A fix to stop millions of litres of sewage continuing to pour into the waters off the coast of New Zealand’s capital, Wellington will be in place by November, officials have said, with full repairs at the cost of NZ$53.5m by late next year. More than 100 days since the catastrophic failure of the city’s wastewater treatment plant on 4 February, a mix of raw and partially screened human effluent is...
A fix to stop millions of litres of sewage continuing to pour into the waters off the coast of New Zealand’s capital, Wellington will be in place by November, officials have said, with full repairs at the cost of NZ$53.5m by late next year. More than 100 days since the catastrophic failure of the city’s wastewater treatment plant on 4 February, a mix of raw and partially screened human effluent is still being flushed directly into the Pacific Ocean. In an announcement on Wednesday, Wellington’s mayor, Andrew Little, said the Moa Point wastewater plant would be operational again in six months. Work had begun to assess the damage and clean the plant, with all major repair works to be completed by November. By then, effluent would be removed and the waste products would be mostly treated, with water quality improving to the highest level within weeks. “People are looking for certainty about when the plant will be up and running, and I’m confident this can be relied upon in terms of a timeline,” Little said, saying it would provide reassurance to hard-hit businesses on Wellington’s South Coast which had faced “massive disruption”. Full restoration of capacity and a fix for the design flaw that caused the failure would be completed by late 2027, officials said. Wellington residents had mixed feelings about the latest update, saying human and marine health and livelihoods remained at risk. “It would be better if it hadn’t happened, and we should still be significantly worried about the penguins, the dolphins, the fish who are going to be eating raw sewage,” said Nicole Miller, chair of the trust that supports the Taputeranga marine reserve, a network of pristine reefs and underwater ecosystems in the disaster zone. Destination Kilbirnie general manager Steve Walters said they were disappointed with a longer-than-anticipated timeline. The two dozen businesses most affected – which include diving and water recreation companies – were projected to lose a combined NZ$3-4m in ...
Two Canadian pension funds have shelved efforts to sell private equity fund stakes after valuations missed expectations, according to people familiar with the matter. Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has halted a process it began earlier this year to sell fund stakes anticipated to be worth about $1.5 billion, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private. Addition...
Two Canadian pension funds have shelved efforts to sell private equity fund stakes after valuations missed expectations, according to people familiar with the matter. Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has halted a process it began earlier this year to sell fund stakes anticipated to be worth about $1.5 billion, the people said, asking not to be identified because the matter is private. Additionally, Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec suspended an undertaking it started in February to sell an estimated $1.5 billion of Chinese private equity assets, the people said. The pensions, which had both been advised by Greenhill & Co. on the potential sales, stopped the processes recently as buyers offered to take the portfolios at discounts deeper than their expectations, the people said. The La Caisse portfolio, which includes funds managed by HSG, formerly known as Sequoia Capital China, Warburg Pincus and Boyu Capital Investment Management, was priced at a 50% discount by some buyers, one of the people said. Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund Abu Dhabi Investment Authority was the lead bidder, the people said. It isn’t clear what price the fund was considering. While such reassessments aren’t unusual, the decisions underscore investors’ sustained wariness of Chinese assets. Funds investing in China have been trading at heavy discounts, weighed down by risks including a slowing economy , though 50% would be relatively steep. Some China-focused funds could see discounts of 30% depending on the portfolio, Xuanyi Liu, private funds partner at law firm Morrison Foerster, said in February. Meanwhile the CPPIB portfolio, which consists of Asia funds such as those managed by Hillhouse Investment, Bain Capital and PAG, includes assets that have been performing well recently, prompting a reconsideration of the need to sell them at this time, the people said. Among them is publicly traded Kioxia Holdings Corp. , which Bain invested in several years ago, one of the people sai...
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. added a new processor to its expanding AI technology stack, enhancing a push to cover every aspect of artificial intelligence development. The company’s chipmaking unit T-Head unveiled its Zhenwu M890 AI accelerator, equipped with 144GB of GPU memory, at an event in Hangzhou, China, on Wednesday. The hardware will handle both training and inferencing jobs and will be par...
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. added a new processor to its expanding AI technology stack, enhancing a push to cover every aspect of artificial intelligence development. The company’s chipmaking unit T-Head unveiled its Zhenwu M890 AI accelerator, equipped with 144GB of GPU memory, at an event in Hangzhou, China, on Wednesday. The hardware will handle both training and inferencing jobs and will be particularly suitable for agentic tasks, Alibaba said. The company now plans to upgrade its Zhenwu chip every year, accelerating the rate to roughly the same pace as industry leader Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Eddie Wu pledged last year that Alibaba will endeavor to build “full-stack” AI capability, spanning everything from chip design and server operation to model development and cloud service support. Among the configurations for the new Zhenwu chip will be the Panjiu AL128 Supernode Server, which will integrate 128 AI accelerators within one server rack. The Taobao operator now plans to list its chip design business to tap investor appetite for Chinese alternative to Nvidia. T-Head has delivered 560,000 units of its Zhenwu product family, and its processors have been deployed by more than 400 external customers, Alibaba said Wednesday. The subsidiary has already won major mobile operator China Unicom as a client, and Alibaba recently said automakers and financial services companies are using the hardware. Alibaba also released the new Qwen 3.7-Max, a foundational model that’s optimized for coding and agentic jobs. The Hangzhou-based firm is among the strongest contenders in China’s AI field with its open-source Qwen series, though its latest releases have mostly been proprietary , following a structural revamp in March to focus on monetizing AI. Read More: Alibaba, Tencent Investors Look Past Slow Growth to AI Potential
Japanese 20-year bonds gained after an auction of that tenor drew stronger demand than its 12-month average as higher yields attracted investors despite concerns over inflation and government spending. The yield dropped as much as 10 basis points to 3.68% after the bid-to-cover ratio at Wednesday’s sale was 4.01, compared with a 12-month average of 3.43. The average accepted yield rose to 3.711%, ...
Japanese 20-year bonds gained after an auction of that tenor drew stronger demand than its 12-month average as higher yields attracted investors despite concerns over inflation and government spending. The yield dropped as much as 10 basis points to 3.68% after the bid-to-cover ratio at Wednesday’s sale was 4.01, compared with a 12-month average of 3.43. The average accepted yield rose to 3.711%, the highest since 1996. The auction comes less than 24 hours after the country’s 20-year yield hit its peak since 1996. Ructions in the bond market in recent days are a reminder to investors of the challenges that Japan faced a year ago when a sale of the tenor saw the weakest demand in over a decade. Japanese sovereign bonds have come under some of the most intense pressure amid a worldwide debt selloff as rising energy prices from the Middle East conflict stoke inflation fears. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has called on the finance ministry to compile a supplementary budget in response to rising commodity prices, fueling concerns about heavier debt issuance. Minister of Finance Satsuki Katayama indicated on Monday that she will take into account the bond market as the government considers how to fund the extra budget. To finance part of its new spending, the government is likely to issue fresh debt, Reuters said , citing an unnamed government official. While sales of five-, 10- and 30-year bonds this month went relatively smoothly, super-long yields have climbed to even more elevated levels since then. Just this week, the rates for Japanese government borrowing for 30 and 40 years reached the highest levels since those tenors first started trading. The recent slide in the yen is heightening inflationary risks and weighing on Japanese bonds as pressure mounts on the Bank of Japan to raise rates. Traders are now factoring in about a 78% chance of a rate hike at the BOJ’s June meeting, according to the swaps market .