Gapping up
In reaction to strong earnings/guidance:
- CMC +7.4%, PERI +6.7% (guidance)
Select metals/mining stocks trading higher:
- DRD +9.3%, MTL +8.5%, HMY +5.6%, SBGL +4.8%, AU +4.2%, GFI +4.1%, AG +3.8%, AUY +3.6%, IAG +3%, KGC +2.8%, PAAS +2.6%, NEM +2.5%, GDX +2.3%, SLV +2.2%, GOLD +2%, GLD +1.8%
Select oil/gas related names showing strength:
- DNR +8.4%, NBR +2.2%, TOT +2.1%, RDS.A +1.3%, MRO +1.2%, RIG +1.1%, HAL +0.8%, SLB +0.6%
Other news:
- NIO +10.7% (delivered 3,170 vehicles in December 2019 or +25.4% mo/mo)
- XON +4.2% (FDA has granted orphan drug designation to PRGN-3006)
- ELAN +0.7% (signed an agreement to divest Osurnia, a treatment for otitis externa in dogs, to Dechra Pharmaceuticals for $135 mln in an all-cash deal)
- HOOK +0.6% (progress in its collaboration with Gilead for novel arenavirus-based therapeutics intended to support functional cures for chronic HBV and HIV infections)
- MYGN +0.6% (demonstrates GeneSight improved all clinical outcomes using HAM-D6 analysis in large prospective guided study)
Analyst comments:
- EQH +0.7% (upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Wells Fargo)
- FITB +0.5% (upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Barclays)
Early premarket gappers
- Gapping up:
- CMC +11.9%, DRD +9.3%, MTL +8%, HMY +7.3%, PERI +6.1%, SBGL +5.6%, IAG +5.5%, AU +5.5%, DNR +5.2%, GFI +4.7%, AUY +4.1%, KGC +4%, AG +3.7%, GDX +3%, GOLD +3%, PAAS +3%, NEM +2.6%, SLV +2.2%, TOT +2.2%, NBR +2.2%, GLD +1.9%, MRO +1.5%, RDS.A +1.3%, TLRD +1%, SLB +1%, RIG +0.9%
- Gapping down:
- CALM -6.9%, JKS -5.3%, KPTI -3.9%, AEG -3.5%, STM -2.9%, DB -2.6%, IBN -2.3%, WDC -2.2%, TTM -2.1%, ASML -1.9%, TEVA -1.9%, FCX -1.7%, UAA -1.6%, WB -1.5%, NVDA -1.4%, MU -1.4%, DLTR -1.3%, SQ -1.2%, BIDU -1.2%, XLNX -1.1%, AMD -1.1%, MS -0.9%, CS -0.7%
Trade Secrets makes its predictions for 2020
US-EU relations will take a turn for the worse and EU-China relations will prove unfruitful
Happy new year and all that. Now, where we were? Ah yes, indefinite global trade tension and Brexit.
Making predictions is the done thing around this time of year, and we’re not unknown for sticking our necks out. So in today’s newsletter we give you ours (or at least this particular writer’s) for events in the trade world.
We plead in mitigation that predicting trade politics, particularly the timing of events, is difficult at the best of times given the interminable bureaucratic processes involved. And these days we have Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, possessing respectively no consistent decision-making criteria at all and a genius for unacknowledged U-turns. Also, Iran. Sometimes it feels like you might as well be betting on raindrops running down a window. Be kind to us if some of these forecasts turn out wrong. Our chart of the day looks at something which definitely did happen, namely the slump in trade between South Korea and Japan last year.
2020: here’s what’s coming
US-CHINA
Arguments will continue about exactly how many tonnes of US soyabeans China is buying © AP
The first phase of the US-China mini-deal will be signed — on January 15, according to Trump — but there won’t be another substantive one this year. Even the first one will lead to continual grumbling about exactly how many tonnes of soyabeans China is buying. Goods tariffs between the two countries won’t end the year higher than they are now, but those implemented since Trump became president in 2017 won’t be eliminated either.
Despite the huge importance of November’s US presidential election, trade itself won’t play a big role in the campaign. The Democratic candidate will aim to neutralise the issue by tough rhetoric against trade deals in general and Beijing in particular, though not explicitly promising higher tariffs towards China than under Trump.
US-EU
US president Donald Trump will not impose tariffs on car imports from Europe © EPA
US relations with the EU will take a turn for the worse, but not disastrously. Trump will not impose car tariffs on imports from Europe. After the World Trade Organization issues its ruling against Airbus over the summer, Washington and Brussels will start talks on resolving the issue, but these won’t get done quickly and the EU will introduce tariffs in the meantime. The US will take some kind of action over the digital services tax, and the EU will start a WTO case.
EU-CHINA
The German city of Leipzig will host the EU-China summit in September © Mellimage | Dreamstime.com
The EU’s relationship with China will be much less combative than US-China and EU-US relations, but not particularly fruitful. Brussels and Beijing will continue to talk quietly about reform of the WTO, but those discussions will produce little of substance.
The bilateral investment treaty being negotiated between the two countries will miss its 2020 deadline, at least in any meaningful state. The main sticking point will be designing a mechanism to hold China to its promises.
The big EU-China Leipzig conference in September will be a stalemate on the trade front, with noticeable divisions between the more China-sceptic western and northern European member states and the eastern and southern “17+1” grouping. The European Commission’s attempts to impose collective EU policies on 5G procurement, foreign investment and procurement with China in mind will make little progress.
EU AND OTHERS
Disputes about deforestation in the Amazon will contribute to lack of progress over the EU-Mercosur trade deal © Reuters
With environmental and specifically Amazonian deforestation considerations unresolved, ratification of the EU-Mercosur trade deal will be stalled indefinitely. The bilateral deal with New Zealand will progress quickly and will be nearly or totally agreed by the end of the year. The EU-Australia agreement will be slower: it will become tangled up in arguments over beef quotas and a similar (though less dramatic) overlay of climate change concerns. Tensions between different commission directorates over practicalities and legality mean that hopes for introducing a multi-sector carbon border tax by 2021 will start to look shaky.
UK
UK prime minister Boris Johnson will seek to camouflage retreat on Brexit as victory © Kay Nietfeld/dpa
On Brexit, UK prime minister Boris Johnson will find a way (one suggested by an FT colleague here) of de facto extending the transition period rather than having the UK drop into a bare-bones bilateral trade deal by year-end, and will seek to camouflage this retreat as victory. There will be talks and possibly completion of a UK-US bilateral deal covering essentially minor technical measures that could be implemented by the White House without reference to Congress, such as regulatory co-operation.
In both cases, the newsrooms of Britain will be rent by arguments between political journalists repeating the Downing Street spin that this is a huge success and economics/trade reporters correctly pointing out they are mediocre outcomes for the UK reflecting a position of weakness.
The WTO appellate body crisis will not be resolved, as the US will continue to block judge appointments. By the end of the year, at least a dozen countries will have signed up to the EU-inspired alternative version. The US-EU-Japan paper aiming to reform WTO rules on industrial subsidies will in effect be vetoed by China if it is actually presented to WTO members.
The most that the June WTO ministerial in Kazakhstan will produce is an outline agreement on reform of fisheries subsidies. A strong European candidate to be the new director-general of the WTO will emerge ahead of the incumbent Roberto Azevêdo retiring in 2021, but US opposition will mean an African nominee will be the favourite by December 31.
And that’s it. Of course, the huge event for trade policy this year will be the US election. Since we’re not politicos we’ll resist making predictions about the outcome of the electoral college. One thing is clear, though. Another term of Trump and powers such as the EU and China, which have been seeking to stall major trade conflict, will start taking a much more confrontational line. But that’s a question for 2021.
Charted waters
Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe met Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s president, on December 24 for the first talks between the two in 15 months amid a continuing political and economic dispute that had a significant effect on trade between the two Asian nations last year.
John Baldessari, Who Gave Conceptual Art a Dose of Humor, Is Dead at 88
Through his hybrid works and teaching, he helped build the Los Angeles art scene, mentoring a who’s who of contemporary artists.
LOS ANGELES — John Baldessari, the influential conceptual artist who helped transform Los Angeles into a global art capital through his witty image-making and decades of teaching there, died on Thursday at his home in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles. He was 88.
His death was confirmed on Sunday by Virginia Gatelein, his studio manager and the chairwoman of his foundation. No cause was given.
Mr. Baldessari started as a semiabstract painter in the 1950s but grew so disenchanted with his own handiwork — as well as the very notion of handiwork — that in 1970 he decided to take his paintings to a San Diego funeral home and cremate them. He was ready to embrace a wide range of mediums: videos, photography, prints, sculpture, text-based art, installations and, yes, paintings, but most of all hybrid forms of these, like text painting.
While so much early conceptual art tended toward the cold and cerebral, Mr. Baldessari’s was infused with a droll sense of humor. He employed a sort of Dada irony and sometimes colorful Pop Art splashes — blue was his favorite color — to rescue conceptual art from what he saw as its high-minded self-seriousness.
At the same time, Mr. Baldessari helped build the Los Angeles art scene through his teaching, most notably at the California Institute of the Arts from 1970 to 1988 and at the University of California, Los Angeles, from 1996 to 2005.
A small sampling of his former students reads like a who’s who of contemporary artists: David Salle, Tony Oursler, Matt Mullican, Jack Goldstein, Jim Shaw, Mike Kelley, James Welling, Meg Cranston, Liz Larner, Mungo Thomson, Kerry Tribe, Elliott Hundley and Analia Saban.
With the possible exception of Ed Ruscha, who also works at the intersection of photography, painting and text, no artist in Los Angeles had done as much to foster the city’s contemporary art scene as Mr. Baldessari.
John Anthony Baldessari was born on June 17, 1931, in National City, Calif., a town between San Diego and the border city of Tijuana, Mexico, to immigrant parents, Antonio and Hedvig (Jensen) Baldessari. (They met after arriving in the United States, he from Austria and she from Denmark.) His father was a salvage dealer, and the family grew its own fruits and vegetables, raised chickens and rabbits, and practiced composting waste. Mr. Baldessari often cited his childhood as a reason he had a hard time throwing anything away.
“It’s hard for me to throw anything away without thinking about how it can become part of some work I’m doing,” he said in a 2008 interview. “I just stare at something and say: Why isn’t that art? Why couldn’t that be art?”
Mr. Baldessari majored in art education at San Diego State College and earned a master’s degree in art there. In short order he took jobs teaching art in junior high school, community college and in an extension program before joining the faculty of University of California, San Diego. He spent one summer teaching teenagers at a camp for juvenile delinquents run by the California Youth Authority; he would joke that he had been hired only because of his size — an imposing 6 foot 7 inches.
His artwork at the time, which he was just beginning to show in Los Angeles galleries, was moving in a more philosophical direction. In 1968, already distancing himself from painting, he reproduced a cover for Artforum magazine featuring a Frank Stella canvas, hiring a sign painter to add a caption below it: “This is not to be looked at.”
It was an early Magritte-like experiment in pitting words against images, challenging viewers to question their faith in visual representations, the printed word or both. Taken from Goya, the caption also served as a witty comeback to Mr. Stella’s minimalist credo: “What you see is what you see.”
Mr. Baldessari's cremation of his traditional paintings, in 1970, was an unmistakably Duchampian, anti-art gesture that he later sounded slightly embarrassed by.
“It was a very public and symbolic act,” he said, “like announcing you’re going on a diet in order to stick to it.”
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The ashes filled 10 boxes, nine capable of holding an adult, the other infant-size. He folded some of the ashes into cookie dough and displayed the baked goods at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as part of its groundbreaking 1970 survey of conceptual art, “Information.”
That summer, he moved from San Diego to Santa Monica, Calif., and began teaching a course at CalArts, called “post-studio,” that was not tied to any traditional genre, like painting or drawing. At CalArts Mr. Baldessari started making videos, using one of a couple dozen Sony Portapak analog recording systems owned by the institute. Most were short comic sketches, and several used the tools or trappings of the classroom.
One, perhaps his most well-known, shows Mr. Baldessari’s hand writing on a ruled notebook the same sentence — “I will not make any more boring art” — again and again, as if by way of punishment.
A popular 1972 vignette, “Teaching a Plant the Alphabet,” has him patiently intoning letters and holding up large flash cards in front of a potted plant. The plant does not stir. (“When I think I’m teaching, I’m probably not,” Mr., Baldessari once observed dryly. “When I don’t think I’m teaching, I probably am.”)
Mr. Baldessari turned to photo-collages in the 1980s, working mainly with news photographs and Hollywood movie stills that he bought for 10 cents apiece from a movie bookstore in Burbank. A particularly fruitful line of inquiry opened up one day in 1985 when he started playing around with the kind of round white stickers used for price tags. He stuck them on photographs on top of the faces of public figures he disliked.
This soon evolved into a signature technique — painting white, black or colored dots over faces in photographs as a way to get us to look beyond the obvious. Mr. Baldessari often said that one of his favorite compliments came from Nam June Paik, who also taught at CalArts: “What I like most about your work is what you leave out.”
Distilling his view of art, Mr. Baldessari’s said: “What the artist does is jump-start your mind and make you see something fresh, as if you were a visitor to the moon. An artist breathes life back into stereotypes.”
He also tried to empower the viewer.
“The assumption in a lot of my work is that people want to make something out of nothing,” he said. “Remember the old days when you had snow on TV, and people would try to see something in it? I miss that.”
He liked to tell his students, “Don’t look at things — look in between things.”
That approach can be seen in his long-running “body parts” series, which featured simple, often silhouetted images on paintings or prints of disembodied hands, ears, eyebrows and the like. With a nod to Nikolai Gogol’s 1836 short story “The Nose” — in which a Russian bureaucrat wakes up to find that his nose has seditiously left his face — Mr. Baldessari made much of independent-minded noses. He called one sculpture, featuring a nose set against a cloudy sky, “God Nose.” He hung it in the entrance to his studio.
More recently, he turned to old masters paintings for his source material, borrowing details from works at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt for one series and Giotto’s Arena Chapel frescoes for another. A related group of works, shown in Moscow in 2013, paired images from Manet, Courbet, Andy Warhol and David Hockney with an artist’s name, song title or film noir title. Mr. Baldessari called the show “1+1=1,” underscoring the fact that his image-plus-text equations never quite compute. Hans Ulrich-Obrist, who co-organized the Moscow show at the gallery Garage, called him “a serial inventor.”
By then, Mr. Baldessari’s reputation had grown to the point where every year or so brought another museum exhibition or honor. He received a lifetime achievement award from the Americans for the Arts in 2005, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2008, received a Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement from the Venice Biennale in 2009, and was awarded the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2014.
From 2009 to 2011, a five-decade retrospective of his work, “Pure Beauty,” traveled from the Tate Modern in London to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and then to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Reviewing the show for The Los Angeles Times, Christopher Knight wrote that Mr. Baldessari had “helped pry open an unexpectedly vast territory now comfortably occupied by countless artists internationally,” calling him “arguably America’s most influential Conceptual artist.”
Writing in The New York Times, Roberta Smith described his legacy as particularly broad. The show, she wrote, “reveals his career as a vital, unbroken through line from Pop to 1970s Conceptual Art to 1980s appropriation art, a movement that is unthinkable without his unusually direct influence.”
Mr. Baldessari’s early work was revisited by Pacific Standard Time, an $11 million Getty Museum-funded initiative consisting of dozens of museum exhibitions from 2011 to 2012 that explored the rise of contemporary art in California. He was included in 11 of the museum shows, more than any other artist.
He is survived by his daughter, Annamarie; his son, Tony, and his sister, Betty Sokol.
His late-life celebrity brought with it a range of invitations. He participated in book readings, collaborated in fashion shoots and sat for photographs by Catherine Opie and a portrait by David Hockney. In 2018 he even made a guest appearance on “The Simpsons.”
In 2006, for the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, Mr. Baldessari curated a show of works drawn from its permanent collection. Later that year he designed a René Magritte-inspired survey at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, putting images of clouds on the carpeting and images of Los Angeles freeways on the ceilings to disorient visitors in classic Surrealist fashion.
By that point, more people than ever before got the joke.
“All those things that initially seemed so light compared to, say, the deadly serious milieu of Abstract Expressionism — like John’s irony, humor and topicality — those things emerged as major themes in art,” said Michael Govan, the museum’s director. “So it’s not just that John taught so many students who went on to become major players. It’s that art turned and walked through this door he opened.”
It’s Not Just Software. New Safety Risks Under Scrutiny on Boeing’s 737 Max.
The company and regulators are looking into everything from the wiring on the plane to its engines.
Even as Boeing inches closer to getting the 737 Max back in the air, new problems with the plane are emerging that go beyond the software that played a role in two deadly crashes.
As part of the work to return the Max to service, the company and regulators have scrutinized every aspect of the jet, uncovering new potential design flaws.
At the request of the Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing conducted an internal audit in December to determine whether it had accurately assessed the dangers of key systems given new assumptions about how long it might take pilots to respond to emergencies, according to a senior engineer at Boeing and three people familiar with the matter.
Among the most pressing issues discovered were previously unreported concerns with the wiring that helps control the tail of the Max.
The company is looking at whether two bundles of critical wiring are too close together and could cause a short circuit. A short in that area could lead to a crash if pilots did not respond correctly, the people said. Boeing is still trying to determine whether that scenario could actually occur on a flight and, if so, whether it would need to separate the wire bundles in the roughly 800 Max jets that have already been built. The company says that the fix, if needed, is relatively simple.
The company informed the F.A.A. about the potential vulnerability last month, and Boeing’s new chief executive discussed possible changes to the wiring on an internal conference call last week, according to one of the people and the Boeing engineer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The company may eventually need to look into whether the same problem exists on the 737 NG, the predecessor to the Max. There are currently about 6,800 of those planes in service.
The senior Boeing engineer said that finding such problems and fixing them was not unusual and not particular to the Max or to Boeing.
The emergence of new troubles with the Max threatens to extend a crisis that is consuming one of America’s most influential companies and disrupting the global aviation business. The Max has been grounded since March, after two crashes killed 346 people. The crashes were caused in part by new software on the Max, MCAS, which triggered erroneously and sent the planes into nose dives. Boeing has developed a fix for the software, but it has not yet been approved, and the process of returning the plane to service has taken much longer than Boeing expected.
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The Max is Boeing’s most important plane, with about 5,000 ordered by airlines around the world. But as the grounding has dragged on, Boeing said it would temporarily shut down its 737 factory, jolting thousands of suppliers and stoking the concern of President Trump.
Boeing abruptly fired its chief executive late last month after he alienated the F.A.A. and airline customers. His successor is now contending with the fallout, as Boeing’s share price has fallen by 21 percent and the company faces tens of billions of dollars in charges related to the grounding.
Regulators have suggested that the Max could be approved to fly again by the spring, a timetable that could still hold. The company says that even if it needs to fix the wiring issue, it would only take one to two hours per plane to separate the wiring bundles on the Max using a clamp.
“We are working closely with the F.A.A. and other regulators on a robust and thorough certification process to ensure a safe and compliant design,” Gordon Johndroe, a Boeing spokesman, said in a statement. “We identified these issues as part of that rigorous process, and we are working with the F.A.A. to perform the appropriate analysis. It would be premature to speculate as to whether this analysis will lead to any design changes.”
Investigations by international regulators into the cause of the two Max crashes determined that pilots of those flights did not respond as quickly or effectively as Boeing and the F.A.A., using accepted industry standards, presumed they would when designing and evaluating the MCAS software.
So in developing a software update for the Max, Boeing and the F.A.A. recognized that the previous industry assumptions should be changed, and that they needed to consider what would happen if it took crews much longer to act in the face of emergencies.
Using that new set of assumptions about pilot reactions, Boeing discovered that if two wire bundles placed close together toward the rear of the plane caused an electrical short, it could lead to a catastrophic accident. The wiring connects to the motor that controls the stabilizer, the horizontal fin on a plane’s tail, sending signals from the flight control computer that can push the nose down or lift it up.
If pilots did not recognize the problem and quickly take appropriate action, the plane could go into a nose dive, the senior Boeing engineer said. Under those circumstances, a short could bring a plane down in the same way that the MCAS software did on both doomed flights, forcing the stabilizer’s motor to run uncontrollably.
Boeing is still working to determine how likely it is that the wires could actually short circuit. The company does not want to make changes to the plane’s wiring if it doesn't have to, fearing that additional damage could be done during a repair.
The engines on the Max have also become a focus of scrutiny for regulators. CFM International, the joint venture between General Electric and Safran that manufactures the engines, has told the F.A.A. it discovered a possible weakness in one of the engines’ rotors, which could cause the part to shatter. The likelihood of that failure is remote and regulators aren’t requiring an immediate fix, though they are looking to require that airlines inspect as many Max engines as possible before the plane returns to service, an F.A.A. official said.
Boeing also recently told the F.A.A. that it had discovered a manufacturing problem that left the plane’s engines vulnerable to a lightning strike.
While assembling the Max, workers at Boeing’s Renton, Wash., factory had ground down the outer shell of a panel that sits atop the engine housing in an effort to ensure a better fit into the plane. In doing so, they inadvertently removed the coating that insulates the panel from a lightning strike, taking away a crucial protection for the fuel tank and fuel lines. The F.A.A. is developing a directive that will require the company to restore lightning protection to the engine panel and Boeing is already in the process of resolving the issue.
“The F.A.A. and Boeing are analyzing certain findings from a recent review of the proposed modifications to the Boeing 737 MAX,” an F.A.A. spokesman, Lynn Lunsford, said in a statement. “As part of its continuing oversight, the agency will ensure that all safety-related issues identified during this process are addressed before the aircraft is approved for return to passenger service.”
The new issues pose additional challenges for Boeing’s leadership. Late last month, the company’s board fired the chief executive, Dennis A. Muilenburg. He is being replaced on an interim basis by Greg Smith, the former chief financial officer. Next week, David Calhoun, until recently the nonexecutive chairman of Boeing’s board, will take over as chief executive.
On an internal conference call last Thursday, the question of changing the wiring on the Max came up, according to the senior Boeing engineer and another person familiar with the matter. At one point, a Boeing employee asked about whether the fix would need to be made to every plane in the fleet if the issue was found to be low risk. Mr. Smith replied that if changes were needed, they would have to be comprehensive.
Mr. Smith’s sober response served as an immediate contrast to Mr. Muilenburg, who repeatedly made overly optimistic projections about what was needed to get the Max back into service.
Boeing was already confronting a number of problems with the 737 Max and its predecessor.
In recent simulator tests with crews from American, Southwest and United Airlines as well as Aeromexico, many pilots did not use the prescribed emergency procedures to handle problems with the flights, raising the possibility that regulators could mandate flight simulator training or change the procedures before clearing the plane to fly. The F.A.A. is evaluating Boeing’s analysis of the testing.
Still, there are signs that Boeing is making progress toward getting the Max flying again. Regulators from Europe plan to fly to Seattle this week to test the new software in a flight simulator, a sign that international authorities believe the company is far enough along that its fix is ready for serious evaluation, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Government officials believe that the plane may be cleared for a certification test flight as soon as this month, where the company must demonstrate the plane meets all the safety requirements. The flight — the regulator’s final exam for the Max — is a significant milestone and one of the last hurdles the company needs to clear for regulators to lift the grounding.
American Airlines and Southwest Airlines are currently planning to use the Max for commercial flights in April, while United Airlines has scheduled Max flights for June.
“Our highest priority is ensuring the 737 Max meets all safety and regulatory requirements before it returns to service,” said Mr. Johndroe, the Boeing spokesman.
The full list of Golden Globes 2020 winners
All the winners of the 77th annual Golden Globes from the world of TV and film
Best film – drama
Best actress in a film – drama
Cynthia Erivo, Harriet
Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story
Saoirse Ronan, Little Women
Charlize Theron, Bombshell
Renée Zellweger, Judy – WINNER
Scarlett Johansson, Marriage Story
Saoirse Ronan, Little Women
Charlize Theron, Bombshell
Renée Zellweger, Judy – WINNER
Best actor in a film – drama
Christian Bale, Ford v Ferrari
Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory
Adam Driver, Marriage Story
Joaquin Phoenix, Joker – WINNER
Jonathan Pryce, The Two Popes
Antonio Banderas, Pain and Glory
Adam Driver, Marriage Story
Joaquin Phoenix, Joker – WINNER
Jonathan Pryce, The Two Popes
Best film – musical or comedy
Best actress in a film – musical or comedy
Ana De Armas, Knives Out
Awkwafina, The Farewell – WINNER
Cate Blanchett, Where’d You Go, Bernadette
Beanie Feldstein, Booksmart
Emma Thompson, Late Night
Awkwafina, The Farewell – WINNER
Cate Blanchett, Where’d You Go, Bernadette
Beanie Feldstein, Booksmart
Emma Thompson, Late Night
Best actor in a film – musical or comedy
Daniel Craig, Knives Out
Roman Griffin Davis, Jojo Rabbit
Leonardo DiCaprio, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Taron Egerton, Rocketman – WINNER
Eddie Murphy, Dolemite is My Name
Roman Griffin Davis, Jojo Rabbit
Leonardo DiCaprio, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Taron Egerton, Rocketman – WINNER
Eddie Murphy, Dolemite is My Name
Best supporting actor in a film
Tom Hanks, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes
Al Pacino, The Irishman
Joe Pesci, The Irishman
Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – WINNER
Anthony Hopkins, The Two Popes
Al Pacino, The Irishman
Joe Pesci, The Irishman
Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – WINNER
Best score – film
Best limited series or TV film
Best actress in a limited series or TV film
Kaitlyn Dever, Unbelievable
Joey King, The Act
Helen Mirren, Catherine the Great
Merritt Wever, Unbelievable
Michelle Williams, Fosse/Verdon – WINNER
Joey King, The Act
Helen Mirren, Catherine the Great
Merritt Wever, Unbelievable
Michelle Williams, Fosse/Verdon – WINNER
Best director – film
Bong Joon Ho, Parasite
Sam Mendes, 1917 – WINNER
Todd Phillips, Joker
Martin Scorsese, The Irishman
Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Sam Mendes, 1917 – WINNER
Todd Phillips, Joker
Martin Scorsese, The Irishman
Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Best actress in a TV series – drama
Jennifer Aniston, The Morning Show
Olivia Colman, The Crown – WINNER
Jodie Comer, Killing Eve
Nicole Kidman, Big Little Lies
Reese Witherspoon, The Morning Show
Olivia Colman, The Crown – WINNER
Jodie Comer, Killing Eve
Nicole Kidman, Big Little Lies
Reese Witherspoon, The Morning Show
Best supporting actress in a TV series, limited series or TV film
Patricia Arquette, The Act – WINNER
Helena Bonham Carter, The Crown
Toni Collette, Unbelievable
Meryl Streep, Big Little Lies
Emily Watson, Chernobyl
Helena Bonham Carter, The Crown
Toni Collette, Unbelievable
Meryl Streep, Big Little Lies
Emily Watson, Chernobyl
Best song – film
Beautiful Ghosts, Cats
I’m Gonna Love Me Again, Rocketman – WINNER
Into the Unknown, Frozen II
Spirit, The Lion King
Stand Up, Harriet
I’m Gonna Love Me Again, Rocketman – WINNER
Into the Unknown, Frozen II
Spirit, The Lion King
Stand Up, Harriet
Best TV series – musical or comedy
Best supporting actress in a film
Kathy Bates, Richard Jewell
Annette Bening, The Report
Laura Dern, Marriage Story – WINNER
Jennifer Lopez, Hustlers
Margot Robbie, Bombshell
Annette Bening, The Report
Laura Dern, Marriage Story – WINNER
Jennifer Lopez, Hustlers
Margot Robbie, Bombshell
Best film – animated
Best screenplay – film
Marriage Story
Parasite
The Two Popes
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – WINNER
The Irishman
Parasite
The Two Popes
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – WINNER
The Irishman
Best actor in a TV series – drama
Brian Cox, Succession – WINNER
Kit Harington, Game of Thrones
Rami Malek, Mr Robot
Tobias Menzies, The Crown
Billy Porter, Pose
Kit Harington, Game of Thrones
Rami Malek, Mr Robot
Tobias Menzies, The Crown
Billy Porter, Pose
Best film – foreign language
Best actress in a TV series – musical or comedy
Christina Applegate, Dead to Me
Rachel Brosnahan, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel
Kirsten Dunst, On Becoming a God in Central Florida
Natasha Lyonne, Russian Doll
Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Fleabag – WINNER
Rachel Brosnahan, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel
Kirsten Dunst, On Becoming a God in Central Florida
Natasha Lyonne, Russian Doll
Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Fleabag – WINNER
Best TV series – drama
Best supporting actor in a TV series, limited series or TV film
Alan Arkin, The Kominsky Method
Kieran Culkin, Succession
Andrew Scott, Fleabag
Stellan Skarsgård, Chernobyl – WINNER
Henry Winkler, Barry
Kieran Culkin, Succession
Andrew Scott, Fleabag
Stellan Skarsgård, Chernobyl – WINNER
Henry Winkler, Barry
Best actor in a TV series – musical or comedy
Michael Douglas, The Kominsky Method
Bill Hader, Barry
Ben Platt, The Politician
Paul Rudd, Living With Yourself
Ramy Youssef, Ramy – WINNER
Bill Hader, Barry
Ben Platt, The Politician
Paul Rudd, Living With Yourself
Ramy Youssef, Ramy – WINNER
Best actor in a limited series or TV film
Christopher Abbott, Catch-22
Sacha Baron Cohen, The Spy
Russell Crowe, The Loudest Voice – WINNER
Jared Harris, Chernobyl
Sam Rockwell, Fosse/Verdon
Sacha Baron Cohen, The Spy
Russell Crowe, The Loudest Voice – WINNER
Jared Harris, Chernobyl
Sam Rockwell, Fosse/Verdon
Antibiotic Makers Struggle, Hurting War on Superbugs
Commercial prospects dim as doctors prescribe new drugs sparingly; some companies run out of cash
The world desperately needs new antibiotics to tackle the rising threat of drug-resistant superbugs, but there is little reward for doing so.
Instead, the companies that have stepped up to the challenge are going bust.
Makers of newly approved antibiotic drugs are struggling to generate sales because doctors prescribe the treatments sparingly. The new drugs compete with older, cheaper products, and patients typically take them for only a week or two at a time.
One of America’s biggest antibiotics specialists, Melinta Therapeutics Inc., MLNT -8.27% filed for bankruptcy in late December, citing slow sales growth and high costs. Its collapse followed that of Achaogen Inc. AKAOQ 6.67% in April, less than a year after it launched a new antibiotic for difficult-to-treat urinary-tract infections. Other makers might soon face a similar fate, saying their cash will run out before the end of 2020. “We don’t know the fate of those drugs for our patients,” said Helen Boucher, chief of infectious diseases at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. “As a physician, that’s my biggest concern.”
Achaogen’s Zemdri drug was sold for about $16 million, a fraction of the roughly $300 million spent developing it. The lack of return is already causing some companies to rethink their antibiotics research—and prompting calls from investors, executives and doctors for an overhaul of how antibiotics are paid for. “We got everything right, and it still didn’t work,” said Ryan Cirz, who led research at Achaogen.
Investors warmed to antibiotics companies in recent years, partly thanks to a big push by the U.S. government to reinvigorate research after most large pharmaceutical companies abandoned the area. Since 2010, it has provided more than $1 billion to support drug development. A 2012 law made it easier to win regulatory approval and granted patent extensions for antibiotics that addressed the biggest public-health threats.
A spate of deals, including Merck & Co.’s $8 billion purchase of antibiotics developer Cubist, boosted investor interest. But most small companies weren’t acquired, and they are home to more than 90% of antibiotics under development, according to research by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Once their new drugs hit the market—a moment most companies would cheer—they are on their own to fund sales and marketing costs, with far less revenue than their peers.
Makers of new antibiotics don’t expect their products to generate the billion-dollar-plus revenues that some of their predecessors enjoyed. Antibiotics are now used more carefully than in the past, as doctors became aware that overuse accelerated the development of drug resistance in bacteria.
To be a commercial success, a new antibiotic would need to make at least $300 million a year at peak, said Patrick Heron, general partner at venture-capital firm Frazier Healthcare Partners, which has invested in several antibiotic companies. That is modest compared with the $1 billion-plus in annual revenue expected of a successful drug in other parts of the industry, but far more than new antibiotics typically make currently.
New antibiotics struggle to make headway in part because hospitals are incentivized to choose the lower-priced option. Insurers pay hospitals a fixed fee for treating a patient with an infection, regardless of which drugs are used. While new antibiotics cost much less than new drugs for cancer or heart disease—typically a few thousand dollars for a course of treatment—they compete with older antibiotics that cost just a few dollars per dose.
“What wasn’t predicted was how little new antibiotics, once they reached the market, would be used, and how much hospitals and providers would stick to the existing generic products,” Mr. Heron said. He said he wouldn’t make any new investments in antibiotics companies until the market changes.
Dim commercial prospects for new antibiotics are at odds with their value to society, as bacteria and fungi develop new mechanisms to overcome older drugs. Superbugs now kill more than 35,000 people a year in the U.S. and sicken 2.8 million, according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Poor returns are taking a toll on research. Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals Inc. in 2019 cut all its research programs, to funnel cash into launching its only approved drug. The company says it has enough cash only until the third quarter of 2020 and is seeking a loan to remain afloat longer.
Washington has taken notice of the problem, but near-term action remains unlikely. The Disarm Act, short for Developing an Innovative Strategy for Antimicrobial Resistant Microorganisms and introduced in Congress in 2019, would have Medicare pay for certain antibiotics in full. Despite bipartisan support for the bill, executives worry its progress could be hindered by impeachment proceedings and the coming election.
Such a change in payment practices would have an “immediate, positive impact,” said Ted Schroeder, chief executive of Nabriva Therapeutics PLC, which makes an antibiotic for pneumonia. If it doesn’t happen this year, he said, “it’s a pretty bleak future.” Nabriva says it has enough cash to last until the fourth quarter of 2020.
Mr. Schroeder and others say the Disarm Act would be an important step but more measures are needed to address the deeper issue—that new antibiotics are being prescribed sparingly.
Potential fixes include a Netflix -style drug subscription model, which would pay companies for access to their drugs regardless of the number of doses used. The U.K. plans on piloting such a system in 2020. Another idea is a “market entry reward,” a one-time sum paid to companies that launch a new antibiotic.
But for now, these potential changes are hypothetical. “The longer we wait for a sustainable solution, the more companies will die, and the more the earlier pipeline will degrade,” said Kevin Outterson, professor of law specializing in the antibiotics market at Boston University. “That’s my real fear.”
>>> Up
* ASR Nederland Raised to Buy at Deutsche Bank
* DNB Raised to Buy at Arctic Securities; PT 185 kroner (+)
* Jost Werke Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan; PT 42 euros
* Michelin Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan; PT 125 euros
* Molecular Partners Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan
* PGS ASA Raised to Buy at Arctic Securities; PT 25 kroner (+)
* Plastic Omnium Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan; PT 29 euros
* Renault Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan; PT 47 euros
* Sanofi Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan; PT 103 euros
* Sbanken Raised to Buy at Arctic Securities; PT 85 kroner (+)
* Schaeffler Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan; PT 11 euros
* Sonova Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan; PT 236 Swiss francs
* Telefonica Deutschland Raised to Buy at HSBC; PT 3.20 euros
* TI Fluid Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan; PT 315 pence
* UCB Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan; PT 91 euros
>>> Down
* Bakkavor Cut to Hold at HSBC; PT 144.90 pence
* Casino Cut to Neutral at BofA (+)
* Galapagos ADRs Cut to Neutral at JPMorgan; PT $205
* Galapagos Cut to Neutral at JPMorgan; PT 185 euros
* Gamma Communications Cut to Hold at Jefferies; PT 1,280 pence
* Golden Ocean Cut to Hold at Cleaves Securities
* Hikma Cut to Underweight at JPMorgan; PT 1,850 pence
* Intrum Cut to Hold at SEB Equities; PT 299 kronor
* Ipsen Cut to Underweight at JPMorgan; PT 82 euros
* Metro AG Cut to Underperform at Bernstein; PT 11.50 euros
* Next Cut to Sell at SocGen; PT 6,588 pence
* Pagegroup Cut to Hold at Jefferies; PT 555 pence
* Scatec Solar Cut to Hold at DNB Markets; PT 125 kroner
* SP Group Cut to Hold at ABG; PT 270 kroner
* St James's Place Cut to Hold at Deutsche Bank
* TGS Cut to Hold at Arctic Securities; PT 300 kroner (+)
* Wm Morrison Supermarkets Cut to Underperform at BofA (+)
>>> Initiation
* FDJ Rated New Buy at SocGen; PT 28.40 euros
* FDJ Rated New Hold at HSBC; PT 24.50 euros
* STMicroelectronics ADRs Reinstated Hold at Jefferies; PT $30
* STMicroelectronics Rated New Hold at Jefferies; PT 30 euros
>>> Call
* RBC’s Calvasina Boosts S&P 500 Year-End Target to 3,460
Law firm alcohol culture is damaging mental health
Law Society finds prevalence of drinking contributes to bullying and harassment
Law firm drinking culture is having a negative impact on lawyers’ mental health and contributes towards bullying and harassment, according to the professional body for UK lawyers.
The Junior Lawyers Division of the Law Society of England and Wales on Monday released guidelines on creating a healthy alcohol culture in the legal profession, after finding that some lawyers felt excluded from core networking and firm events due to a focus on alcohol.
The update follows concerns about the prevalence of heavy drinking in the industry in the wake of a series of high-profile sexual misconduct scandals at City law firms towards the end of last year.
In October, former Freshfields’ partner Ryan Beckwith was asked whether the “magic circle” firm had a “drinking culture” following revelations about an event which began with lawyers drinking champagne at 10.30am.
Last month Baker McKenzie’s former London head Gary Senior was also forced to discuss his consumption of alcohol at a work event during the course of an ongoing hearing into allegations against him.
Ryan Beckwith and Gary Senior denied any allegations of misconduct.
On Monday, the young lawyers’ division of the Law Society, which surveyed almost 2,000 junior lawyers last year, said unhealthy approaches to alcohol consumption had a potentially negative impact on health, bullying, harassment, diversity and productivity, and argued firms needed to come up with inclusive alcohol policies.
Recommendations included offering better low-alcohol or alcohol-free alternatives at firm events instead of “a warm jug of orange juice or something fizzy”, and considering other times of day for networking and social events, as well as alternative activities such as sports.
The guidelines stem from an annual survey examining the mental health and wellbeing of junior lawyers, launched three years ago in response to fears over the levels of stress suffered by lawyers and conducted most recently last year.
Of the young lawyers surveyed between January and March 2019, over 93 per cent reported feeling stressed in their role, and many said they used alcohol as a coping mechanism and that it was a contributing factor to mental health issues.
The report said it was “often reported that juniors or those at recruitment events particularly feel pressure to consume alcohol to show that they can fit in with the team, socialise well and secure their future career progression”.
The same study in 2018 found that of almost 1,000 junior lawyers, more than 82 per cent of respondents had experienced stress in their role and 26 per cent experienced extreme stress and anxiety.
In response to the new guidelines on Monday, one partner at a top US law firm in London said: “Whether you like it or not, we’ve seen so many problems arising out of events, either formal or informal, at law firms . . . The days of having the big piss-ups are long gone.”
“This is about British culture as much as law firm culture,” he added. “But it is good to see the Law Society giving guidance.”
Not all lawyers agreed, however. Another partner said being “too prescriptive about alcohol intake” was “unhelpful paternalism — people should be trusted to behave but be clear as to consequences if they behave inappropriately”.
She added that law firms should focus on investigating complaints adequately and holding those at fault to account instead.
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