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The global economic, financial and political landscape has never been shakier, but the world's rich are confident they can steer through the fog of uncertainty in the coming year "without so much as a dent in their finances", a survey showed on Wednesday.

The findings of UBS Wealth Management's survey of more than 2,800 millionaires in seven countries show a high degree of worry about the global financial system on the one hand, and supreme self-confidence and optimism on the other.

Some 82 percent of those surveyed said this is the most unpredictable period in history. More than a quarter are reviewing their investments and almost half said they intend to but haven't yet done so.

But more than three quarters (77 pct) believe they can "accurately assess financial risk arising from uncertain events", while 51 percent expect their finances to improve over the coming year compared with 13 percent who expect them to deteriorate.

More than half (57 pct) are optimistic about achieving their long-term goals, compared with 11 percent who are pessimistic. And an overwhelming 86 percent trust their own instincts when making important decisions.

"Most millionaires seem to be confident they can steer their way through the turbulence without so much as a dent in their finances," UBS WM said.

"They identify economic and financial risks as their big concerns and they have serious doubts about the world's corporate and financial system. And yet, they stride into the future with assurance," the report said.

Among the other findings, 68 percent say they suffer from "information overload" as they make their investment decisions, and nearly three quarters (72 pct) say short-term distractions get in the way of their financial plans.

Still, the report highlighted some aspects of their investment behavior that could ultimately work against them. For instance, 75 percent of those surveyed see cash as a safe option, "even though it will perform poorly compared with other asset classes in the context of rising inflation."

Perhaps surprisingly, younger millionaires are more risk-averse than their older peers. Nearly half of the 18-34 year old group are less willing to take risks after the financial crisis, compared to less than 30 percent of the over-65 bracket.

The study surveyed 2,842 millionaires, with investable assets of at least $1 million, in Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Mexico, Italy, Switzerland and Britain.

Disney’s Iger Isn’t About to Let Go as CEO

Succession at world’s largest media conglomerate is up in the air as inside candidates leave, outsiders lack interest; four different retirement dates

Robert Iger owns a license-plate frame printed with the question: “Is there life after Disney DIS -1.05% ?”

The chairman and chief executive of the world’s largest media conglomerate, Walt Disney Co. DIS -1.05% , doesn’t keep the frame on his car anymore. “I decided it’s not worth it,” Mr. Iger said in March at a conference sponsored by the University of Southern California. “I’d get stopped every once in a while by people who asked what it means.”

The same question transfixes people throughout Disney and the entertainment industry, who wonder how much longer Mr. Iger, 66 years old, will keep his grip on the company behind Snow White, “Star Wars” and “SportsCenter.” Twelve years into his tenure as CEO, the question of who will succeed Mr. Iger is more uncertain than it has been for nearly a decade. He isn’t about to let go.

The strongest internal candidates have left, and the most frequently mentioned external candidates are uninterested. Some people who know Mr. Iger believe he simply doesn’t want to retire yet, despite stating repeatedly that he intends to. A contract extension signed in March runs through July 2, 2019. That is the fourth date he has announced for stepping down as CEO.

Disney ’s board of directors and investors seem happy to back Mr. Iger for as long as he wants to stay. Under his widely acclaimed leadership, the Burbank, Calif., company’s share price has nearly quintupled, increasing the stock-market value of Disney to about $170 billion. Disney is the most successful entertainment company in modern history.

The longer Mr. Iger stays, though, the harder it gets to imagine the future of Disney without him—or who could possibly replace him.

Mr. Iger has led the company for so long and with such hands-on attention that he and Disney now seem inseparable to many employees and outside partners. That dynamic also occurred with founder Walt Disney and Mr. Iger’s predecessor as CEO, Michael Eisner. Mr. Eisner left following strife among Disney shareholders and its board, a problem Mr. Iger isn’t facing.

Mr. Iger’s ever-extending leadership might be just what Disney needs to keep thriving where it is strong and solve problems looming on the horizon, such as declines in viewership at ESPN and the company’s other television networks. If the problems worsen, though, Disney shareholders might turn less sanguine about succession questions.

On a conference call with analysts last Tuesday, Mr. Iger said that “more has been made about our succession than it really deserves.” He and the board are trying to ensure “we have enough time to not only consider the right candidates but to make the right decision and to craft a handover of sorts of a transition that should be successful,” added Mr. Iger.

Five-year bake-off

Two years ago, the succession question seemed to be settled. After a five-year bake-off during which Mr. Iger’s retirement as CEO was delayed from 2015 to 2016 and then to 2018, Disney promoted Tom Staggs, head of its parks and resorts division and former finance chief, to operating chief.

The move positioned Mr. Staggs, a 26-year Disney veteran, as the natural successor to Mr. Iger.

In March 2016, Mr. Iger told Mr. Staggs that they needed to talk.

Mr. Staggs’s first year in the No. 2 job was bumpy. Because the chief operating officer had few solo responsibilities and no business units reporting directly to him, Disney employees were uncertain how much authority he carried.

Still, many people inside the company assumed those obstacles would be surmountable. Messrs. Iger and Staggs were longtime friends who had similar leadership styles and whose children attended the same school. But Mr. Iger had a very different message during their meeting in March 2016.

Disney’s board of directors, led by Mr. Iger as chairman, had lost confidence in Mr. Staggs’s ability to ascend to the top job, the CEO said, according to people familiar with the discussion.

Without citing any shortcomings that emerged during Mr. Staggs’s year as operating chief, Mr. Iger said the board would expand its search process for a new chief executive. Mr. Staggs felt he had no choice but to resign.

When his exit was announced, Disney said the board would “broaden the scope of its succession-planning process to identify and evaluate a robust slate of candidates for consideration.”

Throughout Hollywood and Disney, some executives, producers, agents and other business associates believed Mr. Iger had decided he wasn’t ready to step down.

Building a boat

Those people pointed to issues ranging from professional, including his desire to conquer the challenges at ESPN from cord-cutting, to personal, such as the failure of a bid he chaired to build a National Football League stadium near Los Angeles that might have been an anchor of post-Disney life.

In private conversations, Mr. Iger has discussed possibly running for office, serving in a Democratic presidential administration or spending time on a sailboat he is building, say people who have worked at Disney and spoken with him. Those people say they weren’t sure how seriously to take Mr. Iger.

A person close to Mr. Iger says he wanted to retire in 2018 but felt he had to stay longer after the plan for Mr. Staggs to succeed him failed. This person adds that if Mr. Iger’s goal was simply to extend his tenure as CEO, he could have kept Mr. Staggs as operating chief past 2018.

Disney’s board is now focused on hiring or promoting someone directly into the CEO job, rather than an evaluation or training period as operating chief, according to people close to the company. There have been no obvious signs of progress in the past year toward selecting such a person.

Orin C. Smith, Disney’s independent lead director, said in March that the board would continue its “robust process of identifying a successor.”

Speculation inside and outside Disney has centered on three widely respected outsiders: Steve Burke, chief executive of Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal, which includes cable and broadcast networks, film and TV studios and theme parks; Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook Inc.’s operating chief and a Disney director, and Peter Chernin, a producer and investor who was News Corp. president until 2009.

News Corp. later spun off its newspaper and book-publishing assets, including The Wall Street Journal, into News Corp and changed its name to 21st Century Fox Inc.

No interest

Disney hasn’t approached Mr. Burke, Ms. Sandberg or Mr. Chernin about the CEO job, according to people familiar with the matter. None of them is interested in taking it.

Some people at Disney believe the board should try to hire from the inside. Disney prides itself on a corporate culture that focuses obsessively on what it calls “franchises”—or entertainment juggernauts that live on for many years as theme-park rides, toys, videogames, television shows and merchandise.

No one already at Disney has emerged as a strong potential successor to Mr. Iger, either. The company’s theme-park chief for the past two years, Bob Chapek, is the only senior executive who has worked in multiple Disney divisions. He spent much of his career heading home video for Disney’s movie studio before taking over the consumer-products business in 2011.

Mr. Chapek has no experience in Disney’s television business, the biggest unit in terms of revenue and profit.

Finding a successor to Mr. Iger wasn’t supposed to come down to the wire.

Mr. Staggs and Jay Rasulo emerged as leading CEO contenders as far back as 2010, when they swapped jobs, with Mr. Staggs taking over the theme-park division and Mr. Rasulo becoming chief financial officer.

The idea of Mr. Iger and Disney’s board was that Messrs. Staggs and Rasulo would broaden their exposure and skill sets so that either one would become seen as qualified to rise to the CEO spot held by Mr. Iger.

Four months after being passed over in 2015 to be Mr. Iger’s second-in-command, Mr. Rasulo resigned from Disney.

Mr. Iger, Disney’s president since 2000, spent several years as the likely successor to Mr. Eisner before being promoted to the top job in 2005.

Mum until 2018

People close to the company say it appears that Disney’s board isn’t close to zeroing in on a successor to Mr. Iger and is unlikely to announce the company’s new chief executive until 2018 at the earliest.

Meanwhile, Mr. Iger is as hands-on as he has ever been. Initially cautious about getting involved in the film business because his background was in TV, he now reads scripts regularly and discusses release plans.

He tasted the food at Shanghai Disneyland before it opened last year. Mr. Staggs was heavily involved in the new theme park but exited Disney a month before the opening.

Mr. Iger also is leading the charge to figure out a new digital future for profit machine ESPN, which has lost 12 million subscribers in the past five years as consumers become less interested in pricey pay-TV packages.

Solving the ESPN problem is a top priority for Mr. Iger, a perfectionist who wants to leave Disney in as flawless shape as possible, people close to him say.

TV is the biggest challenge for Disney, which otherwise has been succeeding on all fronts. Mr. Iger engineered the purchases of Pixar Animation Studios, Marvel Entertainment Inc. and Lucasfilm, which cost more than $15 billion combined. They are largely responsible for Disney’s dominance of the movie business in the past few years and have helped generate growing profits for parks and consumer products.

Insiders and outsiders are split on whether Disney’s future would be brighter with a CEO from Silicon Valley who could guide the company’s digital transition, an expert in brand management or someone already in the creative bubble of Hollywood. Mr. Iger and the board have given themselves two more years to answer that question.

The European Central Bank should begin unwinding its ultra-loose monetary policy soon if it wants to avoid damaging side-effects, German Deputy Finance Minister Jens Spahn said on Wednesday.

"Unless monetary policy starts normalizing soon, negative side-effects will become more damaging," Spahn told a conference at the German foreign ministry.

"Regarding the euro zone, the ECB should be ready to exit the unconventional monetary policy not too late," he added.

Spahn said there was too much public and private debt in the world and called for an acceleration of structural reforms, saying monetary policy could not solve structural problems.

The weak pound, and other factors, will hit retailers hard this year.

LONDON — While foreign investors and brands may be salivating at the prospect of securing hot property or setting up shop on the U.K. high street, the reality for local retailers is increasingly grim.

A confluence of factors, including the uncertainty surrounding Brexit and the prospect of new trade international deals — or no trade deals at all — the weaker pound, expiring hedging contracts, higher taxes and consumers’ preference for experiences over shopping are making the business of retail ever harder for local brands.

The pound, which is tracking about 13 percent below last year’s pre-referendum level at $1.29, has proven a boon for Chinese, American, Danish and continental European investors, not to mention many retailers, whose goods have been flying off shelves because of the weaker sterling and the comparatively stronger euro and dollar.

Foreign investors have poured billions into central London property in particular, and the Chinese now own some 15 percent of the property around Oxford, Regent and Bond Streets.

U.S. brands such as Polo Ralph Lauren, Tory Burch, Michael Kors, Coach and Stuart Weitzman have all opened units on Regent Street over the past year, spurred on by Britain’s Crown Estate, the property company that has redeveloped the neighborhood, and by cheaper costs due to the weak pound.

For British businesses, though, reality is beginning to sting. Earlier this month, the publicly quoted fashion and home giant Next said sales in the first quarter were down 2.5 percent.

“The U.K. consumer environment remains challenging, particularly in the clothing and homeware markets, and real wage growth is now close to zero,” said the company, adding that full-price sales could fall 3.5 percent in the current fiscal year.

For the first time in 18 years, Next’s chief executive officer Simon Wolfson failed to collect his annual bonus for fiscal 2016-17. Next’s board also missed out on theirs.

Next is not alone — and things could be worse. Over the past year, British high-street stalwarts BHS, Austin Reed and Jaeger all shut up shop due to diverse factors, while Marks & Spencer and Burberry set major cost-cutting and efficiency drives in response to low rates of growth and consumers’ new appetites and ways of shopping.

On May 11, the Bank of England cut its U.K. growth forecast for 2017 to 1.9 percent from the 2 percent it had predicted in February. It cited slow income growth and rising inflation. In the first quarter, the economy grew by 0.3 percent, compared with 0.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016 while inflation stands at a three-year high of 2.3 percent.

When rattled consumers do decide to splash some cash, they prefer to spend it on experiences rather than plain old shopping. According to Barclaycard, which gauges consumer behavior on a monthly basis, year-over-year spending in April was up 5.5 percent due in part to inflation and a later Easter.

During the month, the in-store spend on women’s and men’s clothing dropped 0.5 and 2.8 percent respectively, while department store sales were down 0.9 percent. By contrast, spending in restaurants was up 16.1 percent and money spent on cinema, theater and dance rose 12.7 percent.

“It’s clear consumers are recognizing and responding to the inflationary pressures being placed on household budgets,” said Paul Lockstone, managing director at Barclaycard. “Despite growth across a number of categories, the spending picture in real terms is one of growing caution, as seen by declining confidence levels among the U.K.’s consumer.”

Further fuelling retailers’ woes are local taxes, known as business rates, which have soared for many brands after property prices were re-evaluated for the first time in seven years. The new rates took effect in April.

In the U.K., business owners pay taxes based on the value of the property they occupy rather than on the turnover of the business. On Mayfair’s Dover Street, home to brands such as Victoria Beckham, Acne Studios, Golden Goose, Jimmy Choo Men’s and Christian Louboutin, rates rose 200 to 300 percent, while in other parts of the West End, the spike will be more like 80 to 120 percent.

The pound, too, is becoming troublesome on a number of fronts. While it proved a short-term boon for retailers that rely on tourists, it’s begun to eat away at margins due to higher import costs.

During a recent parliamentary hearing examining the potential implications of Brexit on the British fashion business, U.K. Fashion and Textile Association chief executive officer Adam Mansell said the lion’s share of U.K. high-street goods is imported from non-EU sources. “Bangladesh is our second largest supplier of clothing in the U.K., and the tariff rates on goods coming from the country will go up 25 percent,” he said, unless the U.K. strikes a trade deal similar to the one it has as an EU member.

Those calculations didn’t even take into account the impact of the weaker pound on companies’ sourcing costs.

Many post-referendum currency hedging deals are expiring, which means that over the next few months, firms that import goods priced in dollars will see their expenses rise 13 percent, in keeping with the pound’s decline.

It will be up to the individual companies to decide whether to absorb the extra costs, or to pass them onto an increasingly spooked consumer. It’s going to be one tough decision given that fashion retailers typically operate at margins around 10 percent.

Less attractive hedging deals are also cutting into companies’ bottom lines.

In April, Burberry said it is expecting a 10 million pound, or $12.7 million, drag on the reported, adjusted retail-wholesale profit figure in the current fiscal year, due partly to new hedging rates that are less favorable.

Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation

WASHINGTON — President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.

“I hope you can let this go,” the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.

The documentation of Mr. Trump’s request is the clearest evidence that the president has tried to directly influence the Justice Department and F.B.I. investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia. Late Tuesday, Representative Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, demanded that the F.B.I. turn over all “memoranda, notes, summaries and recordings” of discussions between Mr. Trump and Mr. Comey.

Such documents, Mr. Chaffetz wrote, would “raise questions as to whether the president attempted to influence or impede” the F.B.I

Mr. Comey wrote the memo detailing his conversation with the president immediately after the meeting, which took place the day after Mr. Flynn resigned, according to two people who read the memo. It was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president’s improper efforts to influence a continuing investigation. An F.B.I. agent’s contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations.

Mr. Comey shared the existence of the memo with senior F.B.I. officials and close associates. The New York Times has not viewed a copy of the memo, which is unclassified, but one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of it to a Times reporter.

“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey that Mr. Flynn had done nothing wrong, according to the memo.

Mr. Comey did not say anything to Mr. Trump about curtailing the investigation, replying only: “I agree he is a good guy.”

In a statement, the White House denied the version of events in the memo.

“While the president has repeatedly expressed his view that General Flynn is a decent man who served and protected our country, the president has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn,” the statement said. “The president has the utmost respect for our law enforcement agencies, and all investigations. This is not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the president and Mr. Comey.”

Mr. Chaffetz’s letter, sent to the acting F.B.I. director, Andrew G. McCabe, set a May 24 deadline for the internal documents to be delivered to the House committee. The congressman, a Republican, was criticized in recent months for showing little of the appetite he demonstrated in pursuing Hillary Clinton to pursue investigations into Mr. Trump’s associates.

But since announcing in April that he will not seek re-election in 2018, Mr. Chaffetz has shown more interest in the Russia investigation, and held out the potential for a subpoena on Tuesday, a notably aggressive move as most Republicans have tried to stay out of the fray.

In testimony to the Senate last week, Mr. McCabe said, “There has been no effort to impede our investigation to date.” Mr. McCabe was referring to the broad investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. The investigation into Mr. Flynn is separate.

A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment.

Mr. Comey created similar memos — including some that are classified — about every phone call and meeting he had with the president, the two people said. It is unclear whether Mr. Comey told the Justice Department about the conversation or his memos.

Mr. Trump fired Mr. Comey last week. Trump administration officials have provided multiple, conflicting accounts of the reasoning behind Mr. Comey’s dismissal. Mr. Trump said in a television interview that one of the reasons was because he believed “this Russia thing” was a “made-up story.”

The Feb. 14 meeting took place just a day after Mr. Flynn was forced out of his job after it was revealed he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of phone conversations he had had with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

Despite the conversation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Comey, the investigation of Mr. Flynn has proceeded. In Virginia, a federal grand jury has issued subpoenas in recent weeks for records related to Mr. Flynn. Part of the Flynn investigation is centered on his financial links to Russia and Turkey.

Mr. Comey had been in the Oval Office that day with other senior national security officials for a terrorism threat briefing. When the meeting ended, Mr. Trump told those present — including Mr. Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions — to leave the room except for Mr. Comey.

Alone in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump began the discussion by condemning leaks to the news media, saying that Mr. Comey should consider putting reporters in prison for publishing classified information, according to one of Mr. Comey’s associates.

Mr. Trump then turned the discussion to Mr. Flynn.

After writing up a memo that outlined the meeting, Mr. Comey shared it with senior F.B.I. officials. Mr. Comey and his aides perceived Mr. Trump’s comments as an effort to influence the investigation, but they decided that they would try to keep the conversation secret — even from the F.B.I. agents working on the Russia investigation — so the details of the conversation would not affect the investigation.

Mr. Comey was known among his closest advisers to document conversations that he believed would later be called into question, according to two former confidants, who said Mr. Comey was uncomfortable at times with his relationship with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Comey’s recollection has been bolstered in the past by F.B.I. notes. In 2007, he told Congress about a now-famous showdown with senior White House officials over the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. The White House disputed Mr. Comey’s account, but the F.B.I. director at the time, Robert S. Mueller III, kept notes that backed up Mr. Comey’s story.

The White House has repeatedly crossed lines that other administrations have been reluctant to cross when discussing politically charged criminal investigations. Mr. Trump has disparaged the continuing F.B.I. investigation as a hoax and called for an inquiry into his political rivals. His representatives have taken the unusual step of declaring no need for a special prosecutor to investigate the president’s associates.

The Oval Office meeting occurred a little over two weeks after Mr. Trump summoned Mr. Comey to the White House for a lengthy, one-on-one dinner at the residence. At that dinner, on Jan. 27, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Comey at least two times for a pledge of loyalty — which Mr. Comey declined, according to one of Mr. Comey’s associates.

In a Twitter post on Friday, Mr. Trump said that “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”

After the meeting, Mr. Comey’s associates did not believe there was any way to corroborate Mr. Trump’s statements. But Mr. Trump’s suggestion last week that he was keeping tapes has made them wonder whether there are tapes that back up Mr. Comey’s account.

The Jan. 27 dinner came a day after White House officials learned that Mr. Flynn had been interviewed by F.B.I. agents about his phone calls with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak. On Jan. 26, the acting attorney general, Sally Q. Yates, told the White House counsel about the interview, and said Mr. Flynn could be subject to blackmail by the Russians because they knew he had lied about the content of the calls.

The nation’s top 25 hedge fund honchos raked in a collective $11 billion in 2016 — down just $2 billion from a year earlier despite the industry’s worst year since the financial crisis, according to an annual survey by Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine.

Notably absent from this year’s top 25 were Bill Ackman, whose soured bet on Valeant Pharmaceuticals lost $4 billion, and John Paulson, who racked up double-digit losses in what he called the “most challenging” year since his fund’s inception in 1994.

Still, former math professor Jim Simons managed to claim $1.6 billion in compensation, topping this year’s list, as the quantitative funds of his $42 billion Renaissance Technologies posted solid gains.

Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s biggest hedge fund, earned $1.4 billion, according to the survey, even though Bridgewater’s flagship fund, Pure Alpha, gained just 2.4 percent.

To be sure, last year’s pie is roughly half of the $21 billion the top 25 hedgies earned three years ago.

Nevertheless, 2016’s compensation figures are more than double what they were when the survey began in 2000, and came even though 2016 was only the third year since then that clients took more out of hedge funds than they put in.

And investors had good reason to yank $70 billion from the $3 trillion industry last year.

Despite funds relying on a “2 and 20” compensation model, in which they charge 2 percent of assets under management and 20 percent of profits, nearly half of the top 25 hedgies earned less than 10 percent for their investors in 2016.

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 gained 12 percent for investors on a dividend-adjusted basis for a fraction of the cost.

Sharing third place were John Overdeck and David Siegel, the founders of Two Sigma, who notched $750 million apiece. Appaloosa Management’s David Tepper came in fifth place with $700 million.

Elliott Management’s Paul Singer earned $590 million, landing him in seventh place.

Colgate-Palmolive’s chief executive recently signaled he would be open to selling the company — which has grappled with sluggish demand for its toothpaste, deodorants and food products — for $100 a share, a source told The Post.

CEO Ian Cook’s stated price tag, valuing the consumer-products giant at more than $88 billion, came at a meeting with institutional investors that took place in recent weeks, a source with knowledge of the conversation said.

Rumors about possible deals have swirled of late around the New York-based conglomerate, which has struggled to increase sales of its household staples, which include Irish Spring soap and Hill’s pet food.

In particular, there has been talk that Colgate-Palmolive is being stalked by Unilever, the London-based maker of Dove soap, Axe deodorant and Hellmann’s mayonnaise.

Last Friday, the chatter even prompted a shareholder to ask Cook at the annual meeting what he would do if Unilever made an offer to buy the company.

“We as a company … build value for our share owners and all the constituents in our company,” Cook responded. “And that is what we will focus on and let the rumors and speculation take care of itself.”

Aside from the Unilever chatter, speculation has been stoked partly by the fact that activist Nelson Peltz owns a stake in Procter & Gamble, and may be looking to spark sector consolidation.

Other possible suitors include Johnson & Johnson as well as the partnership formed by billionaire Warren Buffett and Brazilian conglomerate 3G Capital, which owns Kraft Heinz.

Colgate declined to comment on what Cook told investors.