Benzinga Before The Bell: Elon Musk Confirms Tesla Cutting Workforce, Kellogg Splitting In 3 Companies And Other Top Financial Stories Tuesday, June 21

Reuters

Read Rolls Royce’s One-Of-Its-Kind Attempt To Beat Inflation

• Rolls Royce Holdings plc RYCEY doled out £2,000 ($2,458) to ~70% of its U.K. staff to beat the inflation in a first-of-its-kind move.
• The economy battled inflation and has aggravated by the labor crisis, supply chain disruptions, post-Brexit, and Ukraine crisis after an initial rebound from the pandemic.
• Rolls Royce looked to offer the sum to 11,000 shopfloor workers and 3,000 junior managers mainly based at its Derby and Bristol sites, BBC reports.
• Rolls-Royce also offered a 4% pay hike dated to March to 11,000 U.K. shopfloor workers.

Britain Comes To Standstill As Biggest Rail Strike In 3 Decades Begins

• Britain faces its biggest rail strike in 30 years. The strike began today, with tens of thousands of workers walking out in a pay and employment dispute, reported Reuters.
• This strike could pave the way for more widespread industrial action in the coming months.
• What happened: More than 40,000 rail workers scheduled to strike on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday gathered along picket lines from dawn. The London Underground metro was also mostly closed due to a separate strike.

Bloomberg

Tesla Sued By Former Workers Over Mass Layoffs: What You Need To Know

• Two former Tesla Inc TSLA employees have sued the electric vehicle company over not providing the required advance notice to lay off about 10% of its workforce, Bloomberg News reported on Monday, citing a lawsuit.
• The employees who were fired this month from Tesla’s battery factory near Reno, Nevada, allege Tesla did not comply with the 60-day notification requirement under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act.
• John Lynch and Daxton Hartsfield are among the 500 employees at the facility that were let go, as per the lawsuit filed late Sunday in Austin, Texas. Elon Musk Confirms Tesla Cutting Salaried Workforce By 10% Over Next 3 Months.

Financial Times

South Korea Imposes Travel Embargo On Terraform Labs Employees Pending Crypto Investigation

• South Korean prosecutors have banned Terraform Labs employees from leaving the country pending an investigation after its cryptocurrency’s $40 billion wipeout.
• Investors alleged that Terraform founders and the company duped investors with their flawed algorithmic coins.
• Around 15 people, including former project developers for the Anchor lending protocol, received travel restrictions.

Fairfax Financial Offloads Pet Insurance Operations To JAB Holdings For $1.4B

• Fairfax Financial Holdings will sell its global pet insurance operations to the Reimann family-owned private investment company, JAB Holding, for $1.4 billion.
• JAB, which aims to bolster its pet insurance portfolio with the deal, is known for investing in doughnut maker Krispy Kreme Inc DNUT.
• Fairfax, the Canadian investment company, will sell its interests in Crum & Forster Pet Insurance Group and Pethealth Inc to JAB’s pet insurance unit for $1.15 billion in cash and $250 million in seller notes.

Revlon’s Bankruptcy Proceedings Complicated By Citi’s $900M Loan Repayment Error

• Revlon Inc’s REV restructuring initiatives have got complicated due to a $900 million banking error by Citigroup Inc C.
• The cosmetics maker had filed for bankruptcy last week after being mired in debt.
• The report noted that in 2020 Citigroup had erroneously used its own money to repay a $900 million term loan it administered on behalf of Revlon that was held by multiple asset management groups.

Benzinga

Kellogg To Split Into Three Companies - All You Need To Know

• Kellogg Co K Board has approved a plan to separate its North American cereal and plant-based foods businesses through tax-free spin-offs. Those businesses collectively represented 20% of its net sales in 2021.
• The move is expected to result in three independent public companies, Global Snacking Co with $11.4 billion in net sales, North America Cereal Co with about $2.4 billion, and Plant Co with $340 million in sales.
• The three separate companies will focus on their distinct strategic priorities, have more operational flexibility and enable a more focused allocation of capital and resources.

Here’s Why Britain’s Regulatory Watchdog Is After Visa, Mastercard

• Britain looks to probe the card charges imposed by Visa Inc V and Mastercard Inc MA, focusing on the post-Brexit jump in processing fees and cross-border transaction levies.
• The regulator will conduct two reviews on the companies accounting for 99% of U.K. debit and credit card payments.
• Visa and Mastercard have increased these fees fivefold since Brexit.

Venture Global, EnBW Ink LNG Sales And Purchase Deals

• U.S. LNG export project developer Venture Global and German energy company EnBW have signed two long-term sales and purchase agreements for 1.5 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of LNG.
• The LNG will come from Venture Global’s Plaquemines and CP2 facilities, starting in 2026.
• According to the agreement, EnBW will purchase 0.75 mtpa from Plaquemines LNG and 0.75 mtpa from CP2 LNG for 20 years.

JetBlue Submits Improved Proposal For Spirit Airlines At $33.50/Share

• JetBlue Airways Corporation JBLU does not seem to back away, the airline submitted a decisively superior proposal to the Board of Directors of Spirit Airlines Incorporated SAVE for acquisition.
• The new, improved proposal is an update to JetBlue’s previous proposals (dated March 29, 2022, April 29, 2022, and June 6, 2022, respectively) and is structured to maximize value and certainty for Spirit and its stockholders.
• The improved proposal increased the price to $33.50 per Spirit share.

WeChat To Ban Accounts Engaged With Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin Or NFTs

• In a recent move to crackdown on the rising interest in cryptocurrency in China, Tencent Holdings Ltd TCEHY-owned social media platform WeChat has announced policies to ban accounts related to crypto or non-fungible tokens (NFT).
• According to recently updated policies of WeChat, the platform will either restrict or ban social accounts involved with the issuance, trading, and financing of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin BTC/USD, Ethereum ETH/USD, or Dogecoin DOGE/USD, and NFTs.
• The policy further added that such accounts would fall under the “illegal business” category since the country has imposed a blanket ban on digital currencies.

Oreo Owner Mondelez Buys Nutritious Energy Bar Maker Clif Bar

• Mondelez International Inc MDLZ has agreed to acquire energy bars manufacturing company Clif Bar & Company for $2.9 billion with additional contingent earnout consideration.
• The acquisition of on-trend brands CLIF, LUNA, and CLIF Kid expands MDLZ’s global snack bar business to more than $1 billion.
• Mondelez expects the transaction to be top-line accretive in year two and create cost synergies.

Dogecoin Gets 2nd Elon Musk Boost In A Row: Tesla CEO Says ‘Responding’ To People

• Dogecoin DOGE/USD traded 5.5% higher at $0.06 over 24 hours leading up to early Tuesday morning. DOGE rose along with other major coins as the global cryptocurrency market cap shot up 4.8% to $966 billion.
• The 24-hour trading volume for DOGE fell 41.2% to $527,398,037 according to data from CoinMarketCap,
• Coinglass data indicated that $1.2 million worth of DOGE were liquidated over 24 hours as the price of the meme coin declined.

Elon Musk Confirms Tesla Cutting Salaried Workforce By 10% Over Next 3 Months

• Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk said on Tuesday that the electric vehicle maker is reducing the salaried workforce by 10% over the next three months, for the first time confirming a timeline for the reduction, adding that he expects the company’s hourly workforce to grow instead.
• The billionaire entrepreneur said that Tesla’s overall immediate headcount would be lower by 3% to 3.5% in the near term, but it will be higher in about a year’s time.

Why Discord, Coinbase, Google, Steam And Several Other Top Websites Are Seeing An Outage

• Reports show that a widespread outage at Cloudflare, Inc NET affected several popular websites in the early hours of Tuesday.
• Cloudflare said it had identified an issue and was implementing a fix. The company said through its systems status website that it was “investigating widespread issues” with services and/or its network.
• Users reported several websites as facing disruptions, including Amazon.com, Inc AMZN ’s Amazon Web Services and Coinbase Holdings Inc (NASDAQ: COIN and Discord.

Dogecoin Creator Says Crypto’ House Of Cards’ Beginning To Crumble At Bottom

• Dogecoin DOGE/USD co-creator Jackson Palmer has compared cryptocurrencies to playing at the roulette table and said their bottom has “started to crumble,” in yet another critical take on digital coins.
• In a recent Australian TV talk show, Palmer said the latest cryptocurrency downturn was not yet the end, but a lot of people are realizing the “systemic risks” it presents.

Why Alibaba, Nio, Chinese Peers Are Trading Mixed In Hong Kong Today

• Shares of major U.S.-listed Chinese companies traded mixed in Hong Kong on Tuesday, with tech giants like Alibaba Group Holdings BABA, Baidu Inc BIDU, and Tencent Holdings TCEHY trading marginally higher. JD.com Inc JD, however, fell after opening in the green.
• EV stocks Nio Inc NIO, Li Auto Inc LI, and Xpeng Inc XPEV slipped after a higher open.

Joe Biden Backs Apple Workers Joining Maryland Union: ‘Proud Of Them’

• President Joe Biden has praised Apple Inc AAPL workers who voted to form a union in Maryland.
• “I am proud of them,” Biden said on Monday, adding that workers have a “right to determine under what condition they are going to work or not work,” reported Reuters.
• “Everybody is better off, including the final product is always better off (because of unions).”

Tesla, Ford Said To Be In Talks With Indonesia To Set Up Local Plants

• Indonesian President Joko Widodo has been in talks with Tesla Inc TSLA, Ford Motor Co F and other carmakers to set up manufacturing facilities in the Southeast Asian country, CNBC reported, citing Widodo.
• Widodo said his government is open to all players and wants them to use the country’s plentiful natural resources, as per the report.
• Indonesia is rich with natural deposits of tin, copper, nickel, cobalt and bauxite, some of which are key materials for electric vehicle batteries.

Sundial Growers Enters Into Bid Agreement For Zenabis Global Inc.’s Assets, Here’s What We Know

• Sundial Growers Inc. SNDL announced Monday that it entered into a purchase agreement, in the form of a “stalking horse bid,” pursuant to which the shares of Zenabis Global Inc. and the business and assets of its direct and indirectly wholly-owned subsidiaries would be acquired by Sundial, in the context of the initial order pursuant to the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (Canada) (“CCAA”)
• The Bid Agreement is subject to the approval by the Québec Superior Court supervising the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) Proceedings, and to potential alternative bids pursuant to bidding procedures that will follow.

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