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The Morning Risk Report: Gillette’s Ad With a #MeToo Edge Gets Mixed Reactions |
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Gillette's new ad puts a new spin on the brand’s 30-year slogan “The Best a Man Can Get.” PHOTO: PROCTER & GAMBLE CO.
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Good day. The new ad campaign invoking the #MeToo movement from Procter & Gamble Co.’s Gillette is the latest test of how big consumer brands can navigate social movements to appeal to millennials without turning off customers who don’t agree with their message or don’t believe it is well-executed.
The nearly two-minute ad, which plays on the tagline Gillette has used for three decades, “The Best A Man Can Get,” has been viewed about 18 million times on YouTube. Reaction has been divided: with 901,000 dislikes on YouTube and 468,000 likes as of Thursday afternoon.
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In the first three days of the ad’s release, there were more than 1.6 million mentions of Gillette on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, as well as blogs, forums and news sites, according to data from Brandwatch, a social-media monitoring company. Actor James Woods and talk-show host Piers Morgan have lashed out against Gillette on Twitter over the ad and vowed not to use their products again.
The controversy comes as Gillette, which accounts for more than half of the U.S. men’s razor business, competes for market share with Edgewell Personal Care Co.’s Schick and upstarts like Harry’s, Unilever N.V.’s Dollar Shave Club and other smaller brands. The hair-removal category in the U.S., which includes blades and razors for men and women, is a $4 billion market, according to Nielsen data.
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The Morning Risk Report will not be published Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We will resume publication on Tuesday.
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House Vote Doesn’t Stop Treasury Sanctions-Removal Plan |
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The House of Representatives passed a resolution Thursday seeking to block a Trump administration plan to lift sanctions on three companies controlled by a Russian oligarch.
But the 362-53 vote, which included 136 Republicans crossing to vote with Democrats, was largely symbolic because the Senate failed to pass a similar measure earlier this week.
The sanctions, on aluminum giant United Co. Rusal, its holding company EN+ Group PLC and energy company JSC EuroSibEnergo, are set to come off Friday. They were targeted because they are owned by Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire with ties to President Vladimir Putin.
The U.S. Treasury Department struck a deal last month with the companies that cuts Mr. Deripaska’s ownership stakes and severs his control, among other things. After the vote on Thursday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer asked the Treasury to delay the removals, requesting more time to review the agreement.
—Samuel Rubenfeld
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Black paint is piped into tins on a PPG Industries production line in Amsterdam in 2017. The company said it faces a federal probe into 2017 accounting practices. PHOTO: JASPER JUINEN/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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PPG Industries Inc. on Thursday said federal prosecutors are investigating accounting irregularities at the company, ratcheting up pressure on the paint giant that is also facing a push by an activist investor to break itself apart. PPG said U.S. attorneys are looking into the same improper accounting practices from 2017 into which the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission opened a probe last June.
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Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, a Wall Street law firm caught up in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, has agreed to turn over $4.6 million it made from work it did for Ukraine in 2012 with ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, according to an agreement with the Justice Department released Thursday.
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Malaysia’s finance minister waved off an apology from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive David Solomon for the role of one its then-bankers in the scandal surrounding state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd., saying it wasn’t enough. Lim Guan Eng said Friday that the only apology that would matter is one that comes with full reimbursement and reparations for the $6.5 billion the 1MDB fund raised with the investment bank’s help. Prosecutors say much of the money was later siphoned off, with several hundred million dollars going to the personal accounts of then-leader Najib Razak.
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A Franco-German rail merger that has been hanging in the balance for months appeared to be on the verge of collapse Thursday after people close to the talks said antitrust regulators and the companies behind the deal had reached an impasse in talks. The European Commission was expected to block the merger between the train-making operations of France’s Alstom SA and Germany’s Siemens AG if there aren’t fresh concessions by the companies to allay its concerns that the deal would harm competition, European officials said.
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China’s state-run energy giant is making a new approach to clinch a $3 billion deal for more development of an Iranian oil field, seeking to take advantage of waivers allowed under U.S. sanctions as two European nations have ended crude purchases, according to people familiar with the matter.
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A U.S. effort to enlist Europe in its pressure campaign against Iran faced a setback after officials said ministers from several European Union members will likely skip a summit organized by Washington on Iran and the Middle East.
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Germany is considering banning the use of Huawei products. The Chinese technology company, shown at an exhibition booth during the Mobile World Congress in Shanghai in 2018, has long been under scrutiny by the U.S. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Germany is exploring ways to ban the use of Huawei Technologies Co. products in the country’s telecommunications infrastructure, according to a government official, extending the Western backlash against the Chinese tech firm over security concerns.
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At a command center near the airport here, executives from automotive supplier Aptiv PLC showed why deploying robot cars will be far more complicated than many envisioned just a few years ago.
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Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at a technology summit in Paris in May 2018. PHOTO: CHARLES PLATIAU/REUTERS
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Facebook Inc. said early Thursday that it had removed pages and accounts linked to what it said were two Russia-based misinformation campaigns, the latest step in the social-media company’s effort to prevent misuse of its service.
Amazon.com Inc. spent more than $13.6 billion on technology in 2018, making it the biggest corporate IT spender in the world, according to new research from International Data Corp. Google parent Alphabet Inc. and Walmart Inc. were in second and third place, respectively, with each spending nearly $12 billion last year on software, hardware, services, telecommunications equipment and staff, IDC says.
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Les Moonves was forced out of CBS in September. PHOTO: PATRICK FALLON/ZUMA PRESS
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Former CBS Corp. head Leslie Moonves is challenging the company’s decision to deny him a $120 million severance package, CBS said, a move that will prolong a monthslong drama at the media conglomerate. Mr. Moonves was denied his severance after a board investigation concluded that he violated company policies, breached his employment contract and failed to fully cooperate with the investigation.
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Former Nissan Motor Co. chairman Carlos Ghosn is set to stay in jail at least until March after the Tokyo District Court upheld its earlier decision to deny his release on bail.
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Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors Corp. said Friday that Mr. Ghosn received what they described as improper payments totaling €7.8 million ($8.9 million) from a Netherlands entity owned by the two companies.
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JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive James Dimon received a compensation package valued at $31 million in 2018, up 5% from $29.5 million in 2017, according to a Thursday securities filling. His pay exceeds his record compensation of $30 million in 2007 before the financial crisis.
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Across the U.S., beer sales volume slipped 1.5% in 2018, compared with a 1.1% decline in 2017. The beer taps at Two Cranes Bistro & Brew in Albuquerque, N.M. PHOTO: JIM THOMPSON/ZUMA PRESS
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The investment firm run by Byron D. Trott is buying a minority stake in WhistlePig, a distiller of high-end whiskeys, the latest sign of the spirit’s grip on American’s tastes and wallets. The move comes as new data show that U.S. alcohol volumes dropped 0.8% last year, prompting the world’s biggest brewers and liquor companies to push beyond their traditional fare and roll out teas, energy drinks and nonalcoholic spirits.
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Johnson & Johnson said Thursday that it has joined with Apple Inc. on a research study that will test the Apple Watch’s ability to help detect early irregular heart conditions in certain people before something life-threatening happens.
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Sears Holdings Corp.’s creditors are balking at the retailer’s proposed sale to Edward Lampert, its former chief executive and would-be rescuer, accusing the hedge-fund manager of stripping Sears of its best assets before dumping the chain into bankruptcy and reacquiring it on the cheap.
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Drugmakers have sharply boosted prices of some older, low-cost prescription medicines amid supply shortages and recalls—in some cases, by threefold and more.
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Helios & Matheson Analytics Inc., the parent company of MoviePass, wants to spin off the struggling movie-theater subscription service. It said Thursday it formed a new entity that would take possession of its shares in the MoviePass business, as well as other film assets Helios holds, as a prelude to letting that entity trade on its own.
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To protect his latest investment, Ellia Kassoff, who owns Hydrox, claims market leader Oreo and its owner Mondelez International Inc. pushed aside his product on supermarket shelves.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk at the groundbreaking ceremony of a Tesla plant in Shanghai. PHOTO: XINHUA/ZUMA PRESS
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Tesla Inc. is cutting its full-time workforce by 7% as part of an effort to lower costs so the company can sell the Model 3 sedan at a lower price, Chief Executive Elon Musk told employees Friday. “Tesla will need to make these cuts while increasing the Model 3 production rate and making many manufacturing engineering improvements in the coming months,” Mr. Musk told employees in a memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
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Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s NetJets reached a new agreement with its pilots union that increases pay for pilots and extends their contract another three years. The private-jet company and its largest union said the agreement marks how far labor relations at the company have come since 2015, when contentious negotiations led pilots to protest publicly and drew investors’ attention. The high-profile labor unrest was unusual for a Berkshire company.
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British Prime Minister Theresa May’s failure to get U.K. parliamentary approval for a deal to split the country from the European Union adds significant pressure on companies as they plan for the now greater possibility of an abrupt and disorderly exit. With the deadline just weeks away, many big companies find themselves making contingency plans for disaster.
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