Sales & Marketing news

• Elizabeth Warren unloads on Trump's pick to lead Fed bank regulation

  29-07-2017 21:33 via feedproxy.google.com
  Randal Quarles, President Donald Trump’s nominee for Federal Reserve Vice Chair of Regulation, a position created after the financial crisis, took a lot of heat from Senator Elizabeth Warren in a hearing Thursday for what she described as "a 30-year career spinning through the revolving door in the private sector."
  Quarles, a former Wall Street lawyer and Treasury official, was visibly shaken as Warren dug into him with all the details of his career that appeared to go against the role he&
  
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• MOELIS: The rise of Amazon is going to drive a surge in dealmaking (MC)

  29-07-2017 21:06 via feedproxy.google.com
  Wall Street boutique investment bank Moelis & Company is expecting the rate of mergers and acquisitions to continue its climb as retailers struggle to compete with Amazon.
  “There’s a fundamental need to rationalize that people want to get larger to fight online, to fight Amazon in retail specifically,” founder and chief executive Ken Moelis told investors on a conference call Monday afternoon.
  Moelis said that there would be both acquisitions and restructuring activity in t
  
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• Netflix is a 'monster' that's just now 'hitting escape velocity' (NFLX)

  29-07-2017 19:04 via feedproxy.google.com
  It's safe to say that Netflix has no shortage of fans on Wall Street. But BTIG Research analyst Richard Greenfield just raised the bar to unprecedented heights.
  On Wednesday, he boosted his price target on the stock to $225, making him the most bullish analyst on the Street. That's head and shoulders above the average year-end estimate for Netflix, which Bloomberg data lists at $186.44. For the company to reach the rarefied air from Greenfield's forecast, it has to surge roughly 19% by year-end.
  
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• BANK OF AMERICA: The US dollar is overvalued, and there are 'substantial risks' from here

  29-07-2017 18:40 via feedproxy.google.com
  The US dollar is the worst performing G10 currency this year, down 8% versus its major peers. But it's still expensive relative to its history, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. 
  "The currency remains overvalued by about 10 percent compared with its long-term equilibrium and about 12 percent above its 20-year average in real effective term," said Athanasios Vamvakidis, the global head of G10 FX strategy, in a note on Tuesday.
  A combination of tax reform and stronger econ
  
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• Citi said the same word more than 20 times in the same presentation — and it's the key to the bank's strategy (C)

  29-07-2017 18:25 via feedproxy.google.com
  Citigroup repeatedly stressed the power of its global network during its first investor day presentation since 2008.
  The bank has cut the client list in its Institutional Clients Group from 32,000 in 2012 to 14,000 in 2016, as it focuses on its most profitable clients.
  Citigroup on Tuesday held its first investor day since the 2008, signaling that its long road to recovery since the financial crisis is largely over and that the bank has hit its stride. 
  "We have improved the quality a
  
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• Legendary investor Byron Wien says the stock market is entering uncharted territory

  29-07-2017 18:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  Since the start of the eight-year bull market, stock prices have closely tracked the size of the Federal Reserve's balance sheet. But that's quickly changing.
  While the Fed's balance sheet has stayed mostly unchanged in 2017, the S&P 500 has continued to climb, surging roughly 11% year-to-date. The fact that stock indexes continue to make new highs as the Fed prepares to shrink the assets it holds troubles Byron Wien, the vice chairman of Blackstone's private wealth solutions group.
  "Th
  
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• $13 BILLION HEDGE FUND: Jeff Bezos' deal for Whole Foods is 'true genius' (AMZN, WFM)

  29-07-2017 17:56 via feedproxy.google.com
  A $13 billion hedge fund says there's an aspect to Jeff Bezos' bid for Whole Foods that is "pure genius" – the fact that Amazon is valued so highly by the market.
  Highfields Capital Management, a Boston-based hedge fund that flies under the radar, sent a letter to clients this week that lays out the reasoning. A copy of the letter, which is private, was reviewed by Business Insider.
  Here's what the founder, Jonathon S. Jacobson, wrote (emphasis added):
  "Amazon's strateg
  
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• We went to a glamorous poker event where billionaires, athletes, and poker pros face off

  29-07-2017 17:46 via feedproxy.google.com
  Hundreds of Wall Streeters packed a Manhattan venue this week to play poker and raise money for an education nonprofit.
  The crowd included a who's-who of financiers, politicians, athletes and show biz folks, including Kase Capital's Whitney Tilson, one of the event's chairs; Greenlight's David Einhorn; Avenue Capital's Marc Lasry; New York Senator Jeff Klein; and Brian Koppelman, executive producer of Showtime's "Billions."
  There were also pro poker players, like Vanessa Selbst, the highest
  
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• The future of Snap is a 'religious' bet on Evan Spiegel for insiders looking to sell shares (SNAP)

  29-07-2017 17:28 via feedproxy.google.com
  Around the time of Snap’s initial public offering in early March, employees got a rare chance to ask the CEO, Evan Spiegel, anything on their minds.
  Unlike the "town hall" meetings at Google, Facebook, and other tech companies, the Q&A at Snap was a written affair. Using a shared document, employees submitted questions to the company's 27-year-old leader.
  The result revealed a common anxiety: About one dozen of the questions were a variation of whether employees sh
  
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• The US economy got a downgrade, and it's a direct indictment of Trump's ineffectiveness

  29-07-2017 17:20 via feedproxy.google.com
  The International Monetary Fund has sharply revised its forecast for US economic growth in a direct indictment of President Donald Trump's lack of action on promised policy changes.
  The IMF downgraded its forecast for US gross-domestic-product growth to just 2.1% this year, down from 2.3%, and it also cut its 2018 estimate to 2.1% from 2.5%.
  That revision is especially striking since it matched cuts not seen anywhere in the world other than two major emerging economies facing deep politica
  
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• The market's hottest stocks are being used in a clever new way

  29-07-2017 17:03 via feedproxy.google.com
  Heading into Netflix's earnings report last week, traders were braced for the worst. With the stock up a massive 30% since January, a measure of bearish bets sat close to its highest level of the year.
  The company went on to destroy subscriber forecasts, sending its shares up as much as 14% the next day, costing short sellers more than $400 million, according to data from IHS Markit.
  Now that the dust has settled, those bearish speculators haven't gone anywhere, with Netflix short interest &mda
  
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• Citigroup just named a new head of a $390 billion unit (C)

  29-07-2017 16:35 via feedproxy.google.com
  Citigroup has named David Bailin as the global head of investments for its private banking unit.
  The group, which generated $2.9 billion in revenue over the past 12 months, manages $390 billion in assets for some 10,000 high net worth and ultra-high net worth clients.
  Bailin previously served as the global head of managed investments for Citi Private Bank.
  “Over the past eight years, David has demonstrated an enormous amount of passion and enthusiasm for the Private Bank and its clien
  
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• With the Model 3, Elon Musk put the focus exactly where it should be — Tesla's employees (TSLA)

  29-07-2017 16:31 via feedproxy.google.com
  FREMONT, CA — I've been covering Tesla for over a decade. My first meeting with Elon Musk took place at a now-closed Tesla showroom in Los Angeles, long before he became the model for Tony Stark in the "Iron Man" movies, and long before Tesla was producing 100,000 vehicles per year.
  Tesla was barely selling a few thousand of its original Roadsters back then, but Musk harbored much larger ambitions: electric cars for the masses.
  The company has, quite, obviously, come a long way. Last
  
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• The Fed isn’t going to raise interest rates again until Christmas — at the earliest

  29-07-2017 15:22 via feedproxy.google.com
  Think of it as a really, really gradual pace.
  Federal Reserve officials appear to be warming up to the notion that a decline in inflation away from the central bank’s 2% target might turn out to be more entrenched rather than "transitory," as policymakers first predicted.
  This means that any possible justification for more aggressive interest rate increases has effectively evaporated. 
  In the July policy statement that accompanied the widely expected decision to leave interest ra
  
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• Coca-Cola launches first sustainability campaign to promote plastic recycling

  29-07-2017 13:00
  Coca-Cola has launched a multi-million pound campaign to encourage consumers to recycle its plastic bottles, marking the first time it has run a major sustainability campaign in Great Britain.
  The ‘Love Story’ campaign, created by Ogilvy and Mather Berlin, tells the story of two bottles – one Fanta and the other Coke Zero Sugar – who fall in love as they meet over and over again because they keep getting recycled into new bottles. The film ends with a voiceover encouragin
  
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