A German toy manufacturer has introduced a teddy bear created in tribute to Angela Merkel’s time in office as the chancellor steps down at the end of this year after serving 16 years as the head of Germany’s government.
Hermann-Spielwaren, located in the Bavarian city of Coburg, revealed the 40-centimeter tall toy bearing a certain resemblance to the chancellor.
The teddy bear is sporting a hairstyle similar to Frau Merkel, while the paws can be folded to replicate the legendary hand gesture known as the ‘Merkel rhombus’.
“We try to express moments of contemporary history in teddy bears as a form of art,” said Martin Hermann, the managing director of one of the world’s oldest still-existing teddy bear factories, as quoted by Germany’s Bild newspaper.
Among the other outstanding figures who have appeared as teddy bears are former US President Barack Obama, former Chancellor of Germany Helmut Schmidt and Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II.
The 101-year-old family enterprise will produce 500 limited-edition Merkel teddy bears, priced at €189 with the 16th one to be sent to Merkel as a reference to the number of years she spent at the helm of Germany.
Major stock indices in the Asia-Pacific region (APR) are mostly declining on Monday on fears around Chinese property developer Evergrande’s looming bankruptcy.
As of 5am GMT, the Chinese Hang Seng Index dropped 3.23% on the Hong Kong stock exchange, while the Australian S&P/ASX 200 lost 1.91%, with shares of major miners declining the most, trading data shows.
The Hang Seng Properties index plunged 7% to a 52-week low, while shares of insurers listed in Hong Kong also fell, with AIA dropping about 5.2% and Ping An Insurance losing 7.43%.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan fell 1.63%. Markets in mainland China, Japan and South Korea are closed on Monday due to public holidays.
The downward market trend comes as investors assess the financial position of the Chinese real estate developer Evergrande Group, whose debt of $300 billion could lead to the company’s bankruptcy.
The company’s shares in Hong Kong on Monday were down nearly 15%. The company is expected to default later this week. Markets will be affected by whether Evergrande is restructured or completely shut down, according to UBS analysts quoted by the Wall Street Journal.
Europe is bracing for a difficult winter, having turned to weather-dependent sources of energy like wind and solar power over fossil fuels while natural gas storages have run low.
“It could get very ugly unless we act quickly to try to fill every inch of storage. You can survive a week without electricity, but you can’t survive without gas,” Marco Alvera, CEO of Italian energy infrastructure company Snam SpA, told Bloomberg.
European gas prices broke historic records this month, edging close to an unprecedented $1,000 per 1,000 cubic meters. The price spike can be partly blamed on supply chains being unable to meet the rising energy demand in both the household and industry sectors as the global economy gets back on the rails after the global Covid-19 crisis. However, experts say major Western economies have become too dependent on renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power. And this doesn’t seem to pay off, with the Wall Street Journal reporting last week that low winds in the North Sea were brewing chaos for energy networks.
“The sudden slowdown in wind-driven electricity production off the coast of the UK in recent weeks whipsawed through regional energy markets. Gas and coal-fired electricity plants were called in to make up the shortfall from wind,” the outlet reported. As a result, electricity prices have also been on the rise.
“Electricity and gas prices are going to be higher at home than everybody would want and they are going to be higher than they have been for about 12 years,” Dermot Nolan, a former CEO of UK energy regulator Ofgem, told Bloomberg in an interview.
Rising gas prices may also force European countries to pause their ambitions to turn to green energy sources, returning back to the dirtiest of them all – coal.
“Underfilled storage facilities continue to push the price of gas higher. If the facilities are not refilled now, and the winter turns out to be rather severe, EU nations may be forced to reactivate thermal power plants operating on other types of fuel, including coal, to compensate for the lack of electricity,” EU energy markets expert Simonas Vileikis told TASS.
Europe’s major gas supplier, Norway, has been unable to meet the demand with North Sea fields undergoing heavy maintenance after pandemic-induced delays. And amid all of this, European gas inventories are at their lowest level in more than a decade for this time of year. Given the rise in natural gas demand in Asia, which could force suppliers to turn their attention there, experts say the situation in Europe will get worse before it gets better.
“Gas supply is short, coal supply is short and renewables aren’t going great, so we are now in this crazy situation,” Dale Hazelton, head of thermal coal at Wood Mackenzie Ltd told Bloomberg.
“With natural gas prices already hitting record highs in Europe ahead of rising winter demand, prices could move even higher in the coming months… There is a potential it can get worse,” said Stacey Morris, director of research at index provider Alerian in Dallas.
According to Goldman Sachs, Europe will need to curb energy demand if the winter is cold, otherwise it may face outages. Rising energy prices are already putting some industries under stress, with fertilizer plants in the UK and Norway closing or curbing output. This puts at risk the EU’s food-supply chain, which uses natural gas in the heating of greenhouses and requires carbon dioxide gas, a byproduct of fertilizer production, in everything from meat processing to the beer and drinks industries.
Russian gas giant Gazprom’s CEO Alexey Miller recently said the EU will enter winter in about a month without having fully replenished its stockpiles. However, this could all change if Brussels stops stalling the launch of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which is capable of restocking European storages to the brim. The pipeline’s daily capacity of gas supply is comparable to the entire volume of liquefied gas that is now supplied to Europe.
Nord Stream 2 consists of two pipelines with a collective capacity to deliver as many as 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually from the Siberian fields in Russia directly to Europe via the Baltic Sea. The pipeline’s construction was completed earlier this month; however, Europe has been reluctant to speed up the certification process needed to launch deliveries. The project has been delayed under pressure from Washington and some Eastern European countries, which are opposed to increasing energy imports from Russia.
Global investors have been pouring money into the Russian stock market thanks to the country’s drive to curb inflation and conservative fiscal policy, rebounding commodity prices and the easing of US sanctions.
Data shows that foreign ownership of Russian bonds has surged to a five-month high (rising above 20% for the first time since April) while measures of credit risk have eased back to pre-Covid levels.
Analysts say that for investors who look for certainty, Russia has shown itself as a predictable environment with little risk of a sudden change or policy U-turns.
“Markets like the technocratic orientation of the Russian government,” Timothy Ash, an emerging-market strategist from BlueBay Asset Management, told Bloomberg. “It encourages them to look the other way when it comes to ESG [Environmental, Social, and (Corporate) Governance].”
The Russian ruble is this year’s best performer among its emerging-market peers. It has also become one of the 20 most frequently used global currencies, according to the SWIFT interbank transfer system.
The ruble-denominated Moscow Stock Exchange Index (MOEX), which reflects the prices of the most liquid Russian stocks of the largest companies, has rallied 23% this year. The dollar-denominated RTS index has soared 26%.
With foreign-exchange reserves currently at a record-high of $621 billion, the Russian economy is expected to grow 3.9% this year.
Deliveries of pipeline gas from Russia to China in January-August 2021 jumped 2.7 times year on year to 4.73 million tons. According to Russia’s state energy giant Gazprom, China’s gas demand has “stunning” growth potential.
In the first eight months of the year, China spent some $837.32 million on Russian gas, which is a 98.94% increase compared to the corresponding period last year, the Chinese General Customs Administration said on Monday.
According to the ministry, Turkmenistan continues to be China’s top supplier of natural gas, delivering 15.95 million tons of gas for $4.2 billion this year. Russia is in second place in terms of supply volume, followed by Kazakhstan with 3.17 million tons for $723 million, and Myanmar with 2.01 million tons for $922 million.
China’s leading supplier of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in January-August was Australia (20.52 million tons for $8.47 billion), followed by Qatar, Malaysia, and United States. Russia ranked sixth in LNG imports, with 2.67 million tons for $1.23 billion.
According to Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller, gas consumption in China is growing faster than in any other country of the Asia-Pacific region.
“The Chinese market is the most dynamic and fastest in terms of growth. Every year it simply stuns us with the growth rate of consumption and 2021 is no exception. In the first half of the year, the volume of natural gas consumption in China increased by 15.5%, and the volume of imports by 23.8%. This means that by the end of 2021 the forecast estimates of consumption in China will amount to 360 billion cubic meters and the volume of imports will be 160 billion cubic meters,” Miller said last week.
He predicts China’s natural gas imports will reach 300 billion cubic meters per year by 2035 and sees gas consumption in the Asia-Pacific region growing by 1.5 trillion cubic meters by 2040, with 60% of the volume falling on imports.
“For the Asia-Pacific region, it is very important to ensure that the energy balance of these countries is environmentally friendly. This means that natural gas should play a significant role in it because it is natural gas that is the cleanest, most reliable and accessible natural resource. Most importantly, in terms of development of technological consumption, it is difficult to find an alternative to it,” Miller stressed.
Meanwhile, China has also imported $25.1 billion worth of Russian oil in January-August 2021, which is a 30.4% increase year-on-year. However, despite the growth of imports in value terms, the physical volume of crude imported from Russia to China decreased by 7.3%, to 52.92 million tons. Still, Russia retains its position as China’s second-biggest oil supplier after Saudi Arabia, which sold 58.49 million tons to China in January-August for $27.26 billion.
