TheChek News Flow

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Macro :

- Bond Traders Say Don’t Count Out June Hike After Yellen Remarks

- Japan PM Abe planning to propose a ¥5-10T stimulus package during a special legislative session after the upper House elections in July - Nikkei - just two months into FY16, Abe will propose a supplementary budget of ¥5-10T

- Japan PM Abe said to delay the planned sales tax increase by 2.5 years to Oct 2019 - Nikkei citing govt official - Abe said to have expressed his intentions to senior LDP party officials on Saturday night.

Keep an eye on : 

- AC FP : Considering sale of $1.1B European hotel portfolio, looking to sell hotel properties in London, Dublin, and Amsterdam that operate under Hilton's DoubleTree brand

- AIR FP : U.K. Poised to Pick Boeing for New Apache Helicopters: Telegraph

- AA US : Alcoa Says Venture Partner Seeking to Block Business Split

- AAPL US : Apple Mulls Adding Facial-Recognition Technology in Device: CNET

- BAYN GY : Bayer May Table Improved Monsanto Bid This Week: Sunday Times

- CRG IM : Carige Considers EU300m-to-EU400m Capital Increase: Repubblica

- CRG IM : Carige Says Report on Possible Capital Increase Is Groundless

- EDF FP : Hinkley Point C’s future threatened by continued union opposition - Guardian

- ENI IM : Eni says militants attacked the Agip trunk pipeline in the Niger Delta - however, it was not the Bonny Light Nembe 1,2 and 3 pipelines that the militants claimed they had attacked.

- GOOGL US : France’s Sapin Rules Out Google Tax Deal, Reuters Says

- SKB GY : Koenig & Bauer May Raise Capital for More Deals: Euro am Sonntag

- LIGHT NA : Philips Lighting's balance sheet allows for potential takeovers - Het Financieele Dagblad

- MKTO US : Microsoft Said Prepared to Bid for Marketo: StreetInsider

- PNL NA : BPost working on PostNL acquisition 

- PNL NA : Bpost / PostNL: an expected announcement Monday - echo.be - http://bit.ly/1XGHkn7

- PUMA Energy : IPO : Trafigura’s Puma Energy Said to List GBP4b IPO, Sky Says

- RBS LN : RBS to Cut 450 Services Positions Across U.K., FT Reports

- RCS IM : Bonomi’s RCS Offer Deadline Suspended by Italian Regulator

- SCMN VX : Swisscom Chair Says State Co. Vote May ‘Poison’ Market Cap: T-A

- TSCO LN : Philip Day Makes Bid for Tesco’s Dobbies Unit: Sunday Times

- TWTR US : Alphabet Acquisition of Twitter ’Makes Sense’, Says Axiom

- UCG IM : UniCredit Outgoing CEO Rules Out Becoming Bank’s Chairman

- VIV FP : Subsidiary Universal Music Group acquires digital agency Fame House; no terms disclosed Acquired Fame House, an award-winning, innovative digital marketing agency whose clients include artists, brands and festivals including Eminem, Pearl Jam, Mitchell & Ness and Electric Zoo.

- VOW3 GY : VW Seeks 50% Electric-Car Market Share by 2030: Automobilwoche

- VOw3 GY : VW Paid Pischetsrieder EU50m for Post-CEO Work: Bild am Sonntag

When Moët Hennessy unveils its latest top-end wine to its leading international clients next month, it will not be inviting guests to Bordeaux or even to Burgundy. Instead, they will arrive at the French embassy in China.

Ao Yun, as the powerful red is called, is grown, produced and bottled in Adong, an area perched 2,600m above sea level on the edge of the Tibetan plateau in one of the remotest places on Earth.

MH, part of French luxury conglomerate LVMH and owner of brands such as Dom Pérignon, Krug and Château d’Yquem, is targeting the international crowd as much as the Chinese market with the wine, priced at €300 a bottle.

“We are starting to see wine collectors around the world wanting to have iconic wines produced in China,” Jean-Guillaume Prats, president of MH’s estates and wines division, told the Financial Times.

Mr Prats said Moët will begin marketing Ao Yun — roughly translated, the name means “sacred cloud” — to connoisseurs and collectors in Europe from next month, and in China from October.

Production at the vineyard, in the south-west province of Yunnan, close to the Tibetan border, is a tiny 24,000 bottles but Mr Prats said the plan was to reach 50,000 within the next five years. The exotic location was picked for its climatic conditions, rare in China, of not being either too wet or too cold.

So far, critics have applauded the Ao Yun 2013, the first vintage — a fact that helps explain the retail price.

As Mr Prats said: “We certainly would never have priced it at that level if we were not confident or if the critics around the world had not said that it was an exceptional wine.”

But the price tag is also a reflection of the challenging logistics, which make Ao Yun the most expensive wine to produce in the estates and wines division’s portfolio.

MH employs 150 Tibetan farmers to tend to the grapes on 320 terraced plots that until recently were more used to yaks, tomatoes and even the odd marijuana plant than to Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc.

“They do everything that is farming and we do everything that is winemaking,” Mr Prats said.

Several producers have already started to grow grapes in the area, where Moët has leased 30 hectares of an available 300 hectares considered apt for vines. But the Paris-based producer is the only non-Chinese investor.

It is also the only one that has taken the decision to produce dry red wine on site, which is only accessible via a 4,300m mountain pass — just one part of a four and a half-hour journey over unpaved roads from Shangri-La, the nearest airport.

“The logistics of vinifying on the spot is a real nightmare,” he said with a smile. “It’s an extraordinary venture.”

Bpost / PostNL: an expected announcement Monday

The Belgian and Dutch Post announce their merger on Monday. A statement is expected. Probably before market opening.

Two days after the official marriage between giant FedEx parcel delivery and TNT Express, the Belgian and Dutch markets have learned the probable merger of their incumbent postal operators, bpost and PostNL. Although officially we talk about a merger of equals, concretely is that bpost launch a bid for Dutch rival.

We wait for a statement on Monday, probably before market opening.

In exchange, with a valuation of € 4.8 billion, bpost weighs nearly three times as heavy as PostNL

(1.7 billion). The situation in terms of sales is very different, since PostNL finished fiscal 2015 with a turnover of 3.5 billion euros, against 2.4 billion in bpost. We also know that bpost has a comfortable mattress cash, the redemption being Lagardère Retail Travel Belgium should just start.

Who said mass cash, said offensive. Since March, the Belgian operator would already offers twice on its northern neighbor, meeting every time the opposition of its target. Revised upwards, his third attempt would have been more successful.

Offer cash or as securities?

Will it be a cash offer or combining a mixture of cash and shares? If bpost paid partly in shares, this could explain the statements made Friday morning at RTBF Jean-Pascal Labille, former Minister (PS) of Public Enterprises. He had claimed that the state was about to give ten percent of bpost capital to a European postal operator. The current Minister of tutelage, Alexander De Croo, had immediately responded by denying that the state, the majority shareholder with 51% of bpost, intends to sell its shares. If the supply of bpost on PostNL includes a payment in shares equivalent to ten percent of its capital, neither man will be forfeit.

The new law authorizing the privatization of bpost or Proximus now enables such a payment in shares. Although such a bias by the Belgian government lost its majority in bpost, there nevertheless remain the largest shareholder of the group formed with PostNL. Because although it retained its own shares, the largest shareholder in the Dutch, the US investment fund FMR LLC, owns only a ten percent.

Finally, we could therefore see the emergence of a new transnational actor postal weighing 5.9 billion in revenue and valued at over 6.5 billion ... that would have the Belgian State for first shareholder - or majority shareholder if the payment is made entirely in cash!

It would be quite funny, when we remember that there are a dozen years, it was the Dutch Post Office had planned to buy its Belgian counterpart, then 100% owned by the state. Funny too, so we just vote the privatization law, because that is private?

Unions on the alert

The direction of bpost and staff representatives have a meeting to their calendar to Monday. Friday, rumors and speculations born following the statements of Jean-Pascal Labille have caused some agitation among the bpost unions. Mark Mulder, the Liberal Union, it is "logical" that the postal operators wish to collaborate, "certainly when you know it exists on the market behemoths like TNT / FedEx. It would be crazy not to find partner". He also recalled that bpost had almost redeem the Romanian Post a few months ago before giving up due to risk "European" (the fear that the European Commission will put Posta Romana fined for state aid). The union leader has nevertheless expressed concern about the consequences of such collaboration for bpost staff. "What about differences in workers their current status?" has he asked.

His colleague of the socialist union responded with surprise to the information and regretted that trade unions were not informed in recent months.

About the joint meeting on Monday, Mark Mulder said: "We will decide how to react in a common front." Shares are not excluded, he added. What give grist to observers who believe that by making its release broadcast on RTBF, Jean-Pascal Labille sought to cause social unrest boot. For his part, former minister says he is concerned about the disappearance of the public status of the company. But that is already registered in the privatization law ...