Category: Protected – Watson’s Weekly

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• Boris Johnson won the UK general election (Friday) by a majority. He needed to, considering that UK employers became more reluctant to recruit (Tuesday), GDP had flatlined (Wednesday) and shoppers have been staying away from the high street (Monday)
• Over in the US, interest rates stayed unchanged (Thursday) in the 1.5-1.75% range, Trump signaled that the NAFTA-replacing USMCA was heading in the right direction (Wednesday) and announced a partial trade agreement with China (Friday), which sent markets stronger
• Elsewhere, Japan’s cabinet office raised its GDP forecast for the year (Tuesday), although there is concern that there will be a marked drop-off in the final quarter as spending may have increased sharply ahead of the raising of consumption tax (Japan’s equivalent of VAT) on October 1st from 8% to 10%. The Greek government announced it would be cracking down on tax evasion (Monday) by imposing a big fine on anyone who fails to spend at least 30% of their income digitally. The government has projected that it will be able to raise over €500m per annum via this initiative!

• Tesco announced that it is considering the sale of its Thai and Malaysian businesses (Monday). European retailers have tended to fail miserably in their Asian businesses, but Tesco’s is an exception. The dilemma here is whether Tesco takes a fat offer here and uses the proceeds to boost its core UK business or hangs onto a business with attractive operating margins
• Accounting errors had repercussions at Ted Baker (Wednesday) as both the CEO and Chairman resigned following the revelation of a major accounting error last week and then Superdry revealed an accounting hole of its own (Friday), albeit on a much smaller scale
• The UK competition regulator asked Amazon and Deliveroo to respond to their concerns (Thursday) about the stifling of competition in food and grocery delivery given how strong they both are in their respective areas, or face a time-consuming investigation. Amazon took a 16% stake in Deliveroo in May and it’s possible that Amazon could be forced to sell or reduce its stake in the food delivery company if the investigation finds against them

• French car parts maker Valeo said that it thought China car sales had bottomed out (Tuesday) as it saw an uptick in this third quarter with a 5% rise in like-for-like equipment sales in China but then the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers showed that sales in the world’s biggest car market could fall by 2% in 2020 (Friday) after an 8% fall this year and a 3% fall in 2018, so maybe Valeo was being a bit premature. Automobile makers could certainly do with a sales boost in the world’s #1 car market
• There were some interesting developments in autonomous driving this week what with VW making an unspecified investment into start-up Aeva (Thursday) which claims to have invented a new lidar (a light detection and ranging sensor) that is cheaper and more efficient than current options. Lidars help the car to know the distance and depth of objects by creating 3D maps. Current versions are big and unweildy (and can cost thousands of dollars) while Aeva’s is on a single chip with no moving parts and can be fitted next to a car’s lights – for the price of $500. Then there was news that Waymo bought Oxford AI firm, Latent Logic (Friday), which builds extremely realistic road and car simulations that can be used to train AI software for driverless vehicles. There were no details about how much was paid, but the company had been valued at £8m at a fund raising round earlier this year, so this is quite small in the scheme of things

My favourite “alternative” stories of the week this week were Die Hard On Ice parody video released and it’s nothing if not Christmassy (Metro, Jamie Tabberer https://tinyurl.com/sjep2zc) and the potentially very useful How to improve your singing at karaoke with a deceivingly simple trick (SoraNews24, Eli Pang https://tinyurl.com/v5qrfvf)

I hope you have an enjoyable weekend!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• President Trump had a lot to say for himself this week! He put tariffs on aluminium and steel from Brazil and Argentina (Tuesday) and threatened France with 100% tariffs (Tuesday) if they went through with imposing a 3% digital services tax to extract tax from tech giants. Boris Johnson talked about the UK imposing a similar tax (Wednesday) and although the OECD is currently trying to get 135 countries to agree to a more wide-ranging digital tax rate, the EU said that if the OECD couldn’t get agreement, they would seek out a European solution (Friday), so it seems that Europe is currently underwriting a potential digital services tax
• Trump also poured cold water on the idea that a US-China trade deal was imminent (Wednesday) and even speculated that one may not even materialise until after next year’s presidential election
• Meanwhile in Europe, Germany had a shaky start to the week as newly-elected leaders of SPD coalition partners sounded like they were threatening to leave the coalition (Monday), but it seemed that they backpedaled somewhat by the end of the week (Friday) so the government stays intact – for now

• Alphabet/Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepped down from Alphabet (Wednesday), leaving Google Sundar Pichai in charge of the whole lot. Pichai’s selection would imply that the Alphabet “moonshots” business will be toned down (Friday) as the company concentrates more on making money and growing businesses in cloud computing and healthcare
• Elsewhere in software-related business, Slack seems to be growing its customer base (Thursday) but it continues to face massive competition from much larger rival Microsoft with its product “Teams” which is free for every Microsoft 365 subscriber. Epic Games appears to be preparing for life after Fortnite (Wednesday) as it reveals plans to make its games toolkit Unreal Engine available to third party developers. The idea is that the toolkit is free to use, but Epic Games will take a 5% royalty fee for any games that are built using it
• On the hardware side of things, Huawei has released a new phone, called the Mate 30, that has no US-sourced parts (Monday). This could be bad for American companies like Qualcomm and Intel as Huawei’s ban has led to an acceleration in plans to make its products independent of the US and thus threat-proof

• Ted Baker’s new CFO found a £25m hole in the accounts (Tuesday) as it turns out that the company had been overstating the value of its inventory. New accountants and lawyers have been hired and Alix Partners has now been brought in to do a thorough review of its operations. If troubled founder Ray Kelvin harbours any ambitions to buy his company back and take it private, it just got a whole lot cheaper…
• It turns out that ad agency M&C Saatchi had an accounting problem of its own (Thursday) as forensic accountants brought in a few months back concluded that the company had been overstating its performance for up to five years! Shocker! The company’s share price almost halved in response. I would have thought that irate investors could try to sue them. Other than that, the cratering of the share price could attract potential bidders – and I wonder whether ex-WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell could snag a bargain here

• The latest figures from the British Retail Consortium suggested an uptick in sales going into Black Friday (Tuesday), giving some hope to our embattled retailers in the run-up to Christmas but the ongoing slump in retail isn’t just giving shops and their landlords a headache. M&G took the decision to close trading in their property fund (Thursday) as they couldn’t sell assets fast enough to keep up with rising demands from investors to withdraw their money. M&G’s property fund has particularly high exposure to retail properties. Other property funds are starting to sell assets now so they won’t have to resort to what M&G are doing

My favourite “alternative” story was Woman’s ‘trippy’ optical illusion video leaves people completely bemused (The Mirror, Courtney Pochin https://tinyurl.com/trtcttr). I still can’t work this out!!!

I hope you have an enjoyable weekend!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• Hong Kong voters got right behind the pro-democracy candidates in the local elections (Tuesday) and Trump expressed his support by signing a bill that endorsed their movement (Thursday) – which annoyed the Chinese, but not enough to derail sensitive trade talks (Friday). The protests, which are now in their seventh month, have dented Hong Kong’s economy (Thursday) as tourism has dropped off, the territory fell into recession for the first time in ten years in the third quarter and retail sales have fallen sharply
• Elsewhere in the region, Seoul made mildly conciliatory noises in the current South Korea-Japan trade spat (Thursday), but I don’t see this being solved any time soon. Having said that, I believe the countries need each other so something needs to be done to resolve the impasse

• There was so much M&A activity this week (Tuesday) what with Charles Schwab’s acquisition of TD Ameritrade for $26bn, LVMH’s purchase of Tiffany for $16.6bn, Novartis buying biotech company The Medicinces Company for $9.7bn, a Mitsubishi-led consortium takeover of Dutch Utility company Eneco for €4.1bn and eBay selling its online ticketing business StubHub for $4.1bn to Viagogo. Having said that, it sounds like sale of StubHub to Viagogo will be facing some resistance as music industry group FanFair Alliance has written to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority warning of a potential monopoly in UK ticket resale appealing for them to intervene
• State owned oil giant Saudi Aramco faced difficulties with drumming up interest for its IPO (Monday) but then things got better when a regional fund agreed to be a cornerstone investor (Wednesday) and it now looks like the deal is covered (Friday), which will be a relief for all involved

• Although Black Friday generates a lot of activity there are downsides (Monday) as the volume of returns increases, which pushes up costs, and then there are the fake five star reviews (Friday) that the FTC is now trying to crack down on. It’ll be hard to police but at least they are looking into it
• On the high street, the suffering of British retailers continues to filter through to their landlords (Wednesday) as West End landlord Shaftsbury had a huge profit hit due to a revaluation of their property portfolio in Covent Garden, China Town and Carnaby Street. On the plus side, Fortnum & Mason had another good year (Friday), which I think is due to them understanding their client and providing the right environment in which to spend!

• Uber lost its London licence (Tuesday) but it is trying to appeal against TfL’s decision, controversial founder Travis Kalanick sold a ton of his stock (Thursday) in the company and rival ride-hailers Ola (from India) and Bolt (from Estonia) are scrambling around to take advantage of Uber’s current weakness and make inroads in the London market (Wednesday)
• RBS took a big step this week with the official launch of its new digital bank, Bo (Thursday). It has clearly seen what the likes of Monzo, Revolut and Starling have done and wants a piece of the actions!

My favourite “alternative” stories this week were about the mini karaoke booths in HacoKara Karaoke Box: The best way to de-stress at the cinema in Japan (SoraNews24, Oona McGee https://tinyurl.com/wlj7k9a) and Gaza man masters rare skill of balancing art (AP, Hatem Mossa https://tinyurl.com/wh67wow) which brings you the guy who can do some ridiculous things!

I hope you have an enjoyable weekend!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• The Initial Public Offering (IPO) of Saudi Aramco featured a great deal this week – unsurprising considering that the company is being valued at around $1.7tn (which will make it the biggest quoted company in the world)! However, the wheels started falling off the international portion of the offering as the US and Japan roadshows were cancelled (Monday), then the European roadshow was cancelled (Tuesday) which then led to almost all the non-local banks in the syndicate apart from HSBC being snubbed by Saudi Aramco (Friday). Foreign investors said that the valuation was too high, so the state-owned company is having to rely on its neighbours to buy into it. I suspect that the IPO will go well, but I would have thought that the Saudi regime will have to support it a great deal in the background to ensure that it at least looks successful
• The French government managed to raise a useful bit of cash in the Francaise des Jeux IPO (Friday) as Macron’s plan to sell of a bit of family silver to boost the coffers kicks in. The government reduced its holding and the €2bn will come in handy to finance other initiatives, but it is also looking to raise cash from stakes that the state holds in Engie and Aeroports de Paris, for instance

• In tecchie stuff, Yahoo Japan and chat app Line agreed to merge (Monday) in a 50-50 joint venture. They aim to become “one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence technology companies” using AI to optimise marketing, e-commerce and digital payments online. HP rejected Xerox’s friendly takeover bid (Monday), saying that the price was too low, but then Xerox threatened to make it a hostile takeover bid (Friday) if HP didn’t get back to the negotiating table by next Monday. Google is also running into resistance to its recently-proposed purchase of Fitbit (Friday) due to data privacy concerns
• In fashion-related stuff, Kylie Jenner managed to sell a 51% stake in her four-year old cosmetics company to Coty (Tuesday) for $600m and LVMH decided to increase its offer to buy Tiffany’s (Friday) in a bid to get the deal over the line
• In finance-related stuff, PayPal bought discount coupon hunter Honey Science (Thursday) for $4bn and Charles Schwab put in a $25bn bid for rival TD Ameritrade (Friday) as the sector consolidates in the face of pressures on commissions and continued popularity of passive funds

• Google launched its game-streaming service Stadia (Monday) as it aims to gain a foothold in a potentially very exciting growth area. However, it has less on offer than Sony (which already has its own games streaming service, PlayStation Now) currently. It will also have to compete with Microsoft when it launches its xCloud game-streaming offering next year
• ByteDance is preparing to launch a music-streaming service (Monday) and will try to differentiate itself from others including Spotify, Tencent and Apple by focusing on user-generated content

• Retail was a mixed bag in the US as the gloom continued for Home Depot, Kohl’s, JC Penney and Sears (Wednesday) as well as Macy’s and Kroger (Friday) while things were decidedly more upbeat at Walmart (Tuesday), TJX (Wednesday) and Target (Thursday). Home depot rival Lowe’s reported weaker quarterly sales but raised its profits forecast for the year
• In the UK, Crew Clothing did well from its link with the LTA (Thursday) but online electrical goods retailer AO.com decided to pull the plug on its business in the Netherlands (Wednesday)

My favourite “alternative” stories this week were the dodgy window in Woman spots very x-rated detail in church’s window featuring Jesus and Mary (The Mirror, Courtney Pochin https://tinyurl.com/ud3p6re) and Jesus He Knows Me: Huge church statue in Mexico is Phil Collins lookalike (Sky News https://tinyurl.com/rxa8rrj) although I will say that Japan’s YouTube knife-maker is back at it again–this time with a knife made entirely of fungus (SoraNews24, Dale Roll https://tinyurl.com/rxa8rrj) is actually quite hypnotic if you’ve got the time to watch it!

I hope you have an enjoyable weekend!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• The Spanish election proved to be a disappointment (Monday) as PM Pedro Sanchez was left with an even smaller majority for his PSOE Socialists party – but actually he managed to negotiate a coalition government with far left party Podemos soon after (although I would say that isn’t really ideal – more the least worst option!). Drama is sure to continue here…and then Bolivia’s Evo Morales “resigned” (Monday) after being in the top job since 2006, leaving a power vacuum and a dent in the socialist movement in Latin America
• Meanwhile in Europe, there were close shaves all around with Germany managing to avoid recession (Friday) by turning out a sliver of growth thanks to consumers spending money and the UK also managed to avoid a recession (Tuesday) thanks to a strong performance from the services sector. Phew!

• In China, Alibaba had another record-breaking Singles’ Day event (Tuesday) as it took $38bn in sales – in one day! This year’s performance easily smashed last year’s total of $30.8bn
• In the US, Walmart announced its fifth consecutive year of sales growth (Friday). It’s the first major retailer to report and will be followed next week by Target, Best Buy and Macy’s. Meanwhile, Amazon opened its first supermarket (Tuesday) in Los Angeles. It will be distinct from Whole Foods (the top end chain it bought two years ago), the cashierless Amazon Go and its “four star” stores (where it sells goods that were rated four stars or more) and is expected to have Amazon’s branding
• In the UK, Sainsbury’s signed a wholesale deal with Australia’s Coles (Monday) to provide them with a range of cupboard essentials such as soup, beans and dried pasta as well as its homeware. This is part of Coles’ efforts to broaden its own-brand ranges. Meanwhile, Aldi and Lidl continue to take market share (Wednesday) from the incumbents
• Elsewhere on the UK high street, Burger King teamed up with Unilver to produce a “Rebel Whopper” (Tuesday) for the European market while Greggs put in another solid performance (Tuesday) and raised its profit forecasts for the fourth time this year. Retailers continue to call for a rates review (Tuesday) as retail landlords Land Securities (Wednesday) and British Land (Thursday) suffer with lower rents and disappearing tenants

• Facebook announced a new service called Facebook Pay (Wednesday) that will let you pay companies and individuals via WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and Facebook itself. It will launch in the US this week before a more widespread rollout
• Apple announced a new app with a really exciting name – “Research App” (Friday) where users will allow the company access to information collected by their Watches and iPhones and use it to create new products based on “live time” data
• Netflix put a brave face on the impact of the Disney+ launch (Friday) although it is going to find things much harder (and probably more expensive) with the advent of new competitors in streaming
• Google came under scrutiny for the way it shares its data in healthcare (Tuesday, Thursday) but also announced its intentions to wade into banking (Thursday) 

(the other “A” in “FAANGs” is for Amazon – but I already mentioned it in the previous section😜)

• EasyJet decided to buy some Thomas Cook assets and start its own package holiday business (Monday), going against consensus opinion
• Tesla announced it would be building a new “Gigafactory” in Berlin (Wednesday). It discounted locating it in the UK because of Brexit concerns (Thursday)

My favourite “alternative” stories this week are about a cat – Potato the googly-eyed cat’s stunned expression makes people think he’s ‘broken’ (The Mirror, Luke Matthews https://tinyurl.com/tujt5t9) – and a dog in How One Woman Taught Her Dog to Talk (Inside Edition, https://tinyurl.com/runt4ra). Have a great weekend!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• Markets hit new highs as hopes for an end to the US-China trade war increased (Friday) with both sides talking about a phased repealing of tariffs. However, there have been many false dawns before so when/if a concrete agreement is actually reached I would expect markets to get a decent boost
• Canada got some good news as China decided to lift the ban on Canadian pig and beef imports (Thursday) that happened to be imposed after Canada arrested Huawei exec Meng Wanzhou on US fraud charges. It may be that China relented more because it has culled half of its pig population and is short of pork rather than anything else, but I’m sure that Canadian farmers won’t be complaining!
• There was a blow to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) deal as India refused to sign the Asia-Pacific trade pact (Tuesday) because it didn’t want a deluge of Chinese imports when it’s got big trade deficits with it already. 15 other nations (including the 10 Asean nations plus China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand) did, however, sign it. This trading agreement has been under discussion since 2012 and India left the door open to joining at a later stage
• There was embarrassment for Brazil as it launched an auction of deep-sea oil deposits to great fanfare (Wednesday) only to fall flat (Thursday) as oil majors declined the opportunity due to high prices, complicated sharing rules, doubts about Brazil’s regime and increasing pressure to decrease reliance on fossil fuels

• Over in the US, Walgreens Boots Alliance caused a stir by mulling a management buyout (Wednesday) which would be the biggest leveraged buyout in history. However, the mood was more sombre elsewhere as troubled department store chain Sears announced even more store closures (Friday) amid poor trading and Gap announced the departure of its CEO (Friday) who just couldn’t revive its fortunes. His plans to split the company into two separate ones – Old Navy and Gap – are still apparently intact. Robert Fisher, son of the founders, will be the CEO for the time being. Don’t feel too sorry for the departing Art Peck, though – his compensation since being made CEO in 2015 was worth about $40m!
• Back in the UK, Mothercare ceased all UK trading (Wednesday) after the administrators came in. This wasn’t really a surprise given that it’s been in trouble for quite some time. However, the overseas business is going OK so the name might not disappear completely. Clarks announced even more store closures (Thursday) as continued efforts to turn things around aren’t working/working quickly enough and Superdry also announced disappointing sales (Friday) as co-founder Julian Dunkerton continues to try to put his company back on the growth track. M&S isn’t exactly shooting the lights out (Thursday) as the clothing business continues to drag and all this gloom is putting increasing pressure on Intu (Thursday), the retailer landlord. One bright spot amid the gloom was Primark, who continues to put in solid performances (Wednesday), even announcing ambitious US expansion plans.

• Toyota saw its first half profits climb to an all-time high (Friday) in a notably strong performance versus its competitors. Sales grew in all of its key markets including Japan, the US, Europe and Asia including China
• Aston Martin continued to disappoint (Friday) as it announced yet another quarterly loss in the three months to September. Its forthcoming DBX has got even more of a job to do now to support the company – but at least Astons will be in next year’s Bond film, and that’s usually good for sales
• Germany’s car manufacturers appealed to the government for help (Tuesday) to boost demand for electric vehicles

• Everyone got excited about the launch of the Saudi Aramco IPO (Monday). OK, so it doesn’t look like it’ll get the $2tn valuation Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was looking for, but investor interest will certainly be piqued by the promise of guaranteed annual dividends of even more than the $75bn already promised (Friday)
• Then in a quick look at a couple of IPOs that have done really badly since launch, both Uber (Thursday) and Peloton (Wednesday) underwhelmed with their results. There are only so many times that you can promise to be profitable and then not deliver (unless, of course, you are Elon Musk – in which case investors will still keep throwing money at you 😜!).

My favourite “alternative” stories this week are about food and drink from the rather unhealthy Fish and Chip shop sells battered Quality Streets – and they’ve ranked best ones (The Mirror, Courtney Pochin https://tinyurl.com/yxfl2pca) to the rather horrendous sounding Japanese crowdfunding underway for bottled Onionade, just like mom used to make (SoraNews24, Master Blaster https://tinyurl.com/y4vgubfa). OMG 🤢

I hope you have a great weekend whatever you get up to!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• So over in the US, the momentum is gathering to impeach president Trump (Friday) as all Ukraine-related dirty laundry is going to have to be aired in public rather than behind closed doors
• Meanwhile, in Europe, Boris Johnson got the general election he wanted on the date he wanted (Wednesday) while there were signs that Emmanuel Macron’s labour reforms are working (Wednesday) as France’s GDP went up (Thursday) 
• Over in Asia, Hong Kong fell into recession (Friday) following the unveiling of a second successive quarter of GDP contraction, which isn’t really all that surprising considering all the protests that have been going on over the summer

• In contrast to the generally negative sentiment out there on department stores, France’s Galeries Lafayette announced plans to expand in China (Monday) by opening ten shops in the country by 2025. It believes that its China stores will generate around 15% of the group’s overall sales. Over in the US, Authentic Brands got the go-ahead to buy the Barneys New York brand and shops (Friday) although other parties could still make a last-minute bid – and JC Penney is experimenting with different formats to spark a revival (Friday) although it had better get going sooner rather than later as conditions continue to deteriorate
• Amazon announced that it would scrap grocery delivery fees for Prime customers (Wednesday) in the US – although it is expected that this will be rolled out elsewhere in due course. Not to be outdone, M&S announced a new “buy-now-pay-later” service (Wednesday) as it tries to appeal more to a younger audience who value the likes of Klarna – but I think they need to concentrate more on selling clothes that people actually want to buy 😜

• Facebook announced strong third quarter results (Thursday), despite all the accusations and investigations as user numbers rose by 9% versus last year with average revenue per user was up by 19% over the same period. Zuckerberg said he’d continue to offer advertising to political parties – unlike Jack Dorsey at Twitter, who said he’d ban them (Thursday). Although this may sound to some like he is “woke”, I think he’s missing a trick here. Parties will be spending big in the run-up to next year’s election and he’s just handing business to Facebook on a platter. And for what? I think that as long as Zuck manages to make sure such content doesn’t get out of hand there will be no harm done IMO. Apple saw higher revenues from services and wearables among other things (Thursday) as sales of iPhones continue to lose their lustre (well, until 5G starts to kick in properly anyway!). On the other hand, Google saw a dramatic slowdown in paid clicks on adverts (Tuesday) as they only showed 1% growth in the third quarter versus the previous quarter due to rising costs. However, a juicy rumour emerged that Google’s parent, Alphabet, was thinking of buying Fitbit and *** NEWS JUST IN – Fitbit is to be acquired by Alphabet for $2.1bn, with the deal expecting to close in 2020 ***

• Fiat Chrysler and PSA Group boards announced an intention to merge (Thursday). It was also given the thumbs-up by the French government (which owns a chunk of PSA, the parent company that owns marques like Peugeot). This sounds good on a strategic basis but there will be a number of hurdles to jump through before it becomes reality. Still, I expect more consolidation in the industry as players huddle together to survive more onerous regulation and shrinking sales
• Lloyd’s of London faces a potential tsunami of insurance claims relating to pharmaceuticals companies involved in the US opioid crisis (Wednesday) which could potentially drown a number of insurers as some experts believe that the potential volume of claims could have a similar effect on the market that asbestos claims had in the 90s, where Lloyd’s almost collapsed. This could potentially be huge
• Then it turns out that Australia’s #1 supermarket, Woolworths, underpaid its workers for almost ten years (Thursday) in the latest underpayment scandal to hit Australia recently as Domino’s Pizza and 7-Eleven have also had similar issues. The Fair Work Ombudsman will be investigating further and trade unions across the country have launched a campaign against what they term “wage theft” calling for tough new laws to punish wrongdoers. Given the amount of compensation involved and the potential for this finding to be the tip of the iceberg, this could definitely get nastier…

Standout stories for me this week included Obese cat Cinderblock really cannot be bothered with vet’s treadmill (Metro, Richard Hartley-Parkinson https://tinyurl.com/yywtce4p) and holiday maxing in You can double the amount of days you have off work in 2020 if you plan it now (The Mirror, Luke Mattews https://tinyurl.com/y2f6ffww).

I hope you have a great weekend whatever you get up to!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• For those of you who can even stand to read the word “Brexit”, BoJo kicked the week off in a confident mood (Monday) but then it sort of fell apart and now Europe looks like it’ll give us an extension while BoJo pushes for a general election on December 12th (Friday) which MPs don’t seem to be terribly enthused about either
• Mario Draghi hands over the reins to Christine Lagarde as head of the ECB (Friday) with things in the eurozone in a bit of a state. Germany is looking tricky, while Switzerland edged a bit to the left (Tuesday) as the Swiss Green party and the Green-Liberal party got a boost from Sunday’s elections. Justin Trudeau won another term as Canadian PM (Wednesday) but with a smaller majority and a fragmented remit
• In commodities, corn prices continue to weaken (Monday) as demand for pig feed (which uses a lot of corn) has cratered due to the pig population in China falling by 41% since the “start” of the African swine fever epidemic in August last year. There was the potentially very exciting discovery of battery-grade lithium in California by Rio Tinto (Wednesday). If tests are confirmed, this could make the company North America’s biggest producer! The beauty of this discovery is that Rio Tinto found the lithium in piles of waste rock that had just been lying around for almost a hundred years at its Boron site – so no need for any additional digging for now! China has been hoarding lithium supplies for itself and so, given the US-China trade war, a big lithium discovery in the US would mean one less bargaining chip for the China side

• Car manufacturers are having a terrible time of things at the moment. The world’s biggest car market, China, continues to slow down with Ford, Hyundai, Daimler and Volvo among those suffering from a cooling in demand. However, Tesla is now churning out cars from its Chinese gigafactory and surprised investors by turning a profit (Thursday). Meanwhile, it is continuing to put pressure on Europeans to relax restrictions on Tesla’s Autopilot system (Monday) following the proposals it put forward last month
• It’s not only car manufacturers who are suffering, though – Continental took a €2.5bn hit due to the steep decline in the car industry (Wednesday) and I am sure that other parts suppliers will follow given things don’t look like changing any time soon

• Just Eat was minding its own business, getting ready to merge with Takeaway.com, and then – BOOM – along comes South African internet firm Prosus with an all-cash offer (Wednesday), which Just Eat’s board flatly refused. Clearly, other potential bidders may emerge from the woodwork after this approach, so things may get a bit tasty. Talking of tasty, Uber Eats signed a a deal whereby Costcutter, the convenience store chain with over 1,700 shops, will sell groceries via Uber Eat’s app (Wednesday). This follows other similar tie-ups in the sector e.g. Asda launching an express grocery delivery service with Just Eat and the Co-Op working with Deliveroo. Convenience stores just got convenienter. I think I’ve just invented a new word 😱
• Meanwhile, in the world of fast food, US outlets are fighting over brekky (Wednesday) although McDonald’s is losing ground to its rivals on account of it not having a compelling meatless offering. Talking of which, I saw the story British diners offered bite of the Impossible (The Times, Tom Knowles) in today’s edition where it said Impossible Foods is applying for a permit in the EU to market soy leghemoglobin (aka “heme”) which is the company’s “magic ingredient”. So it sounds like things like the Impossible Whopper etc. will be over here pretty soon!

• OK, so WeWork is still alive, but it has had to eat a ton of humble pie since its recent failed attempt at a stock market flotation. Its valuation fell further this week over its uncertain future (Tuesday) and then it decided to make some major changes (Thursday), including cutting 4,000 jobs. What a fall from grace!
• Meanwhile, back home, Regis UK went into administration (Friday) leaving 1,200 workers at 220 Supercuts salons up and down the UK in the lurch. The administrators are in and operations will continue as usual, presumably until they find a suitable buyer for some of all of the business

I thought I’d pick two stories from this week. The, quite frankly, bleurrrgh Man saves his nail clippings for a year and turns them into engagement ring (The Mirror, Courtney Pochin https://tinyurl.com/y57ojwcz) and then, on the altogether more pleasant end of the scale, Have coffee with adorable piggies at Tokyo’s brand-new micro pig cafe in trendy Harajuku (SoraNews24, Casey Baseel https://tinyurl.com/y3cdcejs).

Whatever you get up to this weekend, I hope you have an enjoyable one!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• Market excitement continued on US/China trade hopes (Tuesday) but the Chinese economy appears to be losing momentum (Friday)
• In the Eurozone, we saw inflation at three-year lows (Thursday) and an amended Brexit deal was negotiated (Friday) but Parliament is due to vote on it tomorrow. UK inflation stayed low (Thursday) meaning that there won’t be any real pressure on the Bank of England to raise interest rates to encourage consumers to rein in spending
• Things continued to go from bad to worse as Facebook’s Libra lost Booking.com as a backer (Tuesday), which means that it has joined the likes of PayPal, Mastercard, Visa, e-Bay, Stripe and Mercado Pago who all abandoned over the last week as the Libra Association confirmed its founding members. The only payment firm left is Dutch firm PayU! The prospects for Libra aren’t looking good right at the moment…

• Car sales are suffering pretty much the world over, but weakening sales of New Energy Vehicles in China (Tuesday) is particularly worrying – if it continues – as China is the world’s biggest car market and the government is putting a lot of effort into putting it at the forefront of car technology. It just goes to show that whatever else is going on, car sales go down when you take away the subsidies!
• Marijuana stocks continued their weakness (Monday) as previous projections proved to be overly ambitious but then Canopy Growth’s pharmaceutical division, Spectrum Therapeutics, was granted a licence from the Home Office to import medical cannabis in bulk to the UK. The beginning of something big, perhaps?
• American companies still have designs on making a splash in China despite all the trade shenanigans going on at the moment as Citi plans to take 100% control of its China operations (Wednesday) and PayPal got permission to buy a majority stake in Chinese payments group Gopay (Thursday). This has been made possible by Chinese restrictions on foreign ownership easing up
• Elsewhere, Netflix’s share price continues to weaken on increased short-selling activity (Monday) and subscriber numbers falling short of expectations (Thursday). The nightmare continues for players in the world of vaping as Juul announced the withdrawal of most of its most popular flavours from online sale (Friday) as the crackdown continues from the FDA, FTC and Federal prosecutors

• US retail sales were weaker (Thursday) as the latest US Commerce Department data shows that retailers reported an unexpected fall in headline sales. This could imply that consumer spending, which accounts for two thirds of the US economy, may be weakening. Given recent sluggishness in the US manufacturing sector it will put pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates at its December meeting. Meanwhile Barneys New York has finalised a deal (Thursday) to sell its name and brands to Authentic Brands Group and investment firm B.Riley Financial and close all of its stores, depending on how rent talks go with the landlords. Rival bidders will have until October 22nd to come forward or the deal will go through as is – and if they do, an auction process will be triggered on October 24th
• The number of UK shoppers fell (Monday) as Brexit concerns made them think twice about spending. Sports Direct’s Mike Ashley wanted to make his complaint about Nike and Adidas official (Tuesday) by calling for a Europe-wide investigation into the sportswear industry. He argues that such brands have oversize power in supply and product prices, but I have to say that I think Nike and Adidas should surely have the final say as to where their goods are sold (or not). He’s just annoyed they prefer JD Sports to Sports Direct 😜! Then in online retailing, Asos looks like it is turning a corner (Thursday) and will be able to grow profit margins from here after bolstering its management team and resolving its warehouse issues that dented its profits

• Sophos, the UK cybersecurity software specialist, was bought by private equity fund Thoma Bravo for $3.8bn (Tuesday). The acquisition is expected to complete sometime in the first quarter of next year
• WH Smith bought Marshall Retail Group in the US for $400m (Friday), effectively doubling the size of WHSmith’s international travel business. This follows its $198m acquisition of US business InMotion in October last year and shows its commitment to America and the belief in their profitable travel business

This week, my favourite “alternative” story was Kim Jong-un channels hardman hero Vladimir Putin as he rides on horseback in bizarre snaps (The Sun, Neal Baker https://tinyurl.com/yxbas43d). Nothing like seeing your leader enjoying a bit of fresh air to inspire you to greater things. Having said that, I really hope that Boris Johnson doesn’t try it. You just wouldn’t be able to unsee it!

I hope you have an enjoyable weekend!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• Markets got excited as Trump got involved in China trade talks (Friday) but clearly we’ve had a lot of false dawns so far. Still, the fact that Trump is taking part himself is a good sign that something might get done
• There was more Brexit talk this week and sentiment went from despair (Thursday) to a glimmer of hope (Friday) but no-one really knows what’s going to happen there! Loads of noise from each side as negotiations heat up and details get hammered out. At least the UK looks like it’ll avoid recession (Friday) as GDP grew in the latest quarter versus the contraction in the previous one (a technical recession = two consecutive quarters of contraction)

• There was an important development this week as the OECD outlined proposals to shake up global taxation (Thursday) to stop the likes of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google (aka “FAANGs”) from shuffling their profits around the world to minimise the taxes they pay. Winners from the new proposals will include countries such as the US, China, UK, Germany, France and Italy as well as developing economies while the FAANGs, tax havens and low tax destinations such as Ireland could lose out big time – so expect lots of objections and dragging of feet when the details are debated!
• Although Samsung’s third quarter profits fell for the fourth quarter in a row due to weak memory chip prices it wasn’t by quite as much as everyone was expecting. Some were saying that Samsung has turned a corner (Wednesday) with its mobile and displays business putting in solid performances, but we’ll need to see semiconductor prices getting stronger before that happens IMO

• Pizza Express called in the advisers (Tuesday) as debt problems and general sluggishness continue to hit many restaurants on the UK high street, Vodafone and BT both said they are looking to increase their high street presence (Wednesday, Thursday), Links of London went bust (Thursday) and HMV opened a Birmingham megastore (Friday), bucking a trend of store closures. Talking of which, Hays Travel bought Thomas Cook’s shops (Thursday), giving many staff their jobs back but it certainly has its work cut out (Friday) for long term survival given online competition and overall consumer trends
• LVMH managed to put in a solid sales performance (Thursday) despite all the Hong Kong protests and Unilever promised to cut its use of virgin plastics (Monday) by making more environmentally friendly versions of its products

• Johnson & Johnson got into even more trouble this week (Thursday) as it has been ordered to hand over $8bn after claims that young men on its antipsychotic drug Risperdal could get irreversible breast growth. The company is currently facing accusations of mis-selling opioids, contributing to the US opioid epidemic, and liability lawsuits that claim its talcum powder caused cancer
• Dyson decided to end its attempts to make its own electric car from scratch (Friday) which is hardly surprising given the massive amounts of money you have to throw at this sort of thing (although this was probably pretty embarrassing given that the venture was originally launched to great fanfare!). Chinese car manufacturer Nio is also having problems (Tuesday) and the relationship between Tesla and its battery maker, Panasonic, is becoming increasingly strained (Wednesday)

This week, my favourite “alternative” stories were Marmite is hunting for its biggest haters – so they can hypnotise them (The Mirror, Courtney Pochin https://tinyurl.com/y3ztucmj), which sounds a bit creepy and Hikers left ‘uncomfortable’ after encountering man jogging in pink thong (The Mirror, Courtney Pochin https://tinyurl.com/y23r7ea6) for its sheer randomness!

I hope you have an enjoyable weekend!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• We saw the latest attempt to impeach Trump (Wednesday) as he has been accused of basically blackmailing the Ukranian president to dig up dirt on his own political rivals. He’s survived various attempts thus far to remove him but this one looks like his opponents have something more concrete to work with
• Meanwhile, Boris Johnson had to make an early return from New York (Wednesday) to face an angry parliament who returned to Westminster on the orders of the Supreme Court. Tempers flared, accusations were made all over the shop – and still nothing really got done
• The latest PMI figures reflected a weak eurozone economy (Tuesday) with Germany right at the centre

• Thomas Cook collapsed (Monday), leaving 150,000 holiday makers stranded and 21,000 employees out of a job. It went into liquidation and not administration (Tuesday) because in an administration, an administrator has to stump up cash to keep a business going while it finds buyers. Given the scale and complexity of Thomas Cook’s debt, liquidation was the only option as previous opportunities to pay down debt and restructure had been missed
• Thomas Cook rival Tui is one of a group of companies picking up the pieces (Wednesday) flying people home and is expected to benefit, when the dust has settled, from business that would have gone Thomas Cook’s way. Hedge funds were initially thought to have benefited by shorting the shares and trading CDSs (Tuesday) but actually it seems that they may have largely cancelled each other out (Wednesday). As time went on, the cost of Thomas Cook’s demise went up (Friday) with banks such as Morgan Stanley, Barclays, UniCredit, Credit Suisse and Royal Bank of Scotland being among those facing writedowns of up to £1.8bn due to their exposure to the defunct travel agent
• Thomas Cook’s profitable German airline subsidiary, Condor, searched desperately for a way to survive (Tuesday) and the German government stepped in with a six-month bridging loan, giving staff a stay of execution. Tui is widely expected to benefit from less competition but it’s surviving because it has more control of its business model (Wednesday) due to it owning more of its own assets than Thomas Cook did

• Talk about going from hero to zero! Federal prosecutors are now investigating Juul (Tuesday) along with the FDA and the FTC regarding all sorts of claims while e-cigarettes continue to get withdrawn from sale (Walmart, Juul’s products in China) or banned outright (India). Juul will be going through a shake-up (Wednesday) as a result, but its CEO Kevin Burns stepped down amid the furore to be replaced by Altria’s chief growth officer KC Crosthwaite, a tobacco industry veteran. The proposed merger between Philip Morris International and Altria was called off (Thursday) as a result and rival Imperial Brands downgraded its full-year forecasts due to all the vaping-related problems (Friday)

• Thomas Cook clearly had a bad week, but then so did WeWork. WeWork’s controversial CEO Adam Neumann stepped down (Wednesday) – although he will remain as non-exec chairman of the company – and it sounds like around 20 of Neumann’s friends and family will be cleared out of the company as part of a purge following the collapse of its proposed IPO last week. Thousands are expected to lose their jobs as the company looks to dispose of non-core assets
• It was also a bad week for Match.com as the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is suing it (Thursday), saying that the online dating company ensnared “hundreds of thousands” of people to pay for its services by using false expressions of interest. Match has over 25% of the online dating market and owns Match.com as well as Tinder, OKCupid and PlentyOfFish, so this could get serious

This week, I thought I’d leave you with some “interesting” sweet treats: Chip Shop is making battered Jaffa Cakes – and people are very sceptical (The Mirror, Courtney Pochin https://tinyurl.com/y4wsclw4) and the very weird-sounding Morinaga Milk Industry unveils Japan’s first mayonnaise-flavored ice cream! (SoraNews24, Shannon McNaught https://tinyurl.com/y2hcc8qo). What???

I hope you have an enjoyable weekend!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• US interest rates were cut (Thursday) by 0.25% to a 1.75-2% range to the annoyance of president Trump who wanted a deeper cut to make him look good while the Bank of England kept interest rates unchanged (Friday) as the Bank presumably wants to keep its powder dry ahead of the unknown aftermath of Brexit
• Things seem to be getting trickier in Asia as China saw its slowest industrial growth rate for over 17 years (Tuesday) as tariff wars continue to bite and Japan saw a fall in exports for the ninth month in a row (Thursday) as exports to China, Japan’s biggest trade partner, fell by 12.1% while shipments to the US fell by 4.4%. Exports to South Korea – where trading relations have been getting very frosty of late – fell by 9.4%. Particularly weak categories included automobiles, machinery and other manufactured goods
• Meanwhile, in Europe, there was renewed hope that a Brexit deal might be reached (Friday), Spain faces its fourth election in four years (Wednesday) and the Dutch government rolled out stimulus measures (Wednesday) via tax cuts and an investment boost in an effort to avert economic slowdown
• The oil price had dramatic week after a weekend drone attack hit Saudi Arabia’s production facilities (Monday), oil prices shot up (Tuesday) and then calmed down (Wednesday) on hopes that Saudi Arabia’s oil production could recover more quickly from the weekend’s drone attacks than had originally been thought

• Facebook kicked the week off with talks with officials from 26 central banks regarding its Libra cryptocurrency (Monday) and then announced Portal TV (Thursday), a voice-controlled “smart video chat” device that connects to TVs which will cost $149 as part of its efforts to push into consumer hardware
• Amazon announced a new high-definition music streaming service (Wednesday) as it hopes that quality rather than quantity will be the next frontier in streaming and then followed this up with a massive order of electric delivery vehicles (Friday) as part of its pledge to reduce carbon emissions

• It was another nightmare week for e-cigarette makers as India decided to ban them (Friday) while China mysteriously stopped the sale of Juul’s products (Wednesday). In practical terms, you would have thought that this would result in a rise in “traditional” smoking, which may even be more of a benefit to tobacco companies as that’s where they make the bulk of their money anyway! They may well have to rein in their ambitions of a “tobacco-free future” in the meantime, though, as reports of potentially e-cigarette related lung illnesses seem to be on the rise
• In retailers, Aldi announced plans to double its store numbers in London (Tuesday), River Island plans to open more outlets despite unveiling falling profits and revenues (Thursday), Next announced disappointing sales of its new autumn clothing ranges (Friday), blaming recent warm weather and French Connection extended its deadline for buying a new buyer for the apparel retailer (Wednesday) amid continued trading weakness and the second delay of its strategic review that was originally supposed to complete at the beginning of this year

• WeWork decided to cancel its flotation (Tuesday) as investors got tired of the hype and the prospect of supporting another massive founder ego but Airbnb announced its intentions to float next year (Friday) and fintech start-up Stripe continued to boost its valuation (Friday) in its latest funding round

Here is the story that made me laugh the most this week: Man fuming as wife’s sandwich has ‘b!tch’ written on it – then discovers meaning (The Mirror, Courtney Pochin https://tinyurl.com/y2bw5ywz). You just don’t see the punchline coming!

I hope you have an enjoyable weekend!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• The week started with both sides of the US-China trade divide suffering (Monday), but tariffs were eased (Thursday) ahead of talks scheduled for next month. Trump continued to push the Fed to lower interest rates (Thursday) to stimulate the economy and even goaded them to cut them to zero
• In Europe, outgoing ECB president Mario Draghi announced stimulus measures (Friday) to kick-start a sluggish eurozone economy, although Trump objected saying that it would weaken the Euro and thus dent US imports into the bloc
• There was a major change in Saudi Arabia this week as Khalid al-Falih was removed as its energy minister (Monday) to be replaced by Prince Abdulaziz, a member of the royal family. This is a rare move as such a position is usually taken up by someone from outside the royal family and is generally seen to be a cushy number – but it shows the ruthlessness of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman as he gears up for the much-anticipated Saudi Aramco flotation and moves to reduce the kingdom’s reliance on oil revenues
• Boris Johnson had another torrid week as MPs foiled his second attempt to hold a snap general election (Tuesday) while Scotland’s highest court concluded that prorogation of UK parliament was unlawful (Thursday), although this will be debated in the UK Supreme Court next week. Still, at least wages are still going up and unemployment is going down (Wednesday) – so things could definitely be worse

• Conditions in the UK remain tough for retailers as stores continue to close (Wednesday) and footfall is dropping (Monday). Topshop continues to suffer (Friday), as does Sports Direct (Thursday) but there are still winners in this space including JD Sports (Wednesday) and Honest Burger (Wednesday). Given the deluge of PPI claims before last month’s deadline, it’s possible that consumers may get a windfall going into the end of the year (Tuesday) that they spend on the high street…
• Outside the UK, Zara’s parent company Inditex puts in a solid performance (Thursday) but Forever 21 looks like it will slide into bankruptcy (Thursday) and Old Navy outlines plans regarding its split from Gap (Friday)

• It was a grim week for tobacco majors as US health authorities are now advising people to stop using e-cigs (Monday) and other vaping products while they conduct investigations into three more deaths from mysterious illnesses relating to severe lung injury. Then the FDA warned Juul about misleading marketing practices (Tuesday) and Trump followed this up by saying that he was thinking about pulling most vaping products from the market (Thursday) due to health concerns and the massive rise in teenage use. Clearly, this is not ideal for tobacco companies who are making strategic decisions (Friday) in an attempt to focus more on non-tobacco products

• California passed some landmark legislation that will force companies to reclassify some of its contract workers as employees (Thursday), which could have huge implications on ride-hailing companies and food delivery specialists as well as many others in the gig economy. Unsurprisingly, Uber said it will fight the changes
• Apple announced new phones and other gizmos (Wednesday) with evolution and not revolution in evidence. Sales of the iPhone accounted for less than 50% of Apple’s overall revenues this summer for the first time since 2012 as the company continues its efforts to beef-up revenues from its services segment
• Meanwhile, car manufacturers used the Frankfurt Car Show to unveil new models. VW announced its first ground-up electric car (Wednesday) while Jaguar Land Rover announced the arrival of the new Defender (Wednesday). All very nice, but electric charging networks are still rather patchy and car sales globally are looking pretty sluggish

My favourite stories this week were Nintendo’s crazy new Ring-con and RingFit Adventure are its new exercise/gaming hybrid (SoraNews24, Casey Baseel https://tinyurl.com/y3ww9ozf), which looks rather less alarming than it sounds 😂 – and Egyptian masseur plays with fire to ease muscle pain (Reuters, https://tinyurl.com/y37c5t3a) which is also supposedly the case! I think I’d pass on the massage thanks…

I hope you have an enjoyable weekend!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• President Trump kicked the week off by slapping 15% duties on Chinese imports worth $125bn over the weekend (Monday) but then ended the week by putting a date in the diary for trade talks between Liu He and Robert Lighthizer (Friday). Markets trended higher as a result, but as we all know, it ain’t worth diddly if there’s no deal at the end of it!
• Unrest continued in Hong Kong with a general strike (Monday) but Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam announced a withdrawal of the extradition bill that sparked of months of protests (Thursday), providing some respite in the region
• This was a right old rollercoaster of a week for the UK as Boris Johnson started the week in bullish mood about Brexit (Monday), outlined an ultimatum (Tuesday) whereupon the wheels fell off (Wednesday) – which was then topped off by his brother JoJo resigning (Friday). There was some interesting research on the potential cost of Labour policies on seizing shares of companies (Monday) as well as its bid to “end austerity, eliminate in-work poverty and drive up living standards across the UK economy” (Tuesday) which includes things like the complete overhaul of the use and governance of land, rethinking the role of the Bank of England, trialing universal basic income (i.e. flat lump sums for the unemployed), nationalisation of rail companies, utilities and the Royal Mail plus a drive towards the use of green energy

• Despite a difficult market, Lego announced it was going to increase store numbers (Wednesday) in the growth markets of China and India, M&S fell out of the FTSE100 for the first time in 35 years (Wednesday) and Halfords announced yet another profit warning (Thursday)
• Pressure on retailers with CVAs mounted with the continuation of a Sports Direct-sponsored legal challenge with Debenhams (Tuesday) and a new challenge by British Land on Monsoon Accessorize’s CVA (Friday)

• …as Facebook launched its dating app in the US (Friday), which should have rivals such as Match.com quaking in their boots (although Facebook’s success is not nailed on given its recently-revealed shady record on data privacy)
• …and Samsung’s bendy phone, the Galaxy Fold got relaunched in South Korea (Friday), to be rolled out in the UK, France, Germany and Singapore by September 18th. Let’s hope it’s ready for market this time!

• Elon Musk announced that Tesla was going to become an insurer in its own right (Monday) and use its own balance sheet to underwrite car insurance as Musk believes that the company’s access to its driver’s data will mean it can do a better job than others and bring costs down for its customers into the bargain. There was more good news for the company this week as it turns out that the Model S was Britain’s 3rd highest-selling new car last month (Friday), according to the latest SMMT figures
• Toyota announced deals with China’s BYD and Comtemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) to develop batteries for electric vehicles (Tuesday), cementing its position in the world’s biggest car market and positioning it for the future

Given what’s been going on this week in parliament, this is the thing that made me laugh the most – JOHNNY B IN DA HOUSE!

I hope you have an enjoyable weekend!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• President Trump started off in typically bullish style talking about the prospects of a meeting with Iranian President Rouhani (Tuesday) which was subsequently rebuffed (Wednesday). There were also positive noises aimed in the direction of China (Tuesday) while he maintained that his domestic economy is still in rude health, despite rising investor concerns to the contrary (Friday)
• Boris Johnson started the week off in a generous mood by announcing an increase in the allocation of cash to Britain’s high streets for specific projects (Tuesday) which is designed to give a shot in the arm to city centres. He then proceeded to shock everyone by announcing that he would be shutting parliament down for five weeks (Thursday) in order to scupper opposition plans to take away the no-deal option and followed this up with increasing the frequency of talks with Brussels to hammer out an improved deal (Friday)
• Elsewhere, Indonesia’s President Widodo announced plans to move the capital away from Jakarta (Tuesday) due to it being one of the fastest sinking cities in the world and Ukraine got its youngest ever prime minister (Friday)

• Philip Morris International and Altria announced talks to merge (Wednesday) ten years after they demerged but investors didn’t seemed to be bowled over by the terms (Thursday) and increased scrutiny on vaping will be something both parties will need to consider (Friday) as investigations intensified over Juul’s marketing practices
• BP sold its Alaska business to Hilcorp for $5.6bn (Wednesday) with a view to the funds raised being funneled into its shale operations. This is a major moment for BP as the sale signals the end of its 60-year history in Alaska
• Celgene agreed to sell its hugely popular psoriasis treatment, Otezla, to Amgen for $13.4bn (Tuesday), clearing the path for the Bristol-Myers Squibb/Celgene merger which is currently under scrutiny by the competition regulator

• In the US, CostCo was greeted by frenzied scenes at the opening of its first China store (Wednesday), Guess managed to surprise everyone on the upside (Thursday) as it said it managed to mitigate the tariff madness by reaching new agreements with suppliers – but Tiffany lost its lustre (Thursday) due to the ongoing protests in Hong Kong affecting sales in Asia and fewer tourists loading up at its US stores
• In the UK, the prices we pay in shops fell at their fastest rate in a year (Wednesday) as the BRC blamed “weak consumer spend and intense competition” as retailers have been forced to rely more on discounting to shift product. WH Smith continued to see strong sales (Thursday) from its airport, hospital and railway outlets although its high street store sales continue to weaken and Ted Baker signed a deal with Sojitz Infinity (Thursday) where the latter will use its local knowledge to sell Ted Baker merch in Japan’s department stores

• Pizza Express encapsulated the general high street gloom (Thursday) as it said that it had suffered in the first half of the year and put new restaurant openings on hold while smaller chains Franco Manca and Loungers continue to knock it out of the park (Thursday) helped by decent sales and keeping outlet opening costs down by taking advantage of landlords’ weakening position and refusing to pay high rents
• In meatless developments, KFC said that it is working with Beyond Meat in the US to launch “Beyond Fried Chicken” (Tuesday), which are plant-based “chicken” nuggets and wings . A new meatless burger chain called Neat Burger is opening in the UK next week (Friday) with a view to expansion into Europe and the US over the next few years

I know this is very juvenile of me, but the story that made me laugh the most this week was Couple mortified by mother-in-law’s engagement gift with very awkward design flaw (The Mirror, Courtney Pochin https://tinyurl.com/yyvblatu), which shows how kind intentions can sometimes go awry…

I hope you have an enjoyable weekend!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• Japan-South Korea relations continue to worsen as South Korea scrapped the intelligence-sharing pact with Japan (Friday). The heightened tension between the two neighbours is feeding through to the economy as Japanese exports fell (Tuesday) – a pain for Japan given that it is highly exposed to exports – and both sides appear to be digging their heels in, much to the consternation of the Americans who are keen to see stability in the region. I suspect that China, Russia and North Korea will use the current tensions to stir things up!
• Over in Europe, Italy’s Prime Minister resigned (Wednesday) and Germany edged closer to recession (Tuesday)

• Bayer sold its animal-health unit to Elanco for $7.6billion (Wednesday) as part of a bid to shore up its coffers in anticipation of massive liabilities from the Roundup weedkiller/cancer litigation
• The UK’s #1 pub and restaurant operator Greene King was bought by Chinese conglomerate CK Hutchinson for £5bn (Tuesday) which caused excitement and fear in equal measure among investors and employees respectively (the latter because they are nervous about potential closures and job losses)
• US toymaker Hasbro bought Canadian company Entertainment One for $4bn (Friday) as it tries to broaden its appeal in a competitive market

• In the US, pressure is building on the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple as it turns out that a group of states (some say it could be up to 20 or more) will be be launching an antitrust investigation next month (Tuesday), focusing on whether the outsize power wielded by major tech platforms is being used to strangle the competition. This could potentially coincide with the Justice Department’s antitrust investigation announced in July. Alphabet’s driverless division Waymo announced that it won’t be making cars from scratch (Tuesday) and said that it would be sharing its proprietary self-driving data set to all (Thursday) in a bid to accelerate the development of driverless technology. Also, Tesla is being sued by Walmart (Wednesday) because Walmart alleges that Tesla’s solar panels have been the cause of at least seven roof fires at some of its outlets
• In Chinese tech, Huawei was granted a 90-day grace period by the US Department of Commerce (Tuesday), during which it will be allowed to continue to trade with American companies. This will soften the blow of the complete ban Trump threatened recently and may go some way to easing talks with China scheduled for next month. E-commerce giant Alibaba decided to postpone its much-anticipated flotation on the Hong Kong stock market (Thursday) due to ongoing political unrest

• In the US, Target put in a solid performance in the second quarter (Thursday), powered by investment in its stores, merchandise and online offering. The performance of the American seller of homewares, clothing, electronics and beauty products stood in stark contrast to the fortunes of Macy’s, Kohl’s and JC Penney. In the world of DIY, Lowe’s put in a strong showing (Thursday) as it started to see the fruits of a tough cost-cutting programme but Home Depot published disappointing numbers (Wednesday) as it blamed the ongoing US-China trade war for denting its sales growth this year. Mind you, the world’s biggest home improvement retailer, which has almost 3,000 stores in 50 states, left its full-year earnings per share forecast unchanged as chief exec Craig Menear believes that the “stable housing market” would continue to underpin the business
• The gloom continues in the UK as the latest report from the CBI showed that sales volumes and orders fell at the fastest rate for a decade (Friday) due to rising costs and increasing Brexit uncertainty. Tough trading conditions persist as Morrisons announced it was closing outlets (Friday), Laura Ashley published disappointing results (Friday) pouring cold water over any imminent turnaround hopes, Links has been put up for sale (Friday) by its current owner and even Asos was getting in on the gloom by asking suppliers for discounts (Wednesday) to shore up its own finances

I was most impressed by This Is Officially the Most Instagrammable Café in the World (BestLife, Diana Bruk https://tinyurl.com/y4oqkyga) this week. It’s not normally my sort of thing, but if the food in this place tastes as good as it looks, it should be sensational!

I hope you have an enjoyable weekend!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• Things took a turn for the worse in US-China trade relations this week as China was accused of weaponising its currency to hit back at Trump’s tariff hikes (Tuesday), with Trump turning to Twitter (where else??) to vent his frustrations
• Japan/South Korea relations continued to worsen (Thursday) although Japan made some slight concessions at the end of the week to approve key material shipments of materials needed to make computer chips
• Given the uncertain economic and trading backdrop, it’s hardly surprising that investors decided to park their money in gold as a safe haven asset, sending gold’s price per ounce break the $1,500 barrier (Thursday), it’s highest level for six years.

• US retailers continue to shed jobs (Monday) as they continue their attempts to adapt to changing consumer behaviour. Walgreens decided to close 200 stores in the US (Thursday) as part of a cost-cutting drive in a global restructuring while upmarket US department store Barneys filed for bankruptcy (Tuesday) amid torrid trading in the sector
• Talking of which, Debenhams appointed a new chairman (Thursday) to replace Terry Duddy – turnaround specialist Stefaan Vansteenkiste – when Duddy departs next month. It’s interesting to see that the department store has gone for a “company doctor” rather than a retail veteran. Does this mean it’s more likely to be broken up??
• Elsewhere on the high street, Sports Direct bought preppy apparel retailer Jack Wills for $12.7m (Tuesday) while employees got nervous as online retailer Boohoo.com bought Karen Millen and Coast’s online business for £18.2m (Wednesday) as consolidation continues in the sector

• Investment manager KKR bought German payments group Heidelpay for €600m (Monday) in a hotly contested bid as consolidation in the payments industry continues
• Tencent agreed to buy a 10% stake in Universal Music (Wednesday) from French media conglomerate Vivendi in the the Chinese group’s latest effort to expand its global music industry aspirations. Tencent looks like it could be a very powerful ally in cracking the Chinese market

• Samsung announced a major tie-up with Microsoft (Friday) that will enable more seemless connectivity between apps and devices. This has been one of Apple’s strong points over the years, so could be useful for Samsung and Microsoft in retaining the loyalty of their customers going forward
• Streaming continues to gain ground as a way of consuming content (Friday) but Netflix faces a potential lawsuit for falsifying subscriber numbers (Monday) and Disney – which is soon to announce the launch of its new streaming channel, Disney+ – announced poor overall results (Wednesday) as it was dragged down by Fox’s lacklustre performance

I don’t think I’d describe this week as a legendary one in terms of banter but this did strike me as being super-weird: Charge up your phone with the power of a portable cat battery from Japan (SoraNews24, Oona McGee https://tinyurl.com/y3dhsgeu)

I hope you have an enjoyable weekend!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• In interest rate news this week, the US Federal Reserve cut interest rates (Thursday) by 0.25% to the 2-2.25% range. Markets weakened as they were pricing in a deeper 0.5% cut. The Bank of England kept interest rates unchanged at 0.75% (Friday) despite agreeing with the US and European approach presumably because it wants to give itself capacity to make a big cut on Brexit
• The US-China trade war came to the forefront again this week as Trump initially accused China’s negotiators of not following through on their promises (Wednesday) and then proceeded to slap a 10% tariff on an additional $300bn-worth of Chinese goods (Friday). This is having a negative effect on Asian (Friday) and German manufacturing (Friday)

• Pfizer put its off-patent drug division together with Epi-Pen maker Mylan (Tuesday) to create an off-patent pharmaceutical group, allowing it to focus more on the high margin drugs
• Just Eat announced intentions for a £9bn merger with Takeaway.com (Tuesday) which would form one of the world’s biggest online food delivery companies if it went through
• The London Stock Exchange announced an all-share takeover of Refinitiv (Friday), which will transform it from a trading platform into a UK-based rival to the market information behemoth that is Bloomberg
• Spectacles and sunglasses giant EssilorLuxottica bought the majority of GrandVision in a €7bn (Thursday) as part of its bid to expand its geographic footprint

• Sports Direct were a bit naughty and delayed their already delayed results until after the close on Friday 26th (Monday) due to an unexpected Belgium tax bill (!) and then Grant Thornton resigned as its auditor (Tuesday) as Sports Direct looks increasingly toxic. Needless to say, their results were pretty poor
• Primark is asking landlords for cheaper rents (Monday) as it continues to do well, but is surrounded by other tenants who are paying less because of the number of CVAs. This is playing havoc with retail landlords (Tuesday)
• On the plus side, Next announced strong results (Thursday) prompting it to lift full year guidance and Greggs was also a high street winner (Wednesday) as it announced strong sales. However, the shares went a bit weaker because investors were hoping the company would raise full year guidance – and it didn’t, due to caution over Brexit

• Huawei surprised everyone by announcing very strong sales (Wednesday) despite the US ban
• Apple announced strong revenue performance (Wednesday) but it also lost its #1 spot as the quoted company with the biggest cash pile (Thursday) to Google due to its notably increased spend on share buy backs and dividends. I wonder whether Google will start to follow suit given that it’s probably not going to be able to make a major acquision, given the regulatory environment at the moment. If it does, shareholders may be in for a windfall…
• On the other hand, Samsung announced poor results (Wednesday) which is probably due at least in part to consumers holding onto their existing handsets and waiting for 5G phones (Friday) 
• Elsewhere, Spotify fell short of expectations on new subscribers (Thursday), TikTok got into trouble in its #1 overseas market (Thursday) and Epic Games is to introduce a new competitive esports league (Tuesday) called the Fortnite Championship Series

Without doubt, my favourite video this week shows man vs dog in a noodle eating competition: https://tinyurl.com/y4xrf5hl

I love this video!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• Both the US Federal Reserve (Monday) and the ECB (Friday) are moving towards implementing stimulatory measures that include cutting interest rates
• South Korea’s economy actually staged a rebound (Friday) but its shipping industry continues to reflect weak global trade (Thursday) and its situation isn’t helped by the trade spat it’s having with Japan at the moment (Thursday)
• Although Spain has one of Europe’s best-performing economies, the caretaker PM Pedro Sanchez has failed again to put together a coalition government (Friday), meaning that he now has only two months to get something agreed with potential partner Podemos, who complain that they were only being offered “decorative” government roles

• Chinese car manufacturer BAIC bought a 5% stake in Mercedes-Benz owner Daimler (Wednesday) as it wants to make sure it doesn’t let rival Geely get all the exposure (Geely bought a 9.69% chunk in Daimler for $9bn early last year)
• Peugeot owner PSA Group put in a decent performance (Thursday) as its pricing and profitability benefited from new Citroen models (the C5 and the Aircross SUV), three commercial van launches and the integration of Opel-Vauxhall in 2017
• On the other hand, Nissan announced that it would cut 9% of its global workforce (Thursday) which reflects continued strife in the wider industry
• Tesla lost its chief technology officer (Thursday) – the latest senior management bod to leave the company. Investors didn’t like this, especially it is the latest departure in a long line at a pretty crucial time in the company’s development
• Aston Martin announced absolutely shocking European sales figures (Thursday) which sent its shares down by 26%. There’s a lot riding on the success of its new 4×4, the DBX, which is due to be unveiled in December. Given that it’s going to cost between £140,000 and £160,000, I just don’t know how popular it’s going to be in an increasingly crowded luxury SUV segment – there are only so many people who want to fork out this much money on a big 4×4 IMHO and they will be choosing between the DBX, Ferrari’s new 4×4, Bentley’s Bentayga and Lamborghini’s Urus among others. At least Lambo brought its offering out relatively early to get ahead of the pack.

• Amazon’s winning streak of record profits came to an end (Friday) due to higher shipping costs, a loss in momentum for its cloud computing business and problems in its Indian and European businesses
• Google, on the other hand, did well (Friday) as it continued to benefit from ad revenues and steady progress from its cloud computing division
• Snap posted its best user growth figures since its listing (Wednesday) as Snapchat app improvements and a management overhaul took effect. The company has yet to report a profit, but company founder and CEO Evan Spiegel said that there is an outside chance that it will be in the black by the end of this year
• Although I’ve just said that Google continued to see solid ad revenues, research by global media agency group Zenith which suggests that the internet could lose its crown for being the fastest growing sector of the advertising market for the first time in 20 years (Monday) as brands opt to move away from riskier space towards the traditional areas of cinema, billboards and posters. I’m not so sure about this – surely the whole beauty of internet advertising is that you can be far more targeted in your approach!

• It seems that there was some excitement surrounding Ted Baker (Tuesday) as rumours circulated about founder Ray Kelvin taking it private and away from the City’s prying eyes
• Mothercare also looks like putting itself up for sale (Friday) in order to focus on its online and international business
• Homebase bought Bathstore (Tuesday) and will put Bathstore concessions in its outlets. Homebase is owned by Hilco, the turnaround specialists. I think this is a very risky combo – especially if the UK housing market stays sluggish
• Sports Direct decided to drop its case against Debenhams’ recent CVA (Tuesday) but it will be giving money to another landlord (CPC) to continue the action. It looks to me like it thinks it won’t win but wants to keep some skin in the game for if CPC does win

My favourite “alternative” story this week was An optical illusion that seems to be both a circle and a square is baffling the internet – here’s how it works (Insider, Gili Malinsky https://tinyurl.com/y5kaje9c). This really is so so clever! Have a great weekend!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• China growth fell to its slowest rate since 1992 (Monday) – 6.2% GDP growth – undershooting market expectations. However,  the government will no doubt do its utmost to sort things out in the second half, including more tax cuts and an increase in infrastructure spending. Rising pig prices – as a result of the African swine fever epidemic – aren’t helping consumer spending power (Monday) as the Consumer Price index is getting upward pressure as a result, so Chinese are getting less to spend due to meat prices increasing
• Back in the UK, there’s good news for consumers as wages continue to outpace inflation (Wednesday) according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics which show that average pay growth is now 3.6%, with public sector pay growth seeing its highest growth rate since 2010. More spending power! Yipeee!

• Big tech came under pressure from Congress this week (Wednesday) as politicians from all sides were demanding more regulatory oversight of Big Tech’s sprawling businesses and asking about future expansion plans
• Facebook is facing massive resistance to its proposed Libra “stablecoin” cryptocurrency (Wednesday) from politicians and central bankers alike
• Google was accused of working with the Chinese (Wednesday) by Facebook board member Peter Thiel, who called for the FBI and CIA to investigate the company. Trump tweeted (naturally) that he would be looking into the allegations
• Amazon is going to be investigated by the European Competition Commissioner (Wednesday) over Amazon’s use of data from third party sellers
• Chip giant Qualcomm got a €242m fine from the European Competition Commissioner (Friday) for abusing its dominant market position, marking the end of a nine year case
• Netflix lost subscribers for the first time in almost ten years (Thursday) just when rivals like Disney, Apple and WarnerMedia are coming to market with their own offering
• On the positive side, Microsoft announced strong results (Friday) which were mainly due to the continued success of its cloud computing division
• eBay published better-than-expected results (Thursday) and upped its forecasts although its revenue growth suffered

• Sports Direct got everyone in a panic because it postponed its results (Tuesday) due to issues related to integrating the House of Fraser acquisition (hmmmm)
• American real estate investment specialist Vornado announced its displeasure with Arcadia’s recent CVA (Wednesday), and will be taking them to court. This brings back a bit of uncertainty for the retailer who probably thought it had successfully bought itself some time with a CVA that squeaked through a vote a few weeks back
• Watches of Switzerland put in a strong performance (Thursday) in its first set of results since its May flotation
• Hotel Chocolat also had great results (Thursday) as it saw a 14% rise in sales and predicts profits to be in line with expectations despite splashing out on 16 new shops and expanding into the US (for a second time)

• Yandex and Uber, who are in a JV, bought Russia’s largest taxi company Vezyot (Tuesday), that will dramatically increase their combined market share in the country
• Stonegate owner TDR Capital bought Ei’s pubs (Friday) for a chunky 40% premium over the pre-deal price but we will have to wait to see whether the Competition and Markets Authority wave it through
• On the other hand, Fosun’s rescue of Thomas Cook was put in doubt (Tuesday) as Fosun still requires the approval of the banks and hedge funds that hold £1.6bn of Thomas Cook debt – and things aren’t looking great at the moment
• Also, ABInBev announced that it was going to sell off assets (Friday) after pulling the proposed IPO of its Asian business (Tuesday). It is expected to use the proceeds to pay down its massive debt pile

You are going to think that I am a bit of a softie, but my favourite “alternative” story of the week was Tiny munchkin kitten sleeps like an angel in the cutest position, winning hearts of Instagram (SoraNews24, Dale Role https://tinyurl.com/y2ju83cf). There, I said it! Have a great weekend whatever you get up to!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• Deutsche Bank announced massive staff cuts (Monday) and siphoned off riskier assets to a “bad bank” in an effort to appease criticism that it hasn’t been doing enough to address its problems. Investors didn’t seem to be convinced initially (Tuesday), but the bank reiterated its intention to stay in London and move into a newer, smaller HQ. This move has bought chief exec Christian Sewing some time, but Deutsche isn’t out of the woods yet
• Funnily enough, banks aren’t keen on Facebook’s Libra (Tuesday) while Trump and Fed chief Jerome Powell also expressed their unease with the Facebook-backed cryptocurrency this week. I say “funnily enough” because they are working away on their own cryptocurrencies and neither governments nor central bankers want to support something over which they will have no control!

• Car sales in China continue to get weaker (Thursday) as consumers keep their collective hands in their pockets given the economic uncertainty on US-China trade while India sees weaker car sales (Thursday) due to a crackdown on non-bank lending (which had made up the lion’s share of vehicle financing) meaning that financing has been much harder to come by, which has led to weaker sales
• SUVs are taking longer to sell these days, it seems (Monday), as there are more of them knocking around. Car makers love SUVs because of the superior profit margins but if there are more of them, margins could shrink and any advantage of profitability would be nullified – taking makers back to square one
• BMW decided to pull some engine manufacturing away from the UK (Wednesday) due to Brexit uncertainty in yet another blow to the UK car industry
• Energy suppliers Centrica and SSE have said that they will convert their entire fleet of commercial vehicles to electric by 2030 (Monday), which would be a great boon to the electric vehicle industry. If more companies make similar pledges this could be great for alternative-fueled cars, put more pressure on the powers-that-be to improve the charging network more rapidly and make ownership that much more compelling

• Nintendo had a good week as investors reacted positively to the unveiling of a Switch Lite (Friday), a cheaper version of their popular console, in addition to the announcement that it was moving some Switch production to Vietnam (Wednesday) in a bid to diversify its production away from an over-reliance on China – especially given the current US-China trade tensions
• So it sounds like Facebook is on the look-out for gaming acquisitions (Friday) in order to boost the development of virtual reality and its Oculus goggles
• Amazon appears to making attempts to future-proof its staff by upskilling them (Friday), in an admission that processes will continue to get automated. I think that this is a genius move because, to the outside world, it looks like Amazon is being a benevolent employer. In reality, I think that there will always be people who don’t want to upskill – and they will leave the company for jobs elsewhere. Those that are left and do pick up the skills will be highly motivated and capable, I would imagine – so it’s quite a cunning way of weeding out people that could have been in line for the chop anyway

• British Airways was slapped with a massive fine (Tuesday) for a customer data breach last year which resulted in the details of 500,000 customers being accessed by hackers. The fine was larger than everyone had been expecting and BA will appeal
• Google Belgian public broadcaster VRT NWS said in a report this week that Google employs contractors around the world to listen into recordings of people’s conversations with Google Assistant (Friday) which could result in uproar on privacy but Apple has had to suspend the Walkie-talkie function on its Watch (Friday) because there have been reports of a glitch which can let someone listen in to someone else’s iPhone conversation without consent. Neither of these stories will be disastrous IMHO, but they are certainly not good PR

My favourite “alternative” news story was undoubtedly Mariah Carey hilariously masters the bottle cap challenge using just her voice (Yahoo! Rachel DeSantis https://tinyurl.com/y48njgjw). What a legend!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• Australia decided to cut its interest rate again (Wednesday) for the second time in two months to head off any economic slowdown so it’s now at 1%. The country hasn’t had a recession since 1991 and clearly wants to maintain this record!
• China said that it was going to create its own equivalent of the NASDAQ (Monday) which would give domestic tech companies a viable alternative to listing overseas. This sounds good, but it will take a while to work given the track record of the competition
• Opec decided to leave oil production quotas unchanged (Tuesday) citing the rapid growth of the US shale oil industry and global economic slowdown which they think could cause an increase in supply and a decrease in demand respectively
• Iron ore prices continue to look toppy at the moment (Tuesday) as two dents in supply (mine closures in Brazil following the Vale-owned dam collapse and lower iron ore exports from Australia due to cyclones adversely affecting output) caused the Australian government to forecast that global seaborne supply would fall by 4% this year
• Then in the world of cryptocurrencies, US lawmakers called for Facebook to suspend its launch of Libra (Thursday) until they had had the chance to have a proper look at it while the UK financial regulator, the FCA, said it would stop retail investors trading in financial instruments connected bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies (Thursday) due to the difficulty in valuing cryptoassets

• It was a bad week for William Hill employees as the company announced 700 store closures (Friday), shoe shop Office announced it was looking at closing outlets (Tuesday) and Superdrug had to halve its dividend to shareholders (Monday) due to profits being wiped out by higher staff costs
• It was, however, a good week for Yo! Sushi, Five Guys and Majestic (Wednesday) who announced a new acquisition in the US, expansion in the UK and a new bidder for the chain of shops respectively. Primark managed to put in a reasonable performance despite bad weather over the quarter (Friday) and announced further US expansion

• The UK saw poorer sales of electric vehicles (Friday) due to consumers shying away from making big ticket purchases, but Jaguar Land Rover announced a new major investment in electric vehicle production (Monday) which should help in moving it away from reliance on diesel technology
• Tesla surprised on the upside (Wednesday) as it managed to deliver a record number of cars (95,200) in the second quarter of this year. This is particularly impressive given that it had only delivered 63,000 cars in the previous quarter. Great, but will it be too little too late given that all the other major car manufacturers are coming out with appealing offerings?
• On the other hand, the much-hyped Chinese EV start-up Nio saw some senior managements departures (Tuesday). This has come shortly after the recall of 4,800 of their SUVs following reports of spontaneous combustion, which precipitated a 75% fall in the company’s share price. It seems that there’s much work to be done here…

• Foreign companies will be able to do more business in China sooner than expected (Wednesday). Chinese premier Li Kequiang announced in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Dalian that foreigners would be allowed to have majority ownership of domestic securities companies by 2020 – an opening up of China’s financial sector one year ahead of schedule
• The troubled Deutsche Bank is to make some big big cuts (Thursday) and put over €50bn of its assets  into a “bad bank” in its bid to turn the business around following its failed deal with Commerzbank. Over 20,000 jobs cuts are rumoured to be in the offing with US equities trading and rates divisions expected to be hit hardest by the cuts

This week, I have to say that my favourite “alternative” news story was this: Someone is putting football managers’ hair on politicians and it’s glorious (Metro, Joe Roberts https://tinyurl.com/y6e3dgmf). Quality. And some impressive Photoshops skills on display also! Have a great weekend everyone!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily.

• The war of words between the US and Iran got more heated (Monday, Tuesday) as Trump ratcheted up the sanctions
• Bitcoin shot up, firstly through $11,000 (Tuesday) and then $13,000 (Thursday) before losing steam going into the end of the week (Friday). No one really knows why, but its value is thought to have got frothy following Facebook’s Libra unveiling last week and some are saying that it’s also due to investors trying to find ways of getting money out of China
• It’s bad news for cobalt producer Democratic Republic of Congo (Monday) as cobalt prices continue to fall due to oversupply and the drying up of demand from China. Cobalt is a key ingredient for the lithium ion batteries that power everything from mobile phones to cars

• Eldorado Resorts bought Caesars Entertainment (Tuesday) which could prompt others to consider/accelerate their own consolidation plans
• Capgemini bought Altran Technologies (Tuesday) to boost its existing capabilities and geographical footprint
• Apple bought driverless start-up Drive.ai (Thursday) to enhance its own autonomous division (codenamed “Project Triton”) for an undisclosed sum
• TDR Capital bought BCA Marketplace (Thursday) which will give embattled fund manager Neil Woodford something to cheer about given he owns a decent chunk of it. I bet he wished they’d completed this deal about a month ago ????

• Carrefour is pulling out of China (Monday) after spending decades banging its head against a (Great) wall. It’s selling 80% to Chinese retailer Suning.com so will still have some skin in the game if things take off
• H&M sounds like it’s making progress in its turnaround (Friday) although it’s not perfect
• Bathstore went into administration (Thursday) after the current owner decided not to pour any more money into it and no buyer was found
• Monsoon looks like it’s getting closer to making some big cuts (Tuesday) as it moots store closures as part of its bid for a CVA to survive

• Ford announced that it would axe 12,000 from its European workforce (Friday) as part of its cost-cutting measures and efforts to get its business in the region out of the red and back into the black
• Vauxhall said it will shut its UK operations IF there was a No-Deal Brexit (Friday), but let’s face it – Brexit is just one of a number of bigger reasons why the PSA Group-owned car marque would be cutting production

This week, I thought I’d leave you this heart-warming story – Pink fan gives birth to baby girl during singer’s first song at Liverpool concert (The Mirror, Jenny Kirkham http://tinyurl.com/yxf4ob3x). Amazing! I hope you all have an enjoyable weekend!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily. You will need a FULL SUBSCRIPTION to be able to click through all the links which take you to the relevant articles.

• Markets got excited as Trump arranged trade talks with China at next week’s G20 meeting (Wednesday) and tensions increased due to US-Iran conflict (Monday)
• Markets also got excited about the US Federal Reserve hinting about cutting rates (Thursday) as the latest meeting left them unchanged. UK interest rates were also left untouched (Friday) by the Bank of England due to uncertain economic circumstances trumping above-inflation wage rises as the main driver
• Eurozone wage growth hit new highs (Tuesday), UK consumer confidence remained quite robust (Tuesday) but manufacturing orders slowed right down (Thursday) due to Brexit-induced stockpiles being run down

• Facebook announced a news cryptocurrency called Libra (Wednesday) which could bring cryptocurrencies into the mainstream – but there’s a lot of scepticism given Facebook’s recent behaviour regarding sensitive customer information. It will be put under many microscopes to ensure that it is robust enough to cope with demand. Still, it has the backing of some major banks and retailers, amongst others – so I think it stands a decent chance of success if it satisfies the regulators
• Slack had floated on the New York Stock Exchange (Friday) at a price that was much higher than expectations. It was particularly notable for the fact that it was a direct listing – not a traditional IPO. Still, it has never made a profit and faces the uphill task of living up to its potential to be “an e-mail killer”
• Huawei counted the cost of being on Trump’s naughty list (Tuesday) as it said that revenues for the next two years would be hit by a whopping €30bn as a direct result

• Lufthansa surprised everyone with a profit warning (Tuesday), blaming thinner margins on fierce competition from low-cost rivals and higher fuel costs. Europe’s largest airline saw its share price fall by over 10% on the unscheduled announcement. Lufthansa added that it is also facing a potential €320m bill from German tax authorities. Ouch.
• Airbus announced strong orders for its newly-unveiled A321 XLR aircraft (Thursday) although the embattled Boeing also announced strong sales of its troubled 737 MAX (Wednesday) to British Airways owner IAG

• It was a BAD week for Bathstore, which is looking administration in the face after failing to find a buyer for the business (Thursday), Dixons Carphone announced its second profit warning in a year (Friday) mainly due to weak mobile handset sales and Monsoon Accessorize said that it wanted to push through a CVA (Friday) in order to survive
• It was a GOOD week for Dunelm, whose soft furnishing sales actually benefited from poor weather (Friday) and small coffee chain Black Sheep, which managed to raise funding from private investors (Tuesday) to finance an international expansion

This week, I thought I’d leave you with This picture tells you how stressed you are. What do you see? (India Today, https://tinyurl.com/y2kgq2jk) and the rather brilliant sounding You can hail an Uber to the Great Barrier Reef (National Geographic, Sarah Reid https://tinyurl.com/yyw9lmxk). I hope you have a great weekend!

This is an amalgamation of the “best bits” of the daily weekday newsletter/blog woven together to form a concise and coherent view on the things that matter in the commercial and economic news of the week. 

THE DAY IN BRACKETS REFERS TO THE EDITION WHERE THE STORY APPEARED IN WATSON’S DAILY. Clicking on the day will take you to the appropriate edition of Watson’s Daily. You will need a FULL SUBSCRIPTION to be able to click through all the links which take you to the relevant articles.

• US chipmaker Broadcom said that the Huawei trading ban would hit it sales by $2bn annually (Friday) making it one of the first chipmaking majors to quantify the impact of the US-China trade war. On the China side of the divide, Huawei is already suffering (Friday) as it has had to postpone the launch of its new laptop as well as production in its PC business due to restrictions in buying US products like Intel chips and Microsoft Windows
• Alibaba filed listing paperwork this week (Friday), bringing it closer to a secondary listing in Hong Kong. This move is likely to be a way of mitigating any US-China trade negotiation fallout, giving it an “escape route” for if things get too heated. There’s been no official word, but the rumour is that Alibaba will be looking to raise around $20bn

• United Technologies announced a deal to merge with Raytheon (Monday) to form a combined aerospace and defence company – to be called Raytheon Technologies – worth over $100bn, making it the world’s second largest defence contractor by revenue. Given that there isn’t much of an overlap between the businesses, it’s thought to be unlikely to meet with much antitrust resistance. Having said that, Trump expressed his own misgivings about the enlarged group shortly after the news was announced, saying that it could have too much power in a sector that is known for having only a few players with proper pricing power
• Salesforce announced plans to buy analytics platform Tableau (Tuesday) in a chunky $15bn all-stock offer to enhance its existing offering in business intelligence and data analytics capabilities. Investors balked at the price, but the strategy sounds fairly reasonable

• In UK supermarket news, we saw that Tesco promised to raise staff wages (Tuesday) but sales growth slowed right down (Friday), Morrisons announced a further rollout of the “Morrisons at Amazon” super-fast delivery service (Friday), Ocado invested in “vertical farms” (Tuesday) meaning that customers could in future pick their own salad and Lidl announced plans to open stores in London (Thursday)
• In apparel retailing, Arcadia started to wield the axe on stores and employee numbers (Friday) after winning the crucial vote with creditors this week, Ted Baker had a profit warning (Wednesday) for the second time in less than six months, Zara-owner Inditex benefited from Brazilian online sales (Thursday) and an improving balance between its offline and online offering and Boohoo.com enjoyed a very strong start to the financial year (Thursday) with sales in the UK (which account for over 50% of revenues) up by 27% and international sales up by over 50% as its cheap fast fashion hits a cord with shoppers