16/08/2016 World Business Report

Now for the latest financial news with Sally and World Business

BHP Billiton is set to report a multibillion-dollar loss

for the full year, a deadly dam failure in Brazil adding

US internet news site Gawker is up for auction,

after it loses a massive privacy court case.

Welcome to World Business Report, I'm Sally Bundock.

Also in the programme, Rico will join us to tell us why China's

richest man is delisting his company.

Copper, coal, oil and iron ore are BHP Billiton's key products,

and later today we find out how it is coping

The global mining giant is reporting its full-year earnings,

and the market is expecting big losses, with some estimates close

BHP Billiton is the world's largest listed mining company.

And, like many other commodity firms, it has been hit

by the collapse in commodity prices over recent months.

In particular, the slowdown in demand from China has left a glut

BHP has also faced fallout from the Samarco mine tragedy

in Brazil, which has been called the country's

Last November an iron-ore mine dam collapsed and released a torrent

of toxic mud, killing 19 people and leaving 700 homeless.

Brazilian prosecutors have brought a multibillion-dollar lawsuit

against BHP Billiton and its partner, Vale.

Earlier this year BHP announced it was ending its dividend policy,

which held that it would pay an equal or higher dividend at each

half-year result, in order to protect its credit rating.

Chief executive Andrew Mackenzie cut the mid-year dividend by 75%.With me

is Gary White, chief investment commentator at Charles Stanley.

Good morning, Gary. Hi there. We have outlined some of the

challenges, tell us more about BHP's year. They will be significantly

larger headline losses, but what we need to do is look underneath this.

We are hoping that this could be the final piece of bad news from the

company. There are going to be lots of write-downs because they have

made lots of redundancies. There has been plunging commodity prices so

their minds are not worth as much as they used to be because they can't

sell the products for the amount they were getting at this time last

year. However, if we look underneath that they are still expected to be

profitable. The shares are up by about 45% since their low in

February. So the market is expecting that from now on they can actually

begin the recovery of the company, provided there is in a global

depression or something really negative. So we are looking at a

turnaround moment, in a sense. Yes. Talk us through the situation with

the dividend. Andrew McKenzie, the chief executive, was adamant he

wouldn't cut the dividend until about August last year but commodity

prices just slumped in January and February this year, we had one of

the worst start to the year and market ever, really. And it was

forced, his hand was forced to do that, so he slashed by 75%. That is

why today the quantum, the size of the final dividend is very important

and could determine the share price action today. If it is better than

people expected then we will get a rise in the share price. If it is

worse than people will be fairly negative about the outlook. And what

has been the reaction from shareholders when that dividend cut

announcement came through? Because many put their money in companies

like BHP Billiton because they see it as a bit of a dead cert despite

the cyclical nature of commodity prices. It is of course they get

that dividend. Exactly, dividends are an essential component of

dividend returned in the shares reacted very negatively to that.

However, they have rallied sense because the price of iron ore, one

of the main commodities that the company mines, has risen

significantly over the last few months, since February when we

expected it to be a negative year for China. It has not quite in as

bad as people had feared. Thank you for your analysis. Just to say that

BHP's numbers will be coming out in a few hours loop is time, and we

will fill you in on the figures, and the dividend announcement et cetera.

Shares of the commercial property group Dalian Wanda are climbing

after its investors voted to accept an offer to buy

out its Hong Kong-listed commercial property unit for $4.4 billion.

Rico Hizon is in our Asia Business Hub, in Singapore.

Nice to see you. Dalian Wanda has become a company we have all heard

of because of all it acquisitive moves in the United States. What is

going on now? That's right, they hold property in China and around

the world and of course because of their high-profile purchases of some

major theatres, not only in the US, Sally, but also in the UK, and now

the man who is China's richest man has now become richer because they

have succeeded in taking his Hong Kong listed property private after

its flotation. They are planning the mainland listings as a way to seek

higher valuations. So the price per share to take it private represented

10% up on the company's 2014 listing price and a 44% premium to its price

before the idea of an offer was first floated in March. And that

makes it, Sally, by far the largest taking private for Hong Kong group.

So after it expected delisting, the company owned by Wang Jianlin is to

refloat the company in China at a later date with a better valuation.

But there are also critics to these so-called take private deals, they

say it could pose a risk to Hong Kong's market if other companies

choose to follow suit, since the city offers lower valuations for

mainland companies compared to Shanghai or Shannon Shenzhen, or

even the London Stock Exchange. So let's see how this plays out for

other companies in Hong Kong. The bankrupt blog pioneer

Gawker Media is going up for auction The sale comes after it lost a $140

million lawsuit filed by former The British internet

entrepreneur and founder of Gawker Media Nick Denton spoke

to the BBC about why his company We have broken a lot of stories, and

we have annoyed a lot of powerful people.

Who will snap up Gawker? We will keep you informed.

In other news: Australia's central bank has explained why it cut

interest rates, for the second time in four months,

It said inflation would remain low, and the economy is set

It also said that house price concerns had cooled,

but it gave no forward guidance, so analysts put a 50-50 chance

of a further cut at the bank's last meeting this year, in December.

Of course, markets across the world are extremely consumed with what

central banks are doing, whether they be in Japan, in Tokyo, the

Federal Reserve the US or the Bank of England. The European Central

Bank. A complete shift in sentiment today for markets across Asia. Japan

down by over 1% but the yen is getting stronger, the dollar buying

just over 100 yen today. The price of oil also falling, energy shares

under pressure for that reason. Let's quickly look at what has

happened in the United States. You have a sense of how the day ended on

Wall Street. Pretty much higher across the board, which is

encouraging. You can also see how the euro dollar is trading at the

bottom there. More business stories as we review the papers in the next

couple of minutes. I will see you then. Stay with us on BBC