「经济学人」Business this week

Business this week

《经济学人》2019年4月27日 刊

Kraft Heinz announced that Bernardo Hees would step down in June as chief executive, an abrupt move amid a mountain of problems at the food giant, including a $15.4bn write-down. The new CEO is Miguel Patricio, who has worked for 20 years in senior jobs at Anheuser-Busch InBev. His appointment is backed by 3G Capital, an investment group that brought about the mergers which created both Kraft Heinz and AB InBev.

Boeing reported a quarterly net profit of $2.2bn. Revenue from its commercial-aircraft division was $1bn lower than in the same quarter a year ago, which the aerospace company said reflected a fall in deliveries of the 737 MAX aircraft, which was grounded in March. Boeing ditched its profit forecast for 2019, as it works to sort out problems with the MAX.

Nissan issued its second profit warning this year, in part because of “the impact of recent corporate issues on sales”. The Japanese carmaker sacked Carlos Ghosn as its boss last November amid allegations of financial wrongdoing, which he denies. He was indicted on a fourth charge this week, but also granted bail.

Facebook set aside $3bn to cover a potential fine from America’s Federal Trade Commission for violating an agreement that promised it would not collect personal data and share it without permission. The FTC began investigating the social-media company after last year’s Cambridge Analytica scandal. Facebook warned that the penalty could be as high as $5bn.

Investors were delighted with Twitter’s earnings. The social-media company reported its sixth successive quarterly profit on the back of a surge in revenues, to $787m. Its measure of daily users, counting only those who see ads, rose to 134m. Twitter said its improved performance was explained in part by weeding out abusive content, around 40% of which is now detected by machine-learning algorithms.

The S&P 500 index hit a new high. Stockmarkets have broadly recovered from their drubbing in 2018. The S&P 500 has registered its best start to a year since 1987. Shares in tech companies fared particularly badly last year, but the NASDAQ has also reached a new record.

Not everyone has had a good start to the year.  UBS described the first quarter as “challenging”, as earnings at its core wealth-management business and its investment bank declined significantly. Still, the Swiss bank made an overall net profit of $1.1bn.

Impeded by restructuring costs and extra capital requirements, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank abandoned their plan to merge.

America demanded that countries stop buying Iranian oil or face sanctions, ending months of waivers for Iran’s biggest buyers. The price of oil rose sharply in response, pushing Brent crude to $75 a barrel.

Occidental offered to buy Anadarko for $55bn, exceeding Chevron’s recent $49bn bid, which has been accepted by Anadarko’s board. Anadarko is so alluring because of its assets in shale oil.

South Korea’s economy unexpectedly shrank in the first quarter, by 0.3% compared with the previous three months, the worst performance since the financial crisis. Korean exports have fallen sharply.

Britain’s competition regulator blocked the merger of J. Sainsbury and Asda, a subsidiary of Walmart, which would have created the country’s biggest supermarket chain. The regulator found that the deal would have led to higher prices.

Herman Cain withdrew his name for consideration for a seat on the board of the Federal Reserve. Donald Trump’s desire to nominate Mr Cain had sparked a backlash, even among Republicans worried that the president was seeking to undermine the independence of the central bank by appointing his supporters.

The British government started the formal process for seeking the next governor of the Bank of England. Mark Carney has held the job since 2013. Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, Philip Hammond, hopes to sign someone for an eight-year contract, a period which will see Britain mired in the process of withdrawing from the EU. After three years of Brexit, Mr Hammond believes that “Stability has a value”.

Apr 27th 2019

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