FT : Italian chief emerges from retirement to seal Linde mega deal

Italian chief emerges from retirement to seal Linde mega deal
Belloni drops quiet life in high stakes gamble to complete $65bn chemicals merger

The stakes are high for Aldo Ernesto Belloni. Lured out of retirement in December to complete the mega deal between German chemical group Linde and Praxair of the US, the new chief executive of the Munich-based company may on occasions yearn for the quieter life of a pensioner.

The merger has already collapsed once and claimed the jobs of Linde’s former chief executive and finance director. Now, as Mr Belloni races to seal the terms of the deal before the German group’s annual meeting on May 10, antitrust concerns and unrest from trade unions pose a threat to the tie-up.

“Not being able to communicate [the signing of the formal merger] on that day would be very embarrassing for all of us and it would disappoint the people,” he admits in an interview at Linde’s headquarters.

If the two companies can join forces, the rewards could be high as the merger would create a global leader worth $65bn that could capitalise on “mega trends” in society and industry, from an ageing population to the challenges of renewable energy, he says.

But first, he must deal with the competition issues and the unions.

Analysts at Bernstein have estimated that the enlarged Linde would hold 40 per cent of the global market in industrial gases. In some countries, it would be so big that regulators are almost certain to intervene. 

Meanwhile, Jürgen Wechsler, head of the metalworkers’ union IG Metall in Bavaria, recently came out against the merger, saying he was worried about job losses and questioning whether the deal was truly a “merger of equals”, given Praxair’s larger size. “Linde doesn’t need Praxair,” he said.

If Mr Belloni, an affable 67-year-old Italian who emerged from retirement to take charge on December 8 after a 35-year career with Linde, is ruffled, he does not show it. 

He expressed confidence that the group could pre-empt antitrust worries by disposing of certain assets where their presence is too large. Analysts say this would be in the US, Brazil, Spain and Italy.

Praxair, which is more specialised and attains higher margins, will maintain its dominant role in North America and Brazil, while Linde will keep its stronghold in Europe and Asia. But Mr Belloni says “sacrificial lambs” will be offered so the authorities are presented with a plan that preserves competition. 

He acknowledges that labour unrest has been a source of annoyance, given the board’s preapproval of the deal in December. But he thinks the problem is merely a lack of information. Linde employs 65,000 people in more than 100 countries, with just 11 per cent of them in Germany. “The merger won’t happen at the cost and detriment of the German workforce and locations,” he says.

“There is this sense of losing a German jewel, that’s the fear,” Mr Belloni adds. “In the recent past there have been acquisitions of German technology, and we do not want to be associated with that. It’s a totally different thing. We are partners in a merger of equals.”

The merger is important in an industry that is not well understood but which plays an “all-pervading” role across society, industry and in medicine, he says.

“If you eat and handle food, you’re touching us,” Mr Belloni adds. “We do a lot of things where you don’t see us because we are not at the customer touch point, but we are in the second row of an infinite array of industries.”

Mr Belloni rattles off a number of examples where Linde plays a part — drilling for oil and providing healthcare, but also conserving sperm and oxidising shrimp. “Your frozen pizzas have to be ‘shock frozen’ with liquid nitrogen,” he says. “The materials in your car have been produced by chemical and steel companies that require our products. Even rockets are propelled by hydrogen that we provide.” 

With Praxair, the enlarged company could save €1bn a year in reduced costs and synergies.

That would help propel Linde to capitalise in areas such as respiratory chemicals, where Mr Belloni sees the potential for demand to “increase exponentially” as society ages. Given the long-term demise of combustion engine cars, Linde has also built 160 hydrogen fuel stations to prove fuel cell technology could be “a major business model” to compete with battery-driven cars.

Mr Belloni adds that he is “absolutely convinced” Linde can play a role in energy storage for renewable sources. “The wind is not always blowing, but the demand is very constant,” he says. “So you need a buffer in between, and we have technology which can address this.”

However, there are still risks for the merger, which was only back on in December after talks between the companies failed in September when labour unions voted the deal down. The collapse surprised Praxair and threatened the dealmaking reputation of Linde chairman Wolfgang Reitzle. As a result, heads rolled with the departure of the top executive and finance chief, prompting Mr Belloni’s return.

Coming out of retirement is clearly a gamble for the Italian, but hopes are high that he can rise to the challenge and complete the merger without any hitches before handing over the reins to Steve Angel, Praxair chief executive. “I’m the ferry man,” he says. “I’m transporting the company into a new era.” Only then, will he be able to contemplate the quieter life of retirement.

FT : GSK ‘real world’ study offers new model for drug trials

GSK ‘real world’ study offers new model for drug trials
Pharma groups look to evidence in normal medical settings to prove value for money

GlaxoSmithKline has conducted the world’s first drug trial under “real world” conditions — closely watched by an industry under greater pressure than ever to prove the value of its medicines to cost-constrained health systems.

In a global first for drugmakers, GSK obtained permission to test Relvar, a drug to treat asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), before it had received full regulatory approval. It did this by setting in place an electronic patient data-monitoring system that ensured any adverse reactions were immediately communicated to physicians.

Martin Gibson, a University of Manchester professor and senior diabetes doctor, led the team that devised the technology underpinning the trial — linking primary care, hospitals and pharmacies in Salford, Greater Manchester. He said he has been contacted by “dozens” of companies including some of the pharmaceutical industry’s biggest names, planning to carry out their own trials using the same Salford database.

Some are about to get under way, Prof Gibson added, although he refused to name the companies involved because of commercial confidentiality.

GSK carried out the four-year trial under the everyday conditions of general practice in Greater Manchester. On Friday the city announced discussions are under way over further such collaborations, with the goal of securing better value for money from its £1bn annual spend on medicines.

The group advertised for recruits, and almost any COPD patient, however elderly or sick, could take part. In a striking departure from conventional practice, doctors were able to take patients off Relvar, mid-trial, if they believed another treatment would work better — without the patients being removed from the study.

As the healthcare landscape shifts, particularly in the US, the traditional sales model, with drugs sold directly to individual physicians, is becoming less prevalent. Now drugmakers must often convince a wider array of stakeholders, including insurers and hospitals, that their medicines represent value for money.

Patrick Vallance, president for research and development at GSK, acknowledges that some, even inside the company, initially had doubts about the study. “People said ‘who really cares what happens in one place in the north of England?’, and ‘nobody in the US is going to pay any attention to it’.”


In fact, he says, the US Food and Drug Administration and other bodies, such as the National Academy of Sciences, “are paying a lot of attention to it . . . as they look at how you set up systems to be able to generate so-called real world evidence”.

Enhancing the commercial case for gleaning evidence in normal medical settings, the 21st Century Cures Act, among the last passed under the Obama administration, potentially allows a company to gain approval for a new application for a drug by submitting real world evidence, without the need for a traditional clinical trial.

Andrew Baum, global head of healthcare research at Citigroup, says: “Real world data are definitely taking on a greater importance.”

GSK is heavily dependent on the revenues from its respiratory franchise. Total sales at its pharmaceuticals business in 2016 were £16.1bn, of which respiratory accounted for £6.5bn, or about 40 per cent.

But Advair, an asthma treatment that has long been one of its blockbuster products, lost patent protection in the US in 2010 and a generic replacement is awaiting approval from the US FDA. Relvar, marketed in the US as Breo, is one of a stable of drugs on which the company is relying to offset lost revenue. Sales of Relvar stood at £620m last year — compared with about £3.5bn for Advair.

The key insight GSK gained from the study was that Relvar, an inhaler used once a day, cut incidences of acute symptoms such as severe breathing problems by more than 8 per cent, compared with rival drugs.

The reduction appeared to reflect the fallibility of patients who often forget to take medication or do not follow instructions — so that a once-daily medicine in place of a twice-a-day drug in itself improved outcomes. The Salford study captured this in a way that would not have been possible in a traditional trial in which patients would have been carefully monitored to ensure medicines were taken exactly as prescribed, Dr Vallance suggests.

He acknowledges that the trial was “pretty high-risk”, given that the drug was being tested against alternatives with “essentially an identical mechanism of action”. He says, “normally you’d expect that experiment to answer ‘there’s no difference’, but it did answer ‘different’ because of the way it was taken, probably”.

Arguably, however, the key prize for those who hold the purse strings is whether drugs relieve strain on the wider health system, by reducing expensive hospitalisations, for example. Initial evidence from the trial, however, showed no significant reduction in the number of COPD sufferers seeking help from family doctors, or needing hospital treatment.

Indeed the number visiting GPs with non-respiratory symptoms rose in the first few weeks. Dr David Leather, global medical affairs leader for GSK’s respiratory franchise, attributes this to what might otherwise have seemed unconcerning ailments being linked in patients’ minds to the drug, as they underwent a “familiarisation period” with a new medicine.

Mr Baum argues the nature of the trial was far more striking than the specific outcome achieved.

While it was “useful and interesting” for GSK to pilot a commercial model that was likely to be used more widely by drugmakers, it had added little in the way of information about the efficacy of Relvar, he says.

“The data’s not terribly compelling, given how cheap the alternative therapies are,” he says.

However, Hilary Thomas, chief medical adviser at KPMG, the professional services company, says a reduction of 8 per cent is highly significant in such a crowded field. Many companies would have been too risk-averse to have undertaken the trial when its outcome was so uncertain, she adds.

“Translate that [reduction] in a growing condition for an ageing population and the savings are enormous. A change of even 8 per cent scaled up could free up hospital beds.”


--> Case study
Beryl Howard attributes her health problems to a bleak day, more than 50 years ago, when she had to walk miles home in a suffocating smog in Manchester.
The 81-year-old, a participant in GSK’s Relvar trial, traces the eventual onset of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to that occasion. “When I arrived home, I was black from head to toe . . . The next day, I couldn’t speak. It was three days before I got my voice back. My chest has never been the same since,” she says.
As the global population ages, COPD is becoming one of the leading causes of ill health — making it a large prize for drugmakers that can develop a widely adopted treatment.
Mrs Howard — who also suffers from high blood pressure and cholesterol, conditions that might have seen her excluded from a regular study — was recruited by her GP.
Dr David Leather, who led the study, explains that a traditional trial is a bit like having an animal in a zoo: “They are under control, under observation, you know what’s going on. We wanted to create a situation where it was like a lion on safari, where the patients and the doctors did what they usually did and the only thing we were doing was changing the medicine.”
Eventually more than half the COPD patients in Salford were recruited, an unusually high level of penetration for a drug trial. The vast majority of them remained on it for its entirety. At just 7 per cent the attrition rate was far lower than the average drop out rate in a normal double-blind, randomised control trial which stands at between 20 and 30 per cent.
This may partly reflect the unobtrusive nature of the trial. Information on any health problems was communicated immediately to the team of drug investigators via electronic alerts so patients themselves were required only to undergo quarterly reviews.
Dr Naresh Kanumilli, GP in a practice that had about 100 patients in the trial, said he offered patients two reasons for joining it: the chance for extra reviews of their condition as a side-benefit of participation, and the opportunity to do “something that might benefit the population, so you could almost put your name to something”. He adds that “surprisingly the number of people wanting to do it for that reason [was greater] than for the other”.

WSJ : What Does the French Election Mean for the Euro?

What Does the French Election Mean for the Euro?
National Front candidate Marine Le Pen has said she would pull her country, one of the EU’s founding nations, out of the common currency

This spring, France will vote in a presidential election that has raised questions over the country’s continued use of the euro.
National Front candidate Marine Le Pen has said she would pull her country, one of the European Union’s founding nations, out of the common currency.
That has sent yields on French bonds climbing to their highest level against German debt since 2012. It has also hit the bonds of weaker European economies as questions resurface over the euro project.

But for now, the currency itself appears relatively unmoved by the threat.
What Is Ms. Le Pen Proposing?
Ms. Le Pen has made leaving the euro a cornerstone of her policy platform, proposing to spend her first six months in office negotiating the return of the French franc. That could mean redenominating government debt, which in the view of S&P Global Ratings would effectively trigger a default.
What Is the Likelihood of France Leaving the Euro?
Most experts, and the betting odds, suggest Ms. Le Pen will fail in the vote’s second round as voters coalesce around her opponent.
Even if she wins, she will have to hold a referendum on the issue. To hold that vote, Ms. Le Pen needs the support of the French prime minister. Unless the National Front also wins a parliamentary majority, the prime minister would likely be from another political party.
The party led in around 50 constituencies in the 2015 regional elections, while 289 seats are needed for a parliamentary majority.
If the referendum were held, polling has consistently suggested a significant majority of French voters would back continued membership of the euro.
“You have about two-thirds who feel like they are European citizens and want to keep the euro,” said Marion Amiot, eurozone economist at Oxford Economics.
Are Markets Preparing for a French Departure?
In the short term, derivatives that protect investors against a sharp fall in the euro’s value are becoming more expensive.
Three-month risk reversal skews for the euro-dollar exchange rate have slipped to minus 3% from minus 1.4%. Negative numbers suggest investors are paying more for protection. This derivative is at its most negative in eight months.
But investors are demanding much less protection than they did for the pound ahead of the U.K.’s EU referendum, when risk-reversal skews fell to minus 4.5% three months before the event, and as low as minus 6% shortly before the vote.
Less currency risk priced for France's election than BrexitRisk reversal skews are less extreme for the euro 90 days from theFrench election than they were for the pound before the EUreferendum*Source: Thomson Reuters* A more negative skew suggests investors are paying more to protect against a depreciation of thecurrency
%French election,euro/dollar 3month riskreversalU.K. referendum,sterling/dollar 3month riskreversal10095908580-5-4-3-2-10
Few investors are actually expecting a drop in the currency, though, according to U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data. The CFTC recorded 46,764 more short than long contracts on the euro in the week to Feb. 17, far fewer than the 82,579 weekly average last year.
Short euro positioning is not extremeSpeculative investors are short the euro, according to CFTC data, butless so than they have been for most of the last two yearsTHE WALL STREET JOURNALSource: Commodities Futures Trading Commission
Net long europositions(negativenumbers show netshorts)2013’14’15’16’17-300,000-200,000-100,0000100,000
Also, euro breakup risk doesn’t necessarily mean a weak euro. During the 2011-12 sovereign-debt crisis, when the euro’s future was questioned, the currency was around 7% stronger against a basket of international currencies than it is today.
Breakup risk doesn't always mean a weak euroThe euro was much stronger against the dollar during the sovereigndebt crisis than it is todayTHE WALL STREET JOURNALSource: Factset
2010’11’12’13’14’15’161.001.101.201.301.40$1.50
What Happens if France Leaves?
If Ms. Le Pen wins, some investors predict an immediate drop in the euro.
Fabio Bassi, chief European rates strategist at J.P. Morgan, believes the currency would fall 10% against the dollar in the weeks following the event.

But others say the euro would survive without France, given high support in many parts of the monetary union, including in Germany, the region’s biggest economy.
The euro might even be stronger over the long term following the exit of France, the bloc’s second-biggest economy.
With the German economy making up a larger share of the eurozone, the euro would become more like a “quasi deutsche mark,” according to researchers at Citigroup. “That doesn’t sound like a weak currency to us.”
Does France Suit the Euro?
Ms. Le Pen doesn’t like it, but the euro is in some ways a fairer reflection of the French economy than those of many other eurozone countries.

The French equilibrium exchange rate—which measures what its currency’s fair value would be based on economic conditions such as unemployment and trade balance—was around $1.25 at the end of 2015, according to Angel Talavera at Oxford Economics. The eurozone’s as a whole was $1.23.
In comparison, Germany would need a higher exchange rate, given its economic strength, at $1.37. Greece would need a much weaker exchange rate, at $1.097.
If France Leaves, Will Others Follow?
During the sovereign-debt crisis, investors feared that a Greek exit from the eurozone would drag the next weakest economy out of the bloc, then the next, unraveling the project one country at a time.
Yields on the debt of those countries most exposed to a “Grexit” soared.
“Market dynamics can create the conditions where it’s impossible for the eurozone to remain coherent well before Le Pen signs articles into law to create the franc,” said Neville Hill, co-head of global economic research at Credit Suisse.
Some government bond yields in Southern Europe have risen sharply alongside French yields recently. In fact, yields in Italy have risen by more since the start of the year than those in France.

9to5 :Apple shifts policy, says third-party screen repairs no longer void iPhone

Apple shifts policy, says third-party screen repairs no longer void iPhone warranty

Apple is apparently changing its long-standing policy regarding third-party iPhone screen repairs. According to a memo sent to Apple retail employees, a customer having their device’s screen repaired by a third-party source no longer voids their warranty like it once did…

The memo, obtained by 9to5Mac, says that retail stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers should inspect the device in question for things such as fraud or tampering, but then proceed as normal with the repair. This, of course, assumes that what needs to be repaired doesn’t relate to the display.
There are some conditions to this new policy, however. For one, if the third-party display causes the repair to fail or otherwise causes damage to the iPhone during the repair process, the customer will be required to pay the out-of-warranty cost to resolve the issue. Whether that be replacing the third-party part with an Apple part, replacing the whole device, or something else.
Furthermore, if the issue is related to the third-party display, users will be required to pay the out-of-warranty price for the repair or else be turned away by Apple completely. Lastly, if a customer wants to have the third-party display replaced with an official Apple part, the memo instructs employees to quote the out-of-warranty price. AppleCare+ will also not cover this.
Apple’s previous long-standing policy had been that if a device had a third-party display, the iPhone’s warranty was void and it wouldn’t perform any sort of repairs on the device. With these relaxations, however, Apple is making it easier for users to get their device repaired even if they at one point went elsewhere for service.
Apple itself has also been making it more enticing for users to have their screens replaced at an authorized location. As part of some refinements to AppleCare+ last year, Apple introduced a new $29 screen repair tier that makes it quick and affordable for customers to have their screen repaired with legitimate parts.
While there are certainly some catches with Apple’s new policy, its new tolerance toward third-party screen pairs is notable. The changes reportedly apply to the United States and Canada, as well as various other countries around the world.

TechCrunch : Snap supporters find a scapegoat in Jeremy Liew

A couple of days ago, the New York Times wrote a story that aims to explain why Snap founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy have retained such a hold on voting power in the company — power that its shareholders will not enjoy.

It’s a great account and wonderfully written by a reporter I respect greatly. But I don’t quite buy it.

According to four sources who spoke to the Times, the reason that Snap’s founders are denying shareholders any say in the running of their company can be traced to Jeremy Liew, a venture capitalist with Lightspeed Venture Partners who wrote Spiegel the company’s first check, for $485,000.

It was 2012, Spiegel and Murphy were still Stanford students with a fast-growing phenomenon on their hands, and reportedly, they quickly regretted the term sheet that they signed with Liew. The reason: the agreement gave Lightspeed the right of first refusal to invest in a future round of funding and the ability to increase its share of the company in that round. In fact, Lightspeed could take 50 percent of the future round.

These sources say the terms effectively gave Lightspeed veto power over investment at Snap and made Snap unattractive for other investors who might not be able to take as large a stake in the company as they’d like. Indeed, reports the Times, Snap was so irked by this pact that it struck an agreement with Lightspeed, providing it with warrants to buy future shares at a discounted price in exchange for dropping its right-of-first-refusal and other clauses that bothered the founders.

The unflattering story is surely an embarrassment for Liew, who has used his early check in Snapchat to substantial raise his profile in recent years. You can guess that competing firms that don’t have a stake in Snapchat are relishing the moment.

Still, it stretches my imagination to believe that because of Lightspeed’s shenanigans, the founders determined they would never cede control to investors again or, more to the point, that their decision has much to do with the firm.

For one thing, as much as other investors may envy Lightspeed – it owns more than 8 percent of Snap and stands to make more than $1 billion off its IPO – I think most would tell you privately that the terms Lightspeed presented to Snap are far from the most onerous they’ve ever seen.

A related point: VCs are in business to make money. Founders who think otherwise are living in a fantasy world. As far as venture deals go, Liew was just doing his job, and I’m sure Lightspeed’s institutional investors would tell you he did a fine one at that.

Which begs another issue. Didn’t Lightspeed make it impossible for other VCs to invest? Well, no. Maybe they couldn’t buy as much as they want, but that’s not illegal. It mostly deprives them of bragging rights and, of course, upside.

Okay, but they duped Siegel, though, that much is clear, isn’t it?

I can’t know, obviously, and Liew isn’t talking about the Times story — not to me anyway. (I reached out earlier today and he hasn’t responded.)

But it is worth asking how gullible Spiegel was four years ago and why — though we’re constantly being told, and we believe, that he’s a genius — we’re so quick to believe that he was taken advantage of by a greedy VC. If he were a student at a small Midwestern college, the child of teachers, I might be more inclined to believe it. But Spiegel was a student at Stanford in 2012, then and now the epicenter of the tech universe. More, his parents are both Ivy League-educated attorneys. I’m guessing he received some legal advice before striking a deal with Lightspeed, and it probably was not terrible even if it created sour feelings later.

You may disagree with me. (Trust me, plenty of my colleagues do.) But I do question the narrative that the Times was told.

I don’t own Snap shares, and because of my job, I can’t buy them when they are public, so its decision to offer shares with no voting power won’t won’t impact me directly.

But there are plenty of institutional investors who are genuinely perturbed by Snap’s charter. In fact, institutional investors are so upset that earlier this month, a dozen of the biggest pension funds in the U.S. reportedly sent a letter of objection to Snap.

The executive director of The Council of Institutional Investors went so far as to warn that Snap could “open the floodgates” for more companies to evade accountability.

Will they buy Snap’s shares anyway? Probably.

But if they wind up unhappy afterward, don’t blame Jeremy Liew.

>>> Lifewatch in talks with alternative buyers in attempt to prevent takeover by

Lifewatch in talks with alternative buyers in attempt to prevent takeover by Aevis Victoria
The board of LifeWatch (SWX: LIFE) is in talks with alternative buyers, Schweiz am Sonntag reported. Citing unnamed banking sources the Swiss weekly publication said the board is trying to prevent the takeover by Antoine Hubert's Aevis Victoria group by finding alternative buyers. Talks with medtech groups are underway, the report stated.
Source close to the company said a strategic partner with knowledge of the medtech business would be a better fit. The report named GE Medical Systems Information Technology as a potential strategic partner. The sources also expressed confidence that an alternative buyer would be found before Aevis Victoria's offer expires on 10 April, the report noted.
Huber and another Aevis director, Antoine Kohler, are members of the LifeWatch board, the report added.

>>> Berkshire : Reports Q4 Operating EPS (Class A) $2,665 v $2,843 y/y - FY16 Ne

Reports Q4 Operating EPS (Class A) $2,665 v $2,843 y/y 
- FY16 Net $24.1B v $24.1B y/y; Rev $223.6B v $210.9B y/y

FY16 segment revenue:
- Insurance Premiums: $45.9B v $41.2B y/y
- Sales and Service $119.5B v $107.0B y/y 
- Railroad, Utilities and Energy: $37.5B v $40.0B y/y 
- Finance: $7.7B v $6.9B y/y 

2016 annual letter: http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/2016ar/2016ar.pdf or see attached

>>> Barrons weekend summary: positive on TV, RIG, GPN ; Cautious on HOG, QCOM, I

Barrons weekend summary: positive on TV, RIG, GPN ; Cautious on HOG, QCOM, INTC, SAM 
- Cover story (Cautious): HOG would be a key beneficiary of Donald Trump’s plan to cut taxes and promote American-made goods, but its core demographic of middle-aged white men is shrinking along with other ridership markets, and a strong dollar is crimping foreign sales; Shares should trade in the high $40s, not the high $50s. 

- Tech Trader: Cautious on QCOM, INTC: Both companies recently unveiled new mobile chips, but overall they will see diminishing returns; the best bet for investors interested in wireless chips may be smaller rivals SWKS and QRVO. 

- Trader: Most investors think the Fed will wait to raise rates, while 40% expect a March hike, down slightly from the week prior; Cautious on SAM: Craft beer seems to have hit a saturation point, and the company has been slow to embrace the “tap room” approach other breweries use to draw customers. 

- Interview: David Gluskin, chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates, sees volatility ahead, is cautious on the Trump rally, and thinks the market will finish the year where it started. 

- Features: 1) Positive on TV: Shares of the Mexican television giant, which owns an appealing range of businesses, appear undervalued, having sat out the strong rally in most U.S. cable and media stocks the past year; 2) Positive on RIG: As the company puts lower revenue and losses behind it during a turnaround, shares could rise by more than 35% during the next year or two, making them a good play for patient, value-oriented investors; 3) Cressida Hogg, who oversees the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board’s $18B infrastructure portfolio, talks about Donald Trump’s infrastructure proposals and how the Brexit will affect the market; 4) Positive on GPN: Technology and services provider for small and mid-size merchants has strong international exposure, giving it an edge on U.S. rivals, and is getting into a wider range of businesses. 

- Small Caps: Positive AXTA: Company has a high-quality franchise with top positions in various auto-coating sectors, and its refinishing business, which accounts for 40% of revenue, should grow during the next year. 

- Follow-Up: Positive on Snap: As the company prepares for an initial public offering, “it seems to be overcoming qualms about profitability and slowing user growth,” and investors see strong advertising potential. 

- European Trader: Cautious on Nestle: Food and beverage giant has suffered a number of setbacks, but it still has good prospects in a tough market. 

- Asian Trader: Positive on Shenzhen Huiding Technology, Egis Technology: The Asian companies stand to benefit from the growing user of fingerprint sensors on smartphones, a trend started by AAPL. 

- Emerging Markets: Russian and Indonesia stand to be winners if commodity prices stabilize, driven by demand in China and the U.S. 

- Commodities: Platinum prices are up 11% since the start of 2017, but oversupply and weak demand could end the rally, creating an opportunity for investors to benefit from a drop. 

- Streetwise: “Cyclical rejuvenation hasn’t cured the structural ills of an economy hollowed out by automation and global competition, and stagnant wages for 90% of the population.”