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The Morning Ledger: As Fed Hits Pause, Some Firms Rush to Sell Bonds |
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Altria Group, part-owner of vaping startup Juul Labs, recently sold $11.5 billion in bonds. PHOTO: GABBY JONES/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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Good day. Signs that the U.S. Federal Reserve may be done with its yearslong campaign to raise interest rates are sending ripples through fixed-income markets, holding down interest rates for a wide swath of borrowers.
Green light. Seizing on the buoyant tone of the market, blue chip companies AT&T Inc. and Boeing Co. sold a combined $6.5 billion of bonds Wednesday. That followed an $11.5 billion sale from Altria Group Inc. Tuesday and a $15.5 billion bond-sale from Anheuser-Busch InBev SA in January.
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Lower borrowing costs. The average extra yield, or spread, that investors demand to hold investment-grade corporate bonds has dropped 0.32 percentage points since its peak on Jan. 3—retracing about 60% of its widening in the last three months of the year. Speculative-grade bonds have received an extra boost as investors have shifted money out of junk-rated loans, the coupons of which rise and fall with Fed-dictated interest rates.
Steady as she goes. Taken together, recent moves show investors believe that the Fed is done raising rates and that its shift to a more market-friendly posture can propel the economic expansion into a second decade even as concerns persist about slowing global growth and geopolitical tensions.
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Mastercard’s New CFO to Juggle Growth Amid Industry Shift |
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Purchase, N.Y.-based Mastercard announced on Wednesday that its current chief financial officer, Martina Hund-Mejean, will retire after more than a decade in the role. The 58-year-old, German-born executive will be replaced by Chief Financial Operations Officer Sachin Mehra on April 1, CFO Journal’s Nina Trentmann reports.
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SurveyMonkey CFO Plans to Depart |
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SVMK Inc., the parent company of online-questionnaire provider SurveyMonkey, said Timothy Maly, who has overseen the company’s finances and operations for a decade, has decided to leave, CFO Journal’s Ezequiel Minaya reports.
Mr. Maly, who has served as both chief financial officer and chief operations officer since May 2009, helped guide the company amid a period of rapid chief executive turnover and was among the executives that took SVMK public last year.
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The U.S. Labor Department will publish its producer price index for January at 8:30 a.m. ET. Economists surveyed by the WSJ predict business inflation ticked up 0.1% last month, compared with a 0.2% decline in December.
U.S. retail sales for December, also due out at 8:30 a.m. ET, are expected to have ticked up 0.1%.
The Coca-Cola Co., Kraft Heinz Co., CME Group Inc., Duke Energy Corp., Zoetis Inc., Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc., Charles Schwab Corp., CBS Corp. and Nvidia Corp. are among the companies scheduled to report earnings today.
The WSJ's Asa Fitch has three things to watch in Nvidia's results.
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Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company is investing $13 billion this year in data centers and offices across the U.S. PHOTO: DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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Alphabet Inc.'s Google is planning to spend $13 billion this year on data centers and offices across the U.S., Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said.
The turnaround of General Electric Co. depends on the revival of its core power business, a reversal that will require Chief Executive Larry Culp to churn through a $92 billion sales backlog marred by lousy projects.
Jeans maker Levi Strauss & Co. filed for an initial public offering, potentially returning the company’s shares to public markets after a leveraged buyout more than 30 years ago.
Airbus SE pulled the plug on its poorly selling A380 superjumbo, a rival to Boeing Co.’s 747, as airlines flock to smaller, nimbler long-range planes.
American International Group Inc.’s fourth-quarter loss narrowed as the insurance conglomerate benefited from the absence of a year-earlier tax adjustment, the company said.
Washington’s campaign to get some of its closest European allies to give up telecommunications gear made by Chinese companies has been a tough sell.
Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon unit has reached a deal to buy medical-technology company Auris Health Inc. for about $3.4 billion in cash.
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An Apple store in Grand Central terminal in New York. PHOTO: JUSTIN LANE/SHUTTERSTOCK
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A former Apple Inc. senior lawyer has been accused by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission of exploiting his position to illegally trade shares in the company ahead of Apple’s financial reports, according to court documents.
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Apple said it would make some older iPhone models available for sale again in Germany, two months after it had removed the models because a court ruled that the smartphone maker had infringed on a patent by Qualcomm Inc.
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The European Union agreed on a new copyright law aimed at reining in tech giants and throwing a lifeline to news publishers.
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Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu LLC agreed Wednesday to pay $2 million to settle allegations that it issued audit reports for audit client Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. when dozens of its employees also maintained bank accounts at the bank’s subsidiary, reports MarketWatch.com.
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U.S. regulators rejected Options Clearing Corp.’s plan to boost cash reserves, dealing a blow to what had been one of the clearing firm’s key initiatives since the financial crisis.
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T-Mobile US Inc. Chief Executive John Legere and Sprint Corp. Executive Chairman Marcelo Claure defended their planned merger against new attacks from labor groups and advocates for rural wireless customers who said the tie-up would hurt consumers.
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Congress is wrangling with the trade pact agreed to by former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, left, President Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
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A sharp divide between Democrats and the Trump administration over how to enforce trade rules is threatening to delay or derail a congressional vote on a new version of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
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U.S. federal tax revenue declined 0.4% in 2018, the first full calendar year under the new tax law, despite robust economic growth and the lowest unemployment rate in nearly five decades.
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U.S. consumer prices were flat at the beginning of the year for the third month in a row, a sign volatile oil prices are helping hold down inflation.
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China’s exports surprisingly accelerated last month, suggesting a pickup in global demand for Chinese goods after a drop-off late last year.
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In the past decade, Puerto Rico has lost roughly half a million people as its economy deteriorated, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates. Nearly 160,000 residents relocated to the mainland in search for work.
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Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LLC, a joint-venture of Chevron Corp. and Phillips 66, on Wednesday named Carolyn Burke its chief financial officer, effective immediately.
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She succeeds Tim Leveille who has been CFO since March 2012. Ms. Burke comes from independent power producer Dynegy Inc., which announced plans to merge with Vistra Energy Corp. in 2017. At Dynegy, Ms. Burke held the position of executive vice president, strategy and administration. She had previous stints at JPMorgan Chase & Co. and NRG Energy Inc. Compensation details weren't released.
Daimler AG, the German car manufacturer, on Wednesday appointed Harald Wilhelm as chief financial officer, effective May 22. Mr. Wilhelm joins Daimler on April 1 and will take over from current finance chief Bodo Uebber at the company's annual shareholders' meeting on May 22.
Mr. Wilhelm is currently CFO at European plane maker Airbus SE, a role that he took on in July 2012. Daimler announced in October that Mr. Uebber would retire. He has been CFO since December 2004. Compensation details weren't released.
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