European Midday Briefing : Stocks Charge Higher on -2-

DNB Bank Raises Dividend, Launches Buyback As 4Q Earnings Beat Views

DNB Bank ASA on Thursday raised its dividend and said it will initiate a share buyback program after it posted a forecast-beating fourth-quarter net profit amid higher net interest income.

Norway's largest lender made a profit attributable to shareholders of 9.7 billion Norwegian kroner ($939.3 million), compared with NOK5.88 billion a year earlier. Net interest income rose 37% to NOK14.07 billion, it said.

Vinci Posts Higher 2022 Earnings Amid Global Momentum

Vinci SA on Thursday reported higher net profit and revenue for 2022 as its businesses saw significant growth for the year.

The French construction and infrastructure company said net profit rose to 4.26 billion euros ($4.56 billion), compared with EUR2.60 billion in the prior year, on revenue that rose 25% to EUR61.68 billion.

U.K. Considers Sending British Jet Fighters to Ukraine

LONDON-The U.K. is considering sending advanced jets to Ukraine and will begin training Ukrainian pilots in coming months, a major victory for President Volodymyr Zelensky, who made a surprise visit to European allies Wednesday to lobby Western governments to provide more air power to counter a growing Russian offensive.

Hours after Ukrainian leader Mr. Zelensky made an emotional plea to the British Parliament for more military aid, U.K. officials said that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had tasked his defense minister with analyzing which jets Britain may send, adding that no final decision had been made and that it could take a significant amount of time before pilots were fully trained.

Russian Forces Pressure Ukrainian Defenses in Northeast

Russian armed forces were trying to break through Ukrainian defense lines in the country's northeast on Wednesday, Ukrainian officials said, a sign of building Russian pressure across the front.

Meanwhile, in a victory for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the U.K. is considering sending British fighter jets to Ukraine, a U.K. government spokesman said. Mr. Zelensky made a surprise visit to London on Wednesday to press for more military assistance to Kyiv, including fighter jets.

Hopes of Finding Earthquake Survivors in Turkey and Syria Fade as Aid Arrives

ELBISTAN, Turkey-Hopes dwindled Thursday of finding people still alive under collapsed buildings caused by earthquakes that rocked Turkey and Syria, with rescuers now focusing on recovering bodies and finding shelter for survivors.

Rescuers continued to dig through the tangled mess of concrete, steel and wires of collapsed structures after Monday's earthquakes-magnitude 7.8 and 7.5-that hit the Syrian-Turkish border. But the number of survivors found has slowed to a trickle as efforts passed the crucial 72 hours that most disaster experts say is the most likely window to save lives.

GLOBAL NEWS

The SEC Would Revamp Stock Trading. Its Math is Dubious.

After a decadelong struggle for trading volume, stock exchanges have mostly lost the trades of individual investors to a half-dozen off-exchange market makers like Citadel Securities and Virtu Financial. These wholesale market makers now process a quarter of all stock trades, which they get from retail brokers like Charles Schwab and Robinhood Markets. Now, new rules proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission at the end of December would shift those trades back to the exchanges.

The most controversial of the new proposals would revamp how stocks trade, with the SEC projecting that changes could save small investors over $1 billion in annual costs. Close examination of the agency's math by Barron's and others, however, suggests that those savings are overstated and highly uncertain.

Russia's War Could Lead to Shift in Sources for Energy Supplies

Nearly a year after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the ongoing war has called attention to how vulnerable the U.S. petroleum market is to an event thousands of miles away, and may lead to a shift in the global market to better secure energy supplies.

Russia's actions on Feb. 24 ignited "widespread, credible concerns of extraordinary disruptions in oil and [natural] gas flow to Europe," says Brian Milne, product manager, editor, and analyst at DTN. Europe's reliance on Russian gas had the "potential to make Europeans hostages during the winter months," if Russian President Vladimir Putin cut off gas supply to the continent.

Biden Pushes Economic Message After Rowdy State of the Union Speech

President Biden headed to Wisconsin on Wednesday, taking the economic pitch he delivered during the State of the Union on the road, and ramping up his criticism of a Republican proposal on entitlements that led to lawmakers heckling him during the prime-time speech.

Mr. Biden sought to explain to the public in his address on Tuesday how they stand to benefit from the trillions of dollars in spending he helped shepherd through Congress, arguing that his policies have helped the U.S. economy recover from the Covid-19 pandemic with the unemployment rate now at a 53-year low. Republicans say he has spent far too much federal money and has been an unsteady steward of the economy.

Fed Officials Signal Higher Interest Rates Will Be Needed to Contain Inflation

A senior Federal Reserve official said the economy will need higher borrowing costs for a few years to bring down inflation and prevent price pressures from strengthening.

"We still have some work to do to get interest rates in the right place, " said New York Fed President John Williams at The Wall Street Journal's CFO Network Summit in New York on Wednesday. "We need a sufficiently restrictive stance" of rates, and "we're going to need to maintain that for a few years to make sure we get inflation to 2%."

Biggest Shipping Companies Signal Global Trade Slowdown

A Danish shipping giant on Wednesday became the latest company to showcase how global trade has slowed through the Covid-19 pandemic.

A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, one of the world's largest ocean freight companies, said its earnings could plunge nearly 80% this year amid weakening demand to ship containers.

China's Fleet of Balloons Prove Hard to Detect as They Survey the World

China has operated a fleet of high-altitude balloons, like the one shot down by the Air Force, to carry out surveillance on five continents, the Biden administration said, as it tries to bring international attention to the scope of Beijing's program.

Administration officials embarked on a series of briefings about the balloon with allies and partners, officials said. Those briefings draw on "what we've learned based on our careful observation of the system when it was in our airspace," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday.

Senate Republicans Demand Answers on Handling of Suspected Chinese Spy Balloon

WASHINGTON-Leading Senate Republicans demanded the Biden administration provide more information about its handling of a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon, as administration officials prepared to give the Senate a closed-door briefing about the episode.

In a letter Wednesday to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, the lawmakers particularly asked about Pentagon and White House decision-making in the days after the balloon was detected and why the military and spy agencies weren't better prepared given previous incursions.

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This article is a text version of a Wall Street Journal newsletter published earlier today.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

02-09-23 0557ET