* NYT (Saturday): A highly anticipated report by the Justice Department’s inspector general is expected to sharply criticize lower-level FBI officials and bureau leaders involved in the early stages of the Trump-Russia investigation, but to absolve the top ranks of abusing their powers out of bias against the president; Moscow has run a yearslong operation to blame Ukraine for its own 2016 election interference, and Republicans have used similar talking points to defend Trump in impeachment proceedings; Michael Bloomberg spent at least $30M on Friday for a single week of television ads, a show of financial force that signals his willingness to use his vast personal fortune to reshape the Democratic presidential race; Around the world, from Australia to California, fire seasons are running longer, stronger, hotter, stretching capacity for the companies that provide most of the globe’s largest firefighting aircraft, and increasing anxiety for fire officials worldwide; Under intense pressure from the U.S., South Korea reversed itself Friday and extended an intelligence-sharing pact with Japan, a sign Seoul may seek to mend fraying relations with Tokyo; Two months after announcing that he planned to ban the sale of most flavored e-cigarettes, Trump once again raised concerns about such restrictions, saying a ban might end up spawning counterfeit vaping products; China has joined the U.S. and other governments in putting new pressure on vaping—regulators have banned online sales of vaping products, and China’s major propaganda outlets have heaped on scrutiny, citing the potential health effects; Open enrollment on HealthCare.gov, the federal online exchange for people who don’t have health coverage through their job, began November 1 and runs through December 15 in most states, for coverage beginning in 2020; (Sunday): Front page story reports that Juul hooked a younger generation on nicotine and planted the seeds of a public health crisis by marketing to millennials, who had low smoking rates, while ignoring evidence that teenagers were using its products; A focus on problems with the BA Max jet after its involvement in a fatal Lion Air crash has given cover to the Indonesian carrier with global ambitions, which has neither fully admitted to nor swiftly addressed numerous safety issues; Newly revealed documents and e-mails released by the State Department indicate secretary of state Mike Pompeo enabled the Ukrainian pressure campaign at the center of the impeachment proceedings; General Kenneth McKenzie, the commander of American forces in the Middle East, said the deployment of 14,000 additional American troops to the Persian Gulf since the spring has probably not dissuaded Iran from planning a major attack in the region; Vice president Mike Pence made an unexpected visit to Iraq on Saturday, arriving as protests aimed at toppling the Iraqi leadership and changing the political system continued to roil the country; Sunday Business: To combat the arrival of streaming services and mammoth flat-screen televisions, Hollywood has swung sharply toward event movies like the Marvel blockbusters, elbowing out mid- and low-budget films, to the consternation of older audiences; Republicans now support a form of paid family leave, but the party continues a debate over which workers would qualify and whether to pay for it by borrowing from their future benefits.
* WSJ (Weekend): Donald Trump called antigovernment protests in Hong Kong a “complicating factor” in his bid for an elusive trade deal with China and wouldn’t say whether he would sign a bill passed by Congress supporting the protesters; The Justice Department’s inspector general is expected to conclude there was a proper legal basis for the government’s application to monitor former Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser Carter Page, but that errors and lapses in judgment were made during the process; Business activity in the U.S. is showing signs of a pickup late in the year, contrasting with more sluggish economic performances in some of the world’s other largest economies; California’s decision to move up its 2020 primary to early March will make the state one of the most important in deciding the Democratic presidential candidate, but the winner may not be known for weeks because of changes to the states election procedures; The federal Indian Health Service, which provides healthcare to 2.6M Native Americans, has given second chances to dozens of doctors with trails of medical mistakes and regulatory sanctions—sometimes to disastrous effect—according to a WJS investigation; Millions of shoppers are expected to take advantage of online bargains over the Thanksgiving holiday, but many e-commerce purchases are pushed by misleading tactics designed to get consumers to buy goods they otherwise wouldn’t; +/- FB, GOOGL, TWTR: Among tech giants that have benefited from enabling users to easily share pictures or videos, and which are working to stem the spread of maliciously doctored content ahead of next year’s presidential election; Baby boomers are getting ready to sell one quarter of America’s homes over the next two decades, but many of these properties are in places where younger people no longer want to live; Intelligent Investor: New research suggests that commodities may deserve a small place in the portfolios of iconoclastic investors who have plenty of patience, since the best time to invest in something is when its performance is at its worst; + HAS, JAKK: The toymakers are among those releasing a host of new merchandise based on DIS’ “Frozen 2,” hoping to avoid repeating the dearth of merchandise that plagued the launch of the original film; A new batch of projects around the country promise to add so-called renewable natural gas to the supply of methane that is used to produce much of the country’s electricity, heat homes and fuel buses; H.O.T.S.: “How consumers pay in the online checkout line is becoming a hot topic for investors”; Investors betting on TSLA dominating the truck market have far more to worry about than the fact a shatterproof window was easily broken during the unveiling; Repeated guidance cuts and inconsistent comments on the outlook for its pet-food brands are giving SJM a credibility problem.
* FT (Weekend): Front page story reports European Central Bank head Christine Lagarde has stepped up the bank’s call for Eurozone governments to boost the bloc’s sluggish economy by increasing public spending; Warehouses in Canada are piled high with unsold marijuana after cannabis producers overestimated demand for the drug following its legalization a year ago; The U.S. sent Heino Klinck, the most senior Pentagon official in East Asia, to Taipei for the first time in more than a decade amid growing concern about the Chinese military threat to Taiwan; Big Read piece says that even though two weeks of impeachment hearings about Donald Trump’s Ukraine pressure campaign have damaged the president, there is no sign that Republicans will abandon him; Lex Column: TSLA’s Cybertruck promises all sorts of cool features, but it may be too outré to make a dent in the pick-up market; Chinese household wealth increasingly lies in real estate; Any attempt by World Chess to turn online chess tournaments into a major e-sport will take a major investment—and marketing flair; Comment: Institutional checks during 151 years of largely prosperous British administration in Hong Kong made it an attractive destination for entrepreneurs, says Tom Mitchell, and Beijing, which has ruled the territory for 22 increasingly dysfunction years, should think twice about gutting them
* NY POST (Saturday): Though hedge fund mogul Ray Dalio denies that Bridgewater made a $1.5B bet against the stock market, he has made a series of negative comments about the economy that predict a market dip; +/- GOOGL: Google employees demonstrated outside the company’s San Francisco office Friday to protest the Internet giant’s decision to put two staff members on extended leave because of their internal activism; (Sunday): + AAPL: A resident of Queens who woke up in the night with an alert from her Apple Watch about an irregular heartbeat went to the hospital, and saved herself from a potential stroke or heart attack; Bloomberg News will “suspend” its editorial board while founder Michael Bloomberg runs for president—and key members of the organization are joining his campaign
LVMH nears deal to buy Tiffany after raising offer to $16.7bn
Luxury goods giant poised to announce acquisition of US jeweller
LVMH is set to buy Tiffany & Co for $16.7bn, after the US jeweller convinced Bernard Arnault’s luxury group to raise its takeover offer by about $600m to clinch an agreement, according to people close to the deal.
The deal, one of the biggest in the career of Mr Arnault, amounts to a bet by Europe’s richest man that his group can restore the brand to its former glory as a top name in global luxury.
The boards of both companies are meeting on Sunday to approve the latest all-cash bid from LVMH for the US business known for its diamond engagement rings. At $135 a share, the improved takeover offer values Tiffany at $16.3bn before including net debt of $350m.
An agreement could be unveiled as soon as Monday, the people said, although they cautioned that there were still a few more hurdles to overcome before any transaction was signed off.
Tiffany, founded in 1837, achieved famed status with its trademark blue boxes and from the film adaptation of the Truman Capote novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s starring Audrey Hepburn in 1961. But that allure has faded in recent years.
Several advisers working with luxury companies questioned the logic behind a deal, asking why would Mr Arnault buy a business that had fallen off the list of top-tier brands. Beyond appearances, Tiffany’s business has also had to cope with the impact of lower spending by tourists and a strong US dollar.
For LVMH, however, the acquisition would deepen its presence in jewellery, allowing it to compete in the category more closely with the likes of Switzerland’s Richemont in one of the fastest-growing categories in the personal luxury goods sector.
Tiffany, which has a considerable footprint in the US and remains popular with Asian consumers, would sit in a portfolio that includes Bulgari, the Italian jeweller, which Mr Arnault acquired in 2011 for $5.2bn. LVMH’s broader stable of brands include Louis Vuitton, Dior and Sephora.
The two sides have been in talks for weeks since it was revealed that LVMH tabled its first offer at $120 a share in October. That bid was delivered in conjunction with Mr Arnault’s arrival to the US to visit a new LVMH factory in Texas with President Donald Trump, where Louis Vuitton is producing “Made in the USA” handbags.
Last week, the French group increased its offer to $130 a share and was granted access to Tiffany’s books to conduct due diligence. The company’s share price closed last Friday in New York at $125.51. As recently as August, the stock was trading close to $80 a share.
For the full year to the end of July, Tiffany reported revenues of $4.4bn, down nearly 1 per cent from a year ago, and net income of $561m, an increase of 13 per cent. The company employs over 14,000 staff, according to Capital IQ.
Tiffany and LVMH did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s White Whale
Trump will not stop until he brings down Trump.
With Trump firmly lodged in our heads, it is understandable if we have all become a little conspiracy-minded.
Case in point: A few weeks ago, someone signed me up for A.Word.A.Day email from Wordsmith.org. Soon I began to detect a pattern.
Friday’s word was vulgarian, following close after bareknuckle. Others included rodomont (a vain boaster), grobian (a buffoonish person) and Sinon (one who misleads and betrays). Also chirocracy (a government that rules with a heavy hand) and froward (difficult to deal with or contrary).
Sound like anyone you know?
Since this is a town of fevered conspiracists now, theories abound about why the president went to Walter Reed military hospital last Saturday. But nobody here buys that it was a spontaneous desire to do Phase 1 of a physical.
As Trump himself said Friday about it, “A lot of things are a matter with me.” But we do know the name of one severe malady the president has: proditomania. A.Word.A.Day defined it as the feeling or belief that everyone is out to get you.
Trump believes that paranoia can be useful. He sees the world as vicious and life as a battle for survival.
As we draw closer to Trump getting a lump of coal in his Christmas stocking, with Nancy Pelosi implacably heading toward a holiday impeachment, his proditomania is revving up.
Even Steve Doocy looked a little bemused during Trump’s shambolic 54-minute call into “Fox & Friends” on Friday.
No matter how many experts — including the gloriously bracing Fiona Hill — explain that it is Russia that interfered with our elections and that Russia has been scheming to deflect blame to Ukraine, Trump keeps rambling about that D.N.C. server.
“The F.B.I. went in, and they told them, ‘Get out of here, we’re not giving it to you,’” he said on Fox. “They gave the server to CrowdStrike, or whatever it is called, which is a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian. I still want to see that server.”
Trying to justify why he had ousted and smeared the ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, he claimed that she was “an Obama person” who had refused to hang his picture in the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv. (A lawyer for Yovanovitch said the portrait had been hung immediately.)
“This was not an angel, this woman, O.K.?” Trump sneered, adding that when he complained that the dignified and well-respected former ambassador was being treated too gently, he was told: “Well, sir, she’s a woman. We have to be nice.”
It was peak Trump pique.
After climbing up in politics by putting down Barack Obama as an illegitimate president, Trump is so terrified of being seen as an illegitimate president that he acts out in ways that cause more people to see him as an illegitimate president.
His presidency began with him obsessing on his inauguration crowd size and carrying around his 2016 electoral map.
He can’t get past it and it’s intensifying, playing out on the world stage with national security implications. It’s debilitating to his presidency, and the rest of us are hostages to his insecurities.
As Hill succinctly noted about the inability in the Trump era to separate fictional narratives from objective realities: “Our nation is being torn apart. Truth is questioned.”
Vladimir Putin hit the jackpot with Trump. He makes a perfect sucker for the former K.G.B. spy.
“Thank God nobody is accusing us anymore of interfering in the U.S. elections,” Putin gloated Wednesday at an economic forum in Moscow. “Now they’re accusing Ukraine.”
The president seems like even more of a crackpot, given the New York Times story on Friday revealing that, even as Republican lawmakers vociferously defended the president, they received a briefing “that Russia had engaged in a yearslong campaign to essentially frame Ukraine as responsible for Moscow’s own hacking of the 2016 election.”
Julian E. Barnes and Matthew Rosenberg reported that the Kremlin succeeded in spreading discord among its adversaries and sluicing false claims about Ukrainian meddling into Republican talking points. A lot of Republicans have dirtied themselves defending Trump, and their party will not easily recover from perverting its values.
Trump is blustering about impeachment and wanting a Senate trial and calling Pelosi — who has his presidency in a vise grip — “totally incompetent” and “crazy as a bedbug.”
But those who know him believe that he’s genuinely unnerved and even hurt at the prospect of impeachment.
One of his tweets Thursday, as he headed toward being the third president to be impeached, seemed to reflect a rare hint of vulnerability. “I never in my wildest dreams thought my name would in any way be associated with the ugly word, Impeachment!” he wrote.
It recalls a prescient moment from September when the president’s former homeland security adviser, Thomas Bossert, appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and warned that Trump had to let go of his conspiracy theory linking CrowdStrike, Ukraine and the D.N.C. server.
“If he continues to focus on that white whale,” Bossert said, “it’s going to bring him down.”
But, like Ahab, Trump can’t ever let go. He’s hellbent on harpooning himself, chasing that which will sink him.
Seppuku. My word of the day.
LVMH Nears Deal to Acquire Tiffany for $16.3 Billion
The boards of the two luxury companies are meeting Sunday to approve the deal, with an announcement set for Monday
LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton LVMUY 0.18% is nearing a deal to buy famed jeweler Tiffany TIF -0.78% & Co. for more than $16 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
The companies have reached a preliminary agreement on a deal that values Tiffany at $135 a share, or about $16.3 billion, the people said.
The boards of the luxury companies are meeting Sunday to finalize the deal and unless there is a last-minute hitch, it is expected to be announced Monday if not sooner.
The companies have been discussing a deal since LVMH last month privately approached Tiffany with an offer to buy the upscale jeweler for $120 a share.
Shares of New York-based Tiffany have surged on hopes of a deal at a higher price, closing Friday at $125.51. The shares traded near $140 in the middle of last year.
LVMH has a market value of nearly €200 billion ($220 billion). Buying Tiffany would increase the Paris-based company’s exposure to jewelry, one of the fastest-growing businesses in the luxury sector.
The Financial Times earlier reported that a deal is close.
Tiffany, with more than 300 stores globally and about $4 billion in annual revenue, has struggled with lackluster growth for years.
The 182-year-old brand has been trying to rebuild its business after ousting its chief executive two years ago amid pressure from an activist investor. The stock, which had slumped near $60 in 2016, had been hovering around $100 for much of the past year before LVMH’s overture surfaced.
Under CEO Alessandro Bogliolo, the jeweler has pushed an expansion into China, with plans to open flagship stores in several major cities. The chain, which relies heavily on tourist spending in the U.S. market, also has been renovating its flagship New York store on Fifth Avenue.
But in recent quarters sales have slipped both in the U.S. and Asia, hurt by factors including trade tension between the U.S. and China. Excluding currency swings, comparable sales declined from a year earlier for two straight quarters.
Being part of a luxury-goods giant could help Tiffany weather such external challenges and return to growth.
LVMH, which has about $50 billion in annual revenue from brands including Louis Vuitton and Dom Pérignon, has fared better than Tiffany in recent years and could use its deep pockets to develop product lines in which Tiffany is weak. LVMH already owns Tiffany rival Bulgari as well as luxury watchmakers Hublot and TAG Heuer.
The acquisition would be the biggest yet by LVMH under Bernard Arnault, the French billionaire who has been the luxury group’s chief executive and controlling shareholder for three decades. It tops the €12 billion Mr. Arnault paid in 2017 to bring all of the French fashion house Christian Dior under the ownership of LVMH.
Mr. Bogliolo is familiar with LVMH; he spent 16 years at Bulgari before LVMH took control of the company in 2011 and then served as North American operating chief at LVMH’s Sephora unit for a little more than a year.