Category: 3. Business

TSX/NYSE/PSE: MFC     SEHK: 945

TORONTO, Nov. 21, 2025 /PRNewswire/ – Colin Simpson, Chief Financial Officer, Manulife, will participate in a fireside chat at the Desjardins Toronto Conference on Tuesday, November 25, 2025. The fireside chat is scheduled to begin at 1:45 p.m. ET.

The live webcast and a replay of the fireside chat will be available through Manulife’s Investor Relations website. The replay will be available for 90 days following the live session.

About Manulife
Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, helping our customers make their decisions easier and lives better. With our global headquarters in Toronto, Canada, we operate as Manulife across Canada, Asia, and Europe, and primarily as John Hancock in the United States, providing financial advice and insurance for individuals, groups and businesses. Through Manulife Wealth & Asset Management, we offer global investment, financial advice, and retirement plan services to individuals, institutions, and retirement plan members worldwide. At the end of 2024, we had more than 37,000 employees, over 109,000 agents, and thousands of distribution partners, serving over 36 million customers. We trade as ‘MFC’ on the Toronto, New York, and the Philippine stock exchanges, and under ‘945’ in Hong Kong. 

Not all offerings are available in all jurisdictions. For additional information, please visit manulife.com.

Media Contact
Fiona McLean
Manulife
(437) 441-7491
[email protected] 

Investor Relations
Derek Theobalds
Manulife
(416) 254-1774
[email protected]

SOURCE Manulife Financial Corporation

Get to know the C-suite members, founders, presidents and department leaders who’ll nominate the next generation of creative talent at the Festival this June. We’re delighted to announce the LIONS Scholarship Jury for Cannes Lions 2026 – creative and marketing leaders from around the globe, committed to helping a diverse group of young talent from underrepresented backgrounds into the creative marketing industries.

The LIONS Scholarship gives young creatives and marketers the opportunity of a lifetime. Offering 10 winners from 10 different countries a place in either the Creative Academy or Brand Marketers Academy at Cannes Lions 2026 – where they’ll join a cohort of learners aged 30 and under, for an unmatched learning and networking experience at the heart of the global creative community.

The Scholarship aims to level the playing field for creative excellence the world over, so successful applicants’ passes, travel and accommodation are fully funded by LIONS.

Applications are open now, and close on 5 December. Find out more about the LIONS Scholarship, and start your application, here.

To ensure fairness in the judging process, we’ve selected a global Jury of experts – representing all markets, and every creative discipline. Meet them here:

Andrea Quaye, Marketing Director, Heineken, South Africa

Angela Kyerematen-Jimoh, CEO/Founder BrainWave AfricaTech, Ghana

Brigid Alkema, Chief Creative Officer, Clemenger BBDO, New Zealand

Chandu Rajapreyar, Group Executive Creative Director, Hakuhodo, Vietnam

Colin Selikow, Chief Creative Officer, DDB Chicago, United States

Emir Shafri, Chief Creative Officer, Publicis Groupe, Malaysia

Eugene Park, Integrated Marketing Experience (IMX), CJ CheilJedang, South Korea

Felipe Simi, CEO & Creative Chairperson, Droga5 Sao Paulo, Brazil

Françoise Nottrelet, Global Head of Content Partnerships and Licensing, StarNews Mobile and Head of Business and Content, House of Podcasts, Starnews Mobile and House of Podcasts, France

Gabriel Barrio, Commercial Manager, UNACEM Peru, Peru

Gabriel Suárez Ortega, Latin America Marketing Director, Edgewell Personal Care, Colombia

Gaurav Virkar, Global AI and Media Leader, P&G (Beauty Care), Singapore

Genevieve Hoey, Global Creative Director – Masterbrand, Our LEGO Agency (OLA), The LEGO Group, Denmark

George Bryant, Global Chief Creative Officer, Golin, United Kingdom

Helena Bertho, Global Director of D&I, Nubank, Brazil

Jacquie Mullany, Executive Creative Director, FCB Africa, South Africa

Jayesh Nair, EMEA Creative and Integrated Media Lead, Bayer Consumer Health, Switzerland

Jess Greenwood, Strategy, Marcom, Apple, United States

Josafat Padilla, Regional Chief Creative Officer, Havas Costa Rica, Costa Rica

Kenya Hunt, Editor-in-Chief, ELLE UK, United Kingdom

Khaled AlShehhi, Executive Director of Marketing and Communication, UAE Government Media Office, UAE

Kimberly Evans Paige, Executive VP and Chief Brand Officer, BET Media Group, United States

Klaartje Galle, Chief Creative Officer, VML Belgium

Leila Katrib, Global Executive Creative Director, Incubeta, UAE

Mariko Fukuoka, Creative Director, Dentsu Inc., Japan

Mary Njoku, Founder, Managing Director/CEO, ROK studios(A Canal Plus Subsidiary), Nigeria

Maurice Wangalachi, Creative Director, Ogilvy Africa, Kenya

Michael Duffy, Brand and Innovation Head, AMEA Region, Opella Consumer Healthcare, Australia

Mohammed Jifri, CMO, Hunger Station, UAE

Nada Abisaleh, Head of Leo Beirut, Leo Beirut, Lebanon

Robert Thompson, Head of Marketing and Communication, Sanlam Investments, South Africa

Rodney Williams, Managing Director, Trestle Glen Group, Canada

Sadira E. Furlow, Global Chief Brand and Comms Officer, Tony’s Chocolonely, Netherlands

Sidick Bakayoko, Founder and CEO, Paradise Game, Ivory Coast

Xavier Blais, Partner, Executive Creative Director, Rethink, Canada

Yaa Boateng, Chief Creative Officer and Managing Director, The Storytellers, Ghana

Watson Farley & Williams (“WFW”) advised shipping company MPC Container Ships ASA (“MPCC”) on the order of four new container ships with long-term charter agreements.

The contracts for the construction of the four 4,500 TEU vessels at a price of US$58m each were signed with Chinese shipbuilder Jiangsu Hantong Ship Heavy Industry Co. Ltd. Delivery is scheduled for H1 2028, with options for two additional vessels at the same price.

The vessels ordered will be tailored to the charterer’s requirements and sustainability goals and equipped with state-of-the-art energy-efficient technology. This will reduce slot costs by approximately 50% as MPCC continues to modernise its fleet. Each vessel will be operated under a 10-year time charter agreement with extension options for a leading global liner shipping company, with this initial period expected to generate approximately US$375m in revenue.

Oslo-based MPCC is a leading container ship owner with a focus on small to medium-sized vessels. It primarily owns and operates a portfolio of container ships serving regional trade routes under long-term charter agreements.

The WFW Maritime team that advised MPCC was led by Hamburg Corporate Partner Dr Christian Finnern, supported by Associates Maximilian Hennig and Bjarne Ruthke. Hamburg partner Dr F. Maximilian Boemke advised on regulatory matters, with London Partners Joe McGladdery and Charles Buss providing English law expertise.

Christian commented: “This transaction is another milestone in our long-standing relationship with MPCC. This order for four energy-efficient container ships with long-term charter agreements demonstrates how strategic investments secure competitiveness and sustainability in the maritime industry. We are delighted to have supported MPCC on the legal structuring and execution of this complex project”.

The law firm Clifford Chance is reducing the number of business services staff at its London base by 10%, with the increased use of artificial intelligence a factor behind the decision.

The head of PwC has also indicated that AI may lead to fewer workers being hired at the accountancy and consulting group.

Clifford Chance, one of the largest international law firms, is making about 50 roles redundant in areas such as finance, HR and IT with role changes for up to 35 other jobs, according to the Financial Times which first reported the cuts.

Greater use of AI and reduced demand for some business services are behind the cuts, the FT report said, as well as more work being done at offices outside Clifford Chance’s main UK-US operations in countries like Poland and India.

A spokesperson for Clifford Chance said: “In line with our strategy to strengthen our operations, we can confirm we are proposing changes to some of our London-based business professional functions.

“The proposed changes could see the creation of new roles, changes to the scope of roles, revised team structures and in some cases a reduction in roles.”

White-collar, or office-based jobs, are commonly cited as being vulnerable to advances in AI, the term for computer systems that perform cognitive tasks typically associated with human intelligence.

AI is able to help employees perform some tasks faster – such as coding, research, scheduling meetings and reviewing contracts – and experts believe companies will consider banking those productivity gains by hiring fewer people, or cutting staff numbers as systems become capable of handling certain tasks autonomously.

Four in 10 (41%) bosses told a recent survey of 850 business leaders that AI was allowing them to cut the number of employees. The British Standards Institution poll spanned seven countries: the UK, the US, France, Germany, Australia, China and Japan.

The global chairman of PwC, Mohamed Kande, said the firm would no longer be hiring 100,000 people over a five-year period – a target set in 2021 – due to the advent of AI, indicating that entry-level jobs could be affected.

“When we made the plans to hire that many people, the world looked very, very different,” he told the BBC. “Now we have artificial intelligence. We want to hire, but I don’t know if it’s going to be the same level of people that we hire – it will be a different set of people.”

However, Kande added that PwC was struggling to recruit AI specialists. “We are looking for hundreds and hundreds of engineers today to help us drive our AI agenda, but we just cannot find them,” he said.

The UK head of PwC said in September that AI was “certainly reshaping roles” but that a drop in graduate recruitment at the firm this year was due to a slowdown in economic activity.

The owner of the Fukushima nuclear power plant is edging closer to having one of its reactors restarted for the first time since the 2011 disaster.

Hideyo Hanazumi, the governor of the Niigata region, where Japan’s largest nuclear power plant is located said the prefecture would give its consent for restart.

It will need final approval from Japan’s nuclear regulator before the plan to resume operations at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa facility, operated by Tepco, goes ahead.

If approved, it would be the first time Tepco has been allowed to recommence nuclear reactor operations in Japan since its Fukushima plant went into meltdown following a tsunami.

Residents in Niigata are divided over whether the plant should be restarted or not.

Hanazumi told a news conference on Friday that, once approved, the decision would then be discussed in December at a prefectural government assembly, where he would seek the assembly’s approval.

The approval would be for the recommencement of operations at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant’s No 6 reactor, followed by the No 7.

The resumption of operations at the facility is part of Tepco’s business reconstruction plan following the Fukushima meltdown – when the plant’s reactors were flooded, causing radiation to leak out and forcing 150,000 people to be evacuated from the area.

Eighteen-thousand people were killed in the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that preceded it.

Following the disaster, Tepco was ordered to pay trillions of Japanese yen in damages to those affected and is also paying for the plant’s decommissioning costs.

A survey released by Niigata prefecture last month suggested 50% of the its residents supported the plant’s restart, while 47% were against it. It also indicated that almost 70% of people in the prefecture were concerned about Tepco running the plant.

Fourteen nuclear reactors have already resumed operations in Japan since the Fukushima disaster.

Friday’s decision demonstrates Japan’s desire to move towards increased use of atomic energy to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels as it pursues a goal of net zero carbon emissions.

The uptake of higher-tier (4+) clean cooking solutions, especially in last mile communities, is a critical but often underfunded and insufficiently prioritised need. Despite a diversity of viable technologies, including pure electric cooking (eCooking) powered by photovoltaic systems (solar PV) and PV-supported biomass gasifier stoves, as well as ethanol stoves, their widespread adoption remains a challenge due to various barriers, including upfront costs and low awareness among end-users about potential financial and health benefits. However, the decreasing cost of solar PV modules, and the increasing affordability of PV-supported clean cookstoves and appliances, have made that specific category of technologies more financially viable, cost-competitive and better aligned with the Nationally Determined Contributions to the Paris Agreement on climate change (NDCs).

PV-supported cooking addresses both climate change mitigation and adaptation by reducing CO2 and other pollutant emissions by decreasing the dependence on unsustainably harvested biomass from local (and often fragile) ecosystems. With significant advancements and cost reductions in PV-supported clean cooking, scaling these solutions can help bridge the Emissions Gap and support several Sustainable Development Goals. Overcoming barriers to uptake requires supply and demand-side interventions, including affordable financing for viable business models discussed in this report, to facilitate household adoption of clean cooking technologies through scalable market-based approaches.

The report is co-published with the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Global Platform for Action on Sustainable Energy in Displacement Settings (GPA), in support of the objectives of the Global electric Cooking Coalition (GeCCo) and the multistakeholder Solar electric Cooking Partnership (SOLCO).

By Steve Goldstein

Deutsche Bank says simultaneous move in yen and JGBs is reminiscent of sterling and gilt fall in 2022

The premierships of Sanae Takaichi, left, and Liz Truss, both have been bad for their domestic bonds and currency.

Have we seen this movie before?

The simultaneous decline in Japanese bond yields BX:TMBMKJP-30Y and its currency (USDJPY) is reminding Deutsche Bank’s head of currency research of Liz Truss’s ill-fated premiership, when sterling and U.K. gilts tumbled in value after the introduction of what’s called a mini-budget.

New Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi differs from Truss in that she wants to spend rather than cut taxes, but both plans amount to aggressive fiscal stimulus.

The U.S. dollar and U.S. Treasury bonds also fell simultaneously in April in reaction to President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff plan, which subsequently has been reduced in scope.

“While most commentators have been focused on the recent bout of volatility in U.S. equity markets, something far more worrying is happening elsewhere in our view: the Japanese yen and bond market are collapsing together, with the dynamic sharply accelerating in recent days. The yen and 30-yr government bond have dropped by more than 5% in recent weeks, all the more remarkable given that global fixed-income markets have been rallying elsewhere,” said Deutsche Bank’s George Saravelos.

He says the issue in Japan is that inflation expectations have become unanchored.

“If domestic confidence in the government’s and Bank of Japan’s commitment to low inflation is lost, the reasons to buy JGBs disappear, and more disruptive capital flight ensues,” he says.

Saravelos said that he’ll be watching for signs of capital flight, and whether Japanese authorities give in to pressure from financial markets.

-Steve Goldstein

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  11-21-25 0523ET
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Solvay and Sapio sign ten-year agreement for the production of renewable hydrogen in Rosignano, Italy

Solvay and Sapio have entered a 10-year agreement to collaborate on renewable hydrogen production at Solvay’s Rosignano facility, part of the Hydrogen Valley Rosignano Project aimed at cutting CO₂ emissions from Solvay’s peroxides operations.

Under the agreement, Sapio will construct and manage a 5 MW electrolysis system, powered by a 10 MW photovoltaic installation built by Solvay. The project, expected to be operational by mid-2026, will produce up to 756 tons of renewable hydrogen annually, reducing the site CO₂ emissions by up to 15%. It has received €16 million in funding from the Tuscan Region under Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR).

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