Business

Volkswagen under fire over Xinjiang plant after China chief visit

Volkswagen faced a barrage of criticism from campaigners on Tuesday after the head of its Chinese business said he saw no sign of forced labor during a visit to the carmaker’s Xinjiang plant.

Activists and an international group of lawmakers said verifying labor standards in the region was impossible.

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Rights groups have documented human rights abuses in Xinjiang since the 2000s, including mass forced labor in detention camps which the UN said could constitute crimes against humanity. China has denied any abuses in Xinjiang.

Volkswagen’s China chief Ralf Brandstaetter spent 1-1/2 days on February 16 to 17 touring the German group’s facility in the region, which is part of a joint venture with China’s SAIC, along with Volkswagen’s compliance and external relations chiefs in China.

Brandstaetter said he saw no signs of forced labor and that workers’ comments matched the reports Volkswagen had received from SAIC about the plant.

“I can talk to people and draw my conclusions. I can try and verify the facts, and that’s what I did. I didn’t find any contradictions,” he said, adding it was his first visit but not his last.

But Luke de Pulford of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, a group of legislators from thirty democratic countries including Britain, Germany, and the United States, said human rights organizations felt labor standards could not be verified in the region because members of the Uyghur minority could not speak freely without fearing for their safety.

Campaigners at the World Uyghur Congress in Germany and researchers from Sheffield Hallam University, who authored a report on the auto industry supply chain’s links to Xinjiang, said the visit to the region and conversations with workers were likely planned and coordinated with authorities.

Brandstaetter said he spoke at length to seven workers individually – including Han Chinese, Uyghurs and Kazakhs – some through a translator of Volkswagen’s choice and some in English, and held shorter discussions with other workers on his tour, which he said occurred without government supervision.

The plant, which previously assembled the Santana, has seen 65 percent staff cuts since the pandemic and only conducts final quality checks and installation of certain features before handing over vehicles to dealers for sale in the region.

Planned output for this year is 10,000, a fraction of the 50,000 targeted when it first opened.

Reputational risk

Volkswagen says it has never found evidence of forced labor among its Xinjiang workforce and its presence is positive for the local population. It denied maintaining the plant was a condition imposed by Beijing to keep producing across China.

The carmaker was initially praised for setting up the plant, chief lobbyist Thomas Steg said, comparing the goal of building infrastructure and boosting living conditions to Germany’s reunification.

But the atmosphere shifted after numerous deadly attacks in Xinjiang and elsewhere between 2009-2014 which the Chinese government blamed on militants from the region, leading to a “significantly more repressive approach”, he said.

However, with Volkswagen seeking new contractual partners worldwide – partly to diversify its business from the Chinese market – breaking the agreement with SAIC to keep the plant until at least 2030 was out of the question.

Still, Ingo Speich, head of sustainability and corporate governance at top-20 Volkswagen investor Deka Investment, said the reputational risk of retaining the plant could affect the carmaker’s share price.

Already, some funds were shifting their portfolios to exclude Volkswagen shares after index provider MSCI issued a warning on its environmental, social and governance rating for the carmaker because of the plant in November.

“VW is stuck in a situation of reputational risk in Xinjiang,” Speich said.

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Business

Almarai signs multiple agreements to localize jobs through training and recruitment programs

Almarai signed a cooperation memorandum with the Food Industries Polytechnic, the
Transport General Authority, and the Saudi Logistics Academy to localize jobs in the
food and beverages sector through training and rehabilitation programs ending in
employment. This came within the first international conference on the labor market,
organized by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development on 13 – 14
December 2023 at the King Abdulaziz Convention Center in Riyadh.

‘These agreements are part of Almarai’s corporate program for the social responsibility
to achieve localization in the food industry sector, which is one of the top priorities of the
comprehensive strategic plans in Almarai, especially since the company is one of the
largest working environments in the kingdom, with more than 9,000 Saudi employees,
including more than 900 Saudi female employees.”Fahad Aldrees, Chief Human
Resources Officer of Almarai, said.

He added that the agreements signed to train and qualify young people are part of the
integrated initiatives and training and rehabilitation programs for national human
resources in Almarai. He pointed out that the company provided about half a million
employee training hours during 2022, raising its retention rate to 90% during 2022.

It is worth mentioning that Almarai is the world’s largest vertically integrated dairy
company, and the largest food and beverage producer and distributor in the Middle
East. Almarai was ranked among LinkedIn’s top 15 Saudi companies for professional
career development for 2022.

Business

SEBA Bank rebrands to AMINA Bank and continues to write its success story

a fully licensed Swiss crypto bank, announced today its new brand identity: AMINA Bank AG. The group operates
globally from its regulated hubs in Zug, Abu Dhabi and Hong Kong, offering its clients traditional and crypto banking services.
SEBA Bank made history in 2019 by becoming one of the first FINMA-regulated institutions to provide crypto banking services. This rebrand marks a new chapter for the company, which has proudly been in operation for more than four years. AMINA Bank is inspired by the same trailblazing ambition to lead the way for its clients and to write its own future as a Swiss-
regulated crypto bank offering services to its traditional and crypto savvy clients around the globe. The name ‘AMINA’ stems from the term ‘transAMINAtion’, meaning transference of one compound to another. AMINA is a brand driven by perpetual change, bringing together the various ‘compounds’ of traditional, digital, and crypto banking to unlock new potential and
growth for our clients. This vision of change represents the transformation of our clients’ financial future. Franz Bergmueller, CEO of AMINA, said: “We are delighted to introduce the world to our new brand identity. While we say goodbye to the SEBA name, we remain forever proud of the achievements made by the group under the former brand. “Our brand signifies a new era in the company’s growth and strategy; we are a key player in crypto banking and are here to define the future of finance. With our client-focused approach, our years of traversing traditional and crypto finance, we offer a platform for investors to build
wealth safely and under the highest regulatory standards.” “We are grateful to be encouraged by our supportive and committed investors who have been very helpful, supporting the growth of the company. We thank our employees in all the regions
for their dedication and client focus. As we look forward to 2024, our ambition is to accelerate the growth of our strategic hubs in Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Abu Dhabi, and to continue our global expansion, building on all the successes we have laid down over the past years.” Current clients of AMINA Bank (formerly SEBA Bank) will be unaffected by the rebrand other than encountering the new name; all operations will be business as usual across the board. The branch office based in Abu Dhabi and the subsidiaries in Hong Kong and Singapore will subsequently apply for a name change to align with the head office in Zug.

Business

Uptime Appoints Mustapha Louni Chief Business Officer

Uptime Institute is pleased to announce the appointment of Mustapha Louni to the position of Chief Business Officer, a role specifically created to drive strategic leadership and client success. In this new role, Mr. Louni will assume responsibility for the global Uptime sales and marketing organizations and drive overall business value for all Uptime clients. He will retain his existing responsibilities overseeing operations in the Middle East, India, Africa, and the Asia Pacific regions. In this elevated capacity, Mr. Louni is poised to play a pivotal role in driving Uptime’s next phase of global expansion through strategic initiatives to enhance market awareness of the dramatically expanding global service lines and delivery capabilities of Uptime that uniquely support the global data center industry in its pursuit of ever higher performance through elevated availability, resiliency, sustainability, and cyber-security of digital infrastructure. Louni’s appointment renews and expands Uptime

Institute 39;s 30-year commitment to advancing excellence in the data center sector on a global scale. “Today we are experiencing the next phase of the one-time, planetary transformation from analog to digital. This unprecedented, once-in-a-generation growth in data center demand is primarily driven by continuing cloud adoption, the new promise of AI, and the demonstrable fact
that hybrid digital infrastructure is here to stay for the foreseeable future,” said Martin McCarthy, CEO, Uptime Institute. “These complex and nuanced market demands require a visionary talent like Mustapha Louni. He is someone who cannot only deftly manage specific aspects of the business but also remain ahead of accelerating changes and trends. He continues to earn client
trust and respect by timely delivery on demanding commitments while he also inspires and energizes colleagues and clients alike. I am delighted to announce Mr. Louni’s new position and know that he will continue to expand the impact that he has already brought to Uptime since his arrival.” In 2014, Mr. Louni joined the Uptime organization in the United Arab Emirates, leveraging his extensive experience from roles at Panduit and Schneider Electric in Paris and Dubai. As the company’s first commercial resource in the Middle East and Africa region, Mr. Louni played a pivotal role in expanding Uptime’s presence. Within a year, he successfully established what became and remains Uptime’s fastest growing regional office. Under his leadership, Uptime has
extended his impressive trajectory of growth in MEA to the Asia-Pacific regions, augmenting the Uptime workforce with dedicated team members spanning more than a dozen countries across these regions. A new Uptime office has been inaugurated in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) this year, further fortifying the company’s ability to meet its commitment to sustained
growth and excellence and serve clients in critical, accelerating markets for digital infrastructure.

Uptime Institute began development of its proprietary and now globally recognized Tier Standards and its Tier Certifications 30 years ago to ensure that the mission critical computing needs of all organizations could be met with confidence and understood by executive management. Since that time, Uptime Tier Certification as well as other Uptime offerings including assessments and awards in digital infrastructure for ensuring business performance in areas of management and operations, risk and resilience, sustainability, and more recently cyber- security have gained global adoption. Uptime’s expanding success is based on delivering a
unique business service that is based upon unparalleled engineering excellence and technical mastery, while remaining vendor independent and technology agnostic.