- Reuters
India's Hindustan Zinc posts sixth straight fall in quarterly profit on lower prices
India's Hindustan Zinc reported a sixth consecutive quarter of declining profit on Friday as zinc prices fell amid subdued demand, sending the miner's shares down by as much as 2.7%. Net profit fell 21% to 20.38 billion rupees ($244.1 million) in the January-March quarter, the country's top zinc producer said. Domestic zinc prices continued to be soft during the quarter as global metal prices were subdued on demand concerns from top consumer China.
- Reuters
EU Commission seeks feedback on Vifor's commitments in rival's disparagement case
The European Union antitrust regulator said on Friday it was seeking feedback on the commitments offered by drug maker Vifor Pharma in a case of alleged anti-competitive disparagement of iron deficiency medicine made by its rival. The EU Commission started an investigation in 2022 on whether Vifor incurred in anti competitive behaviour by disparaging it rival Pharamacosmos in order to hinder competition with its blockbuster iron deficiency medicine Ferinject.
- Reuters
Analysis-China's steel sector has bigger worries than Biden tariff hike
U.S. President Joe Biden's push to triple tariffs on Chinese steel imports strikes a mostly symbolic blow on an industry facing bigger concerns over faltering local demand and threats of even stronger blowback against China's surging exports. The state-backed China Metallurgical Industry Planning and Research Institute (MPI) forecasts a 1.7% drop in China's steel demand this year, following a 3.3% decline in 2023. While China's steel exports last year climbed more than a third to their highest since 2016 at 90.26 million metric tons, about 9% of its total crude steel output, just 598,000 tons of the shipments went to the United States.
