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Report highlights massive scale of disaster and rebuilding efforts that must take place

The earthquake that hit Turkey this month caused $34bn of damage, according to an assessment by the World Bank that underscores the extent of the physical devastation wrought by the natural disaster.

Rebuilding in the 11 provinces affected by the February 6 quake and its aftershocks could cost up to $68bn, with residential buildings, schools, hospitals and public infrastructure all requiring repair work, the World Bank said on Monday. More than 105,000 buildings have been heavily damaged or have collapsed, the Bank added.

“This disaster serves as a reminder of Turkey’s high risk to earthquakes and of the need to enhance resilience in public and private infrastructure,” said Humberto Lopez, World Bank country director for Turkey.

The World Bank report, one of the most detailed studies to date on the aftermath of the worst earthquake to hit Turkey in almost a century, highlights the massive scale of the disaster and the rebuilding efforts that must take place. About 50,000 people were killed by the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, while the World Bank estimates that more than 1.25mn people are now homeless.

The earthquake has become a major political issue in Turkey, with the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan facing severe criticism for its initial response to the catastrophe as well as its 2018 amnesty programme that forgave millions of building faults.

Turkish media aligned with the government, meanwhile, has hit out at leaders of municipalities where opposition parties are in power, accusing them of failing to take adequate measures to protect buildings from ground shaking in an area known to be vulnerable to earthquakes.

The World Bank said the severity of the damage was down to the unusual strength of the earthquake, how shallow it was and also a “potential lack of code compliance” with Turkey’s rules for building construction and maintenance.

Residential properties have sustained the most damage in dollar terms at $18bn, with non-residential buildings and infrastructure taking $9.7bn and $6.4bn hits respectively. At least 15 hospitals have endured partial or severe damage according to provisional estimates, the World Bank said. Almost 190 historic buildings, which require extensive and specialised renovation work, were either severely or moderately damaged.

Overall, the damage amounts to about 4 per cent of Turkey’s 2021 economic output, but the World Bank expects that when secondary factors such as higher material and labour costs are taken into account, the overall cost to gross domestic product could be higher.

Turkey’s southern Hatay province was especially badly hit. The damage to residential structures in the region equated to almost 42 per cent of their overall value, with the so-called “damage ratio” registering 40 per cent for non-residential buildings and 34 per cent for infrastructure, the World Bank said.

Erdoğan has pledged to rebuild the vast area hit by the earthquake within a year, but experts in reconstruction say it could take far longer to complete the process. Officials will first need to get a handle on how many buildings need to be demolished and then devise extensive rebuilding plans and bring in the necessary labour and equipment — with some engineers and local officials estimating the costs to reach $100bn.

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Elon Musk’s space company set to transport astronauts for six-month research mission, according to NASA

SpaceX is set to launch another crew to the International Space Station, the latest human flight the company has handled for NASA since bringing such missions back to the U.S. about three years ago.

The Elon Musk-led company is scheduled to blast four people to the research laboratory at 1:45 a.m. ET on Monday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said.

The crew will fly to the station on one of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon vehicles, which the company will launch on a Falcon 9 rocket.

The space station has a busy couple of months ahead of it. On Saturday, a spacecraft operated by Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, docked at the facility. The vehicle will replace a ship that suffered a leak after a micrometeorite hit a component on it, according to Roscosmos, and will later carry three people back to Earth.

SpaceX and Northrop Grumman Corp. have coming cargo flights to the station, officials have said.

Boeing Co. plans to transport in April two astronauts to the facility for the first time using its Starliner spacecraft, executives said during a recent NASA briefing. The aerospace giant has faced technical hurdles with Starliner, including problems related to software and valves, that delayed the first crewed flight.

The crew on SpaceX’s mission Monday are NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg ; Sultan Alneyadi, an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates; and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. They plan to conduct research and scientific experiments during a six-month stretch on orbit. NASA plans to stream the launch from its website.

Benji Reed, senior director for SpaceX’s human spaceflight program, said during a briefing late Saturday that final preflight tests were successful.

“Crew safety and health is our top priority,” he said. “We’re seeing overall clean vehicles and good ground systems ready to go.”

The flight would mark the seventh time that Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the formal name for Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX, has transported people to the station for NASA. The company is under contract to handle similar flights through 2030. NASA valued the latest batch of the missions it purchased from SpaceX at roughly $287 million per flight, according to a statement from the agency in August.

In 2020, SpaceX blasted two astronauts to the space station for NASA. That represented the first rocket launch of humans from the U.S. since the agency’s last space shuttle mission nine years earlier.

SpaceX also has been preparing to try to launch its Starship spacecraft to orbit for the first time. The company has sold flights on those large vehicles, designed for deeper space missions, to private space travelers, including Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa.

NASA has hired SpaceX to transport two agency astronauts to the surface of the moon on a version of Starship as soon as 2025, as part of the agency’s Artemis exploration program.

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said earlier this month at an industry event that the company initially plans to use Starship to deploy its own Starlink internet satellites while it learns to operate the new rocket.

Soroban says Lance Fritz should be replaced by the railroad’s former chief operating officer

Hedge fund Soroban Capital Partners is pushing Union Pacific Corp. UNP 0.36% to replace Chief Executive Lance Fritz, arguing the railroad has underperformed on his watch, according to people familiar with the matter.

Soroban is a longtime Union Pacific investor, one of the company’s biggest shareholders with a 1%-plus stake valued at about $1.6 billion, the people said.

Soroban argues that Union Pacific, the largest freight railroad operator in the U.S. with a market capitalization of nearly $120 billion, has ranked worst in key operating metrics including safety, volume growth and total shareholder return during Mr. Fritz’s eight-year tenure despite the strength of its railroad network. The Omaha, Neb., railroad’s returns to shareholders, including dividends, are the worst on a percentage basis among so-called Class 1 freight railroad operators in that period, according to FactSet.

The $10 billion hedge fund is pushing for railroad veteran Jim Vena, Union Pacific’s chief operating officer from 2019 to 2020, to take the top post instead. Soroban believes the company’s stock price could double in two years under Mr. Vena, who was in the running in 2021 to be CEO of Canadian National Railway Co. , given his operational experience in the industry, according to the people.

“We want UNP to prosper,” Soroban founder Eric Mandelblatt wrote in a letter to Union Pacific’s board earlier Sunday, a copy of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “Unlike typical shareholder engagements which come with numerous demands, Soroban has only one ask: install new leadership who can get the trains to operate safely and on time.”

“Union Pacific is in regular discussions with our shareholders, including Soroban,” a spokeswoman for the railroad said. “Leadership succession planning is a top priority for the board and there is an active process underway,” she added, echoing prior statements the company has made.

Contacted by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Vena said he would be open to a conversation with Union Pacific about taking the CEO role and expressed admiration for the company. “Union Pacific has a chance to be the best in the industry,” he said.

Soroban’s letter said the fund for years, including most recently in August, had privately expressed its unhappiness with the company’s performance. Soroban has told the board that quick action must be taken so that Union Pacific can take advantage of trends the investor believes are converging to benefit railroads, including renewed investment in domestic manufacturing and efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

Soroban is “completely committed to seeing that these changes be expeditiously implemented,” the letter says. The fund has no current plans for a proxy fight, according to people familiar with the matter.

In January, Union Pacific reported fourth-quarter profit and revenue that fell short of Wall Street’s expectations, with labor shortages, inflation and extreme winter weather weighing on growth. Union Pacific and other U.S. railroad operators have issued tepid outlooks for 2023 in the face of more muted demand for manufactured goods among other products, as well as higher costs.

Union Pacific also has drawn scrutiny from the Surface Transportation Board, the regulator overseeing U.S. freight railroads. The STB in December held a hearing singling out Union Pacific’s soaring use of embargoes—restrictions that rail operators place on the amount of cargo that can be transported—that the regulator said had sparked complaints from shippers and worsened supply-chain issues.

Soroban’s public push for change is unusual. The hedge fund takes concentrated stakes and in recent years has focused on big technology companies and, more recently, commodities investments. But it has rarely held an activist position since its 2010 founding.

Mr. Mandelblatt, 47 years old, got his start on Wall Street as an energy analyst for Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in the 1990s and has invested in railroads since 2005. Soroban has been invested in Union Pacific since 2016 and is a major shareholder at CSX Corp. It has also invested in Norfolk Southern Corp.

Soroban’s push comes at a time of increased activism as beaten-down share prices embolden the investors. Salesforce Inc. and Walt Disney Co. have both attracted multiple activists, although earlier this month Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management LP called off its proxy contest at the entertainment company after Disney unveiled a reorganization and cost-cutting plan. Dan Loeb’s Third Point LLC also plans to launch a proxy fight against Bath & Body Works Inc.