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FAA administrator to tell U.S. airlines MAX approval could come before mid-year
Federal Aviation Administrator Steve Dickson is calling senior U.S. airline officials Friday to tell them that the agency could approve the grounded Boeing 737 MAX's return to service before mid-year, a government official said Friday. FAA approval before mid-year could only happen if Boeing continues to make complete and thorough submissions, the official said, and emphasized that unforeseen issues could always potentially delay approval.
Stocks Set for Biggest Drop Since October on Virus: Markets Wrap
(Bloomberg) -- The spread of a deadly respiratory virus rattled global markets, sending U.S. stocks lower and fueling demand for havens in government bonds and gold. Oil fell for a fourth day on concern the outbreak will dent economic growth.The S&P 500 Index headed for its biggest drop since October amid reports that U.S. officials had confirmed two more cases of the illness, which originated in China and has also spread to several countries in Asia and to Europe. Benchmark Treasury yields fell to a three-month low, while the dollar advanced for a second day.Investors are exercising caution with stocks close to all-time highs, cognizant of the chance the respiratory virus migrates across the world and develops into a more devastating pandemic like the SARS illness that emerged 17 years ago. Officials in China boosted travel restrictions to cover 40 million people to contain the virus’s spread.“People are worried that this problem is worse than China is telling us. Since the market will be closed the next two days, people are taking some chips off the table in front of the weekend because they won’t be able to react to any new news immediately,” said Matt Maley, an equity strategist at Miller Tabak & Co. “People are a little more willing to sell into a down market today because they still have some very, very nice profits.”In company news, United Airlines Holdings Inc. and American Airlines Group Inc. each slid more than 5% on concern the virus will limit demand for air travel and tourism. Financial shares also sank, with Citigroup Inc. down 2% as UBS warned the sector could be hurt by less credit-card spending and a decline in cross-border payments.Health shares were among the worst performers Friday on growing fears that upcoming elections in the U.S. may prompt lawmakers to take action on the increasing cost of medicines in the U.S. Intel Corp. was a rare bright spot after giving a bullish revenue forecast.Elsewhere, the pound slipped for a second day versus the dollar, giving back some of its rally from earlier in the week.These are the main moves in markets:StocksThe S&P 500 Index fell 1.2% as of 2:32 p.m. New York time.The Stoxx Europe 600 Index added 0.9%.The MSCI AC Asia Pacific Index fell 0.1%.CurrenciesThe Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index gained 0.2%.The British pound declined 0.3% to $1.3078.The euro fell 0.3% to $1.1027.The Japanese yen rose 0.2% to 109.32 per dollar.BondsThe yield on 10-year Treasuries fell five basis points 1.69%.Britain’s 10-year yield dipped three basis points to 0.56%.Germany’s 10-year yield fell three basis points to -0.34%.CommoditiesWest Texas Intermediate crude declined 2.3% to $54.31 a barrel.Gold rose 0.4% to $1,578.20 an ounce.\--With assistance from Cecile Gutscher, Adam Haigh and Brian Chappatta.To contact the reporters on this story: Brendan Walsh in Austin at bwalsh8@bloomberg.net;Vildana Hajric in New York at vhajric1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Christopher Anstey at canstey@bloomberg.net, ;Jeremy Herron at jherron8@bloomberg.net, Brendan WalshFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
U.S. bank regulator sharpens teeth on Wells Fargo, surprising critics
Consumer groups had worried that the Trump administration's pick to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Joseph Otting, would do little to change its reputation for leniency. A former chief executive of California's OneWest Bank, Otting as comptroller has referred to lenders as his "customers" and pursued rule changes pushed for by bank lobbyists. One person with knowledge of the matter said Wells Fargo's failure to swiftly fix systemic misconduct has angered Otting, precisely because he spent decades as a banker and felt he was held to high standards.
Drug Stocks Slide as Never-Ending Political Worry Gathers Steam
(Bloomberg) -- Once-untreatable cancers and rare diseases are being vanquished. Medical breakthroughs have put Ebola and HIV on the back foot, even as new viruses emerge. Drug stocks have touched record highs after a decade of gains.But at the industry’s biggest annual gathering, a San Francisco investor meeting that draws in thousands from biotechnology, pharmaceutical and insurance companies, plus investors, bankers and consultants, there was a sense of uncertainty, even worry.“The model is broken in the U.S.,” Sanofi Chief Executive Officer Paul Hudson said in an interview.Despite record scientific and market returns, the health-care industry’s future in the U.S. has never seemed less clear. Candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination have proposed nationalizing the health-insurance system. The president has called for drug-price controls. And after years of struggle, there’s been no winner among the warring factions of drugmakers, health insurers, pharmacy-benefit managers and patients.For one attendee at the conference, hosted in a cramped hotel in the Union Square neighborhood, it felt like waiting for a metaphorical earthquake.“I think that these constant price increases create a situation where there’s all this built-up tension, all this built-up energy,” Denny Lanfear, the CEO of Coherus Biosciences Inc., said about his company’s goal to drive down drug prices with lower-cost competitors to expensive biotech drugs. “It’s kind of like the seismic tension along the San Andreas fault: At some point, you simply have an event which causes a tectonic shift in thinking.”And this week, Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky said on a conference call that the long, volatile debate about the U.S. health care system has contributed to “what may sometimes feel like uncertain times.”Despite the industry’s worries, the market has for weeks suggested that things couldn’t be better. An S&P 500 subindex of health companies, including players like Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer Inc., would hit an all-time high by the conference’s end. Registration for the always-crowded event rose this year, as did San Francisco hotel occupancy, and average hotel rates were $972 a night, according to data from the San Francisco Travel Association.On Friday, some of that confidence began to crack. Health stocks including Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., CVS Health Corp., Amgen Inc. and others led declines after a report that the Trump administration could make a fresh push to lower prices.Among the almost 10,200 attendees last week at the conference, one of those small seismic tremors could be felt between the CEO of one major drugmaker and the top executive from CVS, the pharmacy plan and drugstore chain that negotiates drug prices for patients. The company is also one of the U.S.’s leading health insurers.“We need more regulation of the insurance industry,” David Ricks, CEO of Indianapolis-based drug giant Eli Lilly & Co., said in an interview Tuesday morning in one of the hotel’s lounges. “I don’t think the system will maintain itself like this for the next decade. We’ll have to see reform.”Moments later, Ricks spotted his counterpart at CVS Larry Merlo coming into the room with a group of employees and walked over to him to talk about a long-running business dispute.“We’ve had some differences in the past,” Ricks said to Merlo, as Whitney Houston’s “Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” played over the speakers. The drug CEO told him that he hoped they could soon find some common ground on coverage of insulin, one of Lilly’s major products, and drug affordability.The two executives have clashed before, as have their industry lobbies -- blaming the other for the increasingly expensive price tags for U.S. pharmaceuticals. CVS currently excludes Lilly’s top-selling insulin from its main list of covered drugs.A CVS representative declined to say how the conversation ended, saying CVS would continue to work on getting insulin to patients at the lowest cost.“We’re willing to work with any part of the supply chain,” said CVS spokesman T.J. Crawford, “but we’re also willing to go it alone.” A Lilly spokesman also declined to comment further on the details of the executives’ conversation.Political TargetLater Tuesday evening, Democratic presidential candidates in Iowa for the final debate before the state’s presidential primary caucus took aim at the industry. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders condemned health-care companies -- three times -- for “greed and corruption.” Former Vice President Joe Biden, who leads many polls, called for price controls: “You don’t have to pay the price. Limit what they can charge,” he said. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Sanders’s main rival, said she would use presidential authority to lower the prices of insulin, EpiPens and HIV medications. And almost all the candidates have either called for nationalizing the health insurance system or creating a government-run competitor to it.Sanders kept up the broadside a few days later, attacking “price-gouging” pharmaceutical companies Friday after BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. said it may place a $2 million to $3 million price on its experimental gene-therapy treatment, according to the Wall Street Journal.A BioMarin spokeswoman said in an email that the company hasn’t announced a price for its therapy and declined to comment on the Sanders tweet.President Donald Trump, who is making a bid for re-election this fall, has said he favors a proposal to peg price tags in the U.S. to the much lower levels in other countries, what’s known as an international pricing index. The drug industry is instead is pushing for a cap to how much patients pay out of their own wallets for prescriptions under Medicare’s prescription drug benefit.“The greatest threat the industry faces right now is President Trump pulling the trigger on international price index. It’s clear he doesn’t want to go into the election with nothing on pricing,” said James Greenwood, who leads industry group the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, which is ramping up lobbying efforts going into the election cycle.Washington’s appetite for drug pricing reform could even affect the most commercially viable medicines, like cancer treatments, said Chris Boerner, chief commercialization officer of Bristol-Myers.“Innovation has never been better: immuno-oncology, cell therapy, gene therapy are fundamentally changing diseases,” Boerner said. “But now we unfortunately do see an environment where policies put forth could change the ecosystem that led to those innovations. That’s deeply concerning.”New FocusAs scrutiny of the industry’s prices has continued, some drugmakers have turned away from areas where the pressure is most acute. Sanofi announced in December it would halt research in heart disease and diabetes: two legacy areas that faced significant cost pressure. Hudson, who took the helm in September, will double down on medicines for cancer and other diseases where reimbursement is more straightforward -- and often higher.They’re also making smaller bets, a striking contrast to 2019 mega-mergers like Bristol-Myers’s $74 billion acquisition of Celgene Corp. and AbbVie’s $63 billion bid for Allergan Plc.With the future uncertain, those type of big bets are no longer fashionable. In favor instead are smaller, “bolt-on” deals.Lilly announced a $1.1 billion deal on Jan. 10 that CEO Ricks described as “the definition of bolt-on,” while German drugmaker Bayer AG plans deals to invest further in cell and gene therapy, a move that would complement its acquisition of cell therapy-focused biotech BlueRock last year, Stefan Oelrich, president of pharma, said.Jennifer Taubert, executive vice president and worldwide chairman of pharmaceuticals at Johnson & Johnson, touted the company’s partnerships. “There still is a really good appetite and ability to partner even though there’s other funding mechanisms and things out there,” she said. Sanofi CEO Hudson said he, too, was looking at smaller, earlier-stage deals.“This year, it’s a tricky year, because with the prospect of drug pricing legislation there’s a number of different outcomes that could influence the type of company you’d want to buy,” said Richard Pops, CEO of biotech Alkermes Plc. “What’s going to be in the crosshairs in terms of regulatory or statutory reform that makes certain businesses more or less attractive?”“I can see why pharma is waiting to see how the dust settles before they make big commitments to different businesses,” Pops said.\--With assistance from Bailey Lipschultz.To contact the reporters on this story: Emma Court in New York at ecourt1@bloomberg.net;Riley Griffin in New York at rgriffin42@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Drew Armstrong at darmstrong17@bloomberg.net, Timothy AnnettFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
Boeing Mulls Another Cut to 787 Output in New Threat to Cash
(Bloomberg) -- Boeing Co. is considering another cut to production of its marquee 787 Dreamliner as the aerospace giant contends with sluggish demand, people familiar with the matter said.Executives are studying whether to trim monthly output by two planes to 10 a month from a reduced pace that was announced in October, the people said. While no final decision has been made, a new production schedule for the twin-aisle jet could be announced as early as next week when the company reports earnings.Boeing is grappling with slowing sales for wide-body aircraft in a market glutted with used models. The manufacturer has struggled to persuade airlines to accelerate deliveries to fill empty production slots, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.Slowing output of the carbon-composite Dreamliner, with a list price that starts at about $250 million, would crimp a critical source of cash for Boeing as it attempts to recover from a global grounding of the 737 Max following two fatal crashes. The 787 accounted for about 40% of Boeing’s jetliner deliveries in 2019 as the company was barred most of the year from shipping the best-selling Max.“We maintain a disciplined rate-management process, taking into account a host of risks and opportunities,” Boeing spokesman Chaz Bickers said when asked about a possible output cut for the Dreamliner. “We will continue to assess the demand environment and make adjustments as appropriate in the future.”Boeing fell 0.9% to $314.84 at 1:22 p.m. in New York, reversing earlier gains after Bloomberg News reported on the possible output cut. The stock is down 12% over the last 12 months, the second-worst performance in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.The company has gotten more bad news into the open under new Chief Executive Officer David Calhoun, who took the reins this month. The Chicago-based company has already delayed expectations for the Max’s return to midyear and is expected to report a multibillion-dollar accounting charge for compensating airlines that didn’t receive planes on order.China FactorA nascent thaw in trade tensions between the U.S. and China could weigh against reducing output of the Dreamliner, which can seat as many as 336 passengers. In a trade pact announced last week, China agreed to purchase almost $80 billion in U.S. goods including aircraft through next year.“I would expect a rate reduction sooner rather than later, with one caveat,” John Plueger, CEO of Air Lease Corp., predicted earlier this month. “If Boeing had any suspended 787 deals which get reactivated quickly, then that might modify their rate decision.” He said he had no particular knowledge of Boeing’s plans.In October, Boeing executives cited an extended order drought from China when they said the company would slow production to 12 Dreamliners a month by late this year from its peak rate of 14.The impact on cash flow of any new cut in Dreamliner production could take years to materialize.(Updates with stock action in sixth paragraph.)\--With assistance from Charlotte Ryan and Brandon Kochkodin.To contact the reporters on this story: Julie Johnsson in Chicago at jjohnsson@bloomberg.net;Siddharth Philip in London at sphilip3@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Case at bcase4@bloomberg.net, ;Anthony Palazzo at apalazzo@bloomberg.net, Tony RobinsonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
Discover Tumbles Most in a Decade After Warning on Costs, Debt
(Bloomberg) -- Discover Financial Services slumped the most in more than a decade after warning it will spend more on marketing and technology, including to beef up collections on troubled debt.Full-year operating expenses could rise to as high as $4.9 billion from $4.4 billion in 2019, Discover executives said late Thursday on a conference call. Marketing non-card products such as a new digital checking account will contribute to higher costs, as will investments in analytics.Shares of Discover tumbled 9.7% to $77.54 at 11:10 a.m. in New York, after dropping as much as 11%, the most since 2009. The company has been using some of its new analytics capabilities to identify customers who might be close to falling behind on their payments, Chief Financial Officer John Greene said. Discover has long had a program for “troubled debt restructurings,” or TDRs, that allows customers experiencing financial hardship to modify their repayment terms.In the past, those customers had to call Discover to qualify, but the lender has now made it part of its online and mobile-banking capabilities. That’s led to an increase in usage: The amount of receivables it classifies as TDRs rose to $3.4 billion as of Dec. 31, a 48% increase from a year earlier.Analysts on Discover’s earnings conference call pressed executives to explain their view on the credit quality of the portfolio.“We have seen growth in TDRs because we now make them available not just when you call but as part of our expansion of digital collections,” Chief Executive Officer Roger Hochschild said. Still, he said, “we feel good about credit. Look at charge-offs. Look at delinquencies.”For the year, net charge-offs rose 10% to $2.88 billion, in line with analysts’ estimates. The percentage of credit-card loans that were at least 90 days overdue rose to 1.32% from 1.22% a year earlier.To contact the reporter on this story: Jenny Surane in New York at jsurane4@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael J. Moore at mmoore55@bloomberg.net, Steve Dickson, Peter EichenbaumFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
Family’s Fortune Tumbles $1.5 Billion Since Muddy Waters Attack
(Bloomberg) -- The year is starting off much like the last one ended for the Shetty family.The billionaire clan behind financial services firm Finablr Plc and hospital operator NMC Health Plc has seen its fortune drop more than $1.5 billion since it came under fire in December from short seller Carson Block.The latest blow came Friday after a filing revealed the Shettys pledged more than half their stake in Finablr to secure loans. The payment processor’s shares tumbled as much as 34% in London.A spokesman for the family had no immediate comment when reached by email.The family’s troubles began last month when Block’s Muddy Waters Capital issued a report criticizing NMC’s accounts and disclosing a short position, sending shares down. Since then, a cyberattack rocked one of Finablr’s popular brands -- Travelex Holdings Ltd. -- and NMC plunged again after investors sold shares worth almost $500 million. The health-care firm has named former FBI Director Louis Freeh to examine Block’s claims.Bavaguthu Raghuram Shetty, 77, founded NMC in 1975 after moving to Abu Dhabi from his native India. It’s now the United Arab Emirates’ biggest private health-care provider. He created Finablr in 2018 to consolidate his finance brands and listed the company on the London Stock Exchange last year.The family’s stakes in both firms were worth almost $3 billion before Muddy Waters published its report, but they have been cut in half since, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.\--With assistance from Lisa Pham.To contact the reporter on this story: Ben Stupples in London at bstupples@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Pierre Paulden at ppaulden@bloomberg.net, Steven Crabill, Peter EichenbaumFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.