(BFW) Beam, Oriental Deals Leave Room for More Drinks M&A, Fitch Says

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Beam, Oriental Deals Leave Room for More Drinks M&A, Fitch Says 2014-01-23 15:50:03.755 GMT

By Heather Burke Jan. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Purchases of Beam, Oriental Brewery leave room for more beverage deals in Asia, Africa, Americas, with limited targets in Europe, Fitch said in a report. * Carlsberg, SABMiller have most flexibility for deals at current rating among possible buyers in beer industry * Most likely remaining M&A targets are San Miguel Brewery (48% holder Kirin could buy rest of co.) and Compania Cervecerias Unidas (33% Heineken) * Diageo, Brown Forman have more flexibility for deals within spirits * United Spirits’s Whyte & Mackay one of most likely deal targets * NOTE: AB InBev to Pay $5.8 Billion for Korea’s Oriental Brewery NSN MZPCU46VDKHY <GO> * NOTE: Suntory to Buy Beam in $16 Billion Deal to Gain Maker’s Mark NSN MZDOTX6TTDT3 <GO>

Link to Statement:NSN MZV1GR3PWT1D <GO> Link to Company News:2503 JP <Equity> CN <GO> Link to Company News:ABI BB <Equity> CN <GO> Link to Company News:BAS GR <Equity> CN <GO> Link to Company News:BEAM US <Equity> CN <GO> Link to Company News:CARLB DC <Equity> CN <GO> Link to Company News:DGE LN <Equity> CN <GO> Link to Company News:HEIA NA <Equity> CN <GO> Link to Company News:RI FP <Equity> CN <GO> Link to Company News:SAB LN <Equity> CN <GO>

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To contact the editor responsible for this story: Heather Burke at +44-20-7673-2044 or hburke2@bloomberg.net

FT : Criteo moves beyond the cookie to target adverts inside apps

Criteo has started delivering personalised advertising within mobile apps, a big shift for the $2bn technology group that built its business on targeting ads within web browsers on desktops.

The Nasdaq-listed company is one of many ad tech groups rushing to bring techniques that are common on the web to the nascent but fast-growing market for targeted, real-time advertising in apps.


“If you’re one of our customers, you need to be able to sell your products through mobile devices. That’s suddenly moved from sort of interesting to really important in the last 12 months,” said Jonathan Wolf, chief product officer at Criteo.

“You’re also seeing the dominance of the web browser be really shaken up. You’re moving to an environment where the browser is still important, you can’t ignore it, but the majority of time is being spent in apps.”

According to Flurry, the mobile analytics company, the US consumer spends an average of almost three hours a day on smartphones and tablets, with 80 per cent of that time inside apps and just 20 per cent on the mobile web.

Since Criteo went public in October, investors have worried that the company will struggle to adapt as consumers shift from desktops to mobile devices. This is because the company relies on small files known as cookies to target ads at people browsing the web on desktop computers, but mobile web browsers handle cookies in different ways and mobile apps do not include cookies at all.

To target ads in mobile apps, Criteo is using so-called advertiser IDs provided by Apple and Google. These are strings of numbers that allow ad tracking and targeting within a framework designed to protect user privacy.

Mr Wolf said Criteo’s new technology was designed for advertisers that want to target customers who have already installed their apps but may not have been using them as much as desired.

Dafiti, a Rocket Internet-backed fashion commerce site based in Brazil, is one of the first companies to start using the product, which was built on the back of Criteo’s acquisition of a company called AD-X Tracking last July.

Mobile users will be shown personalised ads that “deep link” from one app, for instance the weather app pictured above, to a specific product page within the advertiser’s own app. Each advert is unique, showing products designed to match the interests of the particular user.

This represents a higher level of sophistication than most in-app advertising, which tends to be targeted with less precision and used to drive the installations of new apps, rather than “deep linking” to pages in ones that have already been downloaded.

“This is about how can we reactivate and reengage users who have downloaded an app,” said Mr Wolf.

If you’re someone who downloads a lot of apps then forgets about them, you are the prime target. One of the advertising world’s biggest retargeting companies is now ready to coax you back.

(Pimco) Emerging Market Watch : Ordem e Progresso

    * Amid stagnant growth and high inflation in 2013, Brazil's equity market was one of the worst performers, the real was a chronic underperformer and the corporate sector struggled.
      * Brazil needs to anchor economic policy around a stringent and credible primary surplus target rather than run the current mix of loose fiscal policy, subsidized public credit and ever tighter monetary policy.
        * Valuations are attractive, but unless an effective policy mix is restored, the outlook for order in Brazil's financial markets is less certain.

        (BN) *MURRAY SAYS IMF NOT AWARE OF ANY REQUEST FROM INDIA FOR AID

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        BFW 01/23 15:30 *MURRAY SAYS IMF NOT AWARE OF ANY REQUEST FROM INDIA FOR AID

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        *MURRAY SAYS IMF NOT AWARE OF ANY REQUEST FROM INDIA FOR AID 2014-01-23 15:30:00.6 GMT

        --PAUL BADERTSCHER

        -0- Jan/23/2014 15:30 GMT

        >>> Time Warner Cable Liberty Media Corporation Comments on Charter’s Proposal t


        Time Warner Cable Liberty Media Corporation Comments on Charter’s Proposal to Time Warner Cable
        - Liberty: The proposed consolidation of Charter and Time Warner Cable, under the respected operational leadership of Tom Rutledge, will enable the cable industry to adopt common technology, brands and service offerings providing the scale necessary to compete in todays marketplace, said John Malone, Chairman of Liberty Media. This industry brought to the home 500 channels; digital compression and high speed internet, but needs scale to attract the developers and innovators critical to remaining competitive.
        - Charter has been and can continue to be successful on a standalone basis, but the proposed combination with Time Warner Cable will drive shareholder value for all.

        (RTR) If you care about eBay/Paypal, have a look to Stripe last funding deal

        Link to article {http://reut.rs/1eVbFFK}

        Jan 22 (Reuters) - Stripe Inc has joined the billion-dollar club.

        The online payment-processing startup announced Wednesday it raised $80 million from venture capital investors in a deal that values Stripe at a hefty $1.75 billion.

        The transaction places the 90-person firm in the rarefied company of startups valued at more than $1 billion just three years after brothers Patrick and John Collison, now ages 25 and 23, debuted their service.

        Chief Executive Patrick Collison said the lofty valuation reflected the promise shown by his company, which processed billions of dollars in payments last year for businesses ranging from Lyft, the ridesharing company, to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The company did not disclose specific details on the total.

        The startup's rapid growth has spurred talk in Silicon Valley of an insurgent threat to PayPal Inc, the eBay Inc subsidiary that has not faced serious competition in a decade.

        Stripe collects 2.9 percent of every transaction plus 30 cents.

        "It's a nice validation of what everyone has gotten done over the last year," Collison, who dropped out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009 to found Stripe, said of the recent investment.

        Collison dodged any direct comparison to PayPal, but he said he was confident the demand for payment processing would only explode in the coming years because only 2 percent of all commercial transactions take place online today.

        "There should be more transactions happening on the Internet on a macro basis, whether you believe that should be 20 percent or 40 percent," he said. "Well, what is holding it back? Our goal is to expand Internet commerce. We approach that problem rather than the competitive angle."

        Stripe announced its funding on the day when activist investor Carl Icahn called on eBay to spin-off PayPal, a fast-growing unit that has thrived while eBay has grown at a more modest pace in recent years.

        PayPal's co-founder, Peter Thiel, who has backed Stripe since its early days, led Stripe's most recent funding round through his venture capital firm, the Founders Fund.

        Stripe's other institutional investors include Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst Partners and Khosla Ventures.