Beijing Shanghai High Speed Railway Co., Ltd., a holding company of China Railway Corporation, has officially launched the A-share listing process. Since its opening on June 30, 2011, the Beijing Shanghai high-speed railway has safely transported 940 million passengers. In 2017, the revenue of the Beijing Shanghai high-speed railway was 29.595 billion yuan, with a profit exceeding 12.7 billion yuan and a net profit of nearly 9.522 billion yuan.
General Electric (GE) revealed on Tuesday that it had reduced its workforce by 30000 in 2018. This struggling industrial giant is undergoing restructuring and has sold some of its business. The total number of employees of the company as of the end of last year was 283000, a 10-year low, including 97000 in the United States. Most of the layoffs come from the company's electricity business, and due to overcapacity, the department has sold some of its business to private equity companies.
Huawei Samsung released its first 5G foldable screen phone Mate X in Barcelona, with a front screen of 6.6 inches and an entire screen of 8 inches when opened. This phone has one battery on each of its two screens, which adds up to 4500mAh. The 8+512GB version is priced at 2299 euros and will be available in mid 2019. Previously, Samsung Electronics had released its first consumer usable foldable smartphone, the Galaxy Fold, in San Francisco. This phone has a special display screen that can be unfolded and used like a tablet. The screen is 4.6 inches when folded and 7.3 inches when unfolded. The phone is priced at $1980 and will officially go on sale globally on April 26th.
Nissan has recently established a policy for producing high-end car engines in the United States. After the revision of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), it was required that the proportion of parts originating in North America on the entire vehicle must reach 75% in order to receive duty-free treatment. Therefore, Nissan decided to transfer production to the local United States.
Bank of America said it plans to remove Merrill Lynch from its trading and investment banking business names. The bank also plans to rename most of its wealth management business Merrill. Under the new 'Merrill' brand, the bank will launch a new marketing campaign with the theme of 'Focusing on Merrill Bulls'. During the 2008 financial crisis, Merrill Lynch sold itself to Bank of America at a low price, all of which were key businesses acquired by Bank of America in this transaction. This renaming marks the end of an era.
Home Depot, a US home improvement retailer, announced weaker than expected fourth quarter profits and revenue. The net profit for the quarter ended February 3rd rose to $2.3 billion, compared to $1.8 billion in the same period last year. Revenue increased by 10.9% to $26.5 billion, while same-store sales in the United States increased by 3.7%.
SK Innovation will invest $859 million in Hungary to build a new electric vehicle battery factory. The European electric vehicle market is currently growing rapidly, and SK Innovation will be able to further accelerate its pace of seizing the European electric vehicle market through the construction of new factories. The factory will start construction in March of this year and will officially start mass production and supply from early 2022.
Boeing, an American aircraft manufacturer, has signed a procurement agreement with VietJet for 100 737MAX aircraft, valued at $12.7 billion based on catalog prices. It has also signed a procurement agreement with Bamboo Airways for 10 787 Dreamplanes, valued at $2.9 billion based on catalog prices.
Recently, Lowe's released its fourth quarter results. In the fourth quarter ended February 1, 2019, Lloyd's had a net loss of $824 million, compared to a net profit of $554 million for the same period last year. The loss of Lloyd's performance was mainly due to the inclusion of $1.6 billion in pre tax expenses in the financial report, of which $952 million was related to goodwill impairment in the Canadian business. Lloyd's revenue for the fourth quarter was $15.65 billion, better than $15.49 billion in the same period last year.
Intel executives have stated that their 5G modem chip will not be applied to mobile phones until 2020, which may result in Apple, its largest customer, launching 5G phones more than a year later than its competitors. Apple executives have already negotiated with Samsung Electronics and MediaTek to use the 5G modem chip for the iPhone released this year. Earlier this year, Apple transferred its modem chip engineering business to its department that produces proprietary processor chips.
Roche Holding AG, a Swiss pharmaceutical giant, has announced a final acquisition agreement with Spark Therapeutics, a star gene therapy company, for a total price of $4.3 billion. As a startup specializing in gene therapy, Spark has collaborated with Pfizer, the world's largest pharmaceutical company, to develop a treatment plan for hemophilia B. However, the company's revenue last year was only $64.7 million, while its net loss was $78.8 million.
On Wednesday, Bayer's chairman of the management committee, Werner Bowman, stated at a financial report press conference that the group achieved double growth in sales and profitability in 2018. The group's sales increased by 4.5% to 39.586 billion euros. After adjusting for exchange rates and asset portfolios, the sales of the Crop Science Division and the Prescription Medicine Division increased year-on-year, while the sales of the Health Consumer Products Division remained unchanged from the same period last year. Bayer has confirmed its group outlook for 2019 and its goals for 2022.
Recently, Lenovo Lingtuo Technology Co., Ltd., a joint venture between Lenovo Group and American storage company NetApp, was officially established in Beijing. Its products mainly cover storage and data management solutions, and Lu Daxin was appointed as the company's CEO. Lenovo Lingtuo is 51% owned by Lenovo and 49% owned by NetApp, respectively. NetApp also holds the top technological level in the global data management industry and ranks among the top manufacturers in the global market share of all flash arrays.
On February 26th, Zhejiang Geely Holding Group announced plans to release the first batch of mass-produced models in China that support 5G and C-V2X in 2021. These models will be built by Geely in collaboration with High Emerging Group and Qualcomm subsidiary Qualcomm Technology. Gaoxing and Qualcomm Technology will provide Geely with Qualcomm based solutions ® snapdragon ™ 5G and C-V2X products on the automotive 5G platform.
According to the latest research by Accenture, China became the world's largest financial technology investment market in 2018. Last year, the total global investment in fintech more than doubled to a record $55.3 billion, and the Chinese market contributed over 40% (46%) of the investment volume, which is highly favored by investors. In 2018, the total investment in fintech in the Chinese market increased eightfold to $25.5 billion, close to the global total investment in fintech in 2017 ($26.7 billion).
On February 28th, Honeywell announced that its new hybrid turbine generator set will be unveiled. The prototype system produced by Honeywell combines a flight proven durable HTS900 engine with two compact high-power density generators. The power of each generator is 200 kilowatts, and the two generators have enough power to supply the air conditioning of 40 ordinary American households with full load operation. This system generates energy by burning traditional or biologically derived aviation kerosene, which can power electric motors or large capacity batteries.
Toshiba Memory, a Japanese semiconductor giant, will go public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange as soon as September. At the same time as going public, it will receive a 300 billion yen injection from the Japanese Policy Investment Bank to repurchase preferred shares held by American companies such as Apple. The official and private fund INCJ is also considering injecting capital, which will increase the Japanese shareholding and create a stable operating environment. Previously, Toshiba sold its Toshiba memory to the 'Japan US Korea Joint Venture' dominated by the US fund Bain Capital for approximately 2 trillion yen. The consortium includes American IT giants such as Apple and Dell, as well as South Korean semiconductor company SK Hynix. Toshiba has also invested approximately 350 billion yen again, holding a 40.2% stake.
Recently, Philips (China) Investment Co., Ltd. and CITIC Pharmaceutical (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. signed a letter of intent to jointly promote the implementation of the VitalHealth platform in China. VitalHealth's solution can easily integrate patient measurement results, patient participation, nursing coordination, and medical analysis into electronic medical records, connecting both inside and outside the hospital, serving healthcare professionals and patients.
Kraft Heinz's latest financial report shows that its net loss attributable to common shareholders in the fourth quarter was $12.6 billion, dragged down by some of its business segments (mainly US refrigeration and Canadian retail), as well as some intangible assets (mainly Kraft and Oscar Mayer brands) with goodwill impairment of $15.4 billion. In October 2018, Kraft Heinz also received a subpoena from the US Securities and Exchange Commission for overdue data disclosure. After the financial report was released, Kraft Heinz's stock price plummeted by 27%, causing a loss of $4.31 billion to major shareholder Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Company.
Multinational Corporation Dynamics [2019, 03, 08]
Recently, according to the 2018 Social Responsibility Report released by State Grid, State Grid achieved a revenue of 2.56 trillion yuan in 2018, a year-on-year increase of 8.7%; The total assets were 3.93 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3.18%; The total profit was 78.01 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 14.29%; The asset liability ratio is 56.6%, a decrease of one percentage point compared to last year. This is the first profit decline for State Grid in nearly five years.
Shell, the Royal Dutch Shell Group, has decided to buy all shares of Sonnen, the largest energy storage battery manufacturer in Europe, to help Sonnen further internationalize its business and expand its production scale. Both parties did not disclose the specific acquisition amount. Shell New Energy will retain Sonnen's brand and may retain the company's original management with only minor adjustments
Toyota Motor and Subaru have started joint development of electric vehicle (EV) entities. The model may be a medium-sized passenger car, expected to be released through the brands of both companies after 2021. Subaru originally planned to officially release its first EV in 2021, but the plan was frozen due to the heavy burden of independently developed vehicles. By accumulating knowledge and experience through cooperation with Toyota, we intend to explore ways for independent development in the future.
Apple has remained silent on its '5G' strategy for the next generation high-speed communication standard. At the shareholders' meeting held on March 1st, Apple did not come up with a specific strategy. Apple has not yet announced its launch plan for 5G smartphones, while competitors have successively released 5G smartphones. Apple's difficulty in releasing 5G terminals is due to the inability to purchase semiconductors that support 5G from Qualcomm in the United States, which has worsened the patent dispute between Apple and Qualcomm. Apple announced that the 5G smartphones that will be released in 2019 are mostly made of Qualcomm's semiconductors, and can be completely independent of Qualcomm's self-developed 5G smartphones. Huawei, which owns a semiconductor company, is the only one under Apple.
Amazon, JPMorgan Chase&Co, and Berkshire Hathaway jointly invested in a mysterious new healthcare company named Haven on Wednesday. The safe haven hopes to improve access to primary healthcare opportunities, simplify insurance, and make prescription drugs cheaper. It will initially serve 1.2 million employees of Amazon, Berkshire, and JPMorgan Chase.
AT&T, a US telecommunications operator, will restructure Warner Media's business. The company is preparing to compete with Netflix and Disney in the field of streaming video. It is expected that there will be a round of large-scale layoffs and cost reduction measures after this restructuring. AT&T will utilize the saved funds to invest in content businesses. Robert Greenblatt, a former executive of NBC Global under Comcast, will serve as the Chairman of Warner Media Entertainment, responsible for cable network HBO, cable channels TNT, TBS, Tru TV, and upcoming streaming video services. CNN head Jeff Zucker will serve as the chairman of the news and sports business, while also responsible for all of the company's sports businesses.
Larry Culp, CEO of General Electric (GE), stated that in 2019, the company's industrial free cash flow 'will be negative. Free cash flow refers to the remaining funds of a company after paying operating expenses and capital expenditures, usually used as a measure of efficiency. For General Electric, its industrial free cash flow is a key indicator that investors are focusing on. Last year, General Electric generated $4.5 billion in industrial free cash flow.
The railway business merger plan between Siemens and Alstom ultimately failed. European Union competition commissioner Margaret Vestager has officially rejected the plan to merge the two companies, stating that the two companies are 'unwilling to address our significant competitive concerns regarding the control of railway signaling systems and ultra high-speed train business after the merger. The European Union stated that the trade fair has nurtured an undisputed market leader in some signal business areas, while Chinese railway signal system suppliers have little influence in Europe and will take a very long time to become trustworthy suppliers.
On March 7th, Huawei announced that it had filed a lawsuit against the constitutionality of Article 889 of the US Defense Authorization Act for the fiscal year 2019, requesting the court to rule that this sales restriction clause against Huawei was unconstitutional and to permanently prohibit its implementation. Huawei's rotating chairman Guo Ping said, 'This restriction clause violates the US Constitution, hinders Huawei's participation in fair competition, and ultimately harms American consumers. We hope the court can make the right decision that benefits American consumers
BMW, a German automaker, stated on Tuesday that if the UK cannot ensure an orderly exit from the EU, some engines and Mini models produced in the UK may be relocated to other locations. This is the latest warning from the automotive industry regarding the UK's exit from the EU. One risk of Brexit without an agreement is that engines manufactured in the UK will no longer be considered as produced in the EU, and some cars may therefore not meet the threshold of approximately 55% to 60% of the country of origin required by many international trade agreements. BMW has not yet made a final decision on whether to transfer some engine production from Hams Hall in central England to Austria, where the Hams Hall factory produced over 375000 engines last year.
Microsoft is leveraging its“