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☆ Tupperware Brands boxes itself into a corner
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-10 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

TORONTO, April 10 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Tupperware Brands’ (TUP.N) options are looking less airtight. As with other direct selling companies, it casts doubt over its business model, as well as how speedily it can remake itself as consumer habits shift. An earnings misstatement, which has left it late in filing its annual report, could cause creditors to declare Tupperware has violated its debt covenants. Even if Tupperware can appease its creditors or find new investors, the rise of e-commerce has dented the fortunes of companies that lean on direct selling. Compared with the company’s heyday, customers have more options for food storage, more places to buy from, and less time for Tupperware parties.

☆ How Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway can navigate the looming economic turmoil
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-07 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

First, let's check in with Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett REUTERS/Rick Wilking1. Few people would argue with you if you said Warren Buffett is the greatest investor of all time. Fewer still would challenge anyone who claimed Berkshire Hathaway was one of the most resilient companies of all time. Is there any other company or conglomerate better poised to navigate uncertainty than Berkshire Hathaway?

The short-lived fight nonetheless underscores the lengths at which scrappy restaurant operators will go to chase consumer dollars. For restaurants that have been open longer than 13 months, Chipotle’s sales grew faster than Sweetgreen’s in the fourth quarter. That could explain why Chipotle’s valuation, at nearly 5 times forward sales, is more than double that of Sweetgreen’s. Follow on @sharonlam_ TwitterCONTEXT NEWSChipotle Mexican Grill sued rival U.S. take-out chain Sweetgreen for violating its trademarks rights in a similarly branded burrito bowl on April 4, leading to a prompt settlement. Chipotle had argued that Sweetgreen’s “Chipotle Chicken Burrito Bowl” violated its trademark rights.

Because I got a tax extension, I was able to work more closely with my CPA and go over all my questions. Those extra months to save made a difference, and I was able to shore up funds to pay for both my corporate and individual tax returns. And since I work with a tax professional, they usually require that I submit all my financial statements and tax documents well before the mid-April deadline. In fact, I usually need to pay quarterly estimated tax returns, plus I usually owe state and federal returns each year. While I don't recommend doing anything last-minute or late, filing my tax returns in mid-October last year did have some unexpected perks.

☆ Saudi $5 bln gaming play only works on some levels
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

LONDON, April 6 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Saudi Arabia is defriending read more Uncle Sam on oil, while deploying its video-game war chest in his backyard. Savvy Games, owned by the country’s Public Investment Fund, announced on Wednesday that it was buying U.S. mobile games specialist Scopely for $4.9 billion. Though privately held Scopely doesn’t disclose its financials, Savvy looks to be getting a good price. Less clear is how Scopely contributes to Saudi’s aims of becoming the “ultimate global hub” for gaming and pivoting its economy away from fossil fuels. If Saudi wants to create jobs from the rapid growth of domestic game consumption, it needs to turn its games M&A into gaming boots on the ground.

The short-lived fight nonetheless underscores the lengths at which scrappy restaurant operators will go to chase consumer dollars. For restaurants that have been open longer than 13 months, Chipotle’s sales grew faster than Sweetgreen’s in the fourth quarter. Sweetgreen billed itself as a tech innovator when it first went public and acquired robotic-kitchen company Spyce back in 2021. Follow on @sharonlam_ TwitterCONTEXT NEWSChipotle Mexican Grill sued rival U.S. take-out chain Sweetgreen for violating its trademarks rights in a similarly branded burrito bowl on April 4, leading to a prompt settlement. Chipotle had argued that Sweetgreen’s “Chipotle Chicken Burrito Bowl” violated its trademark rights.

☆ Dealmaker Raine Group bucks the M&A blues
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

WASHINGTON, April 5 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Amid a dealmaking drought, The Raine Group’s rainmakers are creating some flow themselves. And now it has unveiled an acquisition of its own, buying Code Advisors, a technology-focused boutique M&A firm co-founded by former CBS executives Quincy Smith and Michael Marquez. It is the first purchase for Raine since it was co-founded by a group including Joe Ravitch and Brandon Gardner in 2009 in the aftermath of the last big downturn. Since then, Raine has ballooned to 170 people with about 20 partners advising on transactions such as last year’s 4.25 billion pound ($5.3 billion) sale of Chelsea Football Club. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.

☆ Elon Musk’s Doge barks up SEC’s tree
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

WASHINGTON, April 5 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Elon Musk’s Dogecoin yapping might be loud enough to hear in Washington. The token’s value soared as much as 30% earlier this week after Musk-owned Twitter featured a Shiba Inu on the social media service’s homepage instead of its blue bird logo. It could help inform the crypto-skeptical U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as it considers how to police the industry. Musk said that year that he had invested in Dogecoin, but it’s unclear how much, if any, he holds today. The SEC has largely policed crypto markets through enforcement action when it sees clear examples of tokens behaving like securities.

☆ Fake jobs hide cooler reality for US workforce
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

With listings for positions that don’t exist, dubbed ghost jobs, and stale postings complicating the monthly openings count, the latter signal is probably closer to reality. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 9.9 million job openings in February on Tuesday, still up 42% from the last pre-pandemic reading. Unique job postings collected from hundreds of websites have fallen back to early 2020 levels, according to ZipRecruiter. Nearly half of hiring managers said they left job openings up to give the impression their firm was growing, small-business lender Clarify Capital found in a summer survey. The discrepancy matters, since a still-elevated count probably worries the Federal Reserve, which views strong labor demand as a major contributor to inflation.

☆ Aesop deal spreads scent of stressed M&A
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

TORONTO, April 4 (Reuters Breakingviews) - The scent of stress is wafting from the Brazilian backer of Aesop. Natura (NTCO3.SA)agreed to sell the luxury lotion maker to French cosmetics giant L’Oreal (OREP.PA) for about $2.5 billion. It offloaded the successful investment to shore up its balance sheet, an M&A motivation that probably will spread. With recessions being anticipated in a higher interest rate environment, more companies are bound to consider a similar calculus. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.

☆ How FDIC dropped the ball and picked up the tab
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( John Foley | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +7 min

NEW YORK, April 4 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Bank watchdogs don’t have a crystal ball when it comes to spotting bank runs. The FDIC is one of several agencies that watches over American banks, but it’s the one that picks up the tab when a lender fails. Gruenberg, on the FDIC board since 2005, did not support the rapid phased prototyping data project, fretting that it amounted to outsourcing supervision, according to people familiar with the situation. For all but the biggest banks, the FDIC continues to rely on quarterly snapshots known as “call reports,” and the findings of its on-the-ground inspectors. Reuters GraphicsThe death of the 2020 project – and the fact it didn’t start years sooner – reflect deeper challenges at the FDIC.

☆ J&J’s sweetened talc settlement still unsettling
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( Robert Cyran | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

NEW YORK, April 4 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) is trying a little harder to settle claims that its talc harmed users. The tactic, known as the Texas Two-Step, creates a subsidiary under Texas law which allows what’s called non-divisive mergers. That gets it closer to a threshold that could be enough for a bankruptcy judge to approve the settlement. CONTEXT NEWSJohnson & Johnson said on April 4 that its subsidiary LTL Management had re-filed for bankruptcy in an effort to settle claims that sales of products containing talc harmed users. The new unit then declares bankruptcy, and the legal claims are settled in bankruptcy court.

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Talent agency Endeavor (EDR.N), which owns the mixed martial arts business, will tag-team with Vince McMahon’s WWE in deal valued at some $21 billion. The merger unveiled on Monday creates a new publicly traded company 51% owned by Endeavor and 49% by WWE shareholders. On paper, the WWE enterprise gets the sweeter valuation, at around 24 times last year’s EBITDA, whereas UFC is pegged at 19 times. Instead, in the grand tradition of wrestling, McMahon and Endeavor boss Ari Emanuel are trying to appeal to shareholders with a more unconventional thriller. Under terms of the deal, WWE is being valued on the basis of $106 per share, implying an enterprise valuation of $9.3 billion, according to the companies.

☆ Investors ride out China uncertainty in convertible bonds
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( Georgina Lee | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Funds that invest in Asian convertible bonds attracted inflows of $118.1 million in January and February, data from Morningstar shows, bucking the overall outflows recorded for the more than 350 convertible bond funds it tracks globally. Convertible bonds are hybrid securities with most, like a regular bond, paying a coupon. "Some Asian convertible bonds are attractive as they offer investors comparable or better yields for a shorter duration than straight bonds, as they come with an inexpensive equity option," said Girish Kumarguru, portfolio manager at alterative asset manager, China Everbright Assets Management (0165.HK). Compared to the 6% yield paid by its regular bond, convertible bond investors get less, with current pricing implying a yield of around 2.5%. "Measures to boost consumption in China should be favourable to Asian convertible bonds as there are numerous consumer-related issuers in this region," said Skander Chabbi, head of global convertible team at BNP Paribas Asset Management based in Paris.

☆ How post-2008 bank rules led to a 2023 problem
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Liam Proud | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Here’s how that story applies to the collapse of Credit Suisse (CSGN.S) and Silicon Valley Bank. Silicon Valley Bank’s technology-heavy customers attempted to withdraw $42 billion in a day. Reuters Graphics Reuters GraphicsFollow @liamwardproud on TwitterCONTEXT NEWSUBS will rescue Credit Suisse in a deal worth about 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.3 billion), Swiss authorities and the two banks said on March 19. The smaller bank lost 138 billion Swiss francs of customer deposits between Sept. 30 and Dec. 31, a 37% decline. The lender had $173 billion of total deposits on Dec. 31, of which $81 billion were non-interest-bearing demand deposits.

☆ Another cultish cost-saving formula gets off-track
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Jeffrey Goldfarb | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +9 min

Despite its multiple interpretations and approaches, success is widely gauged by a railway’s operating ratio, a simple measure of how much it spends to make a buck. Union Pacific’s peers improved similarly, indicative of the antiquated ways the industry had been deploying resources. Union Pacific also found itself unable to bring back enough furloughed workers in areas where they were most needed. “In a significant departure from the railroad industry's recent past, we deliberately moved away from a singular focus on operating ratio,” he told lawmakers. “If we wanted to drive [operating ratio] lower over time, we could,” the board wrote in a letter to shareholders in late 2021.

☆ Apple awkwardly pushes into buy-now-pay-later
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

NEW YORK, March 29 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Apple (AAPL.O) is late to the buy-now-pay-later party. If anyone can help validate the product, it’s Apple, but times are considerably tougher. Apple will be well-versed in these risks, but a bigger crackdown is probably coming. What’s more, shifting consumer sentiment and a cooling economy could hurt demand and increase the risk of bad loans. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.

☆ SVB sale puts too-big-to-fail risk in a new bottle
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-28 | by ( John Foley | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

The sale of SVB to rival First Citizens Bancshares (FCNCA.O) addresses the first part, and doubles down on the second. First Citizens snapped up $110 billion of SVB’s assets over the weekend, at a generous $16.5 billion discount to book value. And for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, which is handling SVB’s sale, First Citizens chief Frank Holding is a known quantity. In SVB’s case, the FDIC has agreed to absorb some potential losses in the failed bank’s loan book. The FDIC expects its fund for managing failed banks will take a $20 billion hit.

☆ Powell is leader of the free world – for now
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-28 | by ( Lauren Silva Laughlin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +8 min

As former President Donald Trump will attest, Powell will do what he thinks it’s right. This month, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, a left-wing firebrand, went on TV and called Powell a “dangerous man,” saying she doesn’t think that he should be Fed Chair. CNN television host Jake Tapper asked her if she had told Biden that Powell should be fired. Then Trump called Powell “a golfer who can’t putt, has no touch.” Trump wanted economic growth. Powell resisted and later responded saying that the Fed chair, more than anyone else, needs to be free from political pressures.

☆ Starbucks pours weak tea on virtual union talks
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-28 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

NEW YORK, March 28 (Reuters Breakingviews) - After more than a decade of infusing its coffee with technology, Starbucks (SBUX.O) is putting a lid on one aspect of the digital transition. The $113 billion Frappuccino maker wants to negotiate with unions in person rather than allowing members to join talks by videoconference. Mobile orders accounted for about a quarter of transactions at U.S. stores in the latest quarter. Starbucks also became one of the first big companies to hold a virtual shareholder meeting after the pandemic struck and it hosted the annual event online again last week. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.

☆ Busting through the brick wall barricading M&A: podcast
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-28 | by ( Jeffrey Goldfarb | ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

NEW ORLEANS, March 28 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Worldwide merger activity is down by about half this year to $470 bln, stymied by tough financing conditions, assertive trustbusters and more. In this Exchange podcast from New Orleans, JPMorgan’s head of M&A Anu Aiyengar debates downbeat dealmakers and the pockets of optimism. Listen to the podcastFollow @jgfarb on TwitterSubscribe to Breakingviews’ podcasts, Viewsroom and The Exchange. Editing by Sharon Lam and Thomas ShumOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.

☆ Musk’s Twitter markdown falls short of the mark
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-27 | by ( Lauren Silva Laughlin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

The billionaire owner of Twitter has offered stock grants to the social media app’s shrunken staff at a valuation of about $20 billion, less than half the price he paid in October. In fact, based on Twitter’s operating performance, the effects of leverage and public market comparisons, the equity is probably worthless. Net out $13 billion of debt, as of January, and equity holders are left with just over $20 billion, or about the figure reported over the weekend by The Information. First, Twitter wasn’t generating consistent earnings before Musk bought it, and so it’s hard to believe it’s doing so now. Back out the debt and the equity is less than zero, assuming their cash position hasn’t meaningfully changed.

A version that was leaked earlier this year showed that Brussels was preparing to shorten an additional period of intellectual property protection, known as data exclusivity, which comes on top of drug patent protection. "The duration of data exclusivity, which may be reduced, could actually have a catastrophic impact for Europe," he said. He said the intentions of Brussels lawmakers - improving patient access to innovative drugs while making the European pharma sector more competitive - were noble but any shortening of intellectual property protection would have the opposite effect. Bayer shares lag'HIGHLY ATTRACTIVE'In the United States, a different set of drug market rule changes are underway, with some of the highest-selling products set to see negotiated price discounts under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Among the biggest drivers was the company's decision to prepare a U.S. launch of its next-generation stroke prevention drug asundexian on its own.

☆ Bitcoin is a solution looking for a problem
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-24 | by ( Anita Ramaswamy | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Since his Miami proclamations, bitcoin’s price has fallen by nearly 40%, though in the last few weeks after Silicon Valley Bank’s failure it has had a resurgence. At first glance, his prediction seems wildly optimistic but directionally reasonable – bitcoin has surged by over 35% since SVB’s collapse on March 10. What’s more, bitcoin may never have surpassed $60,000 to reach its highest-ever price level in 2021 had the Fed not kept interest rates consistently low. It’s the prospect of lower rates – not the lack of government stability – that is opening the door to riskier bets like those on bitcoin. Gold is a tangible asset, unlike bitcoin, and that’s precisely what makes it an inflation hedge.

☆ It’s the Most Thankless Job in Banking. Silicon Valley Bank Didn’t Fill It for Months.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( Ben Cohen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

James Lam had just been hired by a new financial division of GE Capital when he walked into his boss’s office with a problem: He was ordering business cards and had no idea what to put on them. Since his position didn’t really exist, it also didn’t have a title, so he was given permission to invent one. He called himself a chief risk officer. Thirty years later, as he followed the spectacular implosion of Silicon Valley Bank, there were few people more qualified than Mr. Lam to ask two simple questions.

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