each presented with $5,000 checks during the January 14, 2025, Brigham Young University (BYU) men’s basketball game. These donations were part of the Cougs Care initiative, where Cougar Nation fans nominated and voted for their favorite charitable organizations online.

    A Media Snippet accompanying this announcement is available by clicking on this link.

    “The Cougs Care initiative highlights the power of community and the positive impact that can be achieved when we come together to support worthy causes,” said Nathan Anderson, executive vice president and COO at Mountain America Credit Union. “Utah Crisis Food Response and Special Olympics Provo United both make a significant impact in addressing critical needs. It’s inspiring to see how our collective efforts can make a difference.”

    UCFR provides delivery of essential meals and resources for families facing food insecurity. Their dedication to alleviating hunger and supporting vulnerable populations makes them a deserving recipient of this donation.

    “We are amazed by Mountain America’s generosity and honored to be nominated by the community for this donation,” said Carie Fanning, executive director of Utah Crisis Food Response. “It is heartwarming to know the community recognizes the importance of our work. UCFR delivers thousands of meals every month, an impossible task without the help of donations like this one.”

    Special Olympics Provo United empowers individuals with intellectual disabilities through sports, promoting inclusion and community engagement. Their programs foster physical fitness, confidence, and lifelong friendships, making a profound difference in the lives of many.

    To learn more about Mountain America, visit macu.com.

    About Mountain America Credit Union
    With more than 1 million members and $20 billion in assets, Mountain America Credit Union helps its members define and achieve their financial dreams. Mountain America provides consumers and businesses with a variety of convenient, flexible products and services, as well as sound, timely advice. Members enjoy access to secure, cutting-edge mobile banking technology, over 100 branches across multiple states, and more than 50,000 surcharge-free ATMs. Mountain America—guiding you forward. Learn more at macu.com. Insured by NCUA.

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Preferred Bank Announces Fire Relief Donations

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    LOS ANGELES, Jan. 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Preferred Bank (NASDAQ: PFBC), (the “Bank”) one of the larger independent California banks, today reported that the Board of Directors had approved a significant donation to benefit fire relief efforts on the Los Angeles area.

    Li Yu, Chairman and CEO, commented, “The recent wildfires in Southern California have been devastating and one of the worst disasters in the history of Southern California. As a company headquartered in the heart of Los Angeles, the fires have been particularly impactful for many of our associates, clients and communities. To support recovery efforts, the Board and executive management have authorized a donation in the amount of $250,000 to be split among four organizations that provide resources and relief to those impacted.

    Those Organizations are:

    • Tzu-Chi – USA
    • Pasadena Community Foundation
    • Alliance for a Better Community
    • Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation

    “In addition, the Bank is also going to match any contribution any employee has already made, or will make, to the wildfire relief efforts on top of the $250,000 donation. The amount the Bank matches will be awarded to the organization the employee donated to. We are pleased to be able to make this contribution and look forward to helping the impacted communities of Southern California rebuild.”  

    About Preferred Bank

    Preferred Bank is one of the larger independent commercial banks headquartered in California. The Bank is chartered by the State of California, and its deposits are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, to the maximum extent permitted by law. The Bank conducts its banking business from its main office in Los Angeles, California, and through twelve full-service branch banking offices in California (Alhambra, Century City, City of Industry, Torrance, Arcadia, Irvine (2), Diamond Bar, Pico Rivera, Tarzana and San Francisco (2)), one branch in Flushing, New York and a branch office in the Houston, Texas suburb of Sugar Land. In addition, the Bank also operates a loan production office in Sunnyvale, California. Preferred Bank offers a broad range of deposit and loan products and services to both commercial and consumer customers. The Bank provides personalized deposit services as well as real estate finance, commercial loans and trade finance to small and mid-sized businesses, entrepreneurs, real estate developers, professionals and high net worth individuals. Although originally founded as a Chinese-American Bank, Preferred Bank now derives most of its customers from the diversified mainstream market but does continue to benefit from the significant migration to California of ethnic Chinese from China and other areas of East Asia.

    AT THE COMPANY:   AT FINANCIAL PROFILES:
    Edward J. Czajka   Jeffrey Haas
    Executive Vice President   General Information
    Chief Financial Officer   (310) 622-8240
    (213) 891-1188   PFBC@finprofiles.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Adachi Electric Industries Co., Ltd. Engages Deal Box for Strategic Investment Packaging and Capital Markets Advisory

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    Tokyo, Japan, Jan. 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — In a significant leap forward for clean energy innovation, Deal Box, the venture capital platform tailored to modern investors, is delighted to support Adachi Electric Industries Co., Ltd. as they scale the global reach of their groundbreaking Oq Solar Cell. This collaboration marks a pivotal moment in renewable energy, combining Adachi Electric Industries’ leading-edge solar technology with Deal Box’s expertise in investment packaging, capital markets advisory, and comprehensive business guidance.

    Transforming the Solar Energy Landscape

    Historically, solar power has been touted for its sustainability yet criticized for limitations in efficiency and durability. Adachi Electric Industries Co., Ltd. is changing that narrative with its Oq Solar Cell—a multi-junction chemical compound panel boasting 32.49% energy efficiency, extended 50-year lifespan and the ability to capture a wide light spectrum (350nm – 2000 nm). Designed to operate in extreme temperatures from -45°C to 85°C, the Oq Solar Cell ensures robust performance across diverse applications, including drones, satellites, electric vehicles, and urban infrastructure.

    Legitimacy through Strategic Collaboration

    Central to the Oq Solar Cell’s global rollout is Adachi Electric Industries’ partnership with Deal Box, which will provide a comprehensive suite of advisory services. Deal Box’s proven track record in merging blockchain-enabled capital markets solutions with institutional-grade due diligence uniquely positions Adachi Electric Industries Co., Ltd. to navigate the complexities of international market expansion.

    Features of the Oq Solar Cell

    1. Superior Efficiency: Achieves 32.49% energy efficiency, surpassing standard silicon-based panels.
    2. Extended Lifespan: Offers a 50-year operational life, significantly reducing replacement costs.
    3. Wide Light Spectrum: Captures wavelengths from 350nm–2000nm, maximizing power generation.
    4. Temperature Resilience: Maintains peak performance from -45°C to 85°C, ensuring reliability in extreme conditions.
    5. Versatile Applications: Powers everything from drones and satellites to EVs, IoT devices, and city infrastructure.

    Deal Box’s Strategic Role

    Deal Box is instrumental in aligning Adachi Electric Industries Co., Ltd.’s vision with investors seeking cutting-edge renewable solutions. Through its modular investment platform, Deal Box empowers accredited investors to participate in the clean energy revolution with confidence.

    • Investment Packaging: Creating compelling, compliant offerings that resonate with global investors.
    • Capital Markets Advisory: Guiding Adachi Electric Industries Co., Ltd. through fundraising and expansion within both traditional and emerging markets.
    • Holistic Support: Providing strategic business guidance to streamline operations, market entry, and technology adoption.

    Implications for Investors

    By marrying disruptive solar technology with Deal Box’s robust investment infrastructure, this partnership sets a new benchmark for clean energy investments:

    • Accessibility: Investors can back a proven solar technology that addresses modern efficiency and reliability challenges.
    • Efficiency: A streamlined, digitized investment process allows for faster transactions and clearer ownership records.
    • Transparency: Regular updates and thorough due diligence ensure clarity throughout the investment lifecycle.

    Executive Insights

    “By merging industry-leading efficiency with unprecedented durability, the Oq Solar Cell is poised to reshape global energy markets,” said Ken Kaneko, CEO of Adachi Electric Industries Co., Ltd. “Collaborating with Deal Box amplifies our ability to reach a worldwide audience and provide them with reliable, long-term solutions in renewable power.”

    Thomas Carter, CEO of Deal Box, commented, “Our role is to empower innovative technologies with the right financial and advisory framework. Adachi Electric Industries Co., Ltd. aligns perfectly with our mission to make transformative, sustainable investments readily accessible to accredited investors everywhere.”

    About Deal Box

    Deal Box is venture capital that fits your life. By merging institutional-grade diligence with flexible investment options, Deal Box empowers accredited investors to craft portfolios that align with their financial ambitions. For more information, visit dealbox.vc

    About Adachi Electric Industries Co., Ltd.

    Adachi Electric Industries Co., Ltd. is a pioneer in multi-junction chemical compound solar technology. Their flagship product, the Oq Solar Cell, is engineered to deliver unmatched efficiency, durability, and adaptability across a variety of applications—from consumer electronics to aerospace. Guided by a mission to foster a sustainable future, Adachi Electric Industries continues to push the boundaries of renewable energy innovation.

    Contact Information

    Thomas Carter
          CEO, Deal Box, Inc.
      Email: thomas@dealbox.io

    Christopher Craney
          Marketing, Adachi Electric Industries Co., Ltd.
      Email: craney@adachi-electric-industries.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Australia: Contract awarded for transformational Tonkin Highway project

    Source: Australian Ministers 1

    A major job-creating road project in Perth’s south has reached a critical milestone with a contract now awarded.

    The $1 billion Tonkin Highway Extension and Thomas Road Upgrade Project will see the transformation of the south-east of Perth, delivering a 14-kilometre extension of Tonkin Highway as well as major upgrades to Thomas Road.

    The extension of Tonkin Highway will include a four-lane dual carriageway from Thomas Road all the way to South Western Highway, including a number of grade-separated interchanges, underpasses and roundabouts.

    The project will also cater for the recreational needs of the area with several equine underpasses, and a new principal shared path along the entire 14-kilometre extension.

    It will also benefit local communities in Byford, Armadale, Kelmscott and Gosnells which currently contend with large volumes of heavy vehicles on local roads, travelling to and from the South West and Wheatbelt regions.

    Upgrades to Thomas Road will include duplication of 4.5-kilometres between Kargotich Road and South Western Highway, new principal shared path and upgrades to a number of local intersections including Kardan Boulevard, Masters Road and Plaistowe Boulevard.

    Construction of the project is scheduled to commence in mid-2025 with completion anticipated by late-2028 and is set to support around 4,400 direct and indirect jobs, marking a significant boost for the local economy.

    The contract to deliver the project has been awarded to the Tonkin Extension Alliance consortium which includes BMD, Civcon Civil and Project Management, Georgiou Group, BG&E, and GHD, bringing together a wealth of expertise and experience to deliver one of Western Australia’s most significant road infrastructure projects.

    Quotes attributable to Federal Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government Catherine King:

    “The Australian Government is proud to partner with the Western Australian Government to deliver this transformative project, which will significantly enhance Perth’s south-east by reducing traffic pressure and improving connectivity.

    “This project will deliver significant benefits to Western Australia’s freight and logistics network, by creating a high-standard north-south transport link, improving road safety, freight efficiency, and connectivity for residents, businesses, and commuters.

    “The project is part of a broader investment to the Tonkin Highway that will deliver a high-standard north-south transport link, including key upgrades such as the Tonkin Highway Gap.”

    Quotes attributable to WA Deputy Premier and Minister for Transport Rita Saffioti:

    “Our Government understands the critical importance of transport infrastructure projects – they create thousands of jobs, deliver significant economic benefits to local businesses and communities, and ensure our transport network can meet the needs of our growing population.

    “The extension of Tonkin Highway will be a game-changer for the movement of freight to and from the South West and Wheatbelt, and provide a safer road network for people living in suburbs like Byford, Armadale, Kelmscott and Gosnells who currently contend with large volumes of heavy vehicles on local roads.

    “This extension complements METRONET’s Byford Rail Extension and other safety improvements in the area, ensuring better access to our transport network for communities in the south.”

    Quotes attributable to Federal Member for Burt Matt Keogh:

    “This $1 billion project is a great example of the Albanese Government working in partnership with the Cook WA Labor Government to make the journeys of people in our south-eastern corridor faster and safer.

    “We have seen incredible growth through the suburb of Byford and that means every day you’re getting more and more interaction between local traffic and trucks.

    “Extending Tonkin Highway will get trucks off South Western Highway, which will support this rapidly growing area, giving this community the roads they deserve.

    “This will make a huge difference to everyday life – whether it’s dropping the kids at school or going up to the city, this is game changing project for the south-eastern suburbs.”

    Quotes attributable to State Member for Darling Range Hugh Jones:

    “The Tonkin Highway Extension and Thomas Road Upgrade project will ease traffic pressure on local roads, making them safer and reducing travel times for our community.

    “This project will better connect our fast-growing suburbs to jobs and education opportunities while improving safety for local families.”

    MIL OSI News –

  • MIL-OSI Economics: IMF Reaches Staff-Level Agreement with Cameroon on the Second Review of Resilience and Sustainability Facility and Seventh Reviews of Extended Credit Facility and Extended Fund Facility

    Source: International Monetary Fund

    January 30, 2025

    End-of-Mission press releases include statements of IMF staff teams that convey preliminary findings after a visit to a country. The views expressed in this statement are those of the IMF staff and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF’s Executive Board. Based on the preliminary findings of this mission, staff will prepare a report that, subject to management approval, will be presented to the IMF’s Executive Board for discussion and decision.

    • The IMF and the Cameroonian authorities have reached a staff-level agreement on the seventh reviews of the Extended Credit Facility (ECF) and the Extended Fund Facility (EFF), as well as the second review of the Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF).
    • Economic recovery has continued, but growth remains subdued. Economic growth was
    • 3.2 percent in 2023 and expected to pick up to 3.9 percent in 2024. Twelve-month average inflation was 4.6 percent in November 2024, down from 7.5 percent last year.
    • Program performance was broadly satisfactory. Some reforms have been delayed, and the authorities have worked to complete work on measures related to governance in the extractive industry sector, the business climate, SOE reform, and public financial management.

    Washington, DC: An International Monetary Fund (IMF) team, led by Ms. Cemile Sancak, Mission Chief for Cameroon, visited Yaoundé from  October 3-16 and held subsequent meetings to discuss progress on reforms and the authorities’ policy priorities in the context of the seventh reviews of their four-year economic program supported by the Extended Credit Facility (ECF) and the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) arrangements, and the second review of the Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF). The ECF/EFF arrangements were approved by the IMF Executive Board for a total amount of SDR 483 million (US$ 689.5 million) in July 2021 (see press release 21/237). An extension of these arrangements of 12 months was approved in December 2023 to allow more time to implement the policies and reforms, and access was augmented by SDR 110.4 million (US$ 147.6 million) (see press release 23/469). The 18-month RSF was approved by the Executive Board in January 2024 in the amount of SDR 138 million (US$ 183.4 million) (see press release 24/30).

    At the conclusion of the discussions, Ms. Sancak issued the following statement:

    “The IMF and the Cameroonian authorities have reached staff-level agreement on the seventh reviews of the ECF/EFF arrangements, as well as the second review of the RSF arrangement. The agreement is subject to approval by the IMF Executive Board. Completion of the reviews would enable disbursement under the ECF-EFF arrangements of SDR 55.2 million (US$ 73.0 million) and disbursement under the RSF arrangement of SDR 34.5 million (US$ 45.6 million).

    “Cameroon’s recovery is continuing, but growth is subdued. In 2023, the economy grew 3.2 percent and is expected to pick up to 3.9 percent for 2024. Inflation has subsided further; twelve-month average inflation was 4.6 percent in November 2024, down from 7.5 percent last year.

    “The fiscal outlook for 2024 is positive. The target for the non-oil primary deficit remains
    2 percent of GDP, an improvement on 2.5 percent of GDP last year (and 3.9 percent of GDP in 2022). During the first half of 2024, non-oil revenues improved by 5 percent, helped by a solid performance of corporate and indirect taxes. Lower-than-expected expenditure was due to delays in investment projects, a recurrent challenge that weighs on growth prospects.   

    “Prospects are broadly positive provided continued reform implementation and benign external conditions. The growth forecast is unchanged at about 4 percent in 2024, gradually rising to about 4.5 percent over the medium term. Inflation is expected to decline to 4.4 percent by the end of 2024 and gradually reach the CEMAC convergence criterion of 3 percent by 2026.

    “The 2025 budget was adopted by Parliament in December and is consistent with the objectives set out under Cameroon’s IMF-supported program and anchoring fiscal policy over the Presidential elections later in 2025. A key goal remains generating space for productive and social investment and advancing anticorruption reforms.

    “There have been delays in the implementation of the structural reform agenda. To attain the ambitious objectives of the national development strategy (SND30), the authorities are encouraged to complete important measures set out in the program concerning governance in the extractive industry sector, the business climate, SOE reform, and public financial management. Specifically, the mission urged the authorities to advance long-pending work on the SONARA restructuring plan and revise the 2013 law to streamline investment incentives.  

    “Under the RSF, Cameroon has intensified efforts to improve the climate policy framework. Work is progressing on the reform measure to establish guidelines for evaluating investment projects with climate change considerations in mind, to improve disaster preparedness by revising the Civil Protection law and by updating the mandate of the National Risk Observatory. The IMF and other development partners are providing technical assistance for a national climate plan, a national strategy for disaster risk financing, and strengthening governance and sustainability of the forestry sector.

    “The IMF team met with the Prime Minister, Joseph Dion Ngute, the Minister of State, Secretary General of the Presidency, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, the Minister of Finance, Louis Paul Motaze, the Minister of Economy, Planning, and Regional Development, Mr. Alamine Ousmane Mey, and other senior officials. The mission also met with representatives of development partners, the diplomatic community, the private sector, and civil society. The team wishes to thank the Cameroonian authorities for their excellent cooperation and for the frank and constructive dialogue.”

    IMF Communications Department
    MEDIA RELATIONS

    PRESS OFFICER: Wafa Amr

    Phone: +1 202 623-7100Email: MEDIA@IMF.org

    MIL OSI Economics –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Sullivan, Joyce, & Bonamici Lead Bicameral Legislation to Improve Harmful Algal Bloom Response

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Alaska Dan Sullivan

    01.30.25

    WASHINGTON—U.S. Senators Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Representatives Dave Joyce (R-Ohio) and Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.) reintroduced the Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research and Control Amendments Act (HABHRCA) of 2025, legislation to reauthorize the original HABHRCA of 1998 for coordinated, effective federal-state responses to harmful algal blooms (HABs) and strengthens the program to ensure that communities have access to HAB observation data, training in HAB monitoring, prevention, and mitigation, and access to testing for HAB toxins.

    HABs occur in all 50 states, in rivers, lakes, and coastal waters. This legislation responds to the increasing severity of harmful algal blooms, with the 2022 algal bloom in Alaska’s Bering Strait region being one of the largest and most toxic blooms ever observed nationwide. HABs directly threaten food security and subsistence and can reduce oxygen levels in the water in events called hypoxia, killing fish and other marine life and harming coastal ecosystems and economies.

    “Unchecked harmful algal blooms can threaten our marine life and coastal ecosystems, the livelihoods of our commercial fisheries and coastal communities, and the health and well-being of Alaskans,” Senator Sullivan said. “Alaska is our country’s leading seafood producer and home to more coastline than the contiguous Lower 48 states combined, making our response to HABs critically important. This legislation develops and coordinates effective responses to harmful algal blooms and will improve the monitoring of the health of our oceans for the sake of coastal communities, especially those that rely on subsistence. I want to thank Representatives Joyce and Bonamici, as well as our crucial Alaska stakeholders, for working with me to support the health of our marine ecosystems in Alaska and nationwide.”

    “The shallowest of all the Great Lakes, Lake Erie, is particularly vulnerable to harmful algal blooms, which have plagued the lake for decades. Any threat to Lake Erie is also a threat to the drinking water supply for 11 million people, our tourism industry, and all the plants and animals that are part of the lake’s ecosystem,” said Congressman Joyce, Co-Chair of the Great Lakes Task Force. “I am proud to introduce this bipartisan, bicameral bill to ensure Lake Erie, and every state in America, is protected from these dangerous threats to our bodies of water.”

    “The scale and frequency of harmful algal blooms and hypoxia events continue to increase with climate change, damaging beloved places, harming fisheries central to coastal economies, affecting tourism, and threatening public and ecosystem health,” said Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici. “This legislation will empower coastal and freshwater communities to better monitor these disastrous events and leverage research to mitigate and prevent their worst effects.”

    Below are comments from marine stakeholders nationally and in Alaska:

    “HABs are a novel danger to food security and food safety for people that rely on the comprehensive use of Arctic marine ecosystems for their nutritional, cultural, and economic well-being. HABs create serious conservation concerns for Arctic marine wildlife that rely on a healthy food web.  The revised HABARCA includes Arctic marine ecosystems and the people that rely on them – we hope it is reauthorized ASAP!”  – Gay Sheffield, Marine Advisory Program Agent, Alaska Sea Grant

    “Alaskan coastal communities are facing a threat to their economy as well as their food safety and security because of HABs. HABHRCA has been crucial in helping to understand and mitigate that risk, and it is imperative that this support continue.” – Sheyna Wisdom, Executive Director, & Dr. Thomas Farrugia, Program Manager, Alaska Ocean Observing System

    “Harmful algal blooms involve the base of the food chain and thus are a significant concern for traditional and commercial harvesters in the Alaskan Arctic region. HABHRCA has already made a significant difference in our understanding of this growing threat, but more research and outreach are needed through reauthorization of HABHRCA to further develop management of food security and safety harvested from the marine ecosystem.” – Emma Pate, Nome Eskimo Community Executive Director

    “The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a national and international leader in harmful algal bloom (HAB) research, strongly supports the reauthorization of HABHRCA. The increasing frequency and intensity of HAB events along every coast, including the Great Lakes and Arctic, is having significant economic, environmental, and human health impacts nationwide. The diversity and complexity of these events requires continuing support for improved understanding of ocean and coastal process contributing to HAB blooms and the development of effective monitoring and mitigation technologies.” – Peter de Menocal, President and Director, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

    A copy of the bill can be found here.

    Background:

    The original Harmful Algal Bloom and Hypoxia Research and Control Act (HABHRCA) was passed in 1998 and established an interagency task force to assess the distribution of harmful algal blooms and their impacts on coastal waters and human health. HABHRCA has since been reauthorized three times, through FY 2023, and is currently due for reauthorization. This bill passed the Senate Commerce Committee last year.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Russia: IMF Reaches Staff-Level Agreement with Cameroon on the Second Review of Resilience and Sustainability Facility and Seventh Reviews of Extended Credit Facility and Extended Fund Facility

    Source: IMF – News in Russian

    January 30, 2025

    End-of-Mission press releases include statements of IMF staff teams that convey preliminary findings after a visit to a country. The views expressed in this statement are those of the IMF staff and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF’s Executive Board. Based on the preliminary findings of this mission, staff will prepare a report that, subject to management approval, will be presented to the IMF’s Executive Board for discussion and decision.

    • The IMF and the Cameroonian authorities have reached a staff-level agreement on the seventh reviews of the Extended Credit Facility (ECF) and the Extended Fund Facility (EFF), as well as the second review of the Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF).
    • Economic recovery has continued, but growth remains subdued. Economic growth was
    • 3.2 percent in 2023 and expected to pick up to 3.9 percent in 2024. Twelve-month average inflation was 4.6 percent in November 2024, down from 7.5 percent last year.
    • Program performance was broadly satisfactory. Some reforms have been delayed, and the authorities have worked to complete work on measures related to governance in the extractive industry sector, the business climate, SOE reform, and public financial management.

    Washington, DC: An International Monetary Fund (IMF) team, led by Ms. Cemile Sancak, Mission Chief for Cameroon, visited Yaoundé from  October 3-16 and held subsequent meetings to discuss progress on reforms and the authorities’ policy priorities in the context of the seventh reviews of their four-year economic program supported by the Extended Credit Facility (ECF) and the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) arrangements, and the second review of the Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF). The ECF/EFF arrangements were approved by the IMF Executive Board for a total amount of SDR 483 million (US$ 689.5 million) in July 2021 (see press release 21/237). An extension of these arrangements of 12 months was approved in December 2023 to allow more time to implement the policies and reforms, and access was augmented by SDR 110.4 million (US$ 147.6 million) (see press release 23/469). The 18-month RSF was approved by the Executive Board in January 2024 in the amount of SDR 138 million (US$ 183.4 million) (see press release 24/30).

    At the conclusion of the discussions, Ms. Sancak issued the following statement:

    “The IMF and the Cameroonian authorities have reached staff-level agreement on the seventh reviews of the ECF/EFF arrangements, as well as the second review of the RSF arrangement. The agreement is subject to approval by the IMF Executive Board. Completion of the reviews would enable disbursement under the ECF-EFF arrangements of SDR 55.2 million (US$ 73.0 million) and disbursement under the RSF arrangement of SDR 34.5 million (US$ 45.6 million).

    “Cameroon’s recovery is continuing, but growth is subdued. In 2023, the economy grew 3.2 percent and is expected to pick up to 3.9 percent for 2024. Inflation has subsided further; twelve-month average inflation was 4.6 percent in November 2024, down from 7.5 percent last year.

    “The fiscal outlook for 2024 is positive. The target for the non-oil primary deficit remains
    2 percent of GDP, an improvement on 2.5 percent of GDP last year (and 3.9 percent of GDP in 2022). During the first half of 2024, non-oil revenues improved by 5 percent, helped by a solid performance of corporate and indirect taxes. Lower-than-expected expenditure was due to delays in investment projects, a recurrent challenge that weighs on growth prospects.   

    “Prospects are broadly positive provided continued reform implementation and benign external conditions. The growth forecast is unchanged at about 4 percent in 2024, gradually rising to about 4.5 percent over the medium term. Inflation is expected to decline to 4.4 percent by the end of 2024 and gradually reach the CEMAC convergence criterion of 3 percent by 2026.

    “The 2025 budget was adopted by Parliament in December and is consistent with the objectives set out under Cameroon’s IMF-supported program and anchoring fiscal policy over the Presidential elections later in 2025. A key goal remains generating space for productive and social investment and advancing anticorruption reforms.

    “There have been delays in the implementation of the structural reform agenda. To attain the ambitious objectives of the national development strategy (SND30), the authorities are encouraged to complete important measures set out in the program concerning governance in the extractive industry sector, the business climate, SOE reform, and public financial management. Specifically, the mission urged the authorities to advance long-pending work on the SONARA restructuring plan and revise the 2013 law to streamline investment incentives.  

    “Under the RSF, Cameroon has intensified efforts to improve the climate policy framework. Work is progressing on the reform measure to establish guidelines for evaluating investment projects with climate change considerations in mind, to improve disaster preparedness by revising the Civil Protection law and by updating the mandate of the National Risk Observatory. The IMF and other development partners are providing technical assistance for a national climate plan, a national strategy for disaster risk financing, and strengthening governance and sustainability of the forestry sector.

    “The IMF team met with the Prime Minister, Joseph Dion Ngute, the Minister of State, Secretary General of the Presidency, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, the Minister of Finance, Louis Paul Motaze, the Minister of Economy, Planning, and Regional Development, Mr. Alamine Ousmane Mey, and other senior officials. The mission also met with representatives of development partners, the diplomatic community, the private sector, and civil society. The team wishes to thank the Cameroonian authorities for their excellent cooperation and for the frank and constructive dialogue.”

    IMF Communications Department
    MEDIA RELATIONS

    PRESS OFFICER: Wafa Amr

    Phone: +1 202 623-7100Email: MEDIA@IMF.org

    https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2025/01/30/pr25022-cameroon-imf-reaches-sla-second-review-rsf-seventh-reviews-ecf-eff

    MIL OSI

    MIL OSI Russia News –

  • MIL-OSI Australia: Review of the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort

    Source: Australian Treasurer

    The Albanese Government is directing the Treasury to undertake a comprehensive review of the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort (CSLR) to ensure victims of financial misconduct have a sustainable avenue for redress.

    This is all about ensuring the scheme remains sustainable into the future for consumers and for the industry.

    Taking care of consumers is the focus of the scheme, it’s the focus of the Albanese Government and it will be the focus of this review.

    At the same time, Australians need access to affordable high quality financial advice.

    The advice industry was abandoned and decimated by the former Coalition government as the number of advisers has fallen from 28,000 in January 2019 to less than 16,000 today. This raised costs on advisers and the cost of advice for Australians.

    The government has taken action to rebuild the financial advice industry. In our first 12 months, we introduced legislation to establish a pathway for experienced advisers to continue providing financial advice, which has retained over 4,000 advisers that could otherwise have exited the industry.

    We are also undertaking the most significant reform to the financial advice laws in over a decade through our Delivering Better Financial Outcomes package which will cut red tape, reform statements of advice and help advisers use their professional judgment to better support clients.

    As recommended by the Ramsay Review, the CSLR is fully funded by industry.

    New data from the operator of the CSLR shows that industry will have to provide $78 million to compensate victims in 2025–26, largely as a result of the liquidation of financial advisory firm United Global Capital Pty Ltd.

    Ensuring the scheme is sustainably funded will be an important focus of the review.

    The government legislated the CSLR in 2023, after the former government failed to take action despite the scheme being a recommendation of the 2017 Ramsay Review and the Banking Royal Commission.

    The CSLR ensures victims can access some compensation in circumstances of genuine last resort where misconduct has occurred in the provision of personal financial advice, credit intermediation, securities dealing and credit provision.

    While industry has provided broad support for the CSLR, it’s important that there is confidence that the scheme is meeting its objective in a way that is sustainable for both companies and consumers.

    Whether it’s our reforms to get a fair go for families and farmers at the checkout or our big and broad competition agenda to ease the cost of living for Australians, taking care of consumers is one of the Albanese Government’s highest priorities.

    We’ll continue to do everything we can to safeguard consumers and ensure all Australians have access to affordable and quality financial advice.

    Further information, including the terms of reference, can be found on the Treasury website.

    MIL OSI News –

  • MIL-OSI: Alpine Banks of Colorado announces financial results for fourth quarter and year end 2024

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo., Jan. 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Alpine Banks of Colorado (OTCQX: ALPIB) (“Alpine” or the “Company”), the holding company for Alpine Bank (the “Bank”), today announced results (unaudited) for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2024. The Company reported net income of $13.8 million, or $128.92 per basic Class A common share and $0.86 per basic Class B common share, for fourth quarter 2024.

    Highlights in fourth quarter 2024 and the year ended December 31, 2024, include:

    • Basic earnings per Class A common share increased 1.4%, or $1.76, during fourth quarter 2024.
    • Basic earnings per Class A common share decreased 12.0%, or $63.32, during the 12 months ended December 31, 2024.
    • Basic earnings per Class B common share increased 1.4%, or $0.01, during fourth quarter 2024.
    • Basic earnings per Class B common share increased 12.0%, or $0.42, during the 12 months ended December 31, 2024.
    • Net interest margin for fourth quarter 2024 was 3.18%, compared to 2.98% in third quarter 2024, and 2.84% in fourth quarter 2023.

    “The fourth quarter of 2024 continued a positive trend of growing customer-based deposits at a lower cost,” said Glen Jammaron, Alpine Banks of Colorado President and Vice Chairman. “During 2024, Alpine grew customer deposits by 7.9% while simultaneously reducing brokered deposits by over 50%. Deposit interest expense decreased by over 10% in fourth quarter 2024, leading the way to a 20-basis point improvement in our net interest margin from third quarter 2024 to fourth quarter 2024. The full team at Alpine looks forward to continued success in 2025.”

    Net Income
    Net income for fourth quarter 2024 and third quarter 2024 was $13.8 million and $13.6 million, respectively. Interest income increased $0.2 million in fourth quarter 2024 compared to third quarter 2024, primarily due to increases in yields and volumes in the securities portfolio, increased rates on due from banks and increased volume in the loan portfolio. These increases were slightly offset by decreased yields on the loan portfolio and decreased balances in due from banks. Interest expense decreased $2.8 million in fourth quarter 2024 compared to third quarter 2024, primarily due to decreased interest rates on the deposit portfolio and the Company’s trust preferred securities. Noninterest income decreased $0.5 million in fourth quarter 2024 compared to third quarter 2024, primarily due to decreases in other income partially offset by increases in earnings on life insurance. Noninterest expense increased $2.2 million in fourth quarter 2024 compared to third quarter 2024, due to increases in other expenses, salary and employee benefit expenses and furniture and fixture expenses slightly offset by decreases in occupancy expenses. A provision for loan losses of $1.5 million was recorded in fourth quarter 2024 compared to a $1.2 million provision recorded in third quarter 2024.

    Net income for the twelve months ended December 31, 2024, and 2023, was $49.7 million and $57.0 million, respectively. Interest income increased $23.4 million in 2024 compared to 2023, primarily due to increases in volume in the loan portfolio and balances due from banks, along with increases in yields on the loan portfolio, the securities portfolio, and balances due from banks. These increases were slightly offset by a decrease in volume in the securities portfolio. Interest expense increased $31.6 million in 2024 compared to 2023, primarily due to increases in costs on the Company’s trust preferred securities, other borrowings, and cost of deposits, along with increases in volume in deposit balances. These increases were partially offset by a decrease in the volume of other borrowings. Noninterest income increased $4.0 million in 2024 compared to 2023, primarily due to increases in earnings on bank-owned life insurance, service charges on deposit accounts and other income. Noninterest expense increased $6.1 million in 2024 compared to 2023, due to increases in salary and employee benefit expenses and occupancy expenses. These increases were partially offset by decreases in furniture and fixture expenses and other expenses. Provision for loan losses decreased $1.5 million in 2024 compared to 2023 due to loan portfolio declines and a small volume of loan charge-offs.

    Net interest margin increased from 2.98% to 3.18% from third quarter 2024 to fourth quarter 2024. Net interest margin for the twelve months ended December 31, 2024, and 2023, was 2.96% and 3.09%. respectively.

    Assets
    Total assets decreased $53.7 million, or 0.8%, to $6.52 billion as of December 31, 2024, compared to September 30, 2024, primarily due to decreased cash and due from banks and investment securities balances, partially offset by increased loans receivable. Total assets increased $105.4 million, or 1.6%, from December 31, 2023, to December 31, 2024. The Alpine Bank Wealth Management* division had assets under management of $1.37 billion on December 31, 2024, an increase of 19.0% compared to $1.15 billion on December 31, 2023.

    Loans
    Loans outstanding as of December 31, 2024, totaled $4.0 billion. The loan portfolio increased $28.9 million, or 0.7%, during fourth quarter 2024 compared to September 30, 2024. This increase was driven by a $30.5 million increase in residential real estate loans, a $22.2 million increase in commercial real estate loans, a $2.4 million increase in consumer loans and a $0.2 million increase in other loans, partially offset by a $20.4 million decrease in commercial and industrial loans and a $5.5 million decrease in real estate construction loans.

    Loans outstanding as of December 31, 2024, reflected an increase of $13.6 million, or 0.3%, compared to loans outstanding of $4.0 billion on December 31, 2023. This increase was driven by a $56.7 million increase in residential real estate loans, a $26.1 million increase in commercial real estate loans, a $7.6 million increase in commercial and industrial loans, a $6.0 million increase in consumer loans and a $0.4 million increase in other loans partially offset by a $83.0 million decrease in real estate construction loans.

    Deposits
    Total deposits decreased $47.1 million, or 0.8%, to $5.8 billion during fourth quarter 2024 compared to September 30, 2024, primarily due to a $46.8 million decrease in demand deposits and a $92.6 million decrease in certificate of deposit accounts. This decrease was partially offset by a $58.9 million increase in money fund accounts, and a $34.2 million increase in interest-bearing checking accounts. Brokered certificates of deposit decreased 25.9% from $330.7 million on September 30, 2024, to $245.0 million on December 31, 2024. Noninterest-bearing demand accounts comprised 30.2% of all deposits on December 31, 2024, compared to 30.7% on September 30, 2024.

    Total deposits of $5.8 billion on December 31, 2024, reflected an increase of $121.5 million, or 2.1%, compared to total deposits of $5.7 billion on December 31, 2023. This increase was due to a $321.9 million increase in money market accounts and an $11.1 million increase in demand deposits, partially offset by a $180.4 million decrease in certificate of deposit accounts, an $8.0 million decrease in interest-bearing checking accounts, and a $23.0 million decrease in savings accounts. Brokered certificates of deposit decreased 53.9% from $531.0 million on December 31, 2023, to $245.0 million on December 31, 2024. Noninterest-bearing demand accounts comprised 30.2% of all deposits on December 31, 2024, compared to 30.6% on December 31, 2023.

    Capital
    The Bank continues to be designated as a “well capitalized” institution as its capital ratios exceed the minimum requirements for this designation. As of December 31, 2024, the Bank’s Tier 1 Leverage Ratio was 9.75%, Tier 1 Risk-Based Capital Ratio was 14.22%, and Total Risk-Based Capital Ratio was 15.37%. On a consolidated basis, the Company’s Tier 1 Leverage Ratio was 9.41%, Tier 1 Risk-Based Capital Ratio was 13.72%, and Total Risk-Based Capital Ratio was 15.98% as of December 31, 2024.

    Book value per share on December 31, 2024, was $4,740.61 per Class A common share and $31.60 per Class B common share, a decrease of $46.96 per Class A common share and a decrease of $0.31 per Class B common share from September 30, 2024, respectively.

    Each Class A common share is entitled to one vote per share. Except as otherwise provided by the Colorado Business Corporation Act, each Class B common share has no voting rights.

    Dividends
    Each Class B common share has dividend and distribution rights equal to one-one hundred and fiftieth (1/150th) of such rights of one Class A common share. Therefore, each one Class A common share is equivalent to 150 Class B common shares for purposes of the payment of dividends.

    During fourth quarter 2024, the Company paid cash dividends of $30.00 per Class A common share and $0.20 per Class B common share. On January 9, 2025, the Company declared cash dividends of $31.50 per Class A common share and $0.21 per Class B common share payable on January 27, 2025, to shareholders of record on January 20, 2025.

    About Alpine Banks of Colorado
    Alpine Banks of Colorado, through its wholly owned subsidiary Alpine Bank, is a $6.5 billion, independent, employee-owned organization founded in 1973 with headquarters in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Alpine Bank employs 890 people and serves 170,000 customers with personal, business, wealth management*, mortgage, and electronic banking services across Colorado’s Western Slope, mountains and Front Range. Alpine Bank has a five-star rating – meaning it has earned a superior performance classification – from BauerFinancial, an independent organization that analyzes and rates the performance of financial institutions in the United States. Shares of the Class B non-voting common stock of Alpine Banks of Colorado trade under the symbol “ALPIB” on the OTCQX® Best Market. Learn more at www.alpinebank.com.

    *Alpine Bank Wealth Management services are not FDIC insured, may lose value, and are not guaranteed by the Bank.

    Contacts: Glen Jammaron
    President and Vice Chairman
    Alpine Banks of Colorado
    2200 Grand Avenue
    Glenwood Springs, CO 81601
    (970) 384-3266    		 Eric A. Gardey
    Chief Financial Officer
    Alpine Banks of Colorado
    2200 Grand Avenue
    Glenwood Springs, CO 81601
    (970) 384-3257
         

    A note about forward-looking statements
    This press release contains “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can be identified by words such as “anticipates,” “intends,” “plans,” “seeks,” “reflects,” “believes,” “can,” “would,” “should,” “will,” “estimates,” “looks forward to,” “continues,” “expects” and similar references to future periods. Examples of forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements we make regarding our evaluation of macro-environment risks, Federal Reserve rate management, and trends reflecting things such as regulatory capital standards and adequacy. Forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations and assumptions regarding our business, the economy and other future conditions. Because forward-looking statements relate to the future, they are subject to inherent uncertainties, risks and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict. Our actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements. We caution you therefore against relying on any of these forward- looking statements. They are neither statements of historical fact nor guarantees or assurances of future performance. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statement include, but are not limited to:

    • The ability to attract new deposits and loans;
    • Demand for financial services in our market areas;
    • Competitive market-pricing factors;
    • Changes in assumptions underlying the establishment of allowances for loan losses and other estimates;
    • Effects of future economic, business and market conditions, including higher inflation;
    • Adverse effects of public health events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, including governmental and societal responses;
    • Deterioration in economic conditions that could result in increased loan losses;
    • Actions by competitors and other market participants that could have an adverse impact on expected performance;
    • Risks associated with concentrations in real estate-related loans;
    • Risks inherent in making loans, such as repayment risks and fluctuating collateral values;
    • Market interest rate volatility, including changes to the federal funds rate;
    • Stability of funding sources and continued availability of borrowings;
    • Geopolitical events, including acts of war, international hostilities and terrorist activities;
    • Assumptions and estimates used in applying critical accounting policies and modeling, including under the CECL model, which may prove unreliable, inaccurate, or not predictive of actual results;
    • Actions of government regulators, including potential future changes in the target range for the federal funds rate by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve;
    • Sale of investment securities in a loss position before their value recovers, including as a result of asset liability management strategies or in response to liquidity needs;
    • Any increases in FDIC assessments;
    • Risks associated with potential cybersecurity incidents, data breaches or failures of key information technology systems;
    • The ability to maintain adequate liquidity and regulatory capital, and comply with evolving federal and state banking regulations;
    • Changes in legal or regulatory requirements or the results of regulatory examinations that could restrict growth;
    • The ability to recruit and retain key management and staff;
    • The ability to raise capital or incur debt on reasonable terms; and
    • Effectiveness of legislation and regulatory efforts to help the U.S. and global financial markets.

    There are many factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statement made by us in this press release or in any subsequent written or oral statements attributable to the Company are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements above. Factors or events that could cause our actual results to differ may emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for us to predict all of them. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise, except as may be required by law.

    Key Financial Measures

    The attached tables highlight the Company’s key financial measures for the periods indicated (unaudited).

    Alpine Banks of Colorado Consolidated Financial Statements 12.31.2024

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: $HAREHOLDER ALERT: The M&A Class Action Firm Urges Stockholders of ATSG, CTV, DFS, BERY to Act Now

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    NEW YORK, Jan. 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Monteverde & Associates PC (the “M&A Class Action Firm”), has recovered millions of dollars for shareholders and is recognized as a Top 50 Firm by ISS Securities Class Action Services Report. We are headquartered at the Empire State Building in New York City and are investigating:

    • Air Transport Services Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATSG), relating to a proposed merger with Stonepeak Nile Parent LLC. Under the terms of the agreement, Air Transport Services Group shareholders will receive $22.50 per share of Air Transport Services Group Common Stock they own.

    ACT NOW. The Shareholder Vote is scheduled for February 10, 2025.

    Click here for more information https://monteverdelaw.com/case/air-transport-services-group-inc-atsg/. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you.

    • Innovid Corp. (NYSE: CTV), relating to the proposed merger with Mediaocean LLC. Under the terms of the agreement, Mediaocean will acquire Innovid at a price of $3.15 per share of common stock.

    ACT NOW. The Shareholder Vote is scheduled for February 11, 2025.

    Click here for more https://monteverdelaw.com/case/innovid-corp-ctv/. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you.

    • Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFS), relating to its proposed merger with Capital One Financial Corp. Under the terms of the agreement, DFS shareholders are expected to receive 1.0192 shares of Capital One per share they own.

    ACT NOW. The Shareholder Vote is scheduled for February 18, 2025.

    Click here for more information: https://www.monteverdelaw.com/case/discover-financial-services. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you.

    • Berry Global Group, Inc. (NYSE: BERY), relating to the proposed merger with AMCOR plc. Under the terms of the agreement, Berry shareholders will receive a fixed exchange ratio of 7.25 Amcor shares for each Berry share held upon closing, resulting in Amcor and Berry shareholders owning approximately 63% and 37% of the combined company, respectively.

    ACT NOW. The Shareholder Vote is scheduled for February 25, 2025.

    Click here for more information https://monteverdelaw.com/case/berry-global-group-inc-bery/. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you.

    NOT ALL LAW FIRMS ARE THE SAME. Before you hire a law firm, you should talk to a lawyer and ask:

    1. Do you file class actions and go to Court?
    2. When was the last time you recovered money for shareholders?
    3. What cases did you recover money in and how much?

    About Monteverde & Associates PC

    Our firm litigates and has recovered money for shareholders…and we do it from our offices in the Empire State Building. We are a national class action securities firm with a successful track record in trial and appellate courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. 

    No company, director or officer is above the law. If you own common stock in any of the above listed companies and have concerns or wish to obtain additional information free of charge, please visit our website or contact Juan Monteverde, Esq. either via e-mail at jmonteverde@monteverdelaw.com or by telephone at (212) 971-1341.

    Contact:
    Juan Monteverde, Esq.
    MONTEVERDE & ASSOCIATES PC
    The Empire State Building
    350 Fifth Ave. Suite 4740
    New York, NY 10118
    United States of America
    jmonteverde@monteverdelaw.com
    Tel: (212) 971-1341

    Attorney Advertising. (C) 2024 Monteverde & Associates PC. The law firm responsible for this advertisement is Monteverde & Associates PC (www.monteverdelaw.com). Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome with respect to any future matter.

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-Evening Report: 5 years after COVID began, outstanding fines mean marginalised Australians are still paying the highest price

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Shelley J. Walker, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Justice Health, National Drug Research Institute, Curtin University

    Rob1037/Shutterstock

    January 25 marked five years since the first COVID case was recorded in Australia.

    Many of us have tried to move on quickly from the pandemic, putting lockdowns and restrictions far behind us.

    But for some Australians, this hasn’t been possible. Among the pandemic’s lingering impacts is the burden of outstanding fines, issued for breaking COVID restrictions.

    These often hit disadvantaged groups the hardest, who were more likely to be fined and less able to pay. Five years down the track, marginalised communities are still feeling the impact of these penalties.

    Our new research involved surveys and in-depth interviews with people who used drugs during the pandemic. They reported feeling targeted by police and even harassed while trying to access drug treatments – and years later, many still have fines they’re unable to pay.

    Thousands of unpaid fines

    During the pandemic, police issued millions of dollars’ worth of fines to people who broke restrictions. More than 50,000 fines were issued in Victoria and around 62,000 in New South Wales .

    Fines ranged from A$200 for not wearing a face mask to nearly $5,000 for breaking rules about gatherings.

    Fines were a public health measure aimed at stopping the virus spreading.

    But for some people already struggling with financial and social problems, including those who use drugs, it compounded their difficulties.

    Studies have found some groups were fined much more often than others, including people from Sudanese and South Sudanese backgrounds, Aboriginal people and children experiencing disadvantage.

    While they were intended as public health measures, the fines reveal deeper patterns about targeted policing.

    Following calls by community legal services and human rights groups and updated legal advice, the NSW government withdrew all outstanding COVID fines at the end of 2024.

    This is not the case in Victoria. In June 2023, around 30,000 fines were outstanding in Victoria, and to our knowledge the situation hasn’t changed since then.

    Feeling targeted

    We know that people who use drugs already face increased police scrutiny in general, due to the criminalisation of drug use.

    We conduct two long-term studies with people who use drugs in Victoria, which involves participating in an annual survey.

    During the pandemic we asked additional questions about people’s interactions with police. Between March 2020 and May 2022, 1,130 participants responded to our survey.

    Our new research found one in ten reported being stopped by police.

    A third of these received at least one COVID-related fine – mostly for breaking curfews, failing to wear a face mask or breaching travel restrictions – a rate we calculated as nearly three times higher than the general population.

    However, this is a crude estimate, as accurate data on the numbers of fines in the general population is not publicly available.

    Of those who received fines, most were unemployed, more than a quarter were in unstable housing or homeless, and more than half had been to prison.

    We also did in-depth interviews with 76 participants. Many told us they felt the pandemic gave police an “excuse” to target them, leading to serious and lasting effects on their lives.

    Fined while accessing services

    Interactions with police were described as fraught with discrimination and harassment. Participants reported being stopped, searched and fined while trying to go about their daily lives. This may be partly because their circumstances meant they were more likely to be using public spaces – and therefore were more visible to police.

    Daniel, aged 41, was fined $1,652 for breaching COVID rules he told us he didn’t understand. He said:

    it was so obvious they were looking for drugs – it felt like they were doing everything they could to find a reason to fine us.

    For people who use drugs, accessing harm-reduction services and drug treatment programs (such as methadone to replace opioids) is vital to their health. Some participants told us they were fined while doing so, despite carrying medical exemptions.

    Natasha, aged 39, was homeless. She said she was fined while travelling to a needle and syringe program, despite being within the permitted travel zone.

    Police issued her a fine for leaving the home for non-essential purposes. Natasha found the situation absurd, asking “how can you be (fined for being) outside if you sleep outside?”

    Ryan, aged 45, was fined $1,800 while collecting methadone. He described the encounter as “humiliating” and unnecessary, saying police appeared more interested in finding drugs than enforcing public health measures.

    The financial and emotional toll

    In our study, the financial burden of COVID fines was devastating.

    Most could not afford to pay fines or lacked the confidence to navigate appeals processes to contest them, leading to further entanglement with the criminal legal system.

    For example, Sally, who received multiple fines while collecting her methadone during the pandemic, said:

    at the end of the day, they’re government authority and I’m a nobody – the chances of me winning would be slim to none.

    As a result, unpaid fines for some reportedly led to court orders, some were arrested, and a few even reported serving prison time.

    The emotional toll was equally severe, with feelings of being targeted and harassed by police further eroding their trust in public institutions.

    The Conversation contacted Victoria Police about our study, noting participants thought police were using the pandemic as an excuse to target them.

    In response, a police spokesperson said: “At the time officers were performing duties on behalf of the Chief Health Officer’s direction.”

    The burden can be lifted

    Public health responses should be designed to protect people, not punish them. As we move forward, it is crucial to address the lasting impacts of COVID fines.

    All Australian governments should follow the lead of NSW and waive all remaining fines to alleviate the financial and emotional burden on vulnerable populations.

    *Names have been changed.

    Shelley Walker is the recipient of an ARC Discovery Early Career Award (project number DE240101056) funded by the Australian Government. The study presented in this article was funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council NHMRC (#2003255). The SuperMIX and VMAX studies are funded by the NHMRC; #545891, #1126090, #1148170)

    Paul Dietze receives funding from the NHMRC and government and non-government organisations for the conduct of research into the impacts of alcohol and other drug use.

    Lisa Maher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. 5 years after COVID began, outstanding fines mean marginalised Australians are still paying the highest price – https://theconversation.com/5-years-after-covid-began-outstanding-fines-mean-marginalised-australians-are-still-paying-the-highest-price-247912

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Fischer Introduces Legislation to Fight Freight Fraud

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Nebraska Deb Fischer
    Today, U.S. Senator Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), a member of the Senate Commerce Committee, introduced the Household Goods Shipping Consumer Protection Act to fight freight fraud. This bipartisan, bicameral legislation will give the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) the tools needed to protect consumers from fraud by scammers in the interstate transportation of household goods.
    U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) joined Senator Fischer as an original cosponsor of this bipartisan bill. U.S. Representatives Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC-AL) and Mike Ezell (MS-04) will introduce identical companion legislation in the House.
    “We cannot allow bad actors in the shipping and moving industry to violate consumer trust and harm our nation’s supply chain. Our bipartisan, bicameral legislation will give the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration the tools they need to hold these thieves accountable. I look forward to working with my colleagues in both the House and the Senate to get our bill signed into law,” said Senator Fischer.
    “Bad actors are constantly developing new ways to defraud hardworking Americans, so it’s critical we keep our legislation up to speed so we can protect our constituents from the latest scamming techniques,” said Senator Duckworth. “Moving is stressful enough without worrying about whether your movers are actually scammers trying to steal your money and belongings. I’m proud to help introduce this bipartisan legislation alongside Senator Fischer to help ensure FMCSA has the tools it needs to shield American consumers from these thieves.” 
    “The Household Goods Shipping Consumer Protection Act aims to tackle fraudulent practices in the moving and shipping industry that damage consumer trust and disrupt our national supply chain,” said Congressman Ezell. “By holding dishonest actors accountable, we’re not only safeguarding consumers but also supporting reputable businesses and their workforce. I’m proud to co-author this important legislation to combat fraud and strengthen order within our economy.”
    “I thank my colleagues, Senator Fischer and Senator Duckworth for partnering with me and Congressman Ezell on introducing this important legislation in both chambers. Shipping fraud is a widespread issue that affects every corner of our nation. I will continue working to fight deceptive business practices by shipping companies,” said Congresswoman Norton.“Freight fraud committed by criminals and scam artists has been devastating to many small business truckers simply trying to make a living in a tough freight market,” said OOIDA President Todd Spencer. “OOIDA and the 150,000 small-business truckers we represent applaud Senator Fischer, Senator Duckworth, Representative Holmes Norton and Representative Ezell for their bipartisan and bicameral leadership to provide FMCSA better tools to root out fraudulent actors, which are also harmful to consumers and highway safety. Because of the broad industry support for these commonsense reforms, we hope this bipartisan legislation will move through the committee process without delay.”
    “Fraud continues to wreak havoc on the supply chain and in turn, hurts consumers and the U.S. economy,” said TIA President and CEO Chris Burroughs. “We thank Senator Fischer and Senator Duckworth for introducing the Household Goods Shipping Consumer Protection Act in the Senate. This bill shows their commitment to implementing strong anti-fraud laws, which could markedly reduce fraud in the supply chain, minimize financial losses to small business and restore integrity to the nation’s freight sector. This bill is good for the industry, consumers and the American economy.”
    “When individuals and families begin the stressful process of relocating, the last thing they should have to worry about is being exploited by unscrupulous companies charging exorbitant rates and holding their household goods hostage. We commend Senators Deb Fischer and Tammy Duckworth for taking action to help prevent consumers from becoming victims of moving fraud and protect the reputations of legitimate moving and storage companies and their hardworking employees. By creating additional tools to crack down on scammers, their legislation will help Americans have greater confidence that the moving professionals they entrust with their valuable possessions are experienced, honest, and reliable,” said American Trucking Associations’ Senior Vice President of Legislative Affairs Henry Hanscom and Moving & Storage Conference Executive Director Dan Hilton.
    Background: 
    Freight fraud, particularly in the household goods sector, is a growing problem that continues to undermine the integrity of the shipping and logistics industry. For years, professional truckers and industry stakeholders have raised concerns with the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) about inadequate enforcement of regulations governing brokers, which has allowed bad actors to thrive. This regulatory gap disproportionately impacts trucking businesses, often leading to fraudulent brokers taking advantage of them through deceptive practices. 
    The Household Goods Shipping Consumer Protection Act seeks to address the issue of household goods fraud by empowering FMCSA with the tools needed to combat fraudulent actors in the shipping industry. This bipartisan, bicameral bill is designed to amend Title 49 of the United States Code to give FMCSA enhanced authority to penalize violators in the freight industry.
    Key provisions of the bill include:
    Restoration of FMCSA’s Authority: Restores FMCSA’s ability to impose civil penalties against unauthorized brokers and other fraudulent entities, enabling the agency to act swiftly against bad actors. 
    Stronger Regulation Enforcement: Mandates that companies operating in the household goods sector must maintain a legitimate principal place of business, ensuring that companies cannot use PO Boxes or non-physical address to skirt regulations.
    Identifying Fraudulent Practices: Directs FMCSA to analyze trend and commonalities among companies apply for shipping authority to identify potentially fraudulent operations before they can cause harm.
    State Enforcement and Consumer Protection: Allows states to use federal funds to enforce consumer protection laws related to household goods transportations, providing a more comprehensive and effective regulatory structure. 
    Click here to read the text of the bill.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Durbin Shares Constituent Concerns About Trump’s Federal Funding Freeze

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Illinois Dick Durbin

    January 30, 2025

    In a speech on the Senate floor, Durbin shared the stories of Illinois constituents who would be dramatically impacted by the Trump Administration’s federal funding freeze

    WASHINGTON – In a speech on the Senate floor last night, U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) shared stories of constituent calls his office received over the last two days in reaction to the Trump Administration’s decision to issue an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) memo to “temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement” of trillions of dollars of Federal financial assistance, which caused mass confusion about the funding and operations of hundreds of government-funded programs ranging from Medicaid, to Head Start, to Violence Against Women Act grants.  Shortly before the federal funding freeze was set to begin, U.S. District Court Judge Loren L. Alikhan, who was confirmed under Durbin’s tenure as Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, temporarily blocked the move by the Trump Administration.  The Trump Administration rescinded the memo yesterday but claimed that the federal funding freeze would still take place. 

    “On Monday night, President Trump threw America into chaos when he abruptly announced a freeze on trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans that so many communities, states, and Americans depend on.  The reaction across the nation has been uniform.  We had our phone ringing off the hook, computers busy and buzzing, everybody wants to know what does this mean, what has happened,” Durbin said.  “Even members of the press were confused, members of Congress were confused, members of the American public were confused.  Even members of the President’s own Administration were confused about the intent and scope of the freeze.”

    In his remarks, Durbin spoke about the impact of the announcement on Illinoisans, who rely on federal funding to support critical programs and medical research.  One woman told Durbin’s office that a halt on federal funding would prevent her brother, who has Down Syndrome, from receiving the care he needs.  Another constituent shared that her work on biomedical research would be jeopardized if the Trump Administration’s funding freeze moves forward.

    “Toni is a woman from Woodstock, Illinois.  She shared with my office that her brother has Down Syndrome, and the care he receives is funded by a federal grant.  His health and safety would be at risk if this freeze is allowed to be implemented,” Durbin said.

    “Or take Dr. Kay, a professor and scientist at the University of Chicago.  Her work depends on funding from the National Institutes of Health and other federal grants.  She shared the freeze would ‘interrupt crucial biomedical research, stopping progress, sometimes destroying years’ worth of research that cannot be undone.’  And it would hurt the retention of our nation’s future scientists,” Durbin said.

    “Or [take] Sarah, a supporter of community-based organizations that serve youth experiencing homelessness in the city of Chicago.  If this freeze, in fact, takes place, the organization will not be able to access the federal funding it needs to provide services for youth, help them escape violence, or help to reunify their families,” Durbin continued.

    The OMB memo caused immediate panic across the country as red and blue states’ Medicaid portals shut down and Head Start programs worried that they would not be open the following day to provide critical child care.  The Trump Administration failed, when asked repeatedly, to provide clear guidance about what programs would be safe from being defunded.

    “Americans across the country faced disruptions in accessing critical funds and services in popular programs like Head Start, Medicaid, and so many more.  These are just a few of the many messages my office and others have received from Americans confused, outraged, and impacted by this freeze,” Durbin said.

    After Judge Alikhan’s ruling on Monday temporarily blocked the freeze from starting, the Trump Administration claimed to rescind the memo while purporting that the funding freeze would still move forward.

    “In response to the backlash from the American public, the organized efforts of many Democratic lawmakers, and the court ruling, President Trump’s Office of Management and Budget today rescinded the memo outlining the funding freeze.  But that isn’t the end of the story.  The President’s Press Secretary now claims that while the memo ordering the freeze has been rescinded, the freeze itself still stands… How does this make sense, you’re asking?  The honest answer is, it doesn’t,” Durbin continued.

    “In true Trump fashion, his Administration has made clear that it doesn’t intend to abide by the will of the American people, the letter of the law, or the Constitution.  It will do whatever it takes to push through this policy, even if it means hurting Americans across the country,” Durbin said.

    Durbin concluded his remarks by reiterating that he will push back against any unconstitutional or harmful policies enacted by the Trump Administration.

    “We’re going to continue to fight this unconstitutional, devastating, and grossly unpopular freeze in federal spending.  I want every American to know that your voice and participation in our democracy means more now than ever,” Durbin said. 

    “The President is betting that you won’t notice when he abuses power or breaks the law, that amidst the chaos that surrounds him you will be too confused, jaded, or just too tired to fight back.  But I urge Americans to continue monitoring the actions of this new Administration, particularly when they touch you and your family personally,” Durbin said.

    Video of Durbin’s remarks on the Senate floor is available here.

    Audio of Durbin’s remarks on the Senate floor is available here.

    Footage of Durbin’s remarks on the Senate floor is available here for TV Stations.

    -30-

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Phoenix Woman Sentenced to 87 Months in Prison for Possession of a Machinegun and Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering

    Source: United States Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF)

    PHOENIX, Ariz. – Cynthia Solano, 40, of Phoenix, was sentenced this week by United States District Judge G. Murray Snow to 87 months in prison, followed by 36 months of supervised release, for her involvement in a transnational firearm smuggling organization. On August 14, 2024, Solano pleaded guilty to Possession of a Machinegun and Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering.

    Between February 2022 and January 2023, Solano conspired with others to conduct financial transactions which were designed to conceal proceeds generated from the sale of firearms trafficked from the United States into Canada. After the proceeds were received, Solano used the proceeds to purchase additional firearms.

    Beginning in late December 2022, Solano gathered 87 firearms in Phoenix which she intended to deliver to other members of the organization in Michigan.  

    On January 3, 2023, Solano was driving near Springfield, Illinois when she was contacted by the Illinois State Police. The Illinois State Police troopers searched her vehicle and found 87 firearms, individually wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper. One of the firearms was equipped with a machinegun conversion device (also known as a “Switch”) attached. A machinegun conversion device converts a semi-automatic firearm into a fully automatic firearm.

    After Solano was arraigned in Arizona, she was placed on pretrial release. She later removed her electronic monitoring device and fled to Mexico. Through the efforts of the United States Marshals’ Office, she was captured by law enforcement in Mexico and removed to the United States to face prosecution.

    This prosecution is part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) Strike Force Initiative, which provides for the establishment of permanent multi-agency task force teams that work side-by-side in the same location. This co-located model enables agents from different agencies to collaborate on intelligence-driven, multi-jurisdictional operations to disrupt and dismantle the most significant drug traffickers, money launderers, gangs, and transnational criminal organizations.

    The OCDETF Arizona Strike Force is comprised of agents and officers from Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation, the United States Marshals Service, the United States Postal Service, United States Postal Inspection Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Arizona Army National Guard, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, Pima County Sheriff’s Office, and the Scottsdale Police Department. The United States Attorney’s Office, District of Arizona, Phoenix, handled the prosecution.
     

    CASE NUMBER:           CR-23-00408-PHX-GMS
    RELEASE NUMBER:    2025-012_Solano

    # # #

    For more information on the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Arizona, visit http://www.justice.gov/usao/az/
    Follow the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Arizona, on X @USAO_AZ for the latest news.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI United Nations: Myanmar: UN chief urges return to civilian rule as crisis worsens

    Source: United Nations 4

    By Vibhu Mishra

    Peace and Security

    The UN Secretary-General on Thursday said Myanmar’s military must relinquish power to allow a return to civilian rule through an inclusive democratic transition, as the country marks four years since the junta seized power.

    Following the coup, President Win Myint and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi were detained and the country was plunged into a humanitarian and human rights crisis that has only worsened amid an intensifying civil conflict.

    “Secretary-General António Guterres condemns all forms of violence and calls on all parties to the conflict to exercise maximum restraint, uphold human rights and international humanitarian law, and prevent further incitement of violence and intercommunal tensions,” UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said in statement. 

    The situation in Myanmar is in freefall, with nearly 20 million people – a third of the population – expected to need humanitarian aid this year.

    Hunger has reached alarming levels, with 15 million people projected to face acute food insecurity in 2025, up from 13.3 million last year. The cost of basic food staples has risen by 30 percent in the past year due to soaring inflation and supply chain disruptions caused by conflict.

    “Even if some food is available in local markets, people simply don’t have the resources to buy the basics, which means they are eating less and going hungry,” said Michael Dunford, UN World Food Programme (WFP) Representative in Myanmar.

    Conflict, displacement and economic collapse

    Fighting between junta forces and opposition armed groups – marked by indiscriminate aerial bombardments, village burnings, and executions – has displaced over 3.5 million people within the country.

    Many others have fled across borders seeking safety, particularly in Thailand and Bangladesh.

    Those in conflict-affected areas, including Chin, Kachin, Rakhine and Sagaing regions, are suffering the worst levels of food insecurity. The collapse of Myanmar’s economy, combined with access restrictions and disasters, has left communities on the brink.

    Concerns over elections

    Secretary-General Guterres also expressed concerns over the military’s plan to hold elections, warning that intensifying conflict and widespread human rights violations do not permit free and peaceful polls.

    He said more cooperation was essential on the part of political and military leaders to bring an end to hostilities and help the people of Myanmar forge a path towards an inclusive democratic transition.

    “A viable future for Myanmar must ensure safety, accountability, and opportunity for all its communities, including the Rohingya, and address the root causes of conflict, discrimination and disenfranchisement in all its forms,” the statement noted.

    End the nightmare

    Tom Andrews, the UN’s independent human rights expert on Myanmar, criticized the junta’s election plans as “a fraud,” stressing that it is not possible to hold a legitimate vote while arresting, detaining, and executing opposition leaders and criminalizing media freedom.

    “Junta forces have slaughtered thousands of civilians, bombed and burned villages, and displaced millions of people. More than 20,000 political prisoners remain behind bars,” he said.

    “The economy and public services have collapsed. Famine and starvation loom over large parts of the population,” he added.

    Best days lie ahead

    Calling on the international community “to help end the nightmare” in Myanmar, Mr. Andrews praised the resilience of Myanmar’s pro-democracy activists, journalists, and humanitarian workers who continue to document abuses and provide aid.

    “The resilience and courage of Myanmar’s people continue to amaze and inspire others around the world…These heroic efforts are compelling indicators that Myanmar’s best days lie ahead,” he said.

    The Special Rapporteur urged governments to impose stronger sanctions, restrict the junta’s access to weapons and support international justice mechanisms, including efforts to bring Myanmar’s military leaders to justice in the International Criminal Court (ICC).

    “Impunity has enabled a decades-long cycle of violence and oppression in Myanmar. Ultimately, this sad chapter of Myanmar’s history must end with junta leaders being prosecuted for their crimes,” he said.

    Mandated and appointed by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, Mr. Andrews is works independently of the UN Secretariat. He is not a staff member and draws no salary.

    MIL OSI United Nations News –

  • MIL-OSI New Zealand: A new direction for the minerals sector to grow the economy

    Source: New Zealand Government

    Firstly I want to thank OceanaGold for hosting our event today. Your operation at Waihi is impressive. I want to acknowledge local MP Scott Simpson, local government dignitaries, community stakeholders and all of you who have gathered here today. 

    It’s a privilege to welcome you to the launch of the Minerals Strategy for New Zealand and our Critical Minerals List.

    Of course our joint presence fulfils a deeper presence. It is a validation of an industry that has suffered from excessive regulation and poisonous politics. It is a chance to stand with a skilled workforce that is literally worth its weight in gold.

    A year of delivery for the minerals sector under the Coalition Government

    In May last year I stood in front of a packed hall in Blackball on the West Coast, people who depend on our mineral resources.

    I presented to them a vision for the future – a vision that would see our wealth base grow by utilising our mineral reserves to benefit all New Zealanders, increasing our domestic resilience by reducing reliance on imported minerals.

    I said this meant owning up to the fact that we will use our indigenous fossil fuels. Resources integral to our modern industrial civilisation. We do have valuable minerals, oil and gas.

    These minerals include coal, a vital ingredient to steel-making, a source of energy and jobs, a stream of export earnings. 

    I spoke of our focus on cutting barriers to development but not corners, and increasing New Zealand’s contributions to global supply chains, especially for minerals that are needed to support the transition to diverse sources of energy.

    Dealing with banks

    It is not widely known but some barriers are not imposed by government but come in the form of corporate straitjackets. One should look no further than the directors and executives of our banking sector. Some are in thrall to climate group-think.

    They are the new corporate gatekeepers, imposing moral priorities under the cover of saving the planet upon regional communities. Not only are they inflicting their luxury beliefs on our farming industry but they are actively de-banking mineral firms.

    Kiwi enterprises legitimately operating in the natural resource sector are being driven to despair by these woke-riddled, corporate undertakers.

    This malevolence flows from cult like accords fostered within the UN where banks and their sustainability units foolishly believe they can change the weather. New Zealand banks should abandon such agreements as the Net Zero Banking Alliance. These instruments are alien and represent a foreign threat to regional development.

    To this end New Zealand First will be introducing a members bill stopping the banks and related corporate bodies from behaving in this harmful manner. We cannot let them hold our economic development to ransom to suit the privileged cabal employed on environmental, social and inclusion matters. 

    This will include the ability for regulators to remove a bank’s operating licence if it persist with virtue-signalling destructiveness. 

    As an Associate Finance Minister, I will be working closely with the Minister for Regulation to identify how elements of our bill can be used in the wider government work programme.

    I would like to acknowledge the work of ACT MP Mark Cameron on this issue so far. He is a champion for the farming sector.

    I want the mining sector on an enduring pathway to boost regional opportunities and jobs, increase our self-sufficiency, to be a critical part of our export-led focus, especially as we take advantage of the global opportunities for new minerals uses.

    How can we achieve such outcomes if key intermediaries such as banks and insurance companies are going to bully our Kiwi businesses and their employees out of the economy? When did citizens authorise corporates to use climate extremism to bankrupt firm and family alike?

    It is bad enough that Aussie-owned banks are behaving in this predatory manner but it is especially galling that Kiwibank is treating Kiwis in this vein. Had New Zealand First known this would be their attitude we may very well have formed a different view about their recent recapitalisation initiative. 

    Our Government has progressed in enabling an environment for a responsible and productive minerals sector to thrive.

    Resources-friendly policy

    We’ve moved quickly to enact policy and legislative fixes. Our upgrades have included introducing the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill that will not only remove the ban on petroleum exploration beyond onshore Taranaki – it will deliver a new tier of minerals permit to make it easier for people to undertake small-scale non-commercial gold mining activity across the country. We expect to finalise and pass the Bill in the coming months.

    We’ve made changes to the Resource Management Act to align consenting for coal mining with other forms of mining to reduce barriers that are holding back economic development.

    Timely permit decisions are vital in supporting the sector to get to work. Following direction on my expectations, regulator New Zealand Petroleum and Minerals has made significant progress dealing with the backlog of permit decisions while managing the growing influx of new applications as activity ramps up. 

    Figures for 2024 show a 74 per cent increase in minerals permitting output – that’s the number of outcomes made on minerals applications – compared to the previous calendar year.

    In 2023, NZP&M received 288 new and change minerals permit applications and in 2024 it was 447. That is a 55 per cent increase – and a very good indicator of a sector that is really starting to hum.

    We have begun our journey to rebuild international investor awareness in our mining sector through the delivery of investment aids such as the GNS Endowment Study. This is a specialist report bringing together extensive technical research to identify short, medium, and long-term prospects for potential development.

    We have returned to the international mining stage to make sure New Zealand is back on the agenda for international investors and challenge responsible operators to explore what we have to offer.

    Finally, I can’t understate the impact that our new Fast-track Approvals legislation will have in sending well-planned, investment-ready projects along the path of development.

    The Act’s broad and overarching purpose statement is to recognise the contributions significant projects such as mining operations can make to our communities and economy.

    At long last the gate-keepers behind the outdated Wildlife Act and cumbersome Conservation Act will be brought to heel. On the former there is more to do. Sadly it is often delivered at an operational level in a way inimical to our productivity. 

    Previously mining companies were unable to secure permits under these statutes for dubious reasons. That has now disappeared. If there are implementation problems the Government will make additional amendments to the law.

    A one-stop shop will streamline the pathway to attaining the approvals required for mining activities, removing the multiple application processes operators currently must navigate to mine in New Zealand.

    Land access

    One of the key areas I see this process improving is concessions for land access. An array of high-value mining and quarrying projects are already approved to travel this consenting pathway.

    Officials estimate the number of jobs across the mining projects listed in Schedule 2 of the Fast-track Approvals Act at over 2,500 direct fulltime jobs at peak production. Many of these roles will be well-paying regional jobs with significant opportunities for training and growing skills.

    I don’t need to tell the good folks of Waihi that every direct employee of a mining company generates many more job opportunities. The environmental scientists that provide expert advice, the drilling companies that contract with OceanaGold, and all the other skills needed to run a successful operation spread out over the local, regional, and national economy.

    For the seven listed mining projects that will generate export revenue, estimates are a peak of $2.5 billion in 2033, with gold playing a big part. This is what our minerals potential looks like.

    Going forward, this is what consenting will look like for significant mining projects in our country.

    As our industry expands, we need to ensure that Paamu and statutes such as the Queen Elizabeth the Second National Trust Act are fit for purpose and do not inhibit the growth of critical minerals.

    When there is opportunity, we are going to say yes

    I will make one further note about this Government’s work to provide the certainty that the sector needs to push forward.

    Not all conservation land is equal. We have an inordinately large conservation estate of varying quality.

    Stewardship land is managed by the Department of Conservation until it is appropriately assessed for its conservation value and classified. Around 30 per cent of conservation areas are held in stewardship – that’s over 2.7 million hectares or 9 per cent of New Zealand’s total land area.

    A lot of that land isn’t considered to have special conservation or scenic values, but we do know that there are areas there likely to contain mineral deposits.

    This Government supports sustainable and environmentally approved mining on stewardship land and other categories of DOC land but we are very clear that national parks and other land categories identified under schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act are not on the table.

    It would be remiss of me not to also mention my favourite amphibian, Freddy the Frog at this point. I raise this not in a flippant way, but as realist wanting to have a genuine conversation about how we focus our efforts and limited resources in protecting the natural assets that New Zealanders value most.

    It is correct that our Archey’s frog is endangered – but it is not from mining. The real threat to Freddy is the rats, stoats and pigs that populate significant extents of our stewardship and conservation land.

    I put to you that the work we are doing to enable responsible mining in New Zealand is the best news Freddy has had for a long time. As part of its listed Fast-track Approvals project, OceanaGold will be stepping up with an intensive predator control programme in the Coromandel Forest Park. 

    In fact, it’s because of OceanaGold and its specialist conservationists that we have some of the most insightful research collected on the species to date. Over $600,000 towards ecological outcomes around this mining site. 

    Actually a much larger sum when one considers the broader commercial footprint including Macraes, Otago, South Island. Such a quantum is not possible without a successful business.

    It is time for Kiwis to have an honest and considered debate on mining. On this score I am going to pay more attention to the blue collar community than woke collar spongers. 

    This engagement will lead us to the complex and deadweight nature of our climate change regulations. They are excessive for our small economy. They run the risk of deindustrialisation, exporting jobs and importing carbon.

    Of course this is all intertwined with environmental, social and government reporting requirements. dubious value and should be discretionary at best. Green scrub that has spread too far and needs a severe prune. 

    We need to acknowledge the criticality of minerals to our daily lives, the importance of maintaining a strong, independent economy with well-paying jobs and opportunities in our regions. Why import materials we can perfectly adequately supply ourselves?

    Some people argue against minerals extraction, but gladly rely on the conveniences of modern society and economy built by those resources. As our Prime Minister said, we don’t have the luxury of turning off growth. 

    A strategy to ensure momentum is enduring

    Some of you in the sector may be looking at this progress and feeling like we’ve been here before, only for the hard-won momentum to die with a change in Government.

    I hear your concerns. I’ve spoken at length about how a lack of long-term, enduring strategic direction has hindered this country in reaping the economic and security benefits our bounty of natural resources presents.

    Today we change that.

    The Minerals Strategy for New Zealand adopts a strategic lens out to 2040, focusing our approach to the development of our minerals estate with a delivery roadmap to get us there. This is a holistic picture of minerals production from the earth, from reprocessing waste material, and from potential recycling and recovery.

    There are three main changes to the strategy follow consultation with New Zealanders.

    We have reframed the strategy to have a clear vision, goal and succinct outcomes.

    Our key outcomes for the sector are productive, valued, and resilient, and are guided by overarching principles that respect Treaty settlement obligations and ensure responsible practices.

    Minerals developments in New Zealand will happen in a responsible manner where environmental guard rails are appropriate to the risks being managed. The protection, the health and safety of our workers, and impacts on regional communities is important.

    This means we are working towards sector growth and innovation that contributes to New Zealand’s prosperity.  The sector’s performance and responsible practices need to be emphasised. Advocacy and being forward leaning is important. I recognise the sector has been subject to misinformation but the mute button is not an option.

    We have updated the goal of doubling our exports to $3 billion by 2035 from the previous goal of $2 billion. Statistics NZ reports that mineral exports for the financial year ending June 2023 totalled $1.46 billion and our submitters were clear – we needed a more ambitious goal.

    Finally, I want to assure you that we are not downing tools when there is still work to do. The addition of a Delivery Roadmap clearly sets out the key actions the Government will take to achieve the strategy’s goal and vision.

    In the short term, key actions include creating a network to support minerals research and development, making information about minerals and regulations more accessible to potential investors, and engaging with countries to support supply chain resilience for critical minerals.

    Longer term, we will deliver a minerals research strategy and address workforce development needs, skills and training programmes.

    Through our Minerals Strategy we have formed the foundations. Soon our government will roll out the refreshed approach to inward foreign direct investment. You have told me that an overseas investment process that is efficient, timely and not too costly is important. 

    We have a pathway forward. A permitting regime which acknowledges the principle of risk proportionality. A recognition that excessive climate net zero regulations will thwart economic growth. A consideration of ecological, community, tangata whenua issues that is balanced and does not present scope for veto power.

    An expanded Critical Minerals List

    I don’t have to explain to anyone here today how we rely on a wide range of minerals to enable the comforts of our lives. Every road you drive on, every light switch you turn on, our schools, hospitals and homes. All are enabled in some way by the extraction of our natural resources.

    If suddenly we couldn’t access aggregate to construct our roads, phosphate to support the growth of our crops or iron sand to make steel for our buildings, our economy would grind to a halt.

    On the matter of iron sands, the recent Taharoa RMA hearing process for consents to continue an activity that has been happening for over 50 years was a circus. It shows that more robustness is needed. Hopefully the treatment this firm receives will be inordinately better under the Fast-track processes.

    Equally, there is no low emissions energy transition without minerals – no batteries, no electric cars, no wind turbines and no solar panels.

    Unfortunately, we have never sought a comprehensive picture of the minerals needs of New Zealand now and in the future, or how we ensure those supplies are secure and affordable.

    I am delighted today to release New Zealand’s Critical Minerals List, a holistic picture of the minerals that are economically important and are vulnerable to supply risk or essential to unlocking other critical minerals.

    Following public consultation last September, the Critical Minerals List now features 37 minerals, up from 35.

    The Coalition Government agreed to include both gold and metallurgical coal, which is used in steelmaking, on the list in recognition of their importance to our minerals sector and economy, and in unlocking other critical minerals.

    Together, they represent 80 per cent of our mineral exports, generating export revenues of around $1.2 billion in the year to June 2023.

    Simply put, OceanaGold’s Waihi Operation today shows gold investments needs skills, machinery, resources, and capacity to support our modern industrial system.

    The legacy of gold- and coal-mining is that of a catalyst for transformation – for our economy, for our development, for our technical skills and trades, and for our place on the world stage.

    Future mining in New Zealand will play to our strengths in terms of existing production while we develop new opportunities. That means gold and metallurgical coal.

    We will also offer more bespoke and boutique opportunities for the right investors.

    Of our 37 critical minerals, we produce or have the potential to produce 21 here in New Zealand. We are a prospective destination for sought-after minerals like antimony and we have operators working rare earth, vanadium and titanium projects – all exciting opportunities for New Zealand to support the international transition to a clean energy future.

    Our list will contribute to New Zealand’s work on critical international supply chains and allow us to investigate specific actions for securing better access to the minerals we’ve deemed critical.

    This could include preferential pathways and settings for development and supply of minerals on the list, or building international relationships to ensure secure supply of those we can’t produce. This work programme forms part of the Strategy’s delivery roadmap and will kick off shortly.

    Close

    When I left Blackball last year, I did so with the promise I would continue to be a dogged champion for the minerals sector and the economic prosperity it can offer New Zealand, if done right.

    I hope I have shown you that with the work we have done to get the right direction and settings in place, you can have confidence that we have an enduring pathway forward. 

    This Government is taking an active, deliberate and co-ordinated approach to harnessing the potential of our natural resources to take us from ‘open for business’ to ‘doing business’.

    The sector has been a transformative agent in the past, and I expect it to play a transforming role into the future.

    MIL OSI New Zealand News –

  • MIL-OSI: The First of Long Island Corporation Reports Earnings for the Year Ended December 31, 2024

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    MELVILLE, N.Y., Jan. 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The First of Long Island Corporation (Nasdaq: FLIC, the “Company” or the “Corporation”), the parent of The First National Bank of Long Island (the “Bank”), reported earnings for the quarter and year ended December 31, 2024.

    President and Chief Executive Officer Chris Becker commented on the Company’s results: “Our team is focused on best positioning our company for the future and its pending merger with ConnectOne Bancorp, Inc.  In that regard, our net interest margin bottomed out during the first quarter of 2024 and began its recovery during the remainder of the year.  Excluding loss on securities in 2023, noninterest income increased nearly 23% largely related to new and recurring fee income categories.  Noninterest expense was well controlled with an increase of 1.6% when compared to the prior year after backing out $3.1 million of merger and branch consolidation expenses in 2024.  Finally, asset quality remains strong.  We look forward to the changes to come in 2025, which will offer new and exciting opportunities to our stockholders, customers, employees and communities.”

    Analysis of Earnings – 2024 Earnings

    Net income and diluted earnings per share (“EPS”) for the year ended December 31, 2024, were $17.1 million and $0.75, respectively, as compared to $26.2 million and $1.16, respectively, in 2023. The principal drivers of the change in net income were a decline in net interest income of $13.6 million, or 15.7%, and a provision for credit losses of $359,000 as compared to a provision reversal of $326,000 in 2023, partially offset by a loss on sales of securities of $3.5 million in the first quarter of 2023, an increase in remaining noninterest income of $2.2 million, an increase in noninterest expense of $4.1 million and a decrease in income tax expense of $3.5 million. The year ended December 31, 2024 produced a return on average assets (“ROA”) of 0.40%, a return on average equity (“ROE”) of 4.49%, an efficiency ratio of 79.00%, and a net interest margin of 1.83%.  

    For the year ended December 31, 2024, net interest income declined due to an increase in interest expense of $25.5 million that was only partially offset by an $11.8 million increase in interest income. Year over year, the cost of interest-bearing liabilities increased 90 basis points while the yield on interest-earning assets increased 31 basis points. The Bank’s balance sheet remains liability sensitive, however the pace of repricing of average interest-earning assets began outpacing the repricing of average interest-bearing liabilities in the second half of the year as the Fed’s easing of interest rates allowed the Bank to reduce nonmatured deposit rates.

    The Bank recorded a provision for credit losses of $359,000 during 2024, compared to a provision reversal of $326,000 in 2023. The allowance for credit losses declined when compared to year-end 2023 largely due to declines in historical loss rates and reserves on individually evaluated loans, partially offset by a deterioration in current and forecasted economic conditions, including adjustments for rent stabilization status of multifamily properties. The reserve coverage ratio remained stable at 0.88% of total loans at December 31, 2024 as compared to 0.89% at December 31, 2023. Past due loans and nonaccrual loans were at $270,000 and $3.2 million, respectively, on December 31, 2024. Overall credit quality of the loan and investment portfolios remains strong.

    Noninterest income, excluding the loss on sales of securities of $3.5 million in the 2023 period, increased $2.2 million, or 22.8%, year over year. Recurring components of noninterest income including bank-owned life insurance (“BOLI”) and service charges on deposit accounts had increases of 8.1% and 11.3%, respectively. Other noninterest income increased 45.7% and included increases of $655,000 in merchant card services, $465,000 in back-to-back swap fees, $377,000 of BOLI benefit payments, and $242,000 in pension income, which were partially offset by a gain on disposition of premises and fixed assets of $240,000 in 2023.

    Noninterest expense increased $4.1 million, or 6.4%, for the year ended December 31, 2024, as compared to the prior year.  The change in noninterest expense is mainly attributable to branch consolidation and merger expenses of $1.9 million and $1.2 million, respectively.  Noninterest expense excluding merger and branch consolidation expenses increased by $1.0 million or 1.6%.  The 6.3% year-over-year increase in salaries and employee benefits included a variety of compensation and benefit categories including the vesting of certain awards during the fourth quarter of 2024.  The decrease of $554,000 in occupancy and equipment expense was largely due to the ongoing branch optimization strategy.  Lower other expenses included a decrease in telecommunication expenses of $510,000 due to efficiencies with system upgrades and a smaller provision for off-balance sheet commitments of $310,000 due to a decrease in off-balance sheet credit exposure.

    Income tax expense decreased $3.5 million, and the effective tax rate declined from 11.0% in 2023 to (1.9%) in 2024. The decline in the effective tax rate is mainly due to an increase in the percentage of pre-tax income derived from the Bank’s real estate investment trust, reducing the state and local income tax due. The decrease in income tax expense reflects the lower effective tax rate and a decline in pre-tax income.

    Analysis of Earnings – Fourth Quarter 2024 Versus Fourth Quarter 2023

    Net income for the fourth quarter of 2024 decreased $2.8 million as compared to the fourth quarter of 2023. The change in net income is mainly attributable to an increase in salaries and employee benefits expense of $2.4 million for substantially the same reasons discussed above with respect to the year-over-year changes, a $1.9 million decline in net interest income along with a $1.4 million increase in branch consolidation expenses.  This was partially offset by a provision reversal for credit losses of $381,000 as compared to a provision of $901,000 in the fourth quarter of 2023, back-to-back swap fees of $233,000 and a BOLI benefit payment of $225,000, both recorded in the current period and an increase in merchant card services income of $186,000. The quarter produced a ROA of 0.31%, a ROE of 3.35%, an efficiency ratio of 86.78%, and a net interest margin of 1.83%. 

    Analysis of Earnings – Fourth Quarter 2024 Versus Third Quarter 2024

    Net income for the fourth quarter of 2024 decreased $1.4 million compared to the third quarter of 2024. The decrease in net income was primarily due to an increase in salaries and employee benefits of $856,000, additional branch consolidation expenses of $840,000 and a decrease in net interest income of $573,000, partially offset by a provision reversal for credit losses of $381,000 in the fourth quarter as compared to a provision of $170,000 in the third quarter and a decrease in merger expenses of $571,000. The decline in net interest income was primarily due to a net interest margin decrease of 6 basis points when compared to the linked quarter, which was largely due to lower income on the fair value derivative.

    Liquidity

    On December 31, 2024, overnight advances and other borrowings were down by $70.0 million and $37.5 million, respectively, from prior year end. At year-end, the Bank had $583.0 million in collateralized borrowing lines with the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York and the Federal Reserve Bank, $20.0 million unsecured line of credit with a correspondent bank and $265.5 million in unencumbered cash and securities. In total, $868.5 million in liquidity was available on December 31, 2024.  Uninsured deposits were 45.8% of total deposits at December 31, 2024. 

    Capital

    The Corporation’s capital position remains strong with a leverage ratio of approximately 10.12% on December 31, 2024. Book value per share was $16.77 on December 31, 2024, versus $16.83 on December 31, 2023. The accumulated other comprehensive loss component of stockholders’ equity is mainly comprised of a net unrealized loss in the available-for-sale securities portfolio due to higher market interest rates. The Company declared its quarterly cash dividend of $0.21 per share during the quarter. There were no share repurchases during the quarter. 

    Forward Looking Information

    This earnings release contains various “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of that term as set forth in Rule 175 of the Securities Act of 1933 and Rule 3b-6 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Such statements are generally contained in sentences including the words “may” or “expect” or “could” or “should” or “would” or “believe” or “anticipate”. The Corporation cautions that these forward-looking statements are subject to numerous assumptions, risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause future results to vary from current management expectations include, but are not limited to, changing economic conditions; legislative and regulatory changes; monetary and fiscal policies of the federal government; changes in interest rates; deposit flows and the cost of funds; demand for loan products; competition; changes in management’s business strategies; changes in accounting principles, policies or guidelines; changes in real estate values; and other factors discussed in the “risk factors” section of the Corporation’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). The forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release, and the Corporation assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those projected in the forward-looking statements.

    For more detailed financial information please see the Corporation’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024. The Form 10-K will be available through the Bank’s website at www.fnbli.com on or about March 12, 2025, when it is anticipated to be electronically filed with the SEC. Our SEC filings are also available on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov.

     
    CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS
    (Unaudited)
                 
        12/31/2024     12/31/2023  
        (dollars in thousands)  
    Assets:                
    Cash and cash equivalents   $ 38,330     $ 60,887  
    Investment securities available-for-sale, at fair value     624,779       695,877  
                     
    Loans:                
    Commercial and industrial     136,732       116,163  
    Secured by real estate:                
    Commercial mortgages     1,963,107       1,919,714  
    Residential mortgages     1,084,090       1,166,887  
    Home equity lines     36,468       44,070  
    Consumer and other     1,210       1,230  
          3,221,607       3,248,064  
    Allowance for credit losses     (28,331 )     (28,992 )
          3,193,276       3,219,072  
                     
    Restricted stock, at cost     27,712       32,659  
    Bank premises and equipment, net     29,135       31,414  
    Right-of-use asset – operating leases     18,951       22,588  
    Bank-owned life insurance     117,075       114,045  
    Pension plan assets, net     11,806       10,740  
    Deferred income tax benefit     36,192       28,996  
    Other assets     22,080       19,622  
        $ 4,119,336     $ 4,235,900  
    Liabilities:                
    Deposits:                
    Checking   $ 1,074,671     $ 1,133,184  
    Savings, NOW and money market     1,574,160       1,546,369  
    Time     616,027       591,433  
          3,264,858       3,270,986  
                     
    Overnight advances     —       70,000  
    Other borrowings     435,000       472,500  
    Operating lease liability     21,964       24,940  
    Accrued expenses and other liabilities     18,648       17,328  
          3,740,470       3,855,754  
    Stockholders’ Equity:                
    Common stock, par value $0.10 per share:                
    Authorized, 80,000,000 shares;                
    Issued and outstanding, 22,595,349 and 22,590,942 shares     2,260       2,259  
    Surplus     79,731       79,728  
    Retained earnings     354,051       355,887  
          436,042       437,874  
    Accumulated other comprehensive loss, net of tax     (57,176 )     (57,728 )
          378,866       380,146  
        $ 4,119,336     $ 4,235,900  
                     
     
    CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF INCOME
    (Unaudited)
                 
        Year Ended     Three Months Ended  
        12/31/2024     12/31/2023     12/31/2024     12/31/2023  
        (dollars in thousands)  
    Interest and dividend income:                                
    Loans   $ 137,092     $ 127,866     $ 34,413     $ 33,160  
    Investment securities:                                
    Taxable     26,412       22,663       5,711       6,786  
    Nontaxable     3,826       4,954       954       978  
          167,330       155,483       41,078       40,924  
    Interest expense:                                
    Savings, NOW and money market deposits     45,254       32,164       11,617       9,976  
    Time deposits     27,509       19,267       6,761       6,181  
    Overnight advances     401       950       9       354  
    Other borrowings     20,947       16,237       4,664       4,455  
          94,111       68,618       23,051       20,966  
    Net interest income     73,219       86,865       18,027       19,958  
    Provision (credit) for credit losses     359       (326 )     (381 )     901  
    Net interest income after provision (credit) for credit losses     72,860       87,191       18,408       19,057  
                                     
    Noninterest income:                                
    Bank-owned life insurance     3,456       3,197       883       814  
    Service charges on deposit accounts     3,376       3,034       833       791  
    Net loss on sales of securities     —       (3,489 )     —       —  
    Gain on disposition of premises and fixed assets     21       240       —       —  
    Other     5,215       3,354       1,504       792  
          12,068       6,336       3,220       2,397  
    Noninterest expense:                                
    Salaries and employee benefits     39,720       37,373       10,551       8,105  
    Occupancy and equipment     12,586       13,140       3,297       3,166  
    Merger expenses     1,161       —       295       —  
    Branch consolidation expenses     1,934       —       1,387       —  
    Other     12,763       13,546       3,128       3,536  
          68,164       64,059       18,658       14,807  
    Income before income taxes     16,764       29,468       2,970       6,647  
    Income tax (credit) expense     (312 )     3,229       (274 )     588  
    Net income   $ 17,076     $ 26,239     $ 3,244     $ 6,059  
                                     
    Share and Per Share Data:                                
    Weighted Average Common Shares     22,527,300       22,550,562       22,548,966       22,586,296  
    Dilutive restricted stock units     121,393       82,609       221,692       122,961  
    Dilutive weighted average common shares     22,648,693       22,633,171       22,770,658       22,709,257  
                                     
    Basic EPS   $ 0.76     $ 1.16     $ 0.14     $ 0.27  
    Diluted EPS     0.75       1.16       0.14       0.27  
    Cash Dividends Declared per share     0.84       0.84       0.21       0.21  
                                     
    FINANCIAL RATIOS
    (Unaudited)
    ROA     0.40 %     0.62 %     0.31 %     0.57 %
    ROE     4.49       7.14       3.35       6.68  
    Net Interest Margin     1.83       2.16       1.83       2.00  
    Efficiency Ratio     79.00       65.52       86.78       65.47  
                                     
     
    PROBLEM AND POTENTIAL PROBLEM LOANS AND ASSETS
    (Unaudited)
                 
        12/31/2024     12/31/2023  
        (dollars in thousands)  
    Loans including modifications to borrowers experiencing financial difficulty:                
    Modified and performing according to their modified terms   $ 421     $ 431  
    Past due 30 through 89 days     270       3,086  
    Past due 90 days or more and still accruing     —       —  
    Nonaccrual     3,229       1,053  
          3,920       4,570  
    Other real estate owned     —       —  
        $ 3,920     $ 4,570  
                     
    Allowance for credit losses   $ 28,331     $ 28,992  
    Allowance for credit losses as a percentage of total loans     0.88 %     0.89 %
    Allowance for credit losses as a multiple of nonaccrual loans     8.8 x     27.5 x
                     
     
    AVERAGE BALANCE SHEET, INTEREST RATES AND INTEREST DIFFERENTIAL
    (Unaudited)
           
        Year Ended December 31,  
        2024     2023  
        Average     Interest/     Average     Average     Interest/     Average  
    (dollars in thousands)   Balance     Dividends     Rate     Balance     Dividends     Rate  
    Assets:                                                
    Interest-earning bank balances   $ 60,259     $ 3,221       5.35 %   $ 48,879     $ 2,508       5.13 %
    Investment securities:                                                
    Taxable (1)     611,936       23,191       3.79       584,450       20,155       3.45  
    Nontaxable (1) (2)     152,575       4,843       3.17       196,341       6,271       3.19  
    Loans (1) (2)     3,237,664       137,092       4.23       3,260,903       127,868       3.92  
    Total interest-earning assets     4,062,434       168,347       4.14       4,090,573       156,802       3.83  
    Allowance for credit losses     (28,613 )                     (30,291 )                
    Net interest-earning assets     4,033,821                       4,060,282                  
    Cash and due from banks     32,207                       30,847                  
    Premises and equipment, net     30,700                       32,027                  
    Other assets     124,909                       112,833                  
        $ 4,221,637                     $ 4,235,989                  
    Liabilities and Stockholders’ Equity:                                                
    Savings, NOW & money market deposits   $ 1,591,320       45,254       2.84     $ 1,657,947       32,164       1.94  
    Time deposits     622,229       27,509       4.42       553,096       19,267       3.48  
    Total interest-bearing deposits     2,213,549       72,763       3.29       2,211,043       51,431       2.33  
    Overnight advances     7,156       401       5.60       17,529       950       5.42  
    Other borrowings     446,837       20,947       4.69       380,399       16,237       4.27  
    Total interest-bearing liabilities     2,667,542       94,111       3.53       2,608,971       68,618       2.63  
    Checking deposits     1,135,579                       1,220,947                  
    Other liabilities     38,159                       38,575                  
          3,841,280                       3,868,493                  
    Stockholders’ equity     380,357                       367,496                  
        $ 4,221,637                     $ 4,235,989                  
                                                     
    Net interest income (2)           $ 74,236                     $ 88,184          
    Net interest spread (2)                     0.61 %                     1.20 %
    Net interest margin (2)                     1.83 %                     2.16 %
    (1)   The average balances of loans include nonaccrual loans. The average balances of investment securities exclude unrealized gains and losses on available-for-sale securities.
    (2)   Tax-equivalent basis. Interest income on a tax-equivalent basis includes the additional amount of interest income that would have been earned if the Corporation’s investment in tax-exempt loans and investment securities had been made in loans and investment securities subject to federal income taxes yielding the same after-tax income. The tax-equivalent amount of $1.00 of nontaxable income was $1.27 for each period presented using the statutory federal income tax rate of 21%.
         
     
    AVERAGE BALANCE SHEET, INTEREST RATES AND INTEREST DIFFERENTIAL
    (Unaudited)
           
        Three Months Ended December 31,  
        2024     2023  
        Average     Interest/     Average     Average     Interest/     Average  
    (dollars in thousands)   Balance     Dividends     Rate     Balance     Dividends     Rate  
    Assets:                                                
    Interest-earning bank balances   $ 41,393     $ 497       4.78 %   $ 39,134     $ 539       5.46 %
    Investment securities:                                                
    Taxable (1)     585,774       5,214       3.56       642,590       6,247       3.89  
    Nontaxable (1) (2)     152,028       1,207       3.18       157,098       1,238       3.15  
    Loans (1)     3,240,254       34,413       4.25       3,245,232       33,160       4.09  
    Total interest-earning assets     4,019,449       41,331       4.11       4,084,054       41,184       4.03  
    Allowance for credit losses     (28,679 )                     (29,577 )                
    Net interest-earning assets     3,990,770                       4,054,477                  
    Cash and due from banks     30,311                       29,175                  
    Premises and equipment, net     29,868                       31,792                  
    Other assets     131,573                       105,902                  
        $ 4,182,522                     $ 4,221,346                  
    Liabilities and Stockholders’ Equity:                                                
    Savings, NOW & money market deposits   $ 1,597,769       11,617       2.89       1,626,615       9,976       2.43  
    Time deposits     612,334       6,761       4.39       602,256       6,181       4.07  
    Total interest-bearing deposits     2,210,103       18,378       3.31       2,228,871       16,157       2.88  
    Overnight advances     761       9       4.70       25,055       354       5.61  
    Other borrowings     416,413       4,664       4.46       390,326       4,455       4.53  
    Total interest-bearing liabilities     2,627,277       23,051       3.49       2,644,252       20,966       3.15  
    Checking deposits     1,132,122                       1,176,276                  
    Other liabilities     37,578                       41,063                  
          3,796,977                       3,861,591                  
    Stockholders’ equity     385,545                       359,755                  
        $ 4,182,522                     $ 4,221,346                  
                                                     
    Net interest income (2)           $ 18,280                     $ 20,218          
    Net interest spread (2)                     0.62 %                     0.88 %
    Net interest margin (2)                     1.83 %                     2.00 %
    (1)   The average balances of loans include nonaccrual loans. The average balances of investment securities exclude unrealized gains and losses on available-for-sale securities.
    (2)   Tax-equivalent basis. Interest income on a tax-equivalent basis includes the additional amount of interest income that would have been earned if the Corporation’s investment in tax-exempt investment securities had been made in investment securities subject to federal income taxes yielding the same after-tax income. The tax-equivalent amount of $1.00 of nontaxable income was $1.27 for each period presented using the statutory federal income tax rate of 21%.
         

    For More Information Contact:
    Janet Verneuille, SEVP and CFO
    (516) 671-4900, Ext. 7462

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Baker Hughes Announces Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year 2024 Results

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    Fourth-quarter highlights

    • Orders of $7.5 billion, including $3.8 billion of IET orders.
    • RPO of $33.1 billion, including IET RPO of $30.1 billion.
    • Revenue of $7.4 billion, up 8% year-over-year.
    • GAAP diluted EPS of $1.18 and adjusted diluted EPS* of $0.70.
    • Adjusted EBITDA* of $1,310 million, up 20% year-over-year.
    • Cash flows from operating activities of $1,189 million and free cash flow* of $894 million.

    Full-year highlights

    • Orders of $28.2 billion, including $13.0 billion of IET orders.
    • Revenue of $27.8 billion, up 9% year-over-year.
    • Attributable net income of $2,979 million.
    • GAAP diluted EPS of $2.98 and adjusted diluted EPS* of $2.35.
    • Adjusted EBITDA* of $4,591 million, up 22% year-over-year.
    • Cash flows from operating activities of $3,332 million and free cash flow* of $2,257 million.
    • Returns to shareholders of $1,320 million, including $484 million of share repurchases.

    HOUSTON and LONDON, Jan. 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Baker Hughes Company (Nasdaq: BKR) (“Baker Hughes” or the “Company”) announced results today for the fourth-quarter and full-year 2024.

    “2024 proved to be a momentous year for Baker Hughes. We closed out the year with exceptional fourth-quarter results, setting new quarterly and annual records for revenue, free cash flow and our adjusted measures of EPS, EBITDA, and EBITDA margin. Our strategy to drive profitable growth and continuous margin improvement is working. Looking forward, we will continue our journey to transform the Company, and we expect 2025 to demonstrate another strong year of EBITDA growth, led by our IET segment,” said Lorenzo Simonelli, Baker Hughes Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

    “IET booked $3.8 billion of orders in the fourth quarter, supported by strong LNG orders and another gas infrastructure award. Including this strong end to the year, 2024 orders totaled $13 billion, the second highest order year ever. This order performance highlights the end-market diversity and versatility of our portfolio.”

    “Overall, our margin increase across both segments continues to demonstrate strong progress on the journey toward 20% segment EBITDA margins. Transformation actions will continue to be a major driver of our margin improvements as we progress through 2025 and beyond. We remain confident in achieving our 20% EBITDA margin targets for OFSE this year and IET in 2026.”

    “As reflected in our strong 2024 results and our exceptional margin improvement, Baker Hughes has evolved into a more profitable energy and industrial technology company. Company results are benefiting from strong execution, sharpened commercial focus and improved productivity gains. Our confidence in the durability and growth of our earnings and free cash flow positions us to continue growing our dividend, highlighted by the announcement to increase our quarterly dividend by 10% to $0.23.”

    “I would like to thank the Baker Hughes team for yet again delivering outstanding results. As we continue our journey to move Baker Hughes forward, we remain committed to our customers, shareholders, and employees,” concluded Simonelli.

    * Non-GAAP measure. See reconciliations in the section titled “Reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP Financial Measures.”

      Three Months Ended   Variance
    (in millions except per share amounts) December 31,
    2024    		 September 30,
    2024    		 December 31,
    2023    		   Sequential Year-over-year
    Orders $ 7,496 $ 6,676 $ 6,904   12 % 9 %
    Revenue   7,364   6,908   6,835   7 % 8 %
    Net income attributable to Baker Hughes   1,179   766   439   54 % 168 %
    Adjusted net income attributable to Baker Hughes*   694   666   511   4 % 36 %
    Operating income   665   930   651   (29 )% 2 %
    Adjusted operating income*   1,019   930   816   10 % 25 %
    Adjusted EBITDA*   1,310   1,208   1,091   8 % 20 %
    Diluted earnings per share (EPS)   1.18   0.77   0.43   54 % 171 %
    Adjusted diluted EPS*   0.70   0.67   0.51   4 % 37 %
    Cash flow from operating activities   1,189   1,010   932   18 % 28 %
    Free cash flow*   894   754   633   19 % 41 %

    * Non-GAAP measure. See reconciliations in the section titled “Reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP Financial Measures.”

    Certain columns and rows in our tables and financial statements may not sum up due to the use of rounded numbers.

    Quarter Highlights

    Industrial & Energy Technology (“IET”) recorded another strong quarter of gas infrastructure orders, booking an equipment award from Tecnicas Reunidas for the third expansion phase of the Jafurah unconventional gas field in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Gas Technology Equipment (“GTE”) will supply a total of 12 electric motor-driven compression trains and auxiliary treatment equipment for gas processing. This contract builds upon Baker Hughes’ long-standing relationship with Aramco and follows previous contract awards in 2022, bringing the total to 24 electric motor-driven compressors and an additional 14 compressors supplied by Baker Hughes for multiple Jafurah gas processing plants.

    In demonstration of its well-established leadership position in liquefied natural gas (“LNG”) technology solutions, Baker Hughes received multiple project awards in the fourth quarter. As part of a master equipment supply agreement, IET received a major contract to provide a modularized LNG system and power island to Venture Global. IET also received, from Bechtel Energy, a GTE award to supply eight LM6000 PF+ driven main refrigeration compressors and eight expander compressors across two LNG trains for a nameplate capacity of approximately 11 million ton per annum for Phase 1 of Woodside Energy’s Louisiana project.

    Gas Technology Services (“GTS”) continues to demonstrate leadership in turbomachinery aftermarket service, booking several notable service and upgrade awards to backlog. GTS signed a long-term services agreement to support Phases 1 and 2 of Venture Global’s Plaquemines LNG project, and also signed a 25-year services agreement with a NextDecade affiliate to support its Rio Grande LNG facility. Additionally, GTS received an award from an energy operator to provide planned maintenance activities to assure reliability, availability, and efficiency of turbomachinery at their LNG facility in Asia Pacific. The capabilities of IET’s iCenter™ will also be utilized to drive improved outcomes for the customer. Finally, GTS booked multiple upgrade awards for gas infrastructure projects in the Middle East and Europe.

    Climate Technology Solutions (“CTS”) secured multiple awards targeting flare reduction. As announced at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, CTS will provide SOCAR, the state-owned oil company of Azerbaijan, with an integrated gas recovery and hydrogen sulfide removal system to significantly reduce downstream flaring at the Heydar Aliyev Oil Refinery. Separately in the Middle East, CTS will supply electric-driven centrifugal compressors for one of the largest gas processing and flare gas recovery projects globally.

    Oilfield Services & Equipment (“OFSE”), through its Mature Assets Solutions (“MAS”) offering, received a multi-year contract from Eni to help unlock bypassed reserves in one of Europe’s largest developments. Baker Hughes will utilize its AutoTrak eXact™ rotary steerable drilling system to reduce risks and execution costs for Eni. OFSE also booked another MAS award in the Middle East to provide artificial lift services in a super-giant oilfield, including advanced permanent magnet motors for improved electric submersible pump efficiency.

    Baker Hughes experienced a strong order quarter for flexible pipe systems in Brazil. Following a third-quarter 2024 award, OFSE received another flexible pipe systems award from Petrobras after an open tender, reinforcing this important relationship and Baker Hughes’ leading position in the product line. The capability of Baker Hughes’ flexible pipe systems to address the critical issue of stress-induced corrosion cracking from CO2 resulted in this significant award for approximately 48 miles of flexible pipe systems to be installed across four different fields. Additionally, OFSE received an order from Brava Energia to supply 9 miles of flexible pipe systems to be deployed in the Campos Basin.

    OFSE also advanced its digitalization and artificial intelligence capabilities, signing an agreement with AIQ, ADNOC and CORVA to launch the AI Rate of Penetration (ROP) Optimization initiative. The project aims to enhance drilling efficiency in real-time by providing insights and recommendations for optimizing weight on bit, rotations per minute and other critical parameters.

    Consolidated Revenue and Operating Income by Reporting Segment

    (in millions) Three Months Ended   Variance
      December 31,
    2024    		 September 30,
    2024    		 December 31,
    2023    		   Sequential Year-over-year
    Oilfield Services & Equipment $ 3,871   $ 3,963   $ 3,956     (2 )% (2 )%
    Industrial & Energy Technology   3,492     2,945     2,879     19  % 21  %
    Segment revenue   7,364     6,908     6,835     7  % 8  %
                 
    Oilfield Services & Equipment   526     547     492     (4 )% 7  %
    Industrial & Energy Technology   584     474     412     23  % 42  %
    Corporate(1)   (91 )   (91 )   (88 )   —  % (3 )%
    Inventory impairment(2)   (73 )   —     (2 )   NM    NM   
    Restructuring, impairment and other   (281 )   —     (163 )   NM     (73 )%
    Operating income   665     930     651     (29 )% 2  %
    Adjusted operating income*   1,019     930     816     10  % 25  %
    Depreciation & amortization   291     278     274     5  % 6  %
    Adjusted EBITDA* $ 1,310   $ 1,208   $ 1,091     8  % 20  %

    * Non-GAAP measure. See reconciliations in the section titled “Reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP Financial Measures.”

    “NM” is used when the percentage variance is not meaningful.

    (1)   Corporate costs are primarily reported in “Selling, general and administrative” in the consolidated statements of income (loss).

    (2)   Charges for inventory impairments are reported in “Cost of goods sold” in the consolidated statements of income (loss).

    Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $7,364 million, an increase of 7% sequentially and an increase of 8% year-over-year. The increase in revenue year-over-year was driven by IET.

    The Company’s total book-to-bill ratio in the fourth quarter of 2024 was 1.0; the IET book-to-bill ratio was 1.1.

    Operating income as determined in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America (“GAAP”), for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $665 million. Operating income decreased $265 million sequentially and increased $13 million year-over-year. Restructuring, impairment, and other charges were $281 million in the fourth quarter of 2024, primarily related to streamlining of the OFSE operating model.

    Adjusted operating income (a non-GAAP financial measure) for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $1,019 million, which excludes adjustments totaling $354 million. A list of the adjusting items and associated reconciliation from GAAP has been provided in Table 1a in the section titled “Reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP Financial Measures.” Adjusted operating income for the fourth quarter of 2024 was up 10% sequentially and up 25% year-over-year.

    Depreciation and amortization for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $291 million.

    Adjusted EBITDA (a non-GAAP financial measure) for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $1,310 million, which excludes adjustments totaling $354 million. See Table 1b in the section titled “Reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP Financial Measures.” Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter was up 8% sequentially and up 20% year-over-year.

    The sequential increase in adjusted operating income and adjusted EBITDA was driven by higher volume in IET and structural cost-out initiatives in both segments, primarily offset by lower volume in OFSE. The year-over-year increase in adjusted operating income and adjusted EBITDA was driven by higher pricing and structural cost-out initiatives in both segments, and increased volume in IET primarily from higher proportionate growth in GTE, partially offset by decreased volume in OFSE and cost inflation in both segments.

    Other Financial Items

    Remaining Performance Obligations (“RPO”) in the fourth quarter of 2024 ended at $33.1 billion, a decrease of $0.3 billion from the third quarter of 2024. OFSE RPO was $3.0 billion, down 6% sequentially, while IET RPO was $30.1 billion, down $100 million sequentially. Within IET RPO, GTE RPO was $11.8 billion and GTS RPO was $15.0 billion.

    Income tax benefit in the fourth quarter of 2024 was $398 million reflecting the impact of a valuation allowance release in the U.S. The valuation allowance has been released primarily as a result of the U.S. moving into a cumulative three-year profit position.

    Other non-operating income in the fourth quarter of 2024 was $181 million. Included in other non-operating income were net mark-to-market gains in fair value and gains from sale for certain equity investments of $196 million.

    GAAP diluted earnings per share was $1.18. Adjusted diluted earnings per share (a non-GAAP financial measure) was $0.70. Excluded from adjusted diluted earnings per share were all items listed in Table 1c in the section titled “Reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP Financial Measures.”

    Cash flow from operating activities was $1,189 million for the fourth quarter of 2024. Free cash flow (a non-GAAP financial measure) for the quarter was $894 million. A reconciliation from GAAP has been provided in Table 1d in the section titled “Reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP Financial Measures.”

    Capital expenditures, net of proceeds from disposal of assets, were $295 million for the fourth quarter of 2024, of which $195 million was for OFSE and $87 million was for IET.

    Results by Reporting Segment
     

    The following segment discussions and variance explanations are intended to reflect management’s view of the relevant comparisons of financial results on a sequential or year-over-year basis, depending on the business dynamics of the reporting segments.

    Oilfield Services & Equipment

    (in millions) Three Months Ended   Variance
    Segment results December 31,
    2024    		 September 30,
    2024    		 December 31,
    2023    		   Sequential Year-over-year
    Orders $ 3,740   $ 3,807   $ 3,874     (2 )% (3 )%
    Revenue $ 3,871   $ 3,963   $ 3,956     (2 )% (2 )%
    Operating income $ 526   $ 547   $ 492     (4 )% 7  %
    Operating margin   13.6 %   13.8 %   12.4 %   -0.2pts   1.1pts  
    Depreciation & amortization $ 229   $ 218   $ 217     5  % 6  %
    EBITDA* $ 755   $ 765   $ 709     (1 )% 7  %
    EBITDA margin*   19.5 %   19.3 %   17.9 %   0.2pts   1.6pts  
    (in millions) Three Months Ended   Variance
    Revenue by Product Line December 31,
    2024    		 September 30,
    2024    		 December 31,
    2023    		   Sequential Year-over-year
    Well Construction $ 943 $ 1,050 $ 1,122   (10 )% (16 )%
    Completions, Intervention, and Measurements   1,022   1,009   1,086   1  % (6 )%
    Production Solutions   974   983   990   (1 )% (2 )%
    Subsea & Surface Pressure Systems   932   921   758   1  % 23  %
    Total Revenue $ 3,871 $ 3,963 $ 3,956   (2 )% (2 )%
    (in millions) Three Months Ended   Variance
    Revenue by Geographic Region December 31,
    2024    		 September 30,
    2024    		 December 31,
    2023    		   Sequential Year-over-year
    North America $ 971 $ 971 $ 1,018   —  % (5 )%
    Latin America   661   648   708   2  % (7 )%
    Europe/CIS/Sub-Saharan Africa   740   933   707   (21 )% 5  %
    Middle East/Asia   1,499   1,411   1,522   6  % (2 )%
    Total Revenue $ 3,871 $ 3,963 $ 3,956   (2 )% (2 )%
                 
    North America $ 971 $ 971 $ 1,018   —  % (5 )%
    International   2,900   2,992   2,938   (3 )% (1 )%

    * Non-GAAP measure. See reconciliations in the section titled “Reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP Financial Measures.” EBITDA margin is defined as EBITDA divided by revenue.

    OFSE orders of $3,740 million for the fourth quarter of 2024 decreased by $67 million sequentially. Subsea and Surface Pressure Systems orders were $802 million, up 3% sequentially, and up 23% year-over-year.

    OFSE revenue of $3,871 million for the fourth quarter of 2024 was down 2% sequentially, and down 2% year-over-year.

    North America revenue was $971 million, flat sequentially. International revenue was $2,900 million, down 3% sequentially, driven by declines in Europe/CIS/Sub-Saharan Africa region partially offset by growth in Middle East/Asia and Latin America.

    Segment operating income for the fourth quarter was $526 million, a decrease of $22 million, or 4%, sequentially. Segment EBITDA for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $755 million, a decrease of $10 million, or 1% sequentially. The sequential decrease in segment operating income and EBITDA was driven by lower volume, partially mitigated by positive price and productivity from structural cost-out initiatives.

    Industrial & Energy Technology

    (in millions) Three Months Ended   Variance
    Segment results December 31,
    2024    		 September 30,
    2024    		 December 31,
    2023    		   Sequential Year-over-year
    Orders $ 3,756   $ 2,868   $ 3,030     31 % 24 %
    Revenue $ 3,492   $ 2,945   $ 2,879     19 % 21 %
    Operating income $ 584   $ 474   $ 412     23 % 42 %
    Operating margin   16.7 %   16.1 %   14.3 %   0.6pts 2.4pts
    Depreciation & amortization $ 56   $ 54   $ 51     4 % 8 %
    EBITDA* $ 639   $ 528   $ 463     21 % 38 %
    EBITDA margin*   18.3 %   17.9 %   16.1 %   0.4pts 2.2pts
    (in millions) Three Months Ended   Variance
    Orders by Product Line December 31,
    2024    		 September 30,
    2024    		 December 31,
    2023    		   Sequential Year-over-year
    Gas Technology Equipment $ 1,865 $ 1,088 $ 1,297   71  % 44  %
    Gas Technology Services   902   778   808   16  % 12  %
    Total Gas Technology   2,767   1,866   2,105   48  % 31  %
    Industrial Products   515   494   514   4  % —  %
    Industrial Solutions   320   293   288   9  % 11  %
    Total Industrial Technology   835   787   802   6  % 4  %
    Climate Technology Solutions   154   215   123   (28 )% 25  %
    Total Orders $ 3,756 $ 2,868 $ 3,030   31  % 24  %
    (in millions) Three Months Ended   Variance
    Revenue by Product Line December 31,
    2024    		 September 30,
    2024    		 December 31,
    2023    		   Sequential Year-over-year
    Gas Technology Equipment $ 1,663 $ 1,281 $ 1,206   30 % 38 %
    Gas Technology Services   796   697   714   14 % 11 %
    Total Gas Technology   2,459   1,978   1,920   24 % 28 %
    Industrial Products   548   520   513   5 % 7 %
    Industrial Solutions   282   257   276   10 % 2 %
    Total Industrial Technology   830   777   789   7 % 5 %
    Climate Technology Solutions   204   191   170   7 % 20 %
    Total Revenue $ 3,492 $ 2,945 $ 2,879   19 % 21 %

    * Non-GAAP measure. See reconciliations in the section titled “Reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP Financial Measures.” EBITDA margin is defined as EBITDA divided by revenue.

    IET orders of $3,756 million for the fourth quarter of 2024 increased by $726 million, or 24% year-over-year. The increase was driven primarily by GTE orders which were up $568 million, or 44% year-over-year.

    IET revenue of $3,492 million for the fourth quarter of 2024 increased $613 million, or 21% year-over-year. The increase was driven primarily by Gas Technology, up 28% year-over-year.

    Segment operating income for the quarter was $584 million, an increase of $172 million, or 42% year-over-year. Segment EBITDA for the quarter was $639 million, an increase of $176 million, or 38% year-over-year. The year-over-year increase in segment operating income and segment EBITDA was driven by increased volume primarily from higher proportionate growth in GTE, positive pricing, and productivity, partially offset by cost inflation.

    2024 Total Year Results

    (in millions) Twelve Months Ended   Variance
      December 31, 2024 December 31, 2023   Year-over-year
    Oilfield Services & Equipment $ 15,240   $ 16,344     (7)%
    Industrial & Energy Technology   13,000     14,178     (8)%
    Orders $ 28,240   $ 30,522     (7)%
             
    Oilfield Services & Equipment $ 15,628   $ 15,361     2%
    Industrial & Energy Technology   12,201     10,145     20%
    Segment Revenue $ 27,829   $ 25,506     9%
             
    Oilfield Services & Equipment $ 1,988   $ 1,746     14%
    Industrial & Energy Technology   1,830     1,310     40%
    Corporate(1)   (363 )   (380 )   5%
    Inventory impairment(2)   (73 )   (35 )   (110)%
    Restructuring, impairment & other   (301 )   (323 )   7%
    Operating income   3,081     2,317     33%
    Adjusted operating income *   3,455     2,676     29%
    Depreciation & amortization   1,136     1,087     4%
    Adjusted EBITDA * $ 4,591   $ 3,763     22%

    * Non-GAAP measure. See reconciliations in the section titled “Reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP Financial Measures.”

    (1)   Corporate costs are primarily reported in “Selling, general and administrative” in the consolidated statements of income (loss).

    (2)   Charges for inventory impairments are reported in “Cost of goods sold” in the consolidated statements of income (loss). 

    Reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP Financial Measures

    Management provides non-GAAP financial measures because it believes such measures are widely accepted financial indicators used by investors and analysts to analyze and compare companies on the basis of operating performance (including adjusted operating income; EBITDA; EBITDA margin; adjusted EBITDA; adjusted net income attributable to Baker Hughes; and adjusted diluted earnings per share) and liquidity (free cash flow) and that these measures may be used by investors to make informed investment decisions. Management believes that the exclusion of certain identified items from several key operating performance measures enables us to evaluate our operations more effectively, to identify underlying trends in the business, and to establish operational goals for certain management compensation purposes. Management also believes that free cash flow is an important supplemental measure of our cash performance but should not be considered as a measure of residual cash flow available for discretionary purposes, or as an alternative to cash flow from operating activities presented in accordance with GAAP.

    Table 1a. Reconciliation of GAAP and Adjusted Operating Income

      Three Months Ended   Twelve Months Ended
      December 31, September 30, December 31,   December 31,
    (in millions)   2024   2024   2023     2024   2023
    Operating income (GAAP) $ 665 $ 930 $ 651   $ 3,081 $ 2,317
    Restructuring, impairment & other   281   —   163     301   323
    Inventory impairment(1)   73   —   2     73   35
    Total operating income adjustments   354   —   165     375   358
    Adjusted operating income (non-GAAP) $ 1,019 $ 930 $ 816   $ 3,455 $ 2,676

    (1)   Charges for inventory impairments are reported in “Cost of goods sold” in the consolidated statements of income (loss).

    Table 1a reconciles operating income, which is the directly comparable financial result determined in accordance with GAAP, to adjusted operating income. Adjusted operating income excludes the impact of certain identified items.

    Table 1b. Reconciliation of Net Income Attributable to Baker Hughes to EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA

      Three Months Ended   Twelve Months Ended
      December 31, September 30, December 31,   December 31,
    (in millions)   2024     2024     2023     2024     2023  
    Net income attributable to Baker Hughes (GAAP) $ 1,179   $ 766   $ 439   $ 2,979   $ 1,943  
    Net income attributable to noncontrolling interests   11     8     11     29     27  
    Provision (benefit) for income taxes   (398 )   235     72     257     685  
    Interest expense, net   54     55     45     198     216  
    Other non-operating (income) loss, net   (181 )   (134 )   84     (382 )   (554 )
    Operating income (GAAP)   665     930     651     3,081     2,317  
    Depreciation & amortization   291     278     274     1,136     1,087  
    EBITDA (non-GAAP)   956     1,208     926     4,216     3,405  
    Total operating income adjustments(1)   354     —     165     375     358  
    Adjusted EBITDA (non-GAAP) $ 1,310   $ 1,208   $ 1,091   $ 4,591   $ 3,763  

    (1)   See Table 1a for the identified adjustments to operating income.

    Table 1b reconciles net income attributable to Baker Hughes, which is the directly comparable financial result determined in accordance with GAAP, to EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA excludes the impact of certain identified items.

    Table 1c. Reconciliation of Net Income Attributable to Baker Hughes to Adjusted Net Income Attributable to Baker Hughes

      Three Months Ended   Twelve Months Ended
      December 31, September 30, December 31,   December 31,
    (in millions, except per share amounts)   2024     2024     2023       2024     2023  
    Net income attributable to Baker Hughes (GAAP) $ 1,179   $ 766   $ 439     $ 2,979   $ 1,943  
    Total operating income adjustments(1)   354     —     165       375     358  
    Other adjustments (non-operating)(2)   (189 )   (99 )   89       (335 )   (554 )
    Tax adjustments(3)   (650 )   (1 )   (181 )     (663 )   (124 )
    Total adjustments, net of income tax   (485 )   (100 )   72       (623 )   (320 )
    Less: adjustments attributable to noncontrolling interests   —     —     —       —     —  
    Adjustments attributable to Baker Hughes   (485 )   (100 )   72       (623 )   (320 )
    Adjusted net income attributable to Baker Hughes (non-GAAP) $ 694   $ 666   $ 511     $ 2,356   $ 1,622  
                 
                 
    Denominator:            
    Weighted-average shares of Class A common stock outstanding diluted   999     999     1,010       1,001     1,015  
    Adjusted earnings per share – diluted (non-GAAP) $ 0.70   $ 0.67   $ 0.51     $ 2.35   $ 1.60  

    (1)   See Table 1a for the identified adjustments to operating income.

    (2)   All periods primarily reflect the net gain or loss on changes in fair value for certain equity investments.

    (3)   All periods reflect the tax associated with the other operating and non-operating adjustments. 4Q’24 and fiscal year 2024 include $664 million and 4Q’23 and fiscal year 2023 include $81 million, respectively, related to the release of valuation allowances for certain deferred tax assets.

    Table 1c reconciles net income attributable to Baker Hughes, which is the directly comparable financial result determined in accordance with GAAP, to adjusted net income attributable to Baker Hughes. Adjusted net income attributable to Baker Hughes excludes the impact of certain identified items.

    Table 1d. Reconciliation of Net Cash Flows From Operating Activities to Free Cash Flow

      Three Months Ended   Twelve Months Ended
      December 31, September 30, December 31,   December 31,
    (in millions)   2024     2024     2023       2024     2023  
    Net cash flows from operating activities (GAAP) $ 1,189   $ 1,010   $ 932     $ 3,332   $ 3,062  
    Add: cash used for capital expenditures, net of proceeds from disposal of assets   (295 )   (256 )   (298 )     (1,075 )   (1,016 )
    Free cash flow (non-GAAP) $ 894   $ 754   $ 633     $ 2,257   $ 2,045  

    Table 1d reconciles net cash flows from operating activities, which is the directly comparable financial result determined in accordance with GAAP, to free cash flow. Free cash flow is defined as net cash flows from operating activities less expenditures for capital assets plus proceeds from disposal of assets.

    Financial Tables (GAAP)
     
    Condensed Consolidated Statements of Income (Loss)
    (Unaudited)
     
      Three Months Ended
    (In millions, except per share amounts) December 31, 2024 September 30, 2024 December 31, 2023
    Revenue $ 7,364   $ 6,908   $ 6,835  
    Costs and expenses:      
    Cost of revenue   5,833     5,366     5,386  
    Selling, general and administrative   585     612     634  
    Restructuring, impairment and other   281     —     163  
    Total costs and expenses   6,699     5,978     6,183  
    Operating income   665     930     651  
    Other non-operating income (loss), net   181     134     (84 )
    Interest expense, net   (54 )   (55 )   (45 )
    Income before income taxes   792     1,009     522  
    Benefit (provision) for income taxes   398     (235 )   (72 )
    Net income   1,190     774     450  
    Less: Net income attributable to noncontrolling interests   11     8     11  
    Net income attributable to Baker Hughes Company $ 1,179   $ 766   $ 439  
           
    Per share amounts:    
    Basic income per Class A common share $ 1.19   $ 0.77   $ 0.44  
    Diluted income per Class A common share $ 1.18   $ 0.77   $ 0.43  
           
    Weighted average shares:      
    Class A basic   990     993     1,001  
    Class A diluted   999     999     1,010  
           
    Cash dividend per Class A common share $ 0.21   $ 0.21   $ 0.20  
           
     
    Condensed Consolidated Statements of Income (Loss)
    (Unaudited)
     
      Year Ended December 31,
    (In millions, except per share amounts)   2024     2023     2022  
    Revenue $ 27,829   $ 25,506   $ 21,156  
    Costs and expenses:      
    Cost of revenue   21,989     20,255     16,756  
    Selling, general and administrative   2,458     2,611     2,510  
    Restructuring, impairment and other   301     323     705  
    Total costs and expenses   24,748     23,189     19,971  
    Operating income   3,081     2,317     1,185  
    Other non-operating income (loss), net   382     554     (911 )
    Interest expense, net   (198 )   (216 )   (252 )
    Income before income taxes   3,265     2,655     22  
    Provision for income taxes   (257 )   (685 )   (600 )
    Net income (loss)   3,008     1,970     (578 )
    Less: Net income attributable to noncontrolling interests   29     27     23  
    Net income (loss) attributable to Baker Hughes Company $ 2,979   $ 1,943   $ (601 )
           
    Per share amounts:      
    Basic income (loss) per Class A common share $ 3.00   $ 1.93   $ (0.61 )
    Diluted income (loss) per Class A common share $ 2.98   $ 1.91   $ (0.61 )
           
    Weighted average shares:      
    Class A basic   994     1,008     987  
    Class A diluted   1,001     1,015     987  
           
    Cash dividend per Class A common share $ 0.84   $ 0.78   $ 0.73  
     
    Condensed Consolidated Statements of Financial Position
    (Unaudited)
     
      December 31,
    (In millions)   2024   2023
    ASSETS
    Current Assets:    
    Cash and cash equivalents $ 3,364 $ 2,646
    Current receivables, net   7,122   7,075
    Inventories, net   4,954   5,094
    All other current assets   1,771   1,486
    Total current assets   17,211   16,301
    Property, plant and equipment, less accumulated depreciation   5,127   4,893
    Goodwill   6,078   6,137
    Other intangible assets, net   3,951   4,093
    Contract and other deferred assets   1,730   1,756
    All other assets   4,266   3,765
    Total assets $ 38,363 $ 36,945
    LIABILITIES AND EQUITY
    Current Liabilities:    
    Accounts payable $ 4,542 $ 4,471
    Short-term and current portion of long-term debt   53   148
    Progress collections and deferred income   5,672   5,542
    All other current liabilities   2,724   2,830
    Total current liabilities   12,991   12,991
    Long-term debt   5,970   5,872
    Liabilities for pensions and other postretirement benefits   988   978
    All other liabilities   1,359   1,585
    Equity   17,055   15,519
    Total liabilities and equity $ 38,363 $ 36,945
         
    Outstanding Baker Hughes Company shares:    
    Class A common stock   990   998
     
    Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows
    (Unaudited)
     
      Three Months
    Ended
    December 31,    		 Twelve Months Ended
    December 31,
    (In millions)   2024     2024     2023  
    Cash flows from operating activities:      
    Net income $ 1,190   $ 3,008   $ 1,970  
    Adjustments to reconcile net income to net cash flows from operating activities:      
    Depreciation and amortization   291     1,136     1,087  
    Benefit for deferred income taxes   (706 )   (671 )   (59 )
    Gain on equity securities   (196 )   (367 )   (555 )
    Stock-based compensation cost   49     202     197  
    Property, plant and equipment impairment, net   77     77     (1 )
    Gain on business dispositions   —     —     (40 )
    Working capital   63     7     42  
    Other operating items, net   421     (60 )   421  
    Net cash flows provided by operating activities   1,189     3,332     3,062  
    Cash flows from investing activities:      
    Expenditures for capital assets   (353 )   (1,278 )   (1,224 )
    Proceeds from disposal of assets   58     203     208  
    Proceeds from sale of equity securities   71     92     372  
    Proceeds from business dispositions   —     —     293  
    Net cash paid for acquisitions   —     —     (301 )
    Other investing items, net   6     (33 )   (165 )
    Net cash flows used in investing activities   (218 )   (1,016 )   (817 )
    Cash flows from financing activities:      
    Repayment of long-term debt   (9 )   (143 )   (651 )
    Dividends paid   (208 )   (836 )   (786 )
    Repurchase of Class A common stock   (9 )   (484 )   (538 )
    Other financing items, net   (8 )   (64 )   (53 )
    Net cash flows used in financing activities   (234 )   (1,527 )   (2,028 )
    Effect of currency exchange rate changes on cash and cash equivalents   (37 )   (71 )   (59 )
    Increase in cash and cash equivalents   700     718     158  
    Cash and cash equivalents, beginning of period   2,664     2,646     2,488  
    Cash and cash equivalents, end of period $ 3,364   $ 3,364   $ 2,646  
    Supplemental cash flows disclosures:      
    Income taxes paid, net of refunds $ 307   $ 1,040   $ 595  
    Interest paid $ 99   $ 298   $ 309  
     

    Supplemental Financial Information

    Supplemental financial information can be found on the Company’s website at: investors.bakerhughes.com in the Financial Information section under Quarterly Results.

    Conference Call and Webcast

    The Company has scheduled an investor conference call to discuss management’s outlook and the results reported in today’s earnings announcement. The call will begin at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time, 8:30 a.m. Central time on Friday, January 31, 2025, the content of which is not part of this earnings release. The conference call will be broadcast live via a webcast and can be accessed by visiting the Events and Presentations page on the Company’s website at: investors.bakerhughes.com. An archived version of the webcast will be available on the website for one month following the webcast.

    Forward-Looking Statements

    This news release (and oral statements made regarding the subjects of this release) may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, (each a “forward-looking statement”). Forward-looking statements concern future circumstances and results and other statements that are not historical facts and are sometimes identified by the words “may,” “will,” “should,” “potential,” “intend,” “expect,” “would,” “seek,” “anticipate,” “estimate,” “overestimate,” “underestimate,” “believe,” “could,” “project,” “predict,” “continue,” “target”, “goal” or other similar words or expressions. There are many risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are also affected by the risk factors described in the Company’s annual report on Form 10-K for the annual period ended December 31,2024; and those set forth from time to time in other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). The documents are available through the Company’s website at: www.investors.bakerhughes.com or through the SEC’s Electronic Data Gathering and Analysis Retrieval system at: www.sec.gov. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statement, except as required by law. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any of these forward-looking statements.

    Our expectations regarding our business outlook and business plans; the business plans of our customers; oil and natural gas market conditions; cost and availability of resources; economic, legal and regulatory conditions, and other matters are only our forecasts regarding these matters.

    These forward-looking statements, including forecasts, may be substantially different from actual results, which are affected by many risks, along with the following risk factors and the timing of any of these risk factors:

    • Economic and political conditions – the impact of worldwide economic conditions and rising inflation; the impact of tariffs and the potential for significant increases thereto; the effect that declines in credit availability may have on worldwide economic growth and demand for hydrocarbons; foreign currency exchange fluctuations and changes in the capital markets in locations where we operate; and the impact of government disruptions and sanctions.
    • Orders and RPO – our ability to execute on orders and RPO in accordance with agreed specifications, terms and conditions and convert those orders and RPO to revenue and cash.
    • Oil and gas market conditions – the level of petroleum industry exploration, development and production expenditures; the price of, volatility in pricing of, and the demand for crude oil and natural gas; drilling activity; drilling permits for and regulation of the shelf and the deepwater drilling; excess productive capacity; crude and product inventories; liquefied natural gas supply and demand; seasonal and other adverse weather conditions that affect the demand for energy; severe weather conditions, such as tornadoes and hurricanes, that affect exploration and production activities; Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (“OPEC”) policy and the adherence by OPEC nations to their OPEC production quotas.
    • Terrorism and geopolitical risks – war, military action, terrorist activities or extended periods of international conflict, particularly involving any petroleum-producing or consuming regions, including Russia and Ukraine; and the recent conflict in the Middle East; labor disruptions, civil unrest or security conditions where we operate; potentially burdensome taxation, expropriation of assets by governmental action; cybersecurity risks and cyber incidents or attacks; epidemic outbreaks.

    About Baker Hughes:

    Baker Hughes (Nasdaq: BKR) is an energy technology company that provides solutions for energy and industrial customers worldwide. Built on a century of experience and conducting business in over 120 countries, our innovative technologies and services are taking energy forward – making it safer, cleaner and more efficient for people and the planet. Visit us at bakerhughes.com

    For more information, please contact:

    Investor Relations

    Chase Mulvehill
    +1 346-297-2561
    investor.relations@bakerhughes.com

    Media Relations

    Adrienne Lynch
    +1 713-906-8407
    adrienne.lynch@bakerhughes.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Friday essay: Seize the day – Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway at 100

    Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Naomi Milthorpe, Senior Lecturer in English, University of Tasmania

    I’m at the park with my daughter, who is jumping in and out of puddles, splashing, shrieking at me (Mum! Look what I can do!), as I read frantically, taking one-handed notes on my phone (Mum! Look at this!). Part of me wishes I could enjoy with her this moment of pleasure in movement. The other, more insistent part is thinking about this essay: where to start, what to say, how to sum up the extraordinary legacy of the book I’m re-reading, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, which this year marks 100 years since its first publication in 1925. How am I supposed to write about this book?

    If you were to read a synopsis, it might seem like a book purely for an academic specialist (which, admittedly, I am). One day in London in June 1923, an ageing rich woman, Clarissa Dalloway, prepares to give a party. Across town, a shell-shocked Great War veteran, Septimus Warren Smith, loses his grip on sanity. Between them oscillate other characters: Clarissa’s former lover Peter Walsh, Clarissa’s husband Richard and daughter Elizabeth, Elizabeth’s tutor Doris Kilman, Septimus’s wife Rezia, and his doctors Holmes and Bradshaw.

    Like that other modernist monument, James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), Mrs Dalloway is explicitly quotidian. It follows ordinary people through ordinary activities on an ordinary day – shopping, walking in the park, riding the bus, going to appointments, mending a dress. As Woolf’s characters go about their day, scenes and impressions are filtered through their individual consciousnesses, threaded together with language, images and memories.

    The novel opens with the famous line “Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself”, a sentence remarkable for its banality, as well as for its commitment to the in medias res plunge into life that Woolf was so keen on. The iconic status of the line is demonstrated by the number of online parodies it inspires, perhaps only surpassed by William Carlos Williams’s poem This Is Just To Say, which has become a verified meme.

    A new seam

    On Good Friday 1924, Woolf wrote on a page of the manuscript she was drafting – then called “The Hours” – that “I will write whatever I want to write.” She could write whatever she wanted to write because she owned her own publishing house, The Hogarth Press. The actual press was in the basement of her suburban Richmond home.

    Mrs Dalloway, first edition dust jacket, with cover art by Vanessa Bell. The Hogarth Press, 1925.
    Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

    Mrs Dalloway was the second of Woolf’s novels to be self-published in this way. Being a small-press publisher allowed her to experiment formally in ways that would have been impossible if she was working with a mainstream publisher. In A Writer’s Diary, she describes her process as both exploratory and technical. On August 30, 1923, she wrote: “I dig out beautiful caves behind my characters”. Later, in October 1924: “I practise writing; do my scales”.

    I recently co-hosted a conference here in Hobart, which included a panel on contemporary Tasmanian experimental writing. The writers who spoke that day talked of the struggle to place work that pushed the boundaries of form and genre. A hundred years after Woolf’s efforts to unearth what she called a new “seam”, commercial imperatives continue to constrain writers and their work.

    Despite Woolf’s refusal to compromise with mainstream tastes, Mrs Dalloway was well received. Her contemporaries recognised the novel’s importance immediately. “An intellectual triumph”, proclaimed P.C. Kennedy in the New Statesman; “a cathedral”, pronounced E.M. Forster in the New Criterion.

    It sold moderately well: 1,500 copies within about a month of its publication on May 14 – more than her prior novel, Jacob’s Room, had sold in a year. Her biographer Hermione Lee records that in 1926 income from writing allowed Woolf and her husband Leonard to install a hot water range and toilet at their country home.

    Woolf’s novel was revolutionary for its depiction of same-sex attraction and mental illness, as well as for its challenge to the novel form and representation of time. Clarissa remembers the jolt of desire she felt as an 18-year-old for her friend Sally Seton, who kisses her on the terrace of her house at Bourton:

    the most exquisite moment of her whole life passing a stone urn with flowers in it. Sally stopped; picked a flower; kissed her on the lips. The whole world might have turned upside down! The others disappeared; there she was alone with Sally. And she felt that she had been given a present, wrapped up, and told just to keep it, not to look at it – a diamond, something infinitely precious, wrapped up, which, as they walked (up and down, up and down), she uncovered, or the radiance burnt through, the revelation, the religious feeling!

    Clarissa, made “virginal” in middle age by illness and marital boredom, is surprised by this irrupting memory. She connects it to her sense of joy in life itself: “the moment of this June morning on which was the pressure of all the other mornings […] collecting the whole of her at one point”.

    Clarissa and Septimus Smith – though they never meet – are shadow versions of each other. Both have beaky noses, thin pale birdlike bodies, and histories of illness.

    Septimus, so capable as a soldier in the Great War, buries the trauma of seeing his commanding officer Evans killed, only to have it resurface in visual and aural hallucinations, of Evans behind the trees, and birds singing in Greek. He perceives, as Clarissa does, the burden of the past upon the present, and he suffers as a result of the coercion of the social system – what Woolf’s narrator ironises as the sister goddesses Conversion and Proportion.

    “Worshipping proportion […] made England prosper”, because proportion forbids despair, illness, and emotional extremes. Conversion, the strong arm of Empire, “offers help, but desires power; smites out of her way roughly the dissentient, the dissatisfied”. Conversion “loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will”. Together, they suck the life from those who cannot or will not comply with them.

    For Septimus, who has witnessed the dreadful disproportion of the war, ordinary social life becomes a torturous pressure cooker, a “gradual drawing together of everything to one centre before his eyes, as if some horror had come almost to the surface and was about to burst into flames”. A reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement emphasised this aspect of its experimentalism:

    Watching Mrs Woolf’s experiment, certainly one of the hardest and very subtly planned, one reckons up its cost. To get the whole value of the present you must enhance it, perhaps, with the past.

    Watching my daughter lark about is shadowed by the two surgeries she had in early childhood to correct her developmental hip dysplasia. I hear her screech with joy in the park, rocketing about freely; I hear her scream in pain in the hospital, encased in plaster from the midsection down. As Woolf knew, the past and the present are experienced within us simultaneously.

    Doubled experience

    “In this book I have almost too many ideas,” Woolf wrote in her diary on June 19, 1923. “I want to give life and death, sanity and insanity; I want to criticise the social system, and to show it at work, at its most intense.”

    Woolf’s ideas have inspired scores of interpretations, focusing on time, space, reality, psychology, domesticity, history, sexual relations, politics, fashion, the environment, health and illness. She is now probably the most written-about 20th century English author. I can remember vividly first reading this novel as an undergraduate, after which I devoured Woolf’s revolutionary 1929 essay A Room of One’s Own, which criticised the educational, economic and social constraints that prevented women, in many instances, from writing anything at all.

    Cover of the first edition of A Room of One’s Own (1929).
    Public domain.

    Woolf, of course, could and did write. This was a function, as she knew, of her financial and class privilege. Feminist politics has progressed beyond Woolf, but she laid one of the foundation stones. In her fiction, she modelled a method of writing that critiques patriarchal thinking. She focuses our attention on overlooked individuals and their inner lives, and she splendidly undoes the Victorian conception of plot.

    The same year Woolf published Mrs Dalloway, she also published her important collection of essays, The Common Reader. The first piece in that book, on the medieval letters of the Paston family, describes the illumination cast by these ordinary, non-literary pieces of writing:

    Like all collections of letters, they seem to hint that we need not care overmuch for the fortunes of individuals. The family will go on, whether Sir John lives or dies. It is their method to heap up in mounds of insignificant and often dismal dust the innumerable trivialities of daily life, as it grinds itself out, year after year. And then suddenly they blaze up; the day shines out, complete, alive, before our eyes.

    Mrs Dalloway encompasses this doubled experience of insignificance and blazing life. Woolf writes of the past emerging into the present day and the present’s capacity to reshape the past. In her diary, she called this her “tunnelling process, by which I tell the past in instalments, as I have need of it”.

    In tunnelling through narrative, digging out caves behind her characters, Woolf flung out a lot of what seems to be dust – buying flowers, ogling girls, table manners and weight gain, advertising, letter writing, doctor’s appointments, eating eclairs in a department store cafe. The novel reminds us of these moments’ triviality, and their significance, through repeated reference to the bells and clocks of London striking the hour.

    This is why the opening line – and the novel as a whole – is so remarkable. It catches drops of shimmering reality from moments that can so easily go unremarked. This, Woolf knew, was what writing needed to do: to stop time. As she wrote of the Pastons’ letters: “There is the ancient day, spread out before us, hour by hour.”

    Portrait of Virginia Woolf – Roger Fry (1917)
    Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

    Her metaphor shows that Woolf’s thinking about time also had a spatial dimension. These two dimensions of space and time structure Mrs Dalloway’s theme and method, As David Daiches explained in his 1939 book The Novel and the Modern World, Woolf first links a series of different perspectives through a single shared moment in time – marked by the sound of the bells – then switches to an individual perspective, anchored in space, and moves through that individual’s memories.

    Woolf wrote in her diary that “the caves shall connect and each comes to daylight at the present moment.” Daiches diagrammed these relations in time and space as a series of connected trees, arguing that they illustrated the novel’s concern with “the importance of contact and at the same time the necessity of keeping the self inviolable, of the extremes of isolation and domination”.

    A legacy of inspiration

    Since its publication, Mrs Dalloway has continued to inspire. For second-wave feminism, Woolf was a touchstone. Since the 1970s, she has enjoyed an unparalleled position in the history of 20th century letters, inspiring the recovery of other contemporaneous women writers connected with the Bloomsbury group.

    Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, Robin Lippincott’s Mr Dalloway and John Lanchester’s Mr Phillips all appeared in the three years between 1998 and 2000, all of them reflecting Woolf’s legacy, tacitly or explicitly.

    Because of the Oscar-winning film adaptation by Stephen Daldry, Cunningham’s novel is the most recognisable of these three. The Hours revises Mrs Dalloway through the stories of three women: Virginia Woolf herself; Laura Brown, a 1950s housewife who reads Mrs Dalloway; and Clarissa Vaughan, nicknamed Mrs Dalloway by her former lover Richard, for whom she throws a literary party.

    Cunningham’s novel counterpoints, as Woolf did, the work of living with the work of art. The homemaker Laura Brown tries to bake a cake to equal a work of art, hoping “to be as satisfied and as filled with anticipation as a writer putting down the first sentence, a builder beginning to draw the plans.” Later, her delirious dying son Richard regrets what he views as the failure of his art to compete with simply living:

    I wanted to create something alive and shocking enough that it could stand beside a morning in somebody’s life. The most ordinary morning. Imagine trying to do that. What foolishness.

    More recently, Michelle Cahill’s Daisy & Woolf (2023) and Miranda Darling’s Thunderhead (2024) have wrestled with Mrs Dalloway the character, and with Woolf’s legacy. Darling’s novel revives a new “Mrs” Dalloway, Winona, a wealthy Sydney suburban writer, wife and mother, who struggles to break through “to something more real” than the constraint of middle class domestication.

    Cahill’s Daisy & Woolf explores a minor character from Mrs Dalloway, whom Woolf failed to make properly live: Daisy Simmons, Peter Walsh’s Anglo-Indian fiancee. In Woolf’s novel, Daisy exists entirely offstage. She is a romantic memory of Peter’s, “dark, adorably pretty”. Daisy, writes Cahill, is

    trapped in the past, in a moment, a vignette, but not the kind that would enter a room, open a window, to a life inside, a life in the mind, as it does for Clarissa with a squeak of hinges on the very first page of Mrs Dalloway! Not a real girl, Daisy, too arch perhaps, the air not stirring for her, seeing as she has no present tense.

    Cahill’s present-day narrator Mina, writing back to Woolf, sees Daisy as a fully fleshed character: a mixed-race woman living in Calcutta in the twilight of Empire, as the Indian independence movement grows in strength. In recovering Daisy’s rich personal and political history, narrated through letters to Peter, Cahill reclaims interiority for this marginalised character.

    In her 1937 essay Craftsmanship, the BBC broadcast of which is the only surviving recording of her voice, Woolf wrote: “Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations.”

    Mrs Dalloway shows us the ways that words can both connect and sever. Characters pass each other on the street, muse on a shared past, or witness the same event from different vantage points and through different filters of personality and psyche. As Hermione Lee explained, for Woolf “the really important life was ‘within’”.

    Peter remembers Clarissa’s theory of life, which is expounded on top of a bus going down Shaftesbury Avenue:

    She felt herself everywhere; not here here here; […] but everywhere. […] so that to know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completed them; even the places […] since our apparitions, the part of us which appears, are so momentary compared with the other, the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive, be recovered somehow attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain places, after death.

    Late in the book, Septimus’s suicide is reported to Clarissa at the party. “Oh,” she thinks, “in the middle of my party, here’s death”. And in the middle of her party, Clarissa feels not only the disaster of death – “her disaster, her disgrace […] and she forced to stand here in her evening dress” – but the deep pulsing joy of life. “Nothing could be slow enough; nothing last too long.”

    In certain lights – to paraphrase Michael Cunningham – Mrs Dalloway might look like the book of one’s own life, a book that will locate you, parent you, arm you for life’s changes. As an undergraduate, I was mesmerised by Woolf’s language and her grasp on the inner life.

    Though Clarissa Dalloway is 52, Woolf turned 43 the year her novel was published. I’m turning 43 this year, too. Woolf, ravaged by long periods of illness and partially toothless, thought of herself as elderly. I do not, though I am no longer young. But to re-read this novel at this age reminds me to relish these long hours and short years: to sniff flowers, feel the lift of the gusting wind, jump and splash with my children, read the patterns made by the clouds. To seize the day.

    Naomi Milthorpe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

    – ref. Friday essay: Seize the day – Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway at 100 – https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-seize-the-day-virginia-woolfs-mrs-dalloway-at-100-246331

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-OSI New Zealand: Major milestone reached with launch of Minerals Strategy and Critical Minerals List

    Source: New Zealand Government

    Resources Minister Shane Jones has launched New Zealand’s national Minerals Strategy and Critical Minerals List, documents that lay a strategic and enduring path for the mineral sector, with the aim of doubling exports to $3 billion by 2035.
    Mr Jones released the documents, which present the Coalition Government’s transformative vision for the sector and identify minerals essential to our economy, at OceanaGold’s Waihi Operation in Hauraki today.
    “I’ve spoken at length about how a lack of long-term strategic direction has hindered this country in reaping the economic and security benefits our natural resources present. I am delighted to say that that ends now,” Mr Jones says.
    The creation of the strategy and list have come about through coalition agreement between New Zealand First and National to investigate the country’s mineral resources, including vanadium, and devise a plan to develop opportunities.
    “Through the Minerals Strategy this Government has formed the foundations of a considered, enduring approach to minerals development that prioritises delivering for New Zealanders, now and into the future, by supporting a productive and resilient economy through responsible and sustainable practices. This is a holistic picture of minerals production from the land and sea, from reprocessing waste material, and from potential recycling and recovery.
    “The final strategy addresses the feedback received during consultation with our three key outcomes refocused around productivity, value, and resilience, guided by overarching principles to honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi obligations and responsible practices. With revised export statistics from Statistics NZ, we are now targeting a goal of doubling our exports to $3b by 2035, up from the previous target of $2b, with a roadmap for how we will get there,” Mr Jones says.
    Following public consultation, the Critical Minerals List now features 37 minerals, up from 35 in the draft list. 
    “The key change to the Critical Minerals List is the addition of gold and metallurgical coal in recognition of their importance to our minerals sector. Together, they represent 80 per cent of our mineral exports, generating export revenues of around $1.2b in the year to June 2023.
    “Simply put, New Zealand wouldn’t have the skills, machinery, resources, and capability to support a modern and responsible mining sector without them,” Mr Jones says. 
    “With the increasing demand and volatility in international markets, I want New Zealand to contribute to the growing critical minerals market as a trusted and reliable partner, particularly where we can support global mineral supply chains of minerals necessary for clean energy technologies.
    “Of the 37 minerals included on the list, we produce or have the potential to produce 21 here in New Zealand. We are a prospective destination for sought-after minerals like antimony and we have operators working rare earth, vanadium and titanium projects, which I note are all ways for New Zealand to support a transition to a clean energy future.”
    The Minerals Strategy and Critical Minerals List are the latest government initiatives led by Mr Jones to unleash the potential of New Zealand’s natural resources to boost regional opportunities and jobs, increase self-sufficiency, and support an export-led recovery for the economy.
    “This Government sees increasing the scale and pace of mineral resources development as a key pillar of a strong economy, as well as international trade, co-operation and investment,” Mr Jones says.
    “Our minerals sector will increase national and regional prosperity, strengthen critical supply chains, and leverage our relationships and international partnerships to drive economic benefits for New Zealanders. As I have said before, our minerals sector has been a transformative agent for our country in the past, and it will play a transforming role into the future.”

    MIL OSI New Zealand News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: IRS, Oregon to recognize Earned Income Tax Credit Awareness Day

    Source: US State of Oregon

    s Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) Awareness Day approaches on Friday, January 31, the Oregon Department of Revenue is encouraging all workers with income in 2024 to check their EITC eligibility.

    The Department of Revenue is working with other state agencies and community partners to encourage taxpayers to learn more about this credit and find out if they’re eligible for the credit, which is celebrating its 50th year in 2025. The IRS estimates that nearly 25 percent eligible Oregon taxpayers are not claiming the EITC. One Oregon organization says that adds up to an estimated $100 million in unclaimed credits.

    While many are unaware of the EITC and other credits, another hurdle is the need for free help filing tax returns. Free tax filing assistance is available at sites across the state.

    The Earned Income Tax Credit is a federal tax credit for people for making up to $66,819 in 2024. Families may be eligible for a maximum refundable credit of $7,830 on their federal tax return, and a maximum Oregon Earned Income Credit of $940 on their state tax return. Certain taxpayers without children may also be eligible for these credits.

    Individuals may qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Oregon EIC, and other credits, even if they are not required to file. To receive the refundable credits, however, they must file a federal and state tax return.

    Basic qualifications for EITC include:

    • All filing statuses are eligible, but some have specific requirements that must be met in order to qualify.
    • You, your spouse, or any qualifying child must have a Social Security number to claim the federal credit.
    • Your earned income in 2024 must be below certain limits based on your number of qualifying dependents.
    • You may be eligible even if you do not have a qualifying child.
    • Taxpayers can use the IRS EITC Assistant to check their eligibility further. The assistant is available in English and Spanish.

    State tax credits for families

    The qualifications for the Oregon Earned Income Credit are the same as those listed above for the federal EITC, except that the Oregon credit is also available to taxpayers who use an individual taxpayer identification number (ITIN) to file their taxes or have a qualifying child with an ITIN. If you have an ITIN, claim the Oregon EIC using schedule OR-EIC-ITIN.

    The Oregon Kids Credit is a refundable credit for low-income people with young dependent children. For those with a modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) of $25,750 or less, the full credit is $1,000 per child for up to five dependent children under the age of six at the end of the tax year. A partial credit is available for individuals and families with an MAGI up to $30,750.

    To encourage Oregonians to save for higher education and career training, the Education Savings Credit for Oregon 529 Plan contributions allows single filers to receive a refundable credit of as much as $180 ($360 for joint filers) if they contribute to an Oregon College Savings Plan account before tax day. The refundable tax credit is also available for contributions to an Oregon ABLE Savings Plan account, which empowers people experiencing disabilities to invest and build financial security without jeopardizing their eligibility for vital state and federal benefits.

    More information about the federal EITC, the Oregon EIC, the Oregon Kids Credit and other similar credits, go to the Tax benefits for families page.

    Taxpayers can visit the Oregon Department of Revenue website to find free tax preparation sites by using the interactive map. For more information on the EITC, visit https://www.eitc.irs.gov/. For questions about Oregon taxes, call the Department of Revenue at 503-378-4988, or email questions.dor@dor.oregon.gov.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI: Jamf to Report Fourth Quarter 2024 Financial Results on February 27, 2025

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    MINNEAPOLIS, Jan. 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Jamf (NASDAQ: JAMF), the standard in managing and securing Apple at work, announced today it will report fourth quarter and fiscal year 2024 financial results for the period ended December 31, 2024, following the close of the market on Thursday, February 27, 2025. On that day, management will host a conference call and webcast at 3:30 p.m. CT (4:30 p.m. ET) to discuss the company’s business and financial results.

    Jamf Fourth Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call

    When: Thursday, February 27, 2025

    Time: 3:30 p.m. CT (4:30 p.m. ET)

    Live Webcast: The conference call will be webcast live on Jamf’s Investor Relations website at https://ir.jamf.com.

    Those parties interested in participating via telephone may register on Jamf’s Investor Relations website or by clicking here.

    Replay: A replay of the call will be available on the Investor Relations website beginning on February 27, 2025, at approximately 6:00 p.m. CT (7:00 p.m. ET).

    About Jamf

    Jamf’s purpose is to simplify work by helping organizations manage and secure an Apple experience that end users love and organizations trust. Jamf is the only company in the world that provides a complete management and security solution for an Apple-first environment that is enterprise secure, consumer simple and protects personal privacy. To learn more, visit: www.jamf.com.

    Investor Contact:
    Jennifer Gaumond
    ir@jamf.com

    Media Contact:
    media@jamf.com

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI: Viper Energy Launches Offering of Class A Common Stock

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    MIDLAND, Texas, Jan. 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Viper Energy, Inc. (NASDAQ: VNOM) (“Viper”) announced today the launch of an underwritten public offering of 22,000,000 shares of its Class A common stock, subject to market and other conditions (the “Primary Offering”). The underwriters will have an option to purchase up to an additional 3,300,000 shares of Class A common stock from Viper in the Primary Offering.

    Viper intends to use the net proceeds from the Primary Offering to fund a portion of the cash consideration for its previously announced pending acquisition of all of the equity interests of certain mineral and royalty-interest owning subsidiaries of Viper’s parent, Diamondback Energy, Inc. (the “Pending Drop Down”), if it closes. If the Pending Drop Down does not close, Viper will use the net proceeds from the Primary Offering for general corporate purposes.

    J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Mizuho and Morgan Stanley are acting as joint book-running managers for the Primary Offering. Copies of the written base prospectus and prospectus supplement for the Primary Offering may be obtained on the website of the Securities and Exchange Commission, www.sec.gov or, when available, may be obtained from J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717 or by email at prospectus-eq_fi@jpmchase.com; Citigroup, c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, by telephone at (800) 831-9146; Mizuho Securities USA LLC, Attn: Equity Capital Markets, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020, by telephone at 1-212-205-7600 or by email at US-ECM@mizuhogroup.com; or Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, Attn: Prospectus Department, 180 Varick Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10014.

    The Class A common stock will be issued and sold pursuant to an effective automatic shelf registration statement on Form S-3ASR previously filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “Registration Statement”).

    This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of such state or jurisdiction. The Primary Offering may only be made by means of a prospectus supplement and related base prospectus.

    About Viper Energy, Inc.

    Viper is a publicly traded Delaware corporation that owns and acquires mineral and royalty interests in oil and natural gas properties primarily in the Permian Basin.

    Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

    The information in this press release includes “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All statements, other than statements of historical fact included in this press release, regarding the completion of the Primary Offering, Viper’s strategy, future operations, financial position, estimated revenues and losses, projected costs, prospects, plans and objectives of management are forward-looking statements. When used in this press release, the words “could,” “may,” “believe,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “estimate,” “expect,” “project,” “goal,” “plan,” “target” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain such identifying words. These forward-looking statements are based on management’s current expectations and assumptions about future events and are based on currently available information as to the outcome and timing of future events. Be cautioned that these forward-looking statements are subject to all of the risk and uncertainties, most of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond Viper’s control, incident to the development, production, gathering and sale of oil and natural gas. These risks include, but are not limited to, commodity price volatility, inflation, lack of availability of drilling and production equipment and services, risks relating to the Pending Drop Down, including its consummation or the realization of the anticipated benefits and synergies therefrom. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of certain factors, including, but not limited to, those set forth in Viper’s filings with the SEC, including the base prospectus and prospectus supplement relating to the Primary Offering, the Registration Statement, its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2023, under the caption “Risk Factors,” as may be updated from time to time in Viper’s periodic filings with the SEC. Any forward-looking statement in this press release speaks only as of the date of this release. Viper undertakes no obligation to publicly update or review any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise, except as may be required by any applicable securities laws.

    Investor Contacts:
    Adam Lawlis
    +1 432.221.7467
    alawlis@diamondbackenergy.com

    Austen Gilfillian
    +1 432.221.7420
    agilfillian@diamondbackenergy.com

    Source: Viper Energy, Inc.

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