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Opening Bell: 10.9.18

IMF getting bearish on the world; Google says "oopsie"; Hard Brexit will blow back on Germans; Cold pizza protest; and more!
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By MEDEF [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

By MEDEF [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Stocks Retreat as Treasury Yield Hits 7-Year High: Markets Wrap [Bloomberg]
As the yield touched 3.25 percent, both the S&P 500 and the Stoxx Europe 600 Index looked poised for a fourth day of declines. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index notched a seventh straight drop, even as stocks in Shanghai rose following their biggest selloff in more than three months. The yuan gained in onshore trading after sliding a day earlier -- a move that has prompted concern within the American administration. Japanese stocks slumped.

IMF cuts its global growth forecasts, citing trade tensions between the US and its trading partners [CNBC]
The IMF said the global economy is now expected to grow at 3.7 percent this year and next year — down 0.2 percentage points from an earlier forecast, according to the fund's latest World Economic Outlook report released on Tuesday.
The report — published twice a year in April and October — is widely read by both public and private sectors globally for the IMF's assessment of the world economy. The latest edition was released as thousands of finance officials and professionals gather in Bali, Indonesia, for the IMF and World Bank annual meetings.

Google Plus Will Be Shut Down After User Information Was Exposed [NYT]
Google did not tell its users about the security issue when it was found in March because it didn’t appear that anyone had gained access to user information, and the company’s “Privacy & Data Protection Office” decided it was not legally required to report it, the search giant said in a blog post.
The decision to stay quiet, which raised eyebrows in the cybersecurity community, comes against the backdrop of relatively new rules in California and Europe that govern when a company must disclose a security episode.

US threatens to block trade talks with China at G20 [FT]
US officials have warned China that Donald Trump will not engage in trade talks with Xi Jinping at next month’s G20 summit if Beijing does not produce a detailed list of concessions, according to two people briefed on negotiations between the countries.
The Chinese, however, say they have such a list but would not present it without some guarantee of it being received in a stable political climate in Washington, including a point person with a mandate to negotiate on behalf of the Trump administration, according to the two people.
US officials have been frustrated by what they see as Beijing’s unwillingness to discuss substantive “structural issues” related to its economic and trade policies. Beijing has been similarly irritated by the erratic approach of the Trump administration, and the inability of US cabinet officials to negotiate binding deals.

Saudi Arabia Still Dreams of Taking Its Oil Company Public [DealBook]
For now, Saudi Aramco will remain private. And while the kingdom has turned to a patchwork of other solutions to replace the proceeds from the stock sale, its ambitions may have to wait.
“In the gulf, there’s a history of a head of state making some dramatic pronouncement that gets a lot of coverage in the press, then quietly rolling it back in months or years,” said Jim Krane, a fellow at the Baker Institute at Rice University.
Referring to Prince Mohammed, he added, “I think he got ahead of himself.”

German firms would face billions in extra tariffs in hard Brexit: study [Reuters]
A hard Brexit would cause huge difficulties for tens of thousands of companies in Europe and hundreds of thousands of employees in Britain and the European Union, Lang said.
He noted that many companies were preparing for a hard Brexit and some wanted to suspend production in Britain from April as delivery routes could not be secured and some were moving their headquarters from Britain, adjusting their legal frameworks and looking for new transport routes.
Lang said there was no overall figure for how much companies had spent on preparing for Brexit but some individual pharmaceutical and chemical companies had spent up to 100 million pounds ($130 million) preparing for Brexit.

Trian Considers a Takeover Bid for Papa John’s [WSJ]
The activist hedge fund recently contacted the pizza chain to collect information as it explores a possible bid, the people said. Trian is one of several parties to express interest since Papa John’s put itself up for sale amid an acrimonious fight with its founder, John Schnatter, who remains on the board and owns nearly 30% of the company’s shares.
There is no guarantee that Trian will make an offer or that Papa John’s will ultimately be sold. There are several other potential bidders, some people familiar with the situation added, including companies and private-equity firms.

Police called to Domino's after family stage sit-in protest in row over cold pizza [Mirror]
"She said if I wasn't happy to ring customer services the next day as there was nothing else she could do.
"So we took our kids and the cold food back to the Barnwood store where it was delivered from.
"We walked in and my husband dropped the boxes on the counter and the manager refused to speak to us."
Ms James filmed what was going on and spent the next 90 minutes waiting around for a replacement or a refund of £21.16, with her 10-year-old daughter.
But nothing was forthcoming from the manager.
"Every now and again she would come over and tell us to wait or leave then ignore us," added the mum-of-two.
"Then at 11pm she told us to leave else she would press the panic button. I said if she gave us a refund or a replacement that we have been waiting for then we would leave.

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IMF Sees ‘Alarmingly High’ Risk of Deeper Global Slump (Bloomberg) The world economy will grow 3.3 percent this year, the slowest since the 2009 recession, and 3.6 percent next year, the IMF said today, compared with July predictions of 3.5 percent in 2012 and 3.9 percent in 2013. The Washington-based lender now sees “alarmingly high” risks of a steeper slowdown, with a one-in-six chance of growth slipping below 2 percent. Depositors Turn Up Heat On Ailing Spanish Banks (WSJ) Eugenio Nuñez Cobás stormed into a bank branch in this coastal town one morning in August with three dozen fellow customers yelling "Thieves! Thieves! Thieves!" Then they returned to the street and pelted the facade with eggs, forcing the branch to close for the day. 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She went to Stanford as an undergrad, switching from pre-med to an esoteric major called “symbolic systems,” which is a mixture of philosophy, brain science, and artificial intelligence (anybody anywhere can do pre-med, she thought), and then continued on, getting an advanced degree in computer science. She entered the job market in the spring of 1999, at the height of the dot-com boom, and got more than a dozen offers—from several dot-coms, including Google (she interviewed with Page and Sergey Brin at a Ping-Pong table), and one from McKinsey & Co. “I like to do matrices,” she told NPR. “One option per line, different facets for each column. Salary, location, happiness index, failure index, and all that.” That spring, her matrix pointed her toward Google. “To my credit, I actually gave Google a hundred times more likely chance of succeeding than any of the other start-ups [from which she got offers], because I gave them a 2 percent chance of success. I gave all the other start-ups a .02 percent chance of success.” A Beacon For DC, By Ben Bernanke (WSJ) People decry the absence of leadership in Washington these days. My response: Look no further than the home-team dugout at Nationals Park. Under Manager Davey Johnson's confident, laid-back leadership, the Washington Nationals, defying all preseason conventional wisdom, have claimed the 2012 championship of the National League Eastern Division and the best regular-season record in Major League Baseball...Davey, who earned a degree in mathematics from Trinity University, is the epitome of the head-and-heart consensus. He was an early proponent of the use of statistical analysis in baseball decision-making, and it is clear in his tactical management of games that he is very conversant with sabermetric principles. He well understands, for instance, how to use statistics in determining lineups and pitcher-hitter matchups. 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Banks Must Cut Deeper to Help Stock Prices, McKinsey Says (Bloomberg) Banks must make deeper and more sweeping cost reductions if they want to restore profitability levels that are acceptable to investors, McKinsey & Co. said in an annual review of the industry. “It has to go a lot further,” Toos Daruvala, a director in the consulting firm’s North American banking practice and a co-author of the report, said yesterday in a phone interview. “Banks have done quite a lot on cost-cutting but frankly the environment has deteriorated over the last year” because of economic weakness, he said. Argentina rejects Singer’s $20M in ransom for ship’s release (NYP) At a court hearing today in Ghana, where hedge fund manager Paul Singer’s lawyers are holding the ARA Libertad hostage, a lawyer for Argentina argued that Singer had no right to detain the ship because it’s a military vessel and immune from seizure. 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But this month he will likely receive a more lenient sentence than the 11-year-prison term given to Raj Rajaratnam, to whom Mr. Gupta provided his illegal leaks, legal experts say. The sentence may have reverberations beyond the 63-year-old Mr. Gupta, a former chief of consulting giant McKinsey & Co. It will be widely watched in executive suites nationwide because it will be among the first handed down to a major corporate figure in the recent insider-trading crackdown. Previous sentences have largely involved traders, lawyers, lower-rung corporate employees and others. Mr. Gupta, who was convicted in June of three counts of securities fraud relating to tips about Goldman and one count of conspiracy, didn't trade or profit directly from his illegal tips. Before the conviction, he had a long and stellar career in corporate America and philanthropy. 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Of the 20% of companies that manipulated their earnings to hit a target, Graham says, a surprising 40% did so to the downside, not the upside, to pad and improve future quarters' earnings. Banks Chasing Asian Millionaires Create Singapore’s Canary Wharf (Bloomberg) Singapore’s Marina Bay area is emerging as the city’s new financial hub, with banks including Standard Chartered Plc and Barclays taking bigger offices as they pursue Asia’s expanding ranks of millionaires. Corrections & Amplifications (WSJ via Lauren Tara LaCapra) "Annie Hubbard, the woman appearing alongside Goldman Sachs's chief financial officer, Harvey Schwartz, in a photograph with a page-one article about Goldman on Tuesday, was incorrectly identified as his wife. Mr. Schwartz isn't married." 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Somebody younger, faster, stronger,’” he said, clearly taking a jab at his ex-wife, who he was still married to at the time of the taping. “But my buddy, you know, him and his girl say, ‘Hey, you can do our laundry any time you want!’ Both of them are saying that,” he told Stern. “Finally after the person I was doing laundry with for millions and millions of years left, and all of a sudden there was nobody there to do laundry, I was depressed… I go to my buddy’s house and he says, ‘Hey man you can do this other person’s laundry that I’m partners with.’ I said, 'Sure.’” Official Warmth And Public Rage For A German Leader In Athens (NYT) ...even as Ms. Merkel said that she had come as a “good friend and a real partner,” not a “taskmaster or teacher to give grades,” the approximately 40,000 Greeks who took to the streets in protest (a rather modest number, by Greek standards) treated the visit as a provocation by the arch-nemesis in the euro crisis whose austerity medicine is obliterating the Greek middle class. 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At first, she said, Pakak totally dominated him, but no longer. “If Mit is resting with his head on my lap, sucking my fingers, looking sweetly into my eyes, and Pak comes anywhere near us, he pops up, yells at Pak and tries to head-butt him,” she said. “Then he’ll turn to me and be all cuddly again. We say he is small, but scrappy — the perfect New Yorker.”

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Opening Bell: 03.19.12

Goldman Sachs Board Must Act on Smith Op-Ed, Ex-Partner Writes (Bloomberg) Goldman Sachs directors must investigate a former employee’s allegations about a change in the firm’s culture, Jacki Zehner, who was a partner when she left the firm in 2002, wrote on her blog. “These are very serious accusations from a credible person in my view and I hope it does indeed provide a ‘wake-up’ call to the board of directors,” wrote Zehner, who was the first female trader promoted to partner and is married to a former partner. She is now CEO and president of Women Moving Millions, a non- profit supporting the advancement of women and girls worldwide. “It is the board that is accountable to shareholders and before they take another paycheck I hope they ask a heck of a lot of questions and get honest answers,” Zehner, 47, wrote in her March 16 commentary...Janet Tiebout Hanson, who left Goldman Sachs after almost 14 years in 1993 and in 1997 founded the women’s networking firm 85 Broads, wrote her own blog response to Smith’s op-ed piece, calling it a “cowardly act.” “By tossing a verbal hand grenade on his way out the door, he sullied the reputations of the vast majority of the people at the firm who work and live by the highest possible professional standards every single day,” wrote Hanson, who was the first woman at Goldman Sachs to be promoted into sales management. “He is just a quitter who never gave management an opportunity to respond before he verbally strafed the entire firm in print.” Is it Magic Johnson vs. Steve Cohen for Dodgers? 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Lagarde Says World Can’t Be Lulled Into Sense of Security (Bloomberg) nternational Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde urged policy makers to be vigilant as oil prices, debt levels, and the risk of slowing growth in emerging markets threaten global economic stability. “Optimism should not give us a sense of comfort or lull us into a false sense of security,” Lagarde said today at a speech in Beijing at the China Development Forum. “We cannot go back to business as usual.” Gupta’s Lawyer Says ‘Wrong Man’ on Trial in Insider Case (Bloomberg) Gupta’s lawyer, Gary Naftalis, said that Rajaratnam had a different Goldman Sachs tipper, who gave him confidential information about Intel Corp. and Apple, the lawyer said. That Goldman source was also caught on government wiretaps passing the inside information, Naftalis said. Where Was The Bracket Born? 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Godfrey said she couldn't find a copy of that program, but she did unearth a Xeroxed copy of the program from the following year, 1878. That program, issued by the "All England Croquet and Lawn-Tennis Club" announced the "Lawn Tennis Championship Meeting," which would be contested for a prize of 19 Guineas. Inside, on a full page, is a one-sided bracket with 34 names. To make the pairings add up correctly, a certain E.R. Seymour and a certain H.F. Lawford were awarded byes. To this day, Wimbledon's program includes a bracket of the tournament field. Apple To Say Monday How It Will Use Cash Hoard (NYT) Apple has finally decided what to do with its cash hoard of nearly $100 billion. The company issued an unusual media alert on Sunday evening saying it planned to announce on Monday morning the long-awaited outcome to a discussion by its board about what to do with its cash balance. It will announce its plans in a conference call at 9 a.m. Eastern time. Goldman's God Problem Goes Away, For Now (Reuters) For the past two years, a group of religious institutions that hold Goldman shares has asked the investment bank to review executive compensation packages and has been successful in getting its proposal taken up at regular shareholders' meetings. This year, the group, including the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, again sought to have its proposal voted on by shareholders. But for the first time, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sided with Goldman, which argued it had already complied with the request Scores Arrested as the Police Clear Zuccotti Park (City Room) The operation occurred after hundreds of people had gathered in the financial district to observe the founding of Occupy Wall Street six months ago. Earlier, protesters had embarked upon a winding march, after which police officers made initial arrests of about a dozen people near the park...Kobi Skolnick, 30, said that officers pushed him in several directions and that as he tried to walk away, he was struck from behind in the neck. “One of the police ran and hit me with a baton,” he said. Cambodia Embracing Capitalism With First IPO Since Khmer Rouge (Bloomberg) Enthusiasm about the start of trading at the exchange, which opened last July without a single listed company, extends beyond the borders of the Southeast Asian country. Investors including Templeton Emerging Markets Group Chairman Mark Mobius said they plan to participate in Cambodia’s stock market after state-owned Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority has its initial public offering next month. “The potential for investors in Cambodia is excellent,” Mobius, who oversees about $50 billion, wrote in an e-mail. “The listing of publicly traded stocks will drive up interest and demand. If a country can list its state-owned enterprises and list enough stocks so that foreign investors can get involved, then it can be very, very good.” E! Network Brings Clint Eastwood Clan (WSJ) Actor and director Clint Eastwood is about to add a credit to his nearly 60-year career: reality-television star. Mr. Eastwood; his wife, Dina; and two of his children, 18-year-old Francesca and 15-year-old Morgan, will appear in "Mrs. Eastwood & Co.," a reality series that tracks the family in Los Angeles, at their Carmel, Calif., home and beyond. The 10-episode series also will follow Overtone, a South African singing group that Mrs. Eastwood manages. The band appeared on the soundtrack of Mr. Eastwood's 2009 film "Invictus," which recounts Nelson Mandela's attempt to use rugby to help unify post-apartheid South Africa.

(Getty Images)
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