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Probes to focus on stall-prevention system and examine whether any shortcuts compromised safety

Federal investigators and lawmakers are asking the same question about Boeing Co.’s BA -1.77% 737 MAX jet: Did U.S. safety regulators rigorously follow longstanding engineering and design standards in approving a suspect stall-prevention feature?

Officials from the Justice Department and the Transportation Department inspector general’s office are looking into how Boeing developed the aircraft, which has been involved in two fatal crashes within five months. The inspector general’s office is also scrutinizing whether the Federal Aviation Administration took any shortcuts compromising safety, people familiar with the matter said. Boeing was eager to complete the design and certification process as quickly as possible, according to people who were involved.

Boeing has said the FAA certified the 737 MAX according to identical requirements and processes for previous airplanes after a six-year, methodical development.

House and Senate committees are separately gearing up to grill senior FAA leaders next month about many of the same issues, focusing on the stall-prevention system, which was created for the 737 MAX but not highlighted in pilot manuals or training.

Canada’s transport minister, Marc Garneau, said Monday the government would conduct its own certification of Boeing’s promised software modification to the stall-prevention system, even if it is certified by the FAA.

Mr. Garneau also said Canada is reviewing its original decision in 2017 to allow 737 MAX jets to fly in that country’s airspace, effectively replicating the FAA’s safety approval. Canada last week grounded the plane shortly before it was idled in the U.S.

“We’re going to review the validation that we did at that time,” Mr. Garneau said in Ottawa. “We may not change anything but we’ve decided that it’s a good idea for us to review” the decision.

Such a move is highly unusual, especially for a close U.S. air-safety partner such as Canada, because governments world-wide almost always accept the decision of the country where an aircraft is manufactured. But as in the unilateral grounding of 737 MAX jets earlier this month by a host of regulators overseas, the FAA’s influence regarding the MAX fleet has been waning.

The U.S. Transportation Department inquiry has included questions about the aircraft’s design, how training was devised and whether safety was compromised in favor of business concerns, a person familiar with the details said.

The FAA said the plane was approved to carry passengers as part of the agency’s “standard certification process,” which the agency said is “well established and (has) consistently produced safe aircraft.” The agency declined to comment on various decisions regarding specific systems.

The Justice Department and the Transportation Department’s inspector general declined to comment.

A Boeing spokesman declined to comment about government inquiries.

As The Wall Street Journal reported earlier, a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., issued a broad subpoena dated March 11 to at least one person involved in the 737 MAX’s development, seeking related documents, including correspondence, emails and other messages.

Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon, the Democratic chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said his panel would delve into how the plane was developed and approved. “We’re going to investigate why retraining was not required,” Mr. DeFazio said in an interview after the FAA grounded the planes last week. “What kind of pressure was applied or not applied?”

Interviews with former government and industry safety experts, however, highlight potential areas where analyses of the stall-prevention system, dubbed MCAS, might have deviated from the FAA’s typical safety-review process.

An important element of the Transportation Department review, these officials said, is expected to be whether the FAA and Boeing complied fully with traditional FAA design requirements for systems that are essential to the safety of an aircraft.

Over the years, the agency has mandated the use of a formal, structured approach to determine how a specific piece of equipment or system failure should be categorized and scrutinized.

Under the FAA’s process, systems that entail significant hazards and potential loss of life if they go haywire are generally put into two categories: those that have an “improbable” risk of failure and those with an “extremely improbable” risk of failure.

“Improbable” essentially means the part or system is unlikely to fail during the lifetime of any individual airplane, according to FAA documents and industry officials. An “extremely improbable” failure is deemed so rare that it is unlikely to occur during the lifetime of an entire fleet of aircraft.

Boeing, these officials said, apparently persuaded the FAA that MCAS wouldn’t have to meet the more-rigorous of those standards, partly because a misfire could be counteracted by pilots simply turning off the entire system.

A spokesman for Boeing said: “The FAA considered the final configuration and operating parameters of MCAS during MAX certification, and concluded that it met all certification and regulatory requirements.”

The need for MCAS arose as Boeing was creating the MAX, because its large, fuel-efficient engines jutted forward in a way those on earlier 737 models hadn’t. That shifted the plane’s balance, tipping its nose up and making it tougher to fly in certain conditions than the 737s that pilots world-wide knew how to handle. To help pilots manage that difference, Boeing added a powerful new stall-prevention system.

That solution, the stall-prevention system known as MCAS, was designed to push the plane’s nose down in certain conditions to avoid the aircraft stalling, a loss of aerodynamic lift that can result when a plane is climbing too steeply or with too little power, leading to an uncontrolled plunge. But MCAS is now under scrutiny after investigators determined pilots in the October crash of Lion Air Flight 610 battled the system during the 11-minute flight. U.S. and other authorities grounded the MAX after initial data from this month’s crash of a second jetliner, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, pointed to potential similarities with the Indonesian accident.

Boeing designed MCAS to rely on data from a single sensor that measures the angle of the plane’s nose, known as the angle of attack. The idea was that a single sensor, rather than two, would be simpler, a person familiar with the matter has said, and would be in line with Boeing’s long-held design philosophy of keeping the pilot at the center of cockpit control.

But Boeing’s design of the system puzzled some former employees, safety experts and regulators. They saw it as a departure from the company’s typical practice of relying on multiple sensors to reduce the risk of systems misfiring based on erroneous data from a single faulty sensor.

“It seems odd given Boeing’s traditions,” said Frank McCormick, a former Boeing flight-controls engineer who went on to be a consultant to regulators and manufacturers on matters including how such systems are designed. “It’s not just as conservative as would have been the norm in the old Boeing.”

A Boeing spokesman said “design, development and certification was consistent with our approach to previous new and derivative airplane designs.”

If the FAA had decided differently, a former regulator and an industry air-safety expert said, Boeing probably would have been forced to go with a design for MCAS that relied on two sensors, instead of just one. An FAA document specifies that the possibility of a given system failing cannot be designated “extremely improbable” if it could result from a single faulty compon

An air-safety expert with decades of safety work and accident-investigation experience criticized the notion that the person flying the plane could provide the ultimate backstop in case MCAS malfunctioned, saying: “A pilot only provides a redundant safeguard if he or she has been properly trained to understand the system.”

Since the Lion Air crash, Boeing has emphasized that an existing procedure that pilots are trained to follow would turn off the stall-prevention system.

Proposed stepped-up purchases would give Beijing more control, semiconductor industry says

WASHINGTON—U.S. semiconductor companies want no part of any trade deal that calls for stepped-up purchases from China, worried that would give Beijing more control over their industry.

As prospects for an agreement to settle the U.S.-China trade standoff have waxed and waned in recent weeks, Washington has pressed Beijing to buy more than $1 trillion in U.S. goods and services as part of any deal. But U.S. chip makers said they have told President Trump’s administration not to include them in any such agreement.

Because U.S. production costs are so high, mandatory-purchase quotas would essentially force U.S. chip makers to open new factories in China and give Beijing bureaucrats more sway over the U.S. firms, these companies said. That would benefit Chinese competitors and make the U.S. firms more dependent on Beijing, executives at the U.S. companies fear.

“Whatever the number, the Chinese chip purchase offer is a distraction that risks deepening Chinese state influence in an environment that is otherwise market-based,” said John Neuffer, president of the Semiconductor Industry Association. “The market should determine commercial success, not government fiat.”

China has offered to buy $30 billion of U.S. chips over six years, industry officials said, essentially doubling U.S. semiconductor exports to China. That is down from a previous offer to buy $200 billion in chips over six years.

After conference calls arranged by the SIA in early March, semiconductor makers rejected the plan. For Beijing to guarantee the sales would require it to put together a kind of quota system, industry officials argued, and that mechanism could later be used to dole out contracts to Chinese firms.

Handel Jones, president of International Business Strategies Inc., a Los Gatos, Calif., chip-research firm, said a deal makes sense for the U.S. so that U.S. companies could assure Chinese customers that they can count on uninterrupted supplies. Chinese firms now are “afraid they’ll be caught off guard by the U.S.,” Mr. Jones said.

But industry officials said customer anxiety is of lesser concern to them.

“For this to be effective, it would have to represent a genuine expansion of the overall semiconductor market in China” because of stronger demand, a senior executive at a U.S. semiconductor company said. “Otherwise, it’s not sustainable and ultimately not helpful.”

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, Washington’s chief negotiator, “isn’t advocating for anything the industry doesn’t want,” a senior Trump administration official said.

The chip industry’s reluctance highlights the difficulty Washington has in putting together a deal that both changes Chinese industrial and technology policies and wins applause back home. Fat purchase orders from Beijing would be one obvious sign of success.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said Beijing is ready to buy $1.2 trillion in additional goods and services, which other officials have said cover a six-year period—an export boost of more than 30% annually.

But trade experts said a surge of that magnitude would be extremely difficult to pull off. Since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 and rose to become the world’s largest trading nation, U.S. annual goods exports to China increased at least 30% in only two years. Goods exports have fallen in three years.

Along with semiconductors, U.S. officials are trying to put together a sales package that includes farm products, financial services and natural gas, among other items.

Mr. Trump, a Republican, has especially promoted the benefits for farmers, lauding Chinese trade envoy Liu He for pledging to make a special purchase of five million tons of soybeans, an offer that Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue later said had risen to 10 million tons. Before the trade battle with Beijing, the U.S. sold about 30 million tons of soybeans annually to China.

Roy Moore, an Illinois soybean farmer and chairman of the American Soybean Association, said a ramp-up in Chinese purchases would be welcome news, but given the massive soybean stockpiles in U.S. grain bins in the wake of Chinese tariffs last year, a boost in exports alone wouldn’t significantly lift prices.

Semiconductor makers said they back other parts of the administration’s China fight, especially efforts to improve protection of intellectual property and reduce government subsidies for domestic firms. As part of the trade talks, Mr. Lighthizer is pressing Beijing to reach a deal with Micron Technology Inc., which alleges that a Chinese state-owned firm and its Taiwan partner have stolen its trade secrets.

But U.S. officials have also pushed chip makers to endorse the purchasing push and have gotten nowhere, industry officials said.

During talks last spring aimed at heading off U.S. tariffs, China’s National Development and Reform Commission, its planning agency, proposed to purchase $200 billion of U.S. semiconductors over six years.

Last year, the U.S. exported $6.7 billion of chips to China. But that vastly understates the importance of the Chinese market to U.S. firms.

Many chips from such companies as Micron and Intel Corp. enter China from factories outside the U.S., including in Malaysia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. U.S. companies sell about $80 billion of chips used in China, estimated Mr. Jones of IBS. Other estimates put the total higher.

Overall, about 90% of the $250 billion in chips used in Chinese manufacturing are supplied by foreign firms, IBS estimated.

The U.S. semiconductor industry rebuffed the $200 billion proposal, arguing that the only way it could hit those targets was by remaking its supply chain so that assembly and testing operations, now often done in Southeast Asia, would be moved to China.

A chip produced in the U.S., shipped to Malaysia for testing and assembly and then flown to China is counted as a Malaysian export. If the assembly work was moved to China, the export would be credited to the U.S.—without the American companies having produced any more chips—and U.S. companies would be more dependent on China.

The spring 2018 negotiations fell apart after Mr. Lighthizer convinced Mr. Trump that China’s purchase pledges weren’t worth much. In July 2018, the U.S. levied tariffs on the first $34 billion of Chinese goods—a number that has risen to $250 billion.

Last month, the Commerce Department and China’s planning agency, again looking for a big number they could promote in a trade deal, dusted off the same proposal and were rejected again by the U.S. chip industry. After that, negotiators reduced the purchase number to $30 billion over six years.

Mr. Lighthizer has come to embrace added purchases of U.S. goods by China—so long as they are part of a package that includes changes to China’s technology and industrial policies, the senior administration official said.

Will media companies sign up to Apple’s TV platform?

Steve Jobs told his biographer in 2011 that Apple had “finally cracked” a winning formula for television. But eight years later, his successor Tim Cook is still trying to win a place in his customers’ living rooms. 

For more than a decade, Apple has toyed with the idea of making its own television sets and pitched cable companies on various kinds of software integrations and bundled services.

Now, after several false starts, Apple is ready to unveil its latest vision for TV, with an event at its Cupertino headquarters next week titled: “It’s show time.” 

Mr Cook’s latest bet is that an acceleration in cord-cutting and the proliferation of streaming services has created a new role for Apple as aggregator. Apple wants to reinvent the TV guide with a personalised slate of programming drawn from a wide range of sources — including a few shows of its own. 

Even getting as far as launching a new service is something of an achievement for Apple. Unlike the music and telecoms industries, which have been forced to cede control to Apple through the iPod and iPhone eras, pay-TV operators have proven able to cling on to their direct relationship with customers. 

Instead of trying to reorient the TV experience around an iPhone-like grid of apps from the likes of Netflix, Disney or HBO, Apple’s new TV platform is likely to put the focus on individual shows.

Its existing “TV” app, which is already available on iPhones and iPads as well as the Apple TV box itself, is designed around each individual viewer’s favourite series, with personalised recommendations for other TV and movies drawn from a wide range of providers. 

Until now, however, shows from key providers such as Netflix have been absent from Apple’s TV guide.

With Hollywood still on the fence about teaming with the iPhone maker, Apple embarked on a radical change in its television strategy two years ago. It hired two well-regarded executives, Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg, from Sony Pictures TV. Armed with a billion-dollar budget, they began to commission its own original TV shows and now has more than 30 series in the works from big-name talent including Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg. 

Apple just needs one those original shows to become a hit — perhaps its new drama starring Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston, a sci-fi epic based on Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels, or a mystery thriller from Sixth Sense director M Night Shyamalan — to pull in viewers to its TV app. 

As it scouted for shows, Hollywood executives say that Apple has sought out high-quality content at a time when Netflix is chasing the mass market with a huge volume of original shows. “Apple are taking a lot of pride in being very curated, with a smaller but higher-quality offering,” said one producer that has worked with both companies. 

However, some in Hollywood have struggled to adjust to the secrecy and exacting standards with which Apple typically approaches all its products. While Apple could show an “abundance of caution at taking each little step”, the producer said, the company is also anxious not to develop a reputation that it is difficult to work with. “They want the best creative talent to work there, not find [Apple] so maddening that they give up.”

Analysts estimate Apple could charge $10-$15 a month for a subscription video service that includes its original shows. The company needs new sources of income to counteract the iPhone’s recent declines and meet its $50bn services revenue target by 2020. 

Some on Wall Street are sceptical that a video service can make a meaningful impact. Analysts at Goldman Sachs said in a note this week that even if 20m people sign up to a $15 monthly fee, by 2020 it would generate only $3.6bn in annual revenues — barely 1 per cent of Apple’s $265.6bn total sales last year — and add less than half of one per cent to Wall Street’s consensus earnings estimates. 

To bolster the income from its own shows, the iPhone maker has also spent many months negotiating deals with television networks and film studios to offer their content too. 

Viacom and CBS are in advanced talks to license programmes to Apple, while AT&T-owned HBO has also held talks, said people familiar with the matter. WarnerMedia’s other content is not being discussed but could be in the future, these people said. 

The pricing would mirror the structure of Amazon’s “Channels”, in which Prime customers can pay an additional monthly fee for individual subscriptions to other streaming services, such as Nickelodeon’s “Noggin”, aimed at pre-school kids. “You basically have an easy flow of the content back and forth between different brands,” said one person with knowledge of the plans. 

Hollywood executives are tempted to team up with Apple because of its massive reach, but are also wary of the potential costs of further ceding control of their content to tech giants. Within Apple’s ecosystem, they may not be privy to information about who their customers are or what they are watching. TV groups fear losing their longstanding control over pricing or user interface design, with their channel brands submerged behind a list of programmes and Apple acting as gatekeeper. 

For smaller companies such as Viacom and CBS, this is an easier decision. Viacom is not trying to build its own streaming service and is making good money by selling shows to tech companies, such as a reboot of MTV’s “The Real World” reality show for Facebook. 

The decision is more complicated for AT&T and Disney, which have made mega-acquisitions to build their content libraries and take on Netflix. “There will be some content that [they] decide is probably best to keep,” said one person familiar with AT&T’s strategy. “The calculus is different now.”

Disney is gearing up to reveal plans for its own streaming service just two weeks after Apple’s event. The media group has been outspoken about its plans, with chief executive Bob Iger dropping details during earnings calls through the past year. 

By contrast, Apple has provided little information about the March 25 event, even to the studios whose shows will appear as part of its new video bundle. After waiting so long for the big unveiling, many in the television business still feel Apple has a lot to prove. 

“They haven’t illustrated a strategy,” said one TV network executive. “It’s Apple, but at the same time there are other places to go.”

Potential collision course with Berlin over plans for Deutsche-Commerzbank tie-up

The eurozone’s top financial supervisor has criticised the idea of creating national or European champions to compete with global rivals, potentially putting the European Central Bank on a collision course with Berlin’s efforts to protect its banking industry via a merger of Germany’s two biggest lenders.

In his first interview since becoming chair of the ECB’s Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), Andrea Enria said: “I do not particularly like the idea of national champions, of European champions; especially when you are a supervisor, you should not promote any particular structural outcome.”

Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank have begun talks on a possible merger after the government in Berlin said it would support the restructuring needed to make the tie-up a success.

Mr Enria declined to comment specifically on Deutsche and Commerzbank’s plans in line with SSM policy not to comment on individual lenders. Mr Enria, who was speaking before the two banks confirmed merger talks, did not say how the supervisor would treat the deal.

He made clear that in all instances, the SSM would ignore any political motivations behind proposed tie-ups.

“What is relevant for us is the deal which is put forward to us, and the only things we care about are the sustainability of the project,” he told the Financial Times last Wednesday. “The ability to deliver a bank which has a strong business, a good capital position, is able to generate profits, and to respect in the medium term the standard requirements, prudential requirements, that is what we look at.”

Berlin has become more aggressive in protecting its largest businesses from foreign pressure. Olaf Scholz, the German finance minister, has been an important driver in encouraging Commerzbank, which is 15 per cent state-owned, to hold talks with Deutsche.

Peter Altmaier, Germany’s economy minister, has also proposed an industrial strategy to challenge China’s dominance.

However, European officials have signalled that they are reluctant to drop their pro-competition stance.

The opposition of the SSM to create “champions” mirrors that of Margrethe Vestager, the EU competitions commissioner, who this year blocked a proposed Franco-German merger between train manufacturers Siemens and Alstom.

Mr Enria took over the supervisor’s role, set up in 2014 in the aftermath of the region’s sovereign debt crisis, in January.

Eurozone banks are in a less critical state than during the financial crisis but are struggling to keep up with their US and Asian investment banking rivals in terms of market capitalisation. While Mr Enria said it was “a problem” that European banks were not seen as “attractive investment propositions”, he insisted the region’s financial services industry should remain open to competition.

“You want to have a market which is open, so that if there are foreign banks, foreign investors, bringing their expertise, their capital, into your jurisdiction, that should be welcome,” Mr Enria said.

The regulator said he expected another seven big lenders and 17 smaller institutions would fall under SSM supervision as banks relocate from London after Brexit. They are expected to add around 6 per cent to the €21.2tn of assets under SSM supervision.

It is the first time that the Frankfurt-based supervisor has revealed exact figures on how its ambit will expand post-Brexit. The SSM already directly supervises the 117 biggest and most complex banks in the region.

“We are asking banks to provide us with their . . . models on how they will gradually move assets from the UK to the euro area, and we expect around €1.2tn of assets to be moved to be under the supervision of the SSM. This is concentrated — let’s say 90 per cent — in the seven largest institutions,” Mr Enria said.

Most banks had now been granted licences, he added.

Mr Enria countered financial industry criticism of the ECB’s low rate policy, saying “banks need to be able to cope with any interest rate environment” and that cheap borrowing costs had bought the region time in dealing with its large stock of bad loans. “To some extent I am glad that we still have this window to allow more space for adjustments,” he said.

He said it was his duty to take the supervisor from its “start-up” phase to become a more transparent institution where supervisors have more discretion in dealing with banks.

“The more you move to a more mature organisation, the more you can let supervisors exercise their judgment on the basis of the specific situation of each and every bank,” he said.

A common gripe among European banks is that the supervisor’s workings are opaque. Mr Enria, previously chair of the European Banking Authority, wants to give lenders a much clearer idea of how the SSM intends to apply guidance that specifies what individual lenders need to do beyond complying with the basic rule book.

“The point is . . . to make sure that it is more tailored to the bank. And to have a system which is more effective in identifying the specific risks that you want the banks to address,” he said.

He also wants more public information on this guidance — in part to give investors a better idea of what the SSM thinks.

“We need to have a more unified way of communicating to the market,” he said. “We are moving from taxpayers bailing out defaulting financial institutions to the concept of bail-in, where private investors are first in line to take losses. We need to create an environment in which investors have adequate information about the banks they invest in.”

The 57-year old Italian suggested the region’s banking system, and the way in which it is supervised, needed to be far more integrated. “We need to move to a setting in which you really have a genuine feeling that you are a European organisation, dealing with European processes and a truly integrated European culture.”

Despite 19 member states sharing a currency, it is uncommon for citizens to bank — or for lenders to devote substantial resources — outside their home market.

This, he said, led to a lack of a common shock absorber to counter periods of financial panic.

Another problem is that banks fail to diversify their holdings of government bonds. This creates the potential for a “doom loop”, where economic and financial weakness combines to create a vicious cycle of teetering banks and deteriorating public finances.

“There are levels of concentration, sometimes, that are extreme. The last time I saw the data you had [banks with] ten times their tier one capital [invested] in the domestic sovereign,” he says. “As a supervisor you cannot like that.”

He said digitalisation could provide “a golden opportunity” for more cross-border banking. Some lenders, such as Dutch bank ING, have managed to scoop up business outside their home member state through offering online-only bank accounts.

Precious metal nears $1,600 an ounce after Moscow curbs exports

Palladium prices touched a record high in Asia trading on Tuesday as the precious metal glowed after Russia placed new pressure on supplies. 

The spot price of palladium rose as much as 0.5 per cent to an intraday high of $1,592 an ounce, according to Refinitiv data, marking a 26.2 per cent increase so far this year. That followed a gain of 1.5 per cent on Monday.

A broad supply shortage for the metal, which is used to reduce harmful emissions in cars with petrol engines, has seen the price rise almost 90 per cent since the bull run took off in August last year.

ANZ analysts said that the latest move in palladium’s “relentless drive higher”, came as investors reacted to a decision from Russia, the world’s largest producer, to ban the export scrap and tailings of precious metals from May until November. 

The rally has raised some concerns of a potential bubble.

Equities in Asia drifted Tuesday as traders awaited central bank meetings amid expectations of dovish signals to monetary policy. The dollar steadied after recent declines, while the yen edged higher.

Stocks posted modest losses in Japan, China and Hong Kong and were little changed in Australia. U.S. equity futures ticked higher after the S&P 500 Index climbed to a five-month high Monday. European equity futures were mixed. The pound pared losses that came after the speaker of Parliament blocked another vote on Prime Minister Theresa May’s current Brexit plan. The yield on 10-year Treasuries nudged lower to just under 2.6 percent. Australia’s three-year bond yield slid below the 1.5 percent policy rate for the first time since September 2016.

US After Hours STNE +14%, SYNH +9%, REV -10% among notable earnings/guidance movers

Nikkei -0.08% Hang Seng -0.08% XSI -0.55% Shanghai -0.26% Shenzen +0.12%

Eur$ 1.1350 CNH 6.7211 CNY 6.7181 JPY 111.29 GBP 1.3265 CHF 1.0005 RUB 64.3815 TRY 5.4713 WTI$ 59.07 -0.03%

S&P +0.10% EuroStoxx +0.18% FTSE -0.03% Dax +0.05% SMI +0.33%

Macro :

- Speaker Wrecks May’s Brexit Plan by Banning New Vote on Deal

- Germany Makes Its Big Bank Problem Even Bigger: Editorial

- May to Request EU for Brexit Delay of 9 to 12 Months: The Sun

Keep an eye on :

- ANA SM : Ferrovial, Acciona Bid for Real Madrid Contract: Expansion

- AIR FP : Airlines Cautious as Analysts Weigh 737 Max Capacity, Cost Hits

- ASOS LN : Asos Sees Full Year Sales About +15%

- CS FP : AXA Equitable Holder to Offer Shares Said to Trade On March 21

- BAYN GY : Perrigo Gets Tentative FDA Approval for Finacea Generic Version

- BKW SW : BKW Full Year Dividend Per Share Beats Estimates

- BME SM : BME Chairman to Give Up Executive Functions From April 25

- BNP FP : France Looks to Fend Off Lending Crunch With Higher Bank Buffer

- CYAD BB : Celyad Sees Updates From Phase 1 Think, Deplethink Trials in 1H

- CEVA SW : Ceva Board Now Recommends Holders to Tender Shares to CMA CGM

- CNHI NA : CNH Industrial Signs EU4B Committed Revolving Credit Line

- CBK GY : Commerzbank Said to Hire Rothschild, Goldman for DB Merger

- ERICB SS : TDC Picks Ericsson as 5G Network Development Partner in Denmark

- EVR LN : Evraz Holders to Sell About 25.4M Shares

- FER SM : Ferrovial, Acciona Bid for Real Madrid Contract: Expansion

- FRA GY : Fraport Sees Budget for New Terminal 3 as High as EU4 Billion

- HIK LN : Hikma Deserves Premium Rating Given Superior Growth, Citi Says

- HUBN SW : Huber + Suhner Full Year Ebit CHF82.5 Mln

- IBE SM : Iberdrola Mulls Sale of Torre Auditori in Barcelona: Expansion

- INF LN : ‘Lowly Rated’ Informa Faces Better Rest of 2019: Morgan Stanley

- ILD FP : Iliad Full Year Revenue 1.0% Below Estimates

- ILD FP : Iliad Mulls Mobile Infrastructure Partnership With Fund

- ISAT LN : Intelsat Rout Deepens as Concerns Spread From Street to Hill

- KIE LN : Kier to Name Andrew Davies as CEO: Sky

- LUMX SW : Arki Busson’s LumX Gives Up Swiss License, Cuts Jobs: FT

- MAS SM : Masmovil’s Largest Domestic Shareholders Add to Stakes

- MSLH LN : Marshalls Already Pricing-In Attractions; Berenberg Cuts to Hold

- NRE1V FH : Solidium Acquires 5.1% of Shares in Nokian Renkaat for EU205 Mln

- COX FP : Nicox Starts Phase 2 Trial of NCX 4251 in Blepharitis

- OR FP : Revlon Tumbles After Warning Late Filing May Show Weakness

- PGHN SW : Partners Group Full Year Ebitda 2.1% Above Estimates

- UG FP : Peugeot Family Stands Ready to Support PSA M&A: Les Echos

- POS AV : PORR Full Year Order Book EU7.10 Bln

- ROG SW : FDA Backs Roche’s Tecentriq, Chemotherapy Combo for Lung Cancer

- SBRY LN : Sainsbury, Asda to Commit to Price Cuts: Financial Times

- SHA GY : Schaeffler Debt Swaps Whipsaw Amid Concerns Over Financing Units

- STADLER IPO : *STADLER RAIL PLANS IPO IN COMING MONTHS

- SWED SS : Swedbank to Disclose External AML Review Findings on Friday

- VET SW : Vetropack Full Year Sales Beat Highest Estimate

- WCH GY : Wacker Chemie Sees 2019 Ebitda 10%-20% Below Year Ago Levels

- WSU GY : Washtec Full Year Dividend Per Share Misses Estimates

- WDI GY : Tesla Bear Quadir Joins Odey in Slamming Wirecard Short Sell Ban