Morning Brief: Top Financial Stories Dominating on Friday, June 10

Reuters

Rebranded McDonald’s Restaurants To Reopen In Russia

• Russia’s fast-food scene is in for a huge overhaul as former McDonald’s Corp MCD restaurants are set to reopen under new branding and ownership.
• The fast-food restaurant chain was opened about three decades ago in early 1990.

US Top Court To Decide On Bayer’s Roundup Weedkiller Appeal

• The U.S. Supreme Court will likely reveal its decision over offering a clean chit to Bayer A.G.’s BAYZF Roundup weedkiller.
• Bayer sought the review of an appeals court that sustained $25 million in damages awarded to a user of glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup, who blamed his cancer on the product.
• Bayer urged the Court to determine federal approval of Roundup’s product label by the Environmental Protection Agency as it challenged the lawsuit’s viability under California’s state law.

Wall Street Journal

Facebook Appears To Migrate Investments From News To Better Compete With TikTok

• News organizations stand to lose revenue worth tens of millions of dollars as Meta Platforms, Inc’s META Facebook reassessed its commitment to paying for news.
• In 2019, Facebook agreed to three-year deals with multiple publishers, which were due for renewal in 2022.
• Facebook paid average annual fees of over $15 million to the Washington Post, just above $20 million to the New York Times, and more than $10 million to The Wall Street Journal.

Cryptocurrency Companies Reduce Hiring In Response To Market Downturn

• Coinbase Global Inc COIN revoked employment offers to people who accepted them and announced a slowing of its hiring pace in recent weeks. Another cryptocurrency exchange, Gemini Trust Co., lost 10% of its workforce, citing the effects of the market downturn.
• In response to the ongoing crypto price collapse, cryptocurrency firms have slowed their spending frenzy.

Bloomberg

Disney To Fight It Out With Asia’s Richest Man For IPL Rights As Amazon Said To Bow Out

• Amazon, Inc. AMZN is reportedly planning to drop off the race for rights to stream the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket matches.
• Amazon Backing Out? The e-commerce retailer’s Prime Video streaming platform, which has already invested about $6 billion in India, is unwilling to cough up another $7.7 billion — the estimated cost of securing rights to the biggest cricketing bonanza for a multi-year period from 2023 to 2027 — Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
• The development comes as a surprise as Amazon was widely touted as the frontrunner in the race. The IPL is a multi-week cricket tournament played in April and May annually and attracts huge viewership in a cricket-crazy country with a population of about 1.4 billion people.

Chanel Owners Pocket $5B Windfall On Post-Pandemic Boom

• French luxury fashion brand Chanel’s owners raked in a $5 billion windfall in 2021.
• Citing the U.K. filings, the report noted Wertheimer family, which owns the brand, got two $2.5 billion dividends in 2021 through their Cayman Islands-based holding company.
• The surge in the global demand for Chanel’s products shot the owner’s fortunes to new highs.

Analysts Tout This Apple Supplier’s $100B Meltdown As Buying Opportunity - Read Why

• Analysts do not seem worried about Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd’s TSM share slump that wiped off $100 billion in value, Bloomberg reports.
• Analysts see the stock as a screaming buy. According to Bloomberg’s analyst compilation, TSMC shares will likely climb ~50% to a record high in 12 months as macro headwinds ease and investors focus on the company’s fundamentals.
• TSMC dominates the global technology supply chain as the most advanced maker of chips for giants from Apple Inc AAPL to Nvidia Corp NVDA.

Benzinga

Fear Of Recession Is Creating A Recession: Apple Analyst Puts Out Theory

• The economy has given enough reasons for investors to fret. With higher inflation and slower growth portending further trouble ahead, noted Apple, Inc. AAPL analyst Gene Munster delved into how the economic picture will shape up in the near term.
• Recession Fear Building Up: The C-suite is looking to trim management jobs for the first time in a few years, the Loup Funds Managing Partner said, citing a recruiter working with Fortune 500 companies.
• The analyst said he thinks fear is building among management teams about a potential slowdown.

Tesla Calls Off Online Hiring Drives In China After Elon Musk’s Job Warning

• Tesla Inc TSLA has called off three online recruitment events in China that were scheduled to take place this month, Reuters reported on Friday, citing notifications on social messaging app WeChat.
• Elon Musk-led Tesla canceled the events saying it was “overstaffed” in some areas.
• The three events were scheduled to take place on June 16, 23, and 30 to hire talent for positions in sales, R&D and Tesla’s supply chain.

GSK Shows Positive Pivotal Phase III Data For Its RSV Vaccine Candidate

• GSK plc GSK intends to engage with regulators immediately after reporting positive headline results from a pre-specified efficacy interim analysis of the AReSVi 006 phase III trial, it anticipates regulatory submissions in the second half of 2022.
• AReSVi 006 is a phase III trial investigating GSK’s respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine candidate for adults aged 60 years and above.
• An Independent Data Monitoring Committee reviewed the interim analysis, and the primary endpoint was exceeded with no unexpected safety concerns observed.

SEC Launches Probe On Ericsson Over Its Iraq Connection

• The U.S. SEC intimated Ericsson ERIC regarding its launch of an investigation on the company concerning the matters described in the company’s 2019 Iraq investigation report.
• Ericsson said it cooperated with the authorities regarding their review and investigation of its conduct in Iraq.
• Previously CEO Borje Ekholm’ disclosed that Ericsson may have made payments to the ISIS terror organization to gain access to specific transport routes in Iraq.

Mastercard Brings Payments Network To NFTs And Web3

• Payments giant Mastercard Inc MA is opening up its payments network to NFTs and Web3.
• In an announcement on Thursday, the company said it was working with a number of NFT marketplaces and web3 infrastructure providers to make the process of buying NFTs easier and safer.
• “For NFT creators, these changes grow their potential customer base to millions more people all over the world,” said Raj Dhamodharan, the head of digital asset and blockchain products at Mastercard.

Alibaba Cracks After Jack Ma’s Ant Group Denies IPO Plans

• The shares of Alibaba Group Holdings BABA cracked after its financial affiliate Ant Group refuted media reports claiming that Beijing had formed a team to reassess Ant’s stalled initial public offering.
• Billionaire Jack Ma controlled Ant Group in a statement that said that it currently has no plans for the IPO.
• “Under the guidance of regulators, we are focused on steadily moving forward with our rectification work and do not have any plan to initiate an IPO,” it said in a statement.

NASA To Study UFOs And Let You Know What It Finds

• NASA is commissioning a study on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, known in common parlance as Unidentified Flying Objects or UFOs.
• What Happened: The federal agency’s study team will begin examining the phenomena in early fall from a scientific perspective, according to a statement on Thursday.
• NASA said that given the “limited number” of UFO sightings, it is difficult to draw scientific conclusions about their nature.

Apple Retail Chain Once Owned By GameStop To Shut Down

• Apple Inc AAPL authorized retailer and service provider Simply Mac is reportedly ending operations and letting go of all its employees.
• Simply Mac CEO Rein Voigt mentioned the COVID-19 pandemic in a letter to employees as a reason for setbacks suffered by the retailer, Appleinsider reported.
• “We could not have possibly foreseen that on December 12, 2019, in Wuhan, China, a worldwide pandemic would start and ultimately cause us to lay off half our workforce and close many of our stores,” said Voigt.

Fidelity CEO Says Bear Market Is The Time To Go ‘Extra Hard’ Into Crypto

• Fidelity Investments CEO and Chairman Abigail Johnson is unfazed by the downturn in the cryptocurrency market, reported CoinDesk on Thursday.
• Speaking at Consensus 2022, Johnson revealed that the current bear market is her “third crypto winter.”
• “There’s been plenty of ups and downs, but I see that as an opportunity.”

Twitter Will Soon Alert You About New Product Drops: How It Works

• Twitter Inc TWTR says it is launching a new feature that will send notifications when sellers drop new products.
• “Product Drops” was announced by the Jack Dorsey-founded company in a blog post on Wednesday.
• Twitter said when a merchant tweets about an upcoming launch, its users will see a “remind me” button at the bottom of the tweet, which will set up an alert once the product is available for sale.

What’s Next For Nio: 4 Things The Chinese Automaker Is Planning

• Nio Inc - ADR NIO shares are down more than 4% in reaction to the weak guidance issued by the company for the second quarter.
• Softer guidance does not come as a surprise, as production was stalled for about three weeks in April, the first month of the quarter, due to the COVID-19 lockdowns in China.
• Even after the restart of production, the ramp-up has been slow and steady. Nio is optimistic about the way forward.

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