US investor Harris Associates has reduced its stake in Credit Suisse to around half of its holding six months ago.

Once a top-three shareholder in the Swiss lender, Harris Associates now owns less than 3%, according to an 11 January regulatory filing on the Swiss Stock Exchange. This is down from its ownership of around 10% of the bank’s stock as recently as June.

The reduction means the asset management subsidiary of Natixis Investment Managers is now free from the obligation to disclose the size of its position to the Swiss bourse — a mandatory requirement when a shareholder owns more than 3% of a company.

However, David Herro, chief investment officer of international equities at Harris Associates, told Financial News the asset manager currently holds just under 5% of Credit Suisse shares.

He added reporting requirements differed between jurisdictions and how ownership is recorded, which explained the difference in shareholding.

READ Activist who called for Credit Suisse break-up says latest overhaul isn’t enough

Herro said its shareholding had been reduced as a result of “capital dilution” following a recent CHF4bn capital raise by Credit Suisse, as well as “year-end outflows [and] distributions”.

Harris Associates participated in the recent capital raise, which closed in December, Herro added.

The rights issue was a cornerstone of Credit Suisse’s strategic review, announced on 27 October, amid the bank’s efforts to overcome multiple quarters of losses.

Credit Suisse’s review included plans to spin out its investment banking unit into a separate business called CS First Boston, creating a ‘bad bank’ for $35bn in unwanted assets, and pulling back from trading while focusing on wealth management.

Credit Suisse’s largest investors — who hold just under 10% between them — comprise Saudi National Bank, Qatar Holding, BlackRock and Olayan Group, according to the bank’s website.

Chicago-headquartered Harris Associates has stuck with Credit Suisse during a series of recent scandals, including its exposure to the Greensill and Archegos blowups.

Herro told FN in January last year that he hoped the Swiss bank would be “revitalised” following a shake-up of the board that ousted chair Sir António Horta-Osório.

Credit Suisse announced Horta-Osório’s departure in a surprise statement last January, after he was found to have breached Covid-19 rules. He had been in the role for just eight months.

Credit Suisse declined to comment.

To contact the author of this story with feedback or news, email David Ricketts

>>>ad: Don't Miss TODAY'S BEST Amazon Deals!

Originally Appeared Here

New York
CNN
 — 

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell made his first public appearance of the year on Tuesday, stressing the importance of central bank independence and his commitment to bringing down inflation.

The painful rate hikes the Fed is implementing to tackle high prices don’t make officials particularly popular, Powell said during a panel discussion at an event hosted by Sweden’s central bank, the Sveriges Riksbank.

But, they are a necessary measure, he noted: “Price stability is the bedrock of a healthy economy and provides the public with immeasurable benefits over time. But restoring price stability when inflation is high can require measures that are not popular in the short term as we raise interest rates to slow the economy.”

“The absence of direct political control over our decisions allows us to take these necessary measures without considering short-term political factors,” Powell added.

He also highlighted climate change as a prime example of why officials at the Fed “should ‘stick to our knitting’ and not wander off to pursue perceived social benefits that are not tightly linked to our statutory goals and authorities.”

The Fed will not “be a climate policymaker,” he said.

The US central bank recently instituted a voluntary pilot program that calls for the six biggest banks to test their stability under various climate event scenarios. The introduction of the program, which has no penalties associated with it, has led some politicians to accuse the central bank of promoting a political agenda.

“Today, some analysts ask whether incorporating into bank supervision the perceived risks associated with climate change is appropriate, wise, and consistent with our existing mandates,” Powell said Tuesday. “In my view, the Fed does have narrow, but important, responsibilities regarding climate-related financial risks. These responsibilities are tightly linked to our responsibilities for bank supervision. The public reasonably expects supervisors to require that banks understand, and appropriately manage, their material risks, including the financial risks of climate change.”

Powell did not explicitly mention his policy outlook in his speech.

US inflation rates (as measured by the Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index) have been steadily falling for the past five months. That has enabled the Fed to start easing back on the size of its historically high rate hikes meant to cool the economy and fight rising prices.

Inflation in the Eurozone, meanwhile, remains at an eye-popping 9.2% — though it eased between November and December. ECB president Christine Lagarde said last month she expects interest rate hikes to rise “significantly further, because inflation remains far too high and is projected to stay above our target for too long.”

“If you compare with the Fed, we have more ground to cover. We have longer to go,” she added.

The Bank of England, meanwhile, has also warned that inflation, still at its highest level since the 1980s, isn’t going anywhere. The BoE’s chief economist Huw Pill said this week that inflation could persist for longer than expected despite recent falls in wholesale energy prices and an economy on the brink of recession.

These three central banks are fighting in different conditions, but they share a similar battle strategy: Keep tightening.

The central bankers defended the importance of independence and credibility for their institutions, which has come under fire as policymakers are accused of having let surging inflation go unchecked for too long.

December meeting minutes from the Fed, released last week, noted that the policymaking committee would “continue to make decisions meeting by meeting,” leaving options open for the size of rate hikes at the next monetary policy decision on February 1.

No policymakers have forecast that it would be appropriate to reduce the bank’s benchmark borrowing rate this year. And while officials welcomed the recent softening in inflation, they stressed that “substantially more evidence” was required for a Fed “pivot.”

Last week’s jobs report further muddied the picture, showing that employment remained strong while wage growth eased.

Thursday’s CPI for December — which will be the new year’s first check on inflation — will also provide helpful clues to investors about whether US price hikes are sufficiently cooling.

Encouraging data could bolster consensus estimates that call for a quarter-percentage point interest rate hike in February, a shift lower from December’s half-point hike and the four prior three-quarter-point hikes.

>>>ad: Don't Miss TODAY'S BEST Amazon Deals!

Originally Appeared Here

Jefferies Financial Group Reports Q4 Results, Shares Down 2% on Lower Profit

By Davit Kirakosyan

Jefferies Financial Group Inc (NYSE:) shares fell nearly 2% after-hours following the company’s posted 52.5% drop in profit for Q4, citing decreased underwriting fees and volatile markets that affected income from trading desks.

However, the company’s investment banking revenue, while down 38% from an off-the-charts 2021, had its second-best year and was significantly higher than in 2019.

Q4 EPS was $0.57, with the consensus expectations, while revenue of $1.44 billion came in better than the consensus estimate of $1.17B.

The company’s Board of Directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.30 per common share, payable on February 24, 2023 to record holders on February 13, 2023.

>>>ad: Don't Miss TODAY'S BEST Amazon Deals!

Originally Appeared Here

Elon Musk has good reason to laugh at those naysayers who predicted Twitter would crash as soon as he laid off half its workforce. Without engineers to keep it going, opined the critics, the platform would collapse. Two months later, the social media site is still alive and may have even grown.

Its demise, however, is still possible. Not because there’s a lack of talent to catch software bugs or keep the servers running, but because its time may have come. Recent gimmicks include reinstating banned accounts, introducing blue ticks for all,and pseudo-democratic policy decisions. At first glance, none of these alone herald impending doom, merely the whims of a billionaire showing off his new play toy.

But history may show this as the moment Musk jumped the shark. That term comes from the 1970s American sitcom Happy Days, which starred Henry Winkler as the leather-jacketed Fonzie and Ron Howard as freckle-faced Richie Cunningham. At the time, the series was one of the top-ranked shows on US television. By season five, though, its writers were getting desperate for new ideas, so they had The Fonz do a water-ski jump over a shark. That episode, although a ratings success, showed how farcical the producers had become in chasing attention.

The show went on for another six seasons, but the audience started to lose interest and its ratings slid dramatically. Jumping the shark didn’t kill Happy Days, but it signaled a peak in relevance and popularity.

Thirty years later, similar desperation could be seen on the faces, and checkbooks, of executives at News Corp. Eager to get into the hip new arena of internet social media, Rupert Murdoch’s multinational conglomerate in July 2005 spent $580 million to take over MySpace.

At the time, MySpace had 16 million users, making it the US’s fifth most-visited website and the world’s premier social networking platform. Murdoch saw it as a chance to drive users to his other properties, including websites for the Fox brand of news, sports and film. (Disclosure: Two years later, News Corp. bought Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, which compete with Bloomberg in the market for financial news and information).

Beyond millions of users, the purchase gave Murdoch’s team what they desperately craved: chic. Instead of buying physical newspapers or tuning into cable news shows, youngsters of that era were spending more time at a computer writing their own content and sharing updates with friends. His humble roots in Adelaide, Australia, coupled with decades in London’s cut-throat newspaper market, had made Murdoch rich and powerful, but it didn’t make him cool. For that, he turned to the Los Angeles-based web wizards.

Although MySpace continued to grow, hitting 100 million global users a year later, it was losing its novelty value to a hip new startup out of a Harvard University dorm room. In 2008, Facebook overtook MySpace in web traffic.

Musk could learn a lot from Murdoch’s mistakes, though he probably won’t.

Eager to monetize MySpace, and hit a publicized target of $1 billion in ad revenue by 2008, News Corp. started force-feeding ads to the site’s users. Tensions escalated between the website’s founders and the team Murdoch brought in to run it. Innovations aimed at making it more usable, such as cutting the number of pages to be loaded, were nixed by the new owner’s desire to squeeze every penny out of the deal. Before long, it was apparent that those who knew MySpace inside out were being usurped by the outsiders who bought it and wanted to assert their right to operate it as they pleased.

Users spent less and less time on MySpace and more on Facebook. Years later, Murdoch himself would recognize that as the beginning of the end.

Look out Facebook! Hours spent participating per member dropping seriously. First really bad sign as seen by crappy MySpace years ago.

— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) May 17, 2013
Musk’s predicament is not dissimilar.

Having shelled out $47 billion, not all of it his own money, the chief executive of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX funded the deal with $13 billion of debt that requires around $1.5 billion in annual interest payments. By comparison, Twitter posted $5 billion in revenue in 2021, with a net loss of $221 million and negative free cash flow of $379 million. The world’s second-richest man has little choice but to hurriedly monetize his new asset, unless he’s to pay that debt out of his own pocket.

Yet Twitter’s challenges, and demise, may have started before Musk even made his half-hearted bid back in April. The site trails at a great distance behind rivals Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp and TikTok, with just 3.5% of global users naming it as their favorite social media platform, according to market researcher GWI.

What’s more, over 75% of Twitter’s audience are regulars on the platforms of major rivals, but the same cannot be said in reverse — just 54% of Instagram and 56% of TikTok users are also active on Twitter. If push comes to shove, those on the blue-bird app have many other places to land. Additionally, it trails in time spent at an average of just 5.5 hours per month globally, behind YouTube at 23.4 hours and TikTok’s 22.9 hours, according to data compiled by HootSuite and We Are Social.

But perhaps the biggest worry is the one Murdoch himself flagged.

While Musk’s attention-grabbing takeover has doubtless attracted some new fans and more engagement, that may only be fleeting. In fact, average time spent on Twitter declined 15% in the third quarter of 2021 and 6% in the final three months of that year, not long before his takeover drew bigger crowds, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence.

If that downward trend returns, as marketers and researchers predict, then Twitter has already peaked. There may be times when stunts and one-off events draw people back. But it’s only so often that a teenage activist can school a balding muscle-head, or the site’s own proprietor can run a gimmicky opinion poll.

yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com https://t.co/V8geeVvEvg

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) December 28, 2022
The rest of the time, Twitter has a good chance of sliding slowly into irrelevance — like a dude wearing a leather jacket jumping a shark.

>>>ad: Don't Miss TODAY'S BEST Amazon Deals!

Originally Appeared Here

TEWKSBURY — In 2022, the Tewksbury Sel­ect Board discussed several new developments, projects and funding opportunities. Here are some of the highlights.

In January, the board announced that following the federal census, the town has received three additional restaurant all-alcohol licenses for a total of 33 licenses; one additional restaurant wine and malt li­quor license for a total of seven licenses; one additional all-alcoholic retail package license for a total of seven licenses; and one additional wine and malt retail package license for a total of seven li­censes.

The new licenses come in addition to special legislation passed by the state legislature which added five additional all-alcohol restaurant li­censes and two additional beer and wine restaurant licenses which must be used by February 2024.

In February, the new town website was launch­ed at the same address, though documents continue to be transferred over.

In March the board vo­ted to extend the town manager’s contract through 2025, increase his rate by 2.25 percent, and allowed him to roll over 430 unused vacation hours to his new contract term.

The board also re­viewed the town’s annual audit from Jim Pow­ers and Romina Mameli of Powers & Sullivan, LLC, who shared their findings of the town’s financial position. Ma­meli explained that the town had higher revenues and lower expenditures than expected.

“You had a great year,” she said, as budget-to-actuals showed an up­side of $4.2 million.

The town bears an un­funded pension liability of $104.5 million for FY21, but Powers said that the town was “chipping away” at the liability and was ahead of the game compared to other regional retirement systems. The town has a 7.2 percent discount rate on debt, a favorable sign for investments.

The town received a clean opinion from the auditors, and the town’s financial staff was praised for a quick turnaround after closing the year.

“You’re extremely well-managed from a long-term perspective,” said Powers.

Following the April election, the board said goodbye to retiring mem­ber Anne Marie Stro­nach; Jayne Wellman was re-elected to her seat and Mark Kratman returned to the board after a stint away. The board heard updates from Tewksbury Home Build on scatter-site de­velopment throughout town.

In June, the board held several show cause hearings for liquor license violations. The board re­viewed a new flag policy, after several years of contentious requests for special flag raisings. The policy would only allow for the American flag, POW/MIA flag, Massachusetts flag, and town flag to be flown on town property.

However, department heads may petition the town manager to fly other flags for short periods of time on special occasions. The board voted 4-1 to accept the policy, with member Jayne Wellman dissenting.

Later in the summer, the board discussed a new electric vehicle dea­ership on Main Street and discussed funding for veterans affordable housing.

In September, the board encouraged residents to consider the Tewksbury Community Choice Power Supply Program to receive a cheaper power rate compared to National Grid. The board discussed the retail marijuana application submission process. Initially, the town plan­ned to review applications on a first-come, first-served basis to allocate the town’s three retail marijuana licenses following approval of the new retail marijuana bylaws at the state level after a favorable vote at Town Meeting, but eventually established a list of criteria to favor a com­plete application over a fast one.

The board also review­ed an adaptive reuse proposal for the Resi­dence Inn at 1775 Ando­ver St.

The year ended with the board setting the annual tax rate and giving high praise to Town Manager Richard Mon­tuori during his yearly performance review. The board heard presentations on the new state MBTA communities legislation and the Mu­ni­cipal Digital Equity Planning Program.

Finally, in a win for tree lovers, the board ap­proved a resident-initiated Arbor Day proclamation to support Tewksbury’s designation as a Tree City.

The next meeting is sche­duled for Jan. 10, 2023. Re­sidents may find the meeting agenda on the town website. The meeting may be viewed on Com­­­cast chan­­nel 99 and Veri­zon channel 33.

>>>ad: Don't Miss TODAY'S BEST Amazon Deals!

Originally Appeared Here

Things seem to be going from grim to grimmer at Silvergate Bank, with a hit to its Moody’s rating and a selloff by Ark Invest. The bank already experienced a run and has been tied to the FTX collapse.

Ark Invest, the investment vehicle of Cathy Wood, sold off more than 400,000 shares of parent company Silvergate Capital (NYSE:), worth $4.3 million on Jan. 6, leaving it with a mere 4,000 shares, according to various media reports. Those shares lost 43% of their value the previous day.

Continue Reading on Coin Telegraph

>>>ad: Don't Miss TODAY'S BEST Amazon Deals!

Originally Appeared Here

— This is the script of CNBC’s financial news report for China’s CCTV on January 06, 2023.

There were two separate fines imposed by the Data Protection Commission of Ireland on Wednesday – €210 million for Facebook’s violation of the bloc’s landmark data privacy rules, and €180 million for Instagram’s.

In addition to this ruling, Meta is required to align its data processing approach with EU law within three months. This may have a significant impact on the company’s advertising strategies.

The Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems stated, “People now need to be asked if they want their data to be used for advertising purposes. They must have a ‘yes or no’ option and can change their mind at any time. “

According to Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, the judgment puts 5 to 7 percent of Meta’s overall advertising revenue at risk. In his words, “This could be a major gut punch.” And according to Investopedia, in the third quarter of 2022, 98% of Meta’s revenue came from advertising.

Meta was already facing a significant decline in advertising revenue due to Apple’s 2021 iOS privacy update. In the meantime, Meta has invested significantly in the virtual reality world known as the metaverse. The financial report shows, however, that the company’s “metaverse” business is losing a significant amount of money and that the operating loss might increase considerably over the coming year.

Several factors have contributed to the stock price plummeting more than 60 percent in the past year.

According to a Meta spokesperson, “There has been a lack of regulatory clarity on this issue, and the debate among regulators and policymakers around which legal basis is most appropriate in a given situation has been ongoing for some time.That’s why we strongly disagree with the DPC’s final decision, and believe we fully comply with GDPR by relying on Contractual Necessity for behavioural ads given the nature of our services. As a result, we will appeal the substance of the decision.”

In fact, there are disagreements over the manner in which privacy rules are enforced in Europe. However, there are signs that the European Union may intensify its efforts to crack down on the world’s largest tech companies. Several analysts have pointed out that the greater impact of this ruling is that it cracks down the core of the business model of tech companies, which in turn prevents them from using personal data to tailor the advertising output to individual users.

Aneesh Chopra
The first U.S. chief technology officer in the Obama administration

“That’s a policy signal about the importance of understanding what’s driving online behavior. My bigger perception here is that data as a vehicle for anti competitive behavior will be a theme that will cut across all sectors of big tech, all all companies that are leading in big tech.”

According to some experts, Meta’s response to this EU ruling may have a decisive impact on the stock’s trajectory in 2023. It would be very detrimental to Meta’s business if a large number of users refused to share their personal information.

>>>ad: Don't Miss TODAY'S BEST Amazon Deals!

Originally Appeared Here

New York
CNN
 — 

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan believes a US recession is the “most likely outcome” of the Fed’s aggressive rate hike regime meant to curb inflation. He joins a growing chorus of economists predicting imminent economic downturn.

His views are particularly important. Not only did Greenspan serve five terms as Fed chair under four different presidents between 1987 and 2006, but he was the last chair to successfully navigate a soft landing, in 1994. In the 12 months that followed February 1994 Greenspan nearly doubled interest rates to 6% and managed to keep the economy steady, avoiding recession.

Greenspan, now 96, said in a note this week that he doubts this current bout of hikes will result in a repeat performance.

The last two months of data showed that prices are beginning to decelerate – good news but not good enough, he said. “I don’t think it will warrant a Fed reversal that is substantial enough to avoid at least a mild recession,” said Greenspan, now a senior economic adviser to Advisors Capital Management, in commentary released on the company’s website Tuesday.

The Fed hiked interest rates seven times last year, increasing the rate that banks charge each other for overnight borrowing to a range of 4.25%-4.5%, the highest since 2007. Fed officials still expect to raise rates by another percentage point, according to projections released during their December monetary policy meeting.

Wage increases and, by extension, employment, “still need to soften further for a pullback in inflation to be anything more than transitory,” said Greenspan. “So we may have a brief period of calm on the inflation front, but I think it will be too little too late.” Unemployment rates remain near historic lows, holding at 3.7% in November. New employment data is set to be released Friday morning.

Greenspan doubts the Fed will loosen interest rates soon because “inflation could flare up again and we would be back at square one,” he said. “Furthermore, this could potentially damage the Federal Reserve’s credibility as a purveyor of stable prices, especially if the action were seen to be taken merely to protect the stock market rather than in response to truly unstable financial conditions.”

He does see some good news for investors on the horizon. Markets won’t be nearly as chaotic in 2023 as they were last year, he said. “I believe 2022 would be a tough year to top with respect to market volatility,” he remarked.

>>>ad: Don't Miss TODAY'S BEST Amazon Deals!

Originally Appeared Here

— This is the script of CNBC’s financial news report for China’s CCTV on January 04, 2023.

For U.S. retailers, January is a critical and perhaps somewhat challenging month. With the holiday season coming to an end for many American consumers, let’s examine retail data during the recent holiday season.

According to data from MasterCard SpendingPulse, which includes both online and offline sales data, sales from Nov. 1 to Dec. 24 were up 7.6 percent year-over-year.

However, from a foot traffic perspective, data from Placer.ai shows that six U.S. retailers, including Walmart, Target and Best Buy, saw an average year-over-year traffic decline of 3.22 percent from Black Friday to Christmas week. Compared to pre-pandemic levels, it has also declined nearly five percent.

The holiday season is also a mixed bag for retailers, and there are signs of a slowdown in consumer spending power.

First, we observe an increase in consumer credit card balances. In addition, data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that U.S. personal savings as a percentage of disposable income was 2.4% in November, which is below the pre-pandemic average of 6.3%. According to some analysts, this low savings rate is unsustainable and consumers have been spending money in their accounts since the outbreak began.

It is worthy of note that previously, with several rounds of economic stimulus and more adequate savings, the shopping boom has continued for Americans since June 2020, and it is clear from the run chart of monthly U.S. retail sales that it has been increasing until recently when a slight slowdown has occurred.

Currently, with a few weeks to go, many retailers will be nearing the end of their fiscal year, and this last month or so will ultimately determine whether this holiday fiscal season was a success. In order to clear inventory, many retailers are offering a variety of discount policies.

The Urban Outfitters-owned retailer Anthropologie offered a $50 reward for a future purchase to online shoppers who spent $200 or more on Friday. But that bonus cash must be used by Jan. 31, when the company’s fiscal quarter ends. Some analysts also pointed out in an interview with CNBC that perhaps price reductions are just right for consumers who are gradually tightening their purse strings at the moment.

Dan Nathan
Principal, RiskReversal Advisors

“I think that there’s some of these discounters that are probably going to do well in the consumer environment that we’re heading for. In 2023. I think some of the ones that have been heavily discounting, you know, for the better part of the last couple of months, dealing with high inventories, they’re going to have a tougher time here.”

In January, consumers typically return and exchange holiday impulse purchases and redeem gift cards. It is therefore unclear whether the discounting method will be successful in clearing inventory. We will closely monitor how U.S. retailers perform in their final quarter of the fiscal year.

>>>ad: Don't Miss TODAY'S BEST Amazon Deals!

Originally Appeared Here

Corporation tax increase goes live

Last year President Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act, which comprised a variety of measures designed to help redistribute from the wealthy. One element of the package were changes to the corporation tax system which will see the biggest companies hit with a 15% tax rate which went live on 1 January 2023. 

After signing the legislation, Biden said that it would help to cut the federal deficit “by having the wealthy and big corporations finally begin to pay part of their fair share,” while “no one earning less than $400,000 a year will pay a penny more in federal taxes.”

>>>ad: Don't Miss TODAY'S BEST Amazon Deals!

Originally Appeared Here