COMPANY NEWS IN BRIEF

Musk laughs off Twitter lawsuitBillionaire Elon Musk issued a humorous late-night response to Twitter’s preparations to sue and force him to complete a US$44 billion takeover of the company.Eschewing any words of his own, the Tesla Inc. and SpaceX chief posted a meme late Sunday featuring images of himself laughing with captions recounting one version of events over the past few months. It conveys a light-hearted attitude from the world’s richest man to what has been a complex and expensive deal that’s weighed on Tesla shares and gone through several iterations of provisional funding.Musk agreed to take Twitter private at a price of US$54.20 per share in late April, after his acquiring a significant stake pushed the stock price up. Twitter shares traded at US$36.81 on Friday, a third below the takeover deal’s price. Musk has expressed growing discontent about the deal and argued Twitter failed to disclose essential information, such as the specific number of fake and automated accounts on the service.“The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement,” Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor tweeted on Friday. -Fin24German energy giant Uniper begs bailoutGerman energy giant Uniper said Friday it was haemorrhaging tens of millions of euros a day since Russia limited gas supplies to Europe's largest economy, as it asked for government support."Under the current circumstances we are seeing cash outflows in the mid two-digit million range," Uniper CEO Klaus-Dieter Maubach said.Uniper, one of the biggest importers of Russian gas, "cannot endure for long" in the present situation, Maubach said, with the group making a formal bailout request to the German government.Since Russian energy giant Gazprom reduced gas supplies to Germany via the Nord Stream pipeline by 60 percent in mid-June, Uniper has been forced to pay higher prices on the spot market to make up the shortfall.Unable to pass the cost on, Uniper has accumulated "substantial losses", the company said in a statement.Without support from the state, Uniper could finish "up to 10 billion euros (US$10.2 billion)" in the red this year, Maubach said.-Fin24No wage increment for Eskom bossesEskom has confirmed that while workers below the senior management level at the entity will be getting a wage increase, its executives including group CEO Andre De Ruyter and chief operating officer Jan Oberholzer will not be getting any salary increase.This past week, Eskom concluded wage negotiations with the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), and Solidarity, where labour got a 7% increase across the board.The wage agreement followed weeks of protest disruptions due to a deadlock in wage talks that triggered Stage 6 load shedding for several days. Eskom executives were not spared criticism for the crisis by South AfricansEskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha told Fin24 that top-level employees at Eskom have not received salary increases or a bonus for years."All managerial level employees have not received salary increases or bonuses since at least 2018. This year the lower-level managerial staff will be receiving the 7% increase agreed upon at the Central Bargaining Forum. Senior managers and executives in the F and E-Bands will still not be receiving any increases," said Mantshantsha. -Fin24Volkswagen to invest over US$20 blnVolkswagen said it would invest over 20 billion euros (US$20.38 billion) in a battery cell business jointly with partners, creating 20,000 jobs and reaching annual sales above 20 billion euros by 2030 as it seeks leadership in the growing market.The PowerCo unit will manage VW's global battery production and research from raw material mining to recycling, and projects including energy storage systems, the carmaker said at the ground-breaking ceremony for its first European battery cell factory."Together, we are laying the foundation today for the future of mobility to once again be decisively made in Salzgitter. It is now clear to everyone that this future must be sustainable and climate-protective," Chancellor Olaf Scholz said in a speech at the ceremony.Volkswagen has repeatedly said making enough batteries to power all cars is by far the biggest challenge of the shift to electric vehicles, and has rolled out a plan to build factories with a joint capacity of 240 gigawatt hours (GWh) by 2030.This includes six plants in Europe, of which Salzgitter is the "blueprint" for VW's future standardised production facilities, and two in North America.-REUTERS

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