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Warren prods Disney CEO on buybacks, pay before 28,000 cuts

CorporateOct 15. 2020Bob Iger, chief executive officer of Walt Disney Co., during a Bloomberg Television interview at Disneyland in Shanghai on June 16, 2017. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Qilai Shen. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Anders Melin · BUSINESS, US-GLOBAL-MARKETS

Sen. Elizabeth Warren criticized Walt Disney Co. for laying off thousands of workers as a result of the pandemic, saying its spending on share buybacks and executive pay enriched bosses and investors but eroded its ability to weather a downturn.

“It appears that — prior to, and during the pandemic — Disney took good care of its top executives and shareholders — and now is hanging its front-line workers out to dry,” Warren wrote Tuesday in a letter to Executive Chairman Bob Iger and Chief Executive Officer Bob Chapek.

In the letter, Warren asked about the monthly cost of wages for the affected employees, whether Disney will cover their health-care premiums, and several questions about the company’s executive pay. The Democratic senator from Massachusetts wrote that she expects an answer by Oct. 27.

Disney shares were down 1% to $127.69 at 10:48 a.m. in New York. The stock is down 12% for the year.

Disney said last month that it would terminate 28,000 workers in its theme parks and cruise-line businesses, which have plunged as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The company said at the time it would offer some benefits, including 90 days of job-placement services. Two-thirds of those laid off were employed part-time. The company’s domestic parks employed more than 100,000 people before the crisis, not counting the cruise line and other divisions.

In her letter, Warren noted that Disney had dismissed more workers in Florida than in California, despite the company attributing the cuts in part to California’s refusal to let Disneyland reopen.

Warren said Disney spent $47.9 billion on share buybacks from 2009 through 2018, $5.4 billion on dividends in 2018 and 2019 alone, and hundreds of millions of dollars on executive compensation.

Iger, for years one of America’s top-paid executives, has received repeated criticism over his compensation. Almost half of the company’s investors rejected its executive-pay practices in advisory votes in 2018 and 2019, after Iger secured a new contract entitling him to more than $100 million in stock if Disney shares did well enough over the coming years.

And Abigail Disney, a granddaughter of the company’s co-founder Roy Disney, drew attention to Iger’s pay by saying in a 2019 CNBC interview that “Jesus Christ himself isn’t worth 500 times his median worker’s pay.” Months earlier, Disney had disclosed that the ratio between Iger’s $65.7 million pay package and $46,127 for the firm’s median employee was 1,424-to-1.

Representatives for Disney didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

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Tencent may increase stake in Universal Music

CorporateOct 15. 2020The Tencent Holdings building stands in the Nanshan district of Shenzhen, China. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Brent Lewin 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Helene Fouquet, Manuel Baigorri · BUSINESS

Tencent Holdings is planning to increase its stake in Universal Music Group by a further 10% before the option expires in January, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Chinese technology company last year led a consortium that purchased 10% of the world’s biggest music company from French media company Vivendi. That deal valued Universal Music at 30 billion euros ($35.2 billion) and Tencent and its partners have the option to increase their stake to as much as 20% at the same valuation until Jan. 15, 2021.

Tencent is likely to exercise this option, three people said, asking not to be identified as the deliberations are private. It could make the move before year’s end, one person said.

Shares of Vivendi rose as much as 2.2% in early trading in Paris. Shares of Tencent listed in Hong Kong rose as much as 2.2% in early trading Wednesday, reaching a record of HK$569.5 ($74.48) each. Tencent’s American Depositary Receipts achieved a record closing price of $74.04 in Tuesday’s U.S. session, after Apple announced that its game “League of Legends: Wild Rift” would be coming to iPhone 12.

It isn’t clear whether Tencent will be joined by the original consortium members, the identities of which haven’t been made public, the people said. Hillhouse Capital and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC were among potential investors that Tencent approached, Bloomberg News reported last year.

Deliberations are ongoing, and Tencent could still opt not to increase its stake in Universal Music, one of the people said. Representatives for Tencent and Vivendi declined to comment.

By increasing its stake, Tencent would seek to diversify from gaming and China, where it has been busy with deals this year. It’s helped orchestrate the combination of Huya and DouYu International Holdings, creating a Chinese game-streaming giant with a market value of more than $11 billion. It has also proposed to take private Chinese gaming firm Leyou Technologies Holdings.

Universal Music has been boosted by a surge in streaming that has dragged the industry out of a decade-long slump. The music business has helped Vivendi hold up through the pandemic lockdown, limiting the blow from a drop in advertising and publishing revenue.

A deal by Tencent will counter a recent venture by rival NetEase, which in August struck a deal to license songs from Universal Music for the first time. China’s antitrust authorities had investigated Tencent’s dealings with the world’s three biggest record labels, but the probe was suspended this year, people familiar with the matter said in February.

An initial public offering of Universal Music is planned by early 2023, according to a Vivendi statement in February. An entry onto the stock market could give the music group more financial clout to compete with rivals Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment. Tencent also plans to take a minority stake in Universal Music’s Chinese subsidiary.

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VW crushed the iconic beetle to make room for this small SUV

CorporateOct 15. 2020A Volkswagen on the steering wheel of a VW ID.3 electric automobile, the first of around 22 million vehicles to be produced and delivered worldwide by 2028, at the automaker’s factory in Dresden, Germany, on Sept. 11, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Krisztian Bocsi. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Christoph Rauwald, Craig Trudell · BUSINESS, WORLD, US-GLOBAL-MARKETS, EUROPE

Automakers are so eager to replace less-lucrative cars with higher-margin SUVs that they’re willing to scrap iconic nameplates along the way.

Volkswagen’s newest North American model, the Taos, is perhaps the starkest example of this yet. The German automaker made room to manufacture the compact sport utility vehicle in its Mexican assembly plant by ceasing production of the Beetle, one of the most influential cars of the 20th century.

For automotive product planners, the decision making is simple. The ebb toward crossovers and away from sedans has been relentless, helping put SUVs and trucks on course to seize more than 70% of the U.S. market this year. Crossovers also are a better bang for automakers’ buck — consumers are willing to pay up for the higher ride height and roomier interior of models that aren’t substantially costlier to develop or build compared with sedans.

“We think the trend is going to continue,” Duncan Movassaghi, executive vice president of sales and marketing for VW’s U.S. unit, told reporters during a briefing on the Taos. The automaker sees Americans buying almost 10 million SUVs a year by the end of the decade.

VW rose as much as 0.8% in early trading in Frankfurt on Wednesday.

The German manufacturer is far from alone in being cold-blooded about its cars.

Ford is abandoning sedans in North America, killing off the likes of the Taurus, once the top-selling car in the country. General Motors Co. has ceased several nameplates including the Chevrolet Impala, a model line with more than 60 years of lineage. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV also gave up trying to get Americans to buy the 500, the diminutive car used to bring its eponymous Italian brand back to the U.S. in 2011.

While those companies are making space in factories and showrooms for SUVs some consumers will recognize — the Ford Bronco, Chevrolet Blazer and Jeep Grand Wagoneer — VW eschewed the Beetle for an entirely new nameplate. The Taos is named after a town of less than 6,000 people in the northern New Mexico desert.

By adding the Taos and the all-electric ID.4 to the Tiguan, VW will have three models in the compact SUV segment, similar to how Subaru has the Outback, Forester and Crosstrek, and Jeep has the Wrangler, Cherokee and Compass.

Chief Executive Officer Herbert Diess is counting on an expanded SUV lineup to help VW put an end to losses that predated the German carmaker’s disastrous diesel-emissions scandal. He told shareholders last month the brand was close to breaking even in North America before the Covid-19 pandemic hit. The manufacturer generates the vast majority of its profits in China and Europe and has struggled for years to make money in the U.S.

The Taos will be available in the second quarter of next year. It will be about 9 inches (23 centimeters) shorter than the Tiguan and priced below that model, which starts at $25,245.

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Krungsri launches real-time money transfer between Thailand and Laos

CorporateOct 15. 2020

By The Nation

Krungsri (Bank of Ayudhya) has joined with Lao Development Bank to launch Krungsri-LDB Global Transfer, a service for real-time money transfers between Thailand and Laos.

Offered through Krungri Biz Online (KBOL), the service is designed to enable individuals and small businesses to better respond to business and customer needs, conveniently and safely.

Krungsri-LDB Global Transfer connects the Application Programming Interface (API) of the two banks for the first time, to offer seamless and easy international remittance transactions. 

The service will support money transfer to recipients’ accounts based on the currency being transferred, without using exchange rates. Baht and US dollars will be supported in the first phase, followed by other currencies in the future. 

Customers can use the service free of charge until the end of 2020.