>>> Europe : Brokers Upgrades & Downgrades - 10th of June 2021

>>> Up
* Alrosa Raised to Buy at Citi
* Remy Cointreau Raised to Buy at Goldman; PT 190 euros
* SpareBank 1 SR Raised to Buy at Arctic Securities; PT 123 kroner
* Stroeer Raised to Overweight at Morgan Stanley; PT 82 euros
* Telefonica Raised to Buy at Berenberg; PT 4.80 euros
* Warimpex Finanz Raised to Buy at Raiffeisen Bank; PT 1.50 euros
* Whitbread Raised to Add at Peel Hunt; PT 3,600 pence

>>> Down
* Amadeus Cut to Neutral at Goldman; PT 65 euros
* BMW Cut to Hold at Stifel; PT 116 euros
* CA Immo Cut to Hold at Raiffeisen Bank; PT 40.50 euros
* Dios Cut to Hold at Pareto Securities; PT 92 kronor
* KWS Saat Cut to Hold at Stifel; PT 82 euros
* Orange Cut to Underweight at Barclays; PT 9.50 euros
* Pennon Cut to Neutral at Citi; PT 1,072 pence
* Pennon Cut to Sector Perform at RBC; PT 1,075 pence
* S Immo Cut to Hold at Raiffeisen Bank; PT 22.50 euros

>>> Initiation
* Air Liquide Rated New Underperform at Wolfe; PT 144 euros
* Darktrace Rated New Buy at Berenberg; PT 450 pence
* Darktrace Rated New Buy at Jefferies; PT 500 pence
* Nilar International Rated New Buy at Berenberg; PT 80 kronor
* Seco Rated New Buy at Goldman; PT 5.20 euros
* Senior Resumed Add at Peel Hunt; PT 168 pence

>>> Call
* Darktrace Gets Buy Ratings on Good Positioning in Cyber Market
* Nilar International to Benefit From Energy Transition: Berenberg
* Pennon Downgraded at RBC and Citi on Valuation Grounds
*
* Whitbread Raised at Peel on Market Share Opportunity, IHG Reduce

>>> What to look at today - 10th of June 2021

Asian stocks rose Thursday as U.S.-China talks helped sentiment and bolstered the offshore yuan. Treasuries rallied ahead of a U.S. inflation report that may provide clues on the monetary policy outlook.
Japanese, Chinese and Hong Kong shares advanced along with U.S. equity contracts. The S&P 500 again flirted with a record before slipping, continuing a pattern of range-bound trading also evident at a global level.
The offshore yuan climbed after the Chinese and U.S. commerce ministers agreed to push forward trade and investment links in their first call since the start of President Joe Biden’s administration. Separately, Biden revoked Trump-era bans on TikTok and WeChat. He ordered a review of software apps from foreign adversaries and action against those that pose a security risk.
The 10-year Treasury yield extended a slide below 1.5%, signaling support for the view that the rebound from the pandemic will stoke only a transient bout of elevated inflation. Australia’s 10-year yield declined. The dollar was steady.
US After Hours OXM +13.4%, RH +5.8% sharply higher on earnings; GME -12% falls on earnings, new CEO

Nikkei +0.32% Hang Seng +0.39% CSI +1.15% Shanghai +0.85% Shenzen +1.24%

Eur$ 1.2168 CNH 6.3816 CNY 6.3849 JPY 109.54 GBP 1.4110 CHF 0.8958 RUB 72.2457 TRY 8.5882 WTI$ 69.53 -0.61% Gold 1,886.12 -0.13% BTC 36,650 +125 ETH 2,530 -70

S&P +0.09% NAsdaq +0.04% EuroStoxx +0.12% FTSE +0.27% Dax +0.07% SMI -0.09%

Macro :
- G-7 Stock Markets Imply Catastrophic Global Warming of 3°C
- U.K. Reports Most New Coronavirus Cases Since February
- U.K.’s Rules on Green Investing Aim to Be More Stringent Than EU
- U.K. May RICS House Price Index at 83 vs Est. 77

Spacs :
- NextNav in SPAC Merger to Become $1.2b Listed Company

Keep an eye on :
- ABN NA : ABN Amro CEO Commercial Banking Daphne de Kluis to Step Down
- AKER NO : Aker Buys Norwegian Tech Company Prototech for Undisclosed Sum
- ALO FP : Alstom-Bombardier Consortium Wins EU1.3B Mexico Rail Contract
- ALT FP : Altice Taps MasMovil Among Bidders for $7.3b Portugal Sale: Rtrs
- AIXA GY :Aixtron Shares See Best Day in Over 3 Months After Guidance Hike
- CS FP : Axa to Pay EU300M to French Restaurant Owners on Covid: Parisien
- BFIT NA : Basic-Fit Convertible, Share Offering Order Books Covered: Terms
- BHG SS : Bhg Group to Buy 92.2% of Shares in HYMA Skog & Trädgård AB
- CPX LN : Cap-XX Says Performance is in Line With Market Expectations
- CMCX LN : CMC Markets to Launch New Personal Wealth Platform: Sky News
- DAI GY : Daimler Curbs Autonomous Tech Investments: Business Insider
- DBK GY : Deutsche Bank Promotes Darsney, Smolkin in Equity Underwriting
- DRX LN : Drax Signs Carbon Capture Deal With Mitsubishi for Biomass Units
- FG SS : Fasadgruppen Group Offering by Holders Prices at SEK121.6/Share
- ITM LN : ITM Power Sees Earnings in Line With Expectations
- MAERSKB DC : Maersk Said to Narrow Bidders for $1 Billion Cold Container Unit
- NYF SS : Nyfosa Offers SEK750 m Shares via Nordea, Swedbank, 6.52m Shares Prices at SEK115/Share
- ALONX FP : Onxeo Gets Notice of Allowance for New Asidna Patent
- ORA FP : French Finance Minister to Speak With Orange CEO on Thursday
- PAN IM : Finpanaria Offer Crosses 90% of Panariagroup Share Capital
- RLF SW : Swiss SER Opens Investigation Against Relief Therapeutics
- RUI FP : Rubis to Launch 2nd Tranche of Share Buyback in 3Q
- SGRE SM : Siemens Gamesa Readies IPO of Spain’s Windar: El Confidencial
- GLE FP : SocGen Doesn’t See Retail M&A Opportunities in France, CEO Says
- SOI FP : SOITEC Sees 2022 Like-for-like Sales About +40%
- STLN IM : Stellantis Joins VW, Renault Facing French Charges Over Diesels
- SSL IM : S.S. Lazio Hires Maurizio Sarri as Coach
- TKTT FP : Tarkett Offer Will Run From June 10-July 9, AMF Says
- TIT IM : DAZN Rejects $609 Million Bid by Sky to Share Soccer TV Rights
- UMI BB : Umicore Offers EU127.91 per Share in Agosi Squeeze-Out
- VOLVB SS : Volvo Cars Could List at End of 3Q, Dagens Industri Reports
- VOW GY : VW’s Aksel in HB: Have Reached Lowest Point of Supply Crisis
- ZIGN SS : Zignsec Offers SEK100 m Shares via Vator Securities, 6.67m Shares Prices at SEK21/Share

WSJ : Solar Eclipse 2021: What Time Is the June ‘Ring of Fire’ and How to Watch

Solar Eclipse 2021: What Time Is the June ‘Ring of Fire’ and How to Watch
First solar eclipse of the year will take place early on June 10

The first of two solar eclipses to occur in 2021 will take place on June 10. Weather permitting, the “ring of fire” eclipse will provide a dramatic show for skywatchers in the northeastern U.S. as well as those in parts of Canada, Greenland, Europe and Asia.

Those in the direct path of the eclipse in Northern Canada, Greenland and Siberia will see what astronomers call an annular eclipse: At the eclipse’s peak, the moon will obscure the central portion of the sun to appear as a bright circular fringe of sunlight surrounding a dark disk. Annular comes from the Latin word annulus, meaning ring.

People just off the eclipse’s direct path will see a partial eclipse. In New York, Philadelphia and Toronto, our star will look like a pair of horns protruding from the horizon, while people in Montreal and Boston will see something resembling a shark’s fin—as if the moon had taken a bite out of the sun, according to the Great American Eclipse website.

Solar eclipses occur when the moon passes between the Earth and the sun. Annular solar eclipses are those occurring when the moon is at or near the most distant point in its elliptical orbit around Earth. Since the moon is farther away then, it appears smaller and doesn’t fully block the sun. Total solar eclipses occur when the moon is closer and appears large enough to fully block the sun.

The eclipse comes 15 days after the year’s only total lunar eclipse, which some called the super flower blood moon. The moon was at its closest point to Earth during that eclipse and thus appeared a bit bigger than usual—a supermoon. But by June 8, the moon had reached its most distant point in its orbit around Earth, said Jackie Faherty, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

The moon will begin to cross in front of the sun at 4:12 a.m. EDT on June 10 and will end its transit roughly five hours later. But for any given location, the duration will be briefer, said Dr. Faherty. In New York, weather permitting, the eclipse will be visible starting at 5:24 a.m., will reach its peak at 5:32 a.m. and will end at 6:30 a.m.

For those in Toronto, the moon will cover 86% of the sun’s diameter. For those in New York, almost 80% of the sun’s diameter will be obscured. In the so-called zone of annularity, where the ring of fire will be visible, the moon will cover nearly 97% of the sun’s diameter, according to the Time and Date website.

Some are taking extraordinary measures to watch Thursday’s event. Jay Pasachoff, an astronomy professor at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., who has seen 72 solar eclipses, plans to be among a group of 35 eclipse-chasers who will board a chartered jet from Minneapolis and fly along a 3½ hour, round-trip route through Canada so they can enjoy an unobscured view of the annularity.

“It’s very exciting to see,” Dr. Pasachoff said of a solar eclipse. “It’s mind boggling to be in the straight alignment of the Earth and the moon and the sun.”

The June 10 eclipse won’t reproduce the eerie effect of the total solar eclipse of 2017, which darkened skies and lowered temperatures across a swath of the U.S.

The most recent total solar eclipse occurred last December and was witnessed by people in Argentina and Chile. The next one will occur in December in the skies over Antarctica. Dr. Pasachoff said he would board an eclipse-chasing flight from Punta Arenas, Chile, to see it.

The last annular solar eclipse occurred on June 21, 2020, and was visible in Africa, Asia and southeastern Europe. The next one after tomorrow’s will occur on Oct. 14, 2023, and will be visible in Central and South America and the western U.S.

To prevent eye damage, precautions must be taken when viewing the sun. Those who lack special eclipse glasses can safely view an eclipse indirectly by using do-it-yourself equipment like a homemade pinhole camera or a colander to project the image of the eclipse onto another surface. The Time and Date website will live-stream the eclipse.

WSJ : Next-Generation GPS Firm NextNav Nears SPAC Deal to Go Public

Next-Generation GPS Firm NextNav Nears SPAC Deal to Go Public
Platform can locate indoor location, including vertical positioning

NextNav Holdings LLC is nearing a combination with a special-purpose acquisition company that would take the next-generation GPS firm public and value it at about $1.2 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

Founded in 2007, NextNav says its platforms can locate a device’s specific indoor positioning, including what floor of a building it is on. Vertical positioning data are a focus for regulators to improve responses to 911 emergency calls in urban areas and could also have consumer applications in sectors like gaming and transportation that require a device’s specific location. NextNav owns licenses to use wireless airwaves that support nationwide telecom networks.

The McLean, Va., company is close to a deal to merge with the SPAC Spartacus Acquisition Corp., TMTS -0.11% the people said. Spartacus is focused on deals in the technology, media and telecom industries. The combination is expected to be announced in the coming days.

NextNav is expected to generate roughly $410 million in cash through the deal from the money held by the SPAC and a private investment in public equity, or PIPE, associated with the merger, they said. PIPE investors in the deal are expected to include Koch Strategic Platforms, a subsidiary of Koch Investments Group, and funds managed by Fortress Investment Group.

Existing NextNav investors include funds managed by Fortress and funds managed by Goldman Sachs Asset Management. XM Satellite Radio founder Gary Parsons is the chairman of NextNav’s board.

SPACs like Spartacus are shell companies that list on an exchange to acquire a private firm and take it public. They are also called blank-check companies. Merging with a SPAC has become a popular way for startups to quickly raise large sums and access investors who are excited about speculative technologies. One reason is that SPAC mergers let startups make projections about their business, which aren’t allowed in a normal IPO.

SPACs have raised about $105 billion so far in 2021, shattering last year’s record north of $80 billion, per data provider SPAC Research. The 2020 total was more than the amount previously raised in the nearly 30-year history of the SPAC market.

Some companies that go public via blank-check firms have become popular investments for individual investors, while many professionals argue that they are overvalued and are wagering that their share prices will fall. That tension has driven volatility and put some of the firms linked to SPACs at the center of the recent day-trading frenzy. Just this week, shares of Clover Health Investments Corp. more than doubled before sliding 24% on Wednesday.

In another illustration of the risks of investing in certain companies that merge with SPACs, electric-truck startup Lordstown Motors Corp. warned Tuesday that it doesn’t have enough cash to begin production and isn’t sure whether it can continue operating.

FT : Departure of Deutsche executives linked to alleged mis-selling probe

Departure of Deutsche executives linked to alleged mis-selling probe
Wind-down unit head Louise Kitchen and senior forex banker Jonathan Tinker to step down

The sudden departure of two veteran Deutsche Bank executives is linked to a continuing investigation into the alleged mis-selling of foreign exchange derivatives to corporate clients in Spain, people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times.

Germany’s largest bank on Tuesday informed staff that Louise Kitchen, head of Deutsche’s asset wind-down unit, and Jonathan Tinker, co-head of global foreign exchange, were both stepping down and would leave the bank.

The departures were announced in memos to staff seen by the Financial Times and first reported by Bloomberg. Deutsche Bank did not give reasons for the departures, two of several senior management changes announced on Tuesday.

People familiar with the details told the Financial Times that the resignations of Kitchen and Tinker, who have both worked at Deutsche Bank for more than 15 years, were linked to Project Teal — an internal investigation into alleged mis-selling of foreign exchange derivatives that pushed some small companies in Spain into financial distress and led to a series of out-of-court settlements.

The probe is one of several compliance issues overshadowing the tenure of chief executive Christian Sewing, who has been in charge of Deutsche Bank since April 2018 and has promised to improve the lender’s internal control mechanisms.

However, German financial watchdog BaFin in April ordered Deutsche Bank to fix its anti-money laundering safeguards at the same time as it broadened and extended the mandate of a special representative parachuted in to the bank in 2018 to monitor the lender’s progress on tightening its internal controls. Deutsche said at the time it had “significantly improved” its controls.

In March, Deutsche chief legal officer Stefan Simon was put in charge of the anti-financial crime unit and compliance — areas that had previously been overseen by chief risk officer Stuart Lewis, who will leave the bank in 2022. The lender has subsequently appointed a new global head of anti-financial crime.

The FT revealed in January that Deutsche was investigating whether its staff had mis-sold sophisticated investment banking products to clients in breach of EU rules and then colluded with individuals within these companies to share the profits.

Two employees who were operationally in charge of the potentially problematic activities have already left the bank. Now two executives who oversaw the business unit where the sales happened are leaving too. Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote about the link between Project Teal and the departures first.

Deutsche Bank declined to comment.

“We thank [Kitchen] for her contribution to the rapid establishment and success of the [Capital Release Group] in helping to transform our bank, and for her work over more than 15 years in senior positions across the bank’s trading platforms and covering corporate and institutional clients,” Deutsche’s chief transformation officer Rebecca Short wrote in a memo to staff.

Ram Nayak, Deutsche’s global head of fixed income, said in a separate email that Tinker “has played an important role in the development of our FX business, and I would like to thank him for his contribution to the franchise”.

Kitchen and Tinker did not respond to FT requests for comment.

The Project Teal probe was triggered by client complaints and found that Deutsche had wrongly categorised client firms under Mifid rules — the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive.

These require banks to separate clients by levels of financial sophistication, such as retail investor, professional investor or counterparty, meaning another bank or financial institution.

Deutsche believes some of its staff knowingly sold inappropriate or unsuitable products to customers who may not have been able to understand and shoulder the risk they were taking with these positions, people familiar with the probe said. The lender is not looking at just a few isolated cases but at what appears to be a broader pattern of misconduct over several years,

One of them said that the topic was “toxic” for Deutsche Bank.

Earlier this year, the lender said that it had “initiated an investigation in relation to our engagement with a limited number of clients”, adding that it could not comment on details as the probe was continuing.

FT : Gold under the new regime

Gold under the new regime
A hedge, but not necessarily an inflation hedge

A hedge against what, exactly?
Wednesday’s piece on Japan in the 1980s was, in a sense, about regime change. The idea was that a big shift in Japanese monetary policy, fiscal approach and corporate culture brought about an asset price bubble and permanently reset all sorts of economic relationships. The question is whether the present unleashing of simultaneous easy fiscal and monetary policy, and the change in the Federal Reserve’s attitude towards inflation, means the US is heading for a similar regime change?

Because a main risk of this potential regime change is, by consensus, high inflation — which would likely cause a correction in stock and bond markets — my mind turned to hedging. Readers’ minds are in a similar place: I have received a number of emails asking where the safe assets are. 

Gold is an obvious candidate; it is often touted as an inflation hedge. But that is too general. Gold has one of the most stable relationships to economic fundamentals of any asset. It moves inversely to real interest rates with great regularity, especially in recent years (all chart data from the Fed): 


The yield on inflation protected 10-year Treasuries (the blue line) is the standard proxy for real interest rates, or the inflation-adjusted cost of money, which is currently negative. 

Gold (yellow line, note that the scale is inverted) has followed real rates, slavishly but in reverse, for 15 years, rising when real rates fall and falling when they rise. There is a simple reason: the real return on money is the opportunity cost for holding gold, an asset that yields nothing. Nominal rates have been rising lately, driven up almost solely by inflation expectations, so gold has cut an uneven but basically sideways path in recent months.

Holding gold will do you no good, judging by the above chart, if the new economic regime increases inflation, but also manages to stimulate real economic activity and real rates. For gold to work, you have to get the inflation without any real growth pay-off (you may have an economic pay-off in the sense of making debt burdens lighter on both sovereigns and households, even without real economic growth, but that is not what fans of monetary/fiscal co-ordination tend to claim they are after). 

I wonder, however, if significantly higher and more volatile inflation would make gold more valuable as a hedge, even if real rates were to rise. High real rates that feel unstable might make investors want something stable in their pockets, no?

Below is a picture of the longer-term relationship between gold and real rates. I have used a different proxy for real rates here, though, because Treasury inflation-protected securities are a relatively new phenomenon. Instead I have used 10-year yields minus the annual rate of CPI inflation. This renders a slightly more volatile series, but checking it against Tips renders a pretty good match. I’ve also left the inflation rate in (in grey).

The period of most interest here is the 1970s, where two huge jumps in inflation drove real rates down hard. Zooming in on those years:

What is compelling here is that the relationship holds (real yields down, gold up) but it is not very stable. When real yields crashed the first time between September 1972 and December 1974, dropping by over eight percentage points, gold rose by 179 per cent, a very nice return in a period when stocks lost a third of their value. But when inflation came through the second time, between 1978 and 1980, gold was spectacular. On a significantly smaller fall in real yields, it rose 238 per cent.

My tentative interpretation is that gold looked better and better to investors as inflationary instability persisted, leaving investors progressively more anxious.

But then came the 1980s, and Paul Volcker’s Fed. Inflation looked like it had been put permanently back in the bottle. And under stable inflation, the real-rates gold relationship was cut adrift, to a degree. There was a large decline in real rates between 1985 and 1990, a swing of over six points, but it happened in a gradual and orderly way, against a background of relatively tame inflation and inflation volatility. Gold rose by only 25 per cent. Again, the violence of the times, and how beaten up investors were feeling, seemed to matter to gold — not just the real yield. 

And the next big rally for gold came, of course, in the run-up to and the aftermath of the great financial crisis, a period of volatility of all sorts. 

As true students of the metal will have determined by now, I am no gold bug. My modest suggestion is only this: the link with real yields is persistent but varies in strength through time. An economic regime change, such as the one many people are going through now could once again change the gold/real rates relationship, which has seemed so consistent in recent years. Hedge carefully, friends.

>>> US After Hours Summary: OXM +13.4%, RH +5.8% sharply higher on earnings; GME

After Hours Summary: OXM +13.4%, RH +5.8% sharply higher on earnings; GME -12% falls on earnings, new CEO

After Hours Gainers:

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: OXM +13.4%, RH +5.8%, GEF +3.8%

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: TLYS +4.3% (delares $1.00/sh special dividend), GNSS +1.5% (acquires Zonehaven), BALY +0.7% (forms strategic partnership with Oscar de la Hoya's KO Entertainment), EZPW +0.6% (acquires 128 pawn stores in Mexico), STLA +0.5% (issues statement regarding diesel emissions investigation in France), HIMS +0.2% (names Miley Cyrus as Creative Advisor), MXL +0.1% (MTSI and MXL to collaborate on Data Center applications), RBLX +0.1% (sued by group of music publishers for alleged copyright infringement, according to WSJ)

After Hours Losers:

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: GME -12% (also names former Amazon execs as CEO and CFO; also files for 5 mln share at-the-market offering; also received SEC request for documents), LAKE -8%, VRNT -0.3%, CANO -0.1%

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: MTLS -8.1% (stock offering), EGLX -6.3% (stock offering), AMC -6.2% (announces shareholder count ahead of Shareholder Meeting in July), CELH -5.8% (stock offering; also files mixed securities shelf offering), LTHM -5.3% (stock offering; also files mixed securities shelf offering), REVG -4.9% (stock offering), HYFM -1.4% (stock offering), MTW -0.9% (identifies cybersecurity incident), AB -0.6% (reports May AUM), ANGI -0.4% (reports monthly metrics for May), SHAK -0.2% (names new CFO), IVZ -0.1% (reports May AUM), EVC -0.1% (to acquire MediaDonuts)

WSJ : Facebook Advertising Boss Carolyn Everson Leaving the Social-Media Company

Facebook Advertising Boss Carolyn Everson Leaving the Social-Media Company
Executive spent more than a decade at Facebook

Carolyn Everson, Facebook Inc.’s FB -1.03% head of global advertising sales and one of the ad industry’s most powerful executives, said she is leaving the company.

Ms. Everson spent more than a decade at Facebook, helping the social-media company build relationships on and off New York’s Madison Avenue and grow into a global ad behemoth. Ad revenue accounted for $84.2 billion of Facebook’s nearly $86 billion of revenue last year.

“I am extremely proud of what we set out to accomplish but way more proud of my team and the support we showed each other, especially in difficult times,” Ms. Everson said in a post on her Facebook page. “I always said no one will ever mention at my funeral the amount of revenue I oversaw. But hopefully one day someone will say my legacy at Facebook was in how I showed up for my team, for our clients and for our industry.”

Some ad executives saw Ms. Everson as a possible successor to Facebook’s revenue chief, David Fischer, who announced plans to leave the company later this year. This month, Facebook named Marne Levine, a longtime lieutenant to operating chief Sheryl Sandberg, to the newly created role of chief business officer. The new business officer role oversees the company’s advertising business and global partnerships.

Facebook said Nicola Mendelsohn will be the interim leader of the global business group that Ms. Everson managed. Ms. Mendelsohn had oversight of the group’s Europe, Middle East and Africa region and has been at Facebook for more than eight years.

“We wish Carolyn the best as she moves into a new chapter,” a Facebook spokeswoman said. “We are grateful for her contributions.”

Ms. Everson is considered one of the most effective client hand-holders in the ad business and is known for her tight relationships with marketing executives across industries. On Wednesday, her post on Facebook explaining that she had left the company had more than 500 comments with many well-known marketers weighing in.

“This is an incredibly huge loss for Facebook and the whole industry,” wrote Musa Tariq, chief marketing officer of crowdfunding platform GoFundMe.

Ms. Everson also has been Facebook’s chief apologist for many issues that the social-media giant has grappled with in recent years, from the Cambridge Analytica data leak to ad-measurement mishaps. Through the crises, she not only played a public role but worked behind the scenes to keep advertisers informed to defuse or limit any financial fallout for the platform, ad executives told The Wall Street Journal.

Last summer, Ms. Everson played a critical role in persuading top advertisers not to pause or limit spending on Facebook when civil-rights groups called for a boycott of the social network for failing to control the spread of hate speech and misinformation. She sent emails and hosted calls with advertisers and ad agencies throughout the episode to convey to brands that Facebook was taking steps to fix the issue. Facebook recovered quickly from the boycott and posted record revenue in last year’s third quarter despite the imbroglio.

Early in her tenure, Ms. Everson helped form Facebook’s client council, an invitation-only group made up of top marketers and top ad agency executives. The council, which was created to allow big brands to give input on the tech company’s ad products, helped Facebook establish strong relationships with some of the country’s biggest ad spenders. Other tech platforms have replicated the company’s council idea.

Some executives said Ms. Everson’s departure could have financial repercussions for Facebook. “She was loved and had deep relationships with marketers,” said Rishad Tobaccowala, senior adviser to ad giant Publicis Groupe SA . “Without her they have no real emotional face to the world.”

WSJ : The Delta Covid-19 Variant: What We Know

The Delta Covid-19 Variant: What We Know
The coronavirus strain, from a lineage first identified in India, has spread to dozens of countries, including the U.S.

Politicians and public-healthofficials in the U.S. are expressing concern about the spread inside the country so-called Delta variant of the coronavirus, which the World Health Organization has designated a global “variant of concern.”

The variant, also known as B.1.617.2, is the most worrying of a lineage of the virus that was first identified in India in late 2020 and has spread to an estimated 60 countries, including the U.S.

The version of the virus played a significant role in a record-setting surge of infections that overwhelmed India’s healthcare system. It has become the dominant variant in the U.K., threatening to delay a planned end to social-distancing restrictions this month.

President Biden tweeted about the variant on Tuesday, noting its spread among young people in the U.K. and urging young Americans to get vaccinated. His chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, said in a White House briefing this week that the variant made up 6% of samples sequenced in the U.S.

The variant will move from country to country over a difficult-to-predict time frame, said Jeff Barrett, director of the Covid-19 Genomics Initiative at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in the U.K. “I think the U.S. will be the next place that will probably see a reasonable rise,” he said.

Here’s what we know so far about the Delta variant.

What is the Delta coronavirus variant?
The B.1.617 lineage, identified in October, refers to several variants of the virus that causes Covid-19.

The most concerning of the lineage is the Delta or B.1.617.2 variant, which scientists say appears to have two advantages over earlier forms of the virus. It has been established to be more infectious and it also appears to be more effective at evading vaccines, though people who are fully vaccinated still have significant protection against illness.

How contagious is this variant?
Scientists are still studying the virus and their early conclusions aren’t definitive. But British scientists, who have probably done the most work on the variant, estimate it is from 40% to as much as 80% more infectious than the so-called Alpha variant, or B.1.1.7, which was first identified in England last year, is now prevalent in the U.S. and is itself more contagious than the version of the virus that emerged in China in 2019.

Wendy Barclay, professor of Virology at Imperial College London, says swab tests suggest that Delta infects people with a heavier virus load, which means they exhale more of it for others to catch. The mutations also appear to make the variant more effective at attaching itself to cells in human airways. The combination means an infected person is, other things being equal, likely to infect more people and that people require less exposure to become infected.

Scientists don’t yet know if the Delta variant is deadlier than other variants.

Will existing vaccines work against this variant?
Yes, but the variant appears to be somewhat more effective at evading the vaccines and the body’s immune responses in general. No vaccine is 100% effective and while those in use in the West appear to work well in preventing symptomatic Covid-19 and serious illness, they appear to work slightly less well than against earlier versions of the virus.

This so-called immune escape gives the variant an extra advantage over earlier versions in highly vaccinated countries such as the U.K. Reported cases in the U.K. of all the B.1.617 family have risen by almost 70% in the four weeks to June 3, according to data from the nonprofit Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data, or GISAID.

Very few of those hospitalized in the U.K. have been fully vaccinated, with the new cases mostly among younger people who aren’t yet vaccinated. There is no evidence that young adults and children are more at risk proportionately from this variant than other age groups, and the increased transmission mostly reflects the fact that they haven’t been immunized, scientists say.

Are there any cases of this new variant in the U.S.?
Yes. There have been more than 2,000 cases of the B.1.617 variants reported in the U.S., an increase of 4.2% in the four weeks to June 2, according to GISAID. The variant has been reported in a majority of states, including California, New York and Massachusetts.

To limit the variant’s spread, the U.S. has suspended most travel from India to the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stipulates that all U.S.-bound air travelers have proof of a negative Covid-19 test administered no more than three days before arrival.

Can I get reinfected with this variant even after I’ve had Covid-19 or been vaccinated against it?
Yes, it is possible to become reinfected, though there is some evidence that second infections are on average less severe than the first.

Are the symptoms of the Delta variant any different?
There are hints that the variant puts people at a somewhat greater risk of hospitalization. However, there is no data yet to show that the variant is causing atypical symptoms. There were reports in India suggesting the virus was causing hearing loss, gangrene and other unusual symptoms but scientists said an intense epidemic such as the one in India will tend to produce a spectrum of rare conditions, simply given the large number of infections.