TheChek News Flow

Uber and Amazon are launching slick new apps that promise to widen the market for high-tech food delivery — but the bill for restaurants won’t be cheap.

Uber will begin in March to deploy its vast network of taxis and bike couriers to deliver gourmet pizzas, burgers and salads through its new “UberEats” platform — and will demand an unprecedentedly steep 30 percent cut of the bill from restaurants, sources told The Post.

Amazon won’t be far behind, with plans to charge eateries 27.5 percent of the check, according to interviews with persons briefed on the situation and documents reviewed by The Post.

Amazon is preparing a mobile ordering platform that will include more than 300 Manhattan eateries through its Prime Now app, sources said.

That’s substantially above the 12 percent to 24 percent that Grubhub and Seamless charge restaurants for food orders, sources said — a rate that is already seen by many mom-and-pop establishments as punishing.

It’s also ahead of the 15 percent to 23 percent charged by rivals like Delivery.com, DoorDash, Postmates and Caviar.

Reps for UberEats have lately told cash-strapped restaurants that charging any less would be “unsustainable,” sources said. The new, full-scale platform replaces a more limited quick-delivery service for lunch launched last year that’s being renamed Uber Instant.

On top of the 30 percent cut it’s charging restaurants, UberEats has been adding a $5 delivery fee to customers in a recent pilot program in Toronto, sources said.

That’s on par with delivery fees of between $2 and $7 typically tagged on by services like Caviar and DoorDash.

Online giant Amazon, which began rolling out the “Amazon Restaurants” feature on its Prime Now app in Chicago last month, has waived delivery fees thus far.

“They’re still trying to really figure out what this is,” one source said of Amazon’s plans. “Is it [a customer] acquisition strategy for [Amazon Prime], or something they’d like to open up to the broader public?”

Officials at Uber and Amazon didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Despite the stiff fees, some Toronto eateries have already acquired a taste for UberEats.

“We’ve had a very good experience with Uber — no complaints,” says Gary Quinto, a partner at Pizzeria Libretto Group, which operates a half-dozen area restaurants.

Still, it’s unclear what kind of threat the higher-priced UberEats and Amazon apps pose to rivals. Mighty Quinn’s Barbeque, about to open its fourth location in Manhattan, currently uses Caviar for deliveries. The chain may try UberEats when it launches.

“It’s kind of volume-contingent — we look at gross-profit dollars instead of gross-profit percentages,” says co-founder Micha Magid, adding, “We don’t need to be on every single platform.”

Some players pooh-pooh the idea that food deliverers need fat percentages to survive.

Munch Ado, a new restaurant search engine that’s in the middle of raising $20 million, says it delivers better service than Seamless and Grubhub’s no-frills site for just 8.5 percent of a restaurant’s bill.

“If we’re going to build a long-term, sustainable model, the pain threshold for restaurants is 10 percent,” says Munch Ado Chief Executive Puneet Talwar.

Weekly Performance

Dow-1.59% S&P-3% Nasdaq-5.44% Russell-4.81% Ibovespa+0.46% Nikkei-3.99% Hang Seng-2.01% Shanghai+0.95% EuroStoxx-5.44% CAC-4.90% DAX-5.22% Ibex-3.59% MIB-7.54% SMI -4.32% FTSE -3.87%

Macro :

- Iran Seeks Payment for Oil Exports in Euros: Shana

- Russia Weighs Convertible Bonds for Privatization Deals: Finmin

- Iran Sees Oil Exports to Europe at 300,000 Barrels/Day: Shana

- China Willing to Negotiate W/ WTO Members on Steel Overcapacity

- China Jan. Retail Auto Sales Rise 13.5% on Year, PCA Says

- Italy Will Probably Consider Bank Measures on Wednesday: Stampa

Keep an eye on :

- AAL LN : Anglo American rumoured to have made progress with potential Samancor stake sale - FT

- AZN LN : AstraZeneca Cancer Treatment Shows Promise in Study: FT

- BARC LN : Barclays urged to dispose of US investment bank - The Times

- CO FP : TCC Said to Buy Groupe Casino’s Big C Stake for $3.46b: WSJ

- CSGN VX : Credit Suisse CEO to Take Substantial Bonus Cut: SonntagsZeitung

- GBF GY : Bilfinger Sells Water Technology Business to Chengdu Techcent

- GPRO US : GoPro, Microsoft Sign Licensing Pact; GoPro Gains Post-Mkt --> +6.42% in after hours

- GSK LN : GlaxoSmithKline Investors Divided Over Break-Up Calls: Telegraph

- BMPS IM : Paschi Considering Actions to Speed Recovery, Sale of Bad Loans

- BT/A LN : BT Group Finance Chief Chanmugam Said to Retire This Year: Sky

- EZJ LN : EasyJet Investors Reject Founder’s Call to Boost Div: Telegraph

- NOVN VX : Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation Gets Orphan Status

- OPERA NO : Opera Software could be takeover target for Qihoo - Dagens Naeringsliv, Finansavisen

- PAL AV : Palfinger has shortlist of potential takeover targets; talks ongoing - OOeNachrichten

- RR/ LN : Rolls-Royce Planning to Cut Dividend, Sunday Times Reports

- SIE GY : Siemens to Cut Jobs in Process, Drive Technology: Handelsblatt

- SYNN VX : ChemChina Won’t Restructure Syngenta HQ for Five Years: SamS

- TKA AV : Telekom Austria could be fully privatised without infrastructure

- VOLVB SS : Volvo CEO not planning disposals

- VNA GY : Vonovia CEO Says Deutsche Wohnen to Remain Listed Company: FAZ

- VOW3 GY : Volkswagen Delayed Earnings Report May Come in Late April: Bild

DUBAI—Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi met with his Venezuelan counterpart on Sunday but didn’t announce any plans for the production cut the South American country says is needed to prop up crude prices.

Venezuela’s Eulogio del Pino traveled to Riyadh this weekend as part of a tour of oil-producing countries both within and outside of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, including Iran and nonmember Russia. Mr. del Pino wants Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, to come around to his call for an output reduction that could bring the world’s vast supply of oil back in line with demand.

Mr. Naimi called the meeting “successful,” with a “positive atmosphere,” according to the state-run Saudi News Agency. Mr. del Pino, on his official Twitter page, said the meeting was productive and focused on cooperating to “stabilize the international oil market.”

OPEC and non-OPEC “countries must reach a consensus to bring stability to the global oil market,” Mr. del Pino said on Twitter.

But neither said there was an agreement to slash oil output. Neither mentioned Mr. del Pino’s call for an emergency OPEC meeting to discuss such a cut, an idea Saudi Arabia has opposed.

Oil prices have fallen more than 70% from their peak of $114 a barrel in June 2014, hitting $27 a barrel in January and now hovering around $35 a barrel.

The oil-market swoon has devastated the economies of oil-producing countries such as Venezuela, where government officials say revenues plunged 70% and the economy shrank 5% in 2015. Venezuela’s 2016 budget is based on a price of $40 a barrel. The country’s heavy oil was priced at $25.27 a barrel in the week ending Friday, according to the oil ministry.

That has put pressure on Saudi Arabia to return to its traditional role as a so-called swing producer, raising and cutting production to regulate prices. Saudi officials have said they believe production cuts would be ineffective given booming American oil output and decided instead to open up the kingdom’s own taps to near record levels and fight for market share.

In recent weeks, Saudi Arabia has signaled a willingness to pull back on near-record production levels, but not on its own. Iraq has said it would join a coordinated cut from its own record output, and poorer OPEC members like Venezuela and Algeria have been calling for action for months.

Today’s economic situation in Europe has parallels with the 1930s and Hitler’s speedy recovery

Re-reading John Weitz’s biography of Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler’s Banker , I noted some interesting parallels between the 1930s and now that I had not considered before. It is well known that Hitler relied on Schacht, his central banker, to help fund his rearmament plans. But Weitz also pointed out — and this is potentially relevant to the situation in the eurozone today — that Schacht was only able to pursue his unorthodox policies at the Reichsbank because he had the backing of a dictator.

If an extremist leader came to power in a large eurozone country — France or Italy, say — what would happen if they were to appoint a central banker with the acumen of Schacht? And what would be the chances that such a team could succeed in increasing economic growth in the short term?

Let me say straightaway that I am not comparing anyone to Hitler — or indeed to Schacht. My point concerns what an unorthodox central banker can do if he or she has the political support to break with the prevailing orthodoxy.

Schacht had two stints as president of the Reichsbank — in the 1920s, when he brought an end to the hyperinflation then crippling Germany, and again from 1933 to 1939. It is hard to identify him with a single economic outlook: in the 1920s he was in favour of the gold standard but then, in the early 1930s, he opposed the consensus that promoted the policies of austerity and deflation. Schacht argued, rightly, that Germany was unable to meet the reparation payments specified in the Young Plan, which was adopted in 1929.

On returning to the Reichsbank, Schacht organised a unilateral restructuring of private debt owed by German companies to foreigners. The German economy had already benefited from withdrawal from the gold standard in 1931, and Schacht piled stimulus upon stimulus. One reason for Hitler’s initial popularity in Germany was the speedy recovery from the depression, which was no doubt helped by a loose fiscal and monetary policy mix.

The current policy orthodoxy in Brussels and Frankfurt, which is shared across northern Europe, has some parallels to the deflationary mindset that prevailed in the 1930s. Today’s politicians and central bankers are fixated with fiscal targets and debt reduction. As in the early 1930s, policy orthodoxy has pathological qualities. Whenever they run out of things to say, today’s central bankers refer to “structural reforms”, although they never say what precisely such reforms would achieve.

In principle, the eurozone’s economic problems are not hard to solve: the European Central Bank could hand each citizen a cheque for €10,000. The inflation problem would be solved within days. Or the ECB could issue its own IOUs — which is what Schacht did. Or else the EU could issue debt and the ECB would buy it up. There are lots of ways to print money. They are all magnificent — and illegal.

There are no Nazi parties in the eurozone today, except in Greece. But France and Italy have populist parties on the right that are clearly outside the current policy consensus. Imagine a scenario in which Beppe Grillo, leader of Italy’s Five Star Movement, were to win the Italian election in 2018.

The term of Ignazio Visco, governor or the Bank of Italy, expires in November that year. Mr Grillo would be in a position to appoint his own central banker. Perhaps he would choose someone as resourceful and ruthless as Schacht and able to plot Italy’s way out of the euro, via a parallel currency regime for a transitional period, defaulting on foreign debt in the process.

The devaluation and the increase in public sector investment which would be possible under a new regime could bring instant economic growth.

If Marine Le Pen were to become president of France in 2017, she might have to wait four years before she can seize control of the Bank of France. The term of François Villeroy, the governor, does not expire until 2021. Given the power vested in the French presidency, however, Ms Le Pen might not need the support of her central banker to do whatever she wanted.

I have no doubt that any populist government in Europe would end in disaster but in the short run they may still succeed in raising economic growth, and this is what makes them so dangerous.

We should not expect an exact re-run of the past, however. As Karl Marx put it, this will be history repeating itself first as tragedy, then as farce. Even this cuddlier version of the 1930s would be a tragedy of sorts. The period of ever-closer union in Europe would be over and the euro experiment would have ended in failure.

Groupe Casino has agreed to sell its stake in Thailand’s Big C Supercenter to the country’s TCC Group for €3.1bn excluding debt in a deal that will help the French retailer halve its net debt.

Casino, whose shares have come under pressure in recent months over its leveraged position, said on Sunday that the deal would allow it to reduce its debt by €3.3bn, including roughly €200m of Big C debt that Casino had on its books.

The transaction to sell Casino’s 59 per cent stake values hypermarket operator Big C at THB 252.88 a share, a 28 per cent premium compared with the share price on January 14.

Casino said that it expected the deal to close at the end of March

If completed, the deal would add to a string of recent acquisitions by TCC, which is controlled by Thai billionaire Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi, the country’s richest man.

Big C, which has a market capitalisation of nearly €4.bn, operates more than 700 stores in Thailand, including 125 hypermarkets, with revenue of €3.4bn last year.

Sunday’s announcement fulfils most of Casino’s recent commitment to sell €4bn in assets this year as it seeks to pay down its €6bn of net debt. In addition to selling its Thai assets, the group is looking to offload its operations in Vietnam.

Last month, the French group, which also has significant operations in Brazil, came under pressure as rating agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) put the French retailer on “negative watch”, causing its shares to tumble. The group’s shares have almost halved during the past 12 months.

S&P had signalled its concerns about the French retailer. “The group’s profitability will continue to be fairly weak for an extended period of time and its debt levels, primarily located at the French operations, too high,” the rating agency wrote in a report.

It placed Casino’s long-term BBB- and short-term A3 debt ratings on credit watch, adding that it could lower the long-term standing “by no more than two notches” — a move that would downgrade the group’s debt rating to “junk” status.

That came after Casino’s stock plunged more than 10 per cent in December after short seller and research firm Muddy Waters described it as one of the “most overvalued and misunderstood” companies it had ever studied.

One of its criticisms was that accounting at the group, which operates a string of different supermarket formats in France, including Monoprix and Leader Price, was “misleading” because the company consolidated assets in which it owned only a small stake.

The effect, argued Muddy Waters, made Casino appear less leveraged than it really was.

Casino’s parent and biggest shareholder is Rallye, which holds 48.4 per cent of the group. It uses dividends from Casino to service its net debt of roughly €2.4bn.

In the days that followed Muddy Waters’ report, Casino struck back with a detailed argument of its own and saying that it had “solid business dynamics” and manageable debt levels.

Last month, Casino reported fourth-quarter sales of €11.8bn, 2.7 per cent lower on a like-for-like basis than 12 months earlier — but higher than the €11.6bn analysts had expected.

But high-flying City fund managers and chief investment officers are increasingly in demand from “single family” offices, which handle the money of one person or family.

Wealth managers for a private investment office can earn far more than their counterparts doing jobs in the City of London, recruitment consultants have said.

Initially the City was better paid but now family offices are offering “attractive” salaries, says Tayyab Mohamed, co-founder of Agreus, a family office advisory and recruitment firm. The bonuses are where the real money is made, he added.

Managers can expect to earn between 25-30 per cent of revenue as a top family wealth manager, compared with 10-15 per cent at an investment bank.

Research published last year on single and multi-family offices found that their chief investment officers earn an average of $270,000 a year. Portfolio managers are paid $160,000. Additional incentives for both, are an average of 41 per cent of base salary, the report found.

Figures from Emolument, which crowdsources pay data, suggest London fund managers earn a median salary of £125,000 plus a bonus of £17,000 for the most experienced. A report last year from think-tank New Financial that assessed salaries around the world suggested the average salary for employees of investment banks was $263,000.

“If you were to put chief investment officers’ compensation on to a scattergraph you’d get crosses all over the place; it’s very difficult to see what a normal comparison is,” said Mark Somers, of Somers Partnership, a financial service recruitment firm specialising in wealth management. “But in some single family offices, CIOs are extremely well paid compared with individuals outside managing slightly less money.”

But while the pay might be greater, often the responsibilities are too. Longer worker hours and being permanently on call were negative factor recruiters cited.

“You do put more hours in as you’re on 24-hour call working for a single family office,” said Gina Le Prevost, chief executive of AP Executive. “That is one of the reasons why people leave — they want to get the work/life balance right.”

However, Matthew Norman, deputy chairman of the Family Office Council, says the lifestyle is better.

“You only have one client to keep happy, rather than lots, so there will be fewer investor relations meeting; you’ll have a broader mandate looking at all asset classes and learning more; and you’ll have a nice office in Mayfair rather than in the City.

“It could also be a stepping stone to understanding a future client base more effectively, so when you move back to the City you understand ultra-net-worth families better, and you’ll have a better network.”

China’s foreign-exchange reserves fell to the lowest level in more than three years in January, raising questions about how long Beijing can keep burning through the rainy-day funds to defend the yuan without triggering massive capital flight.

The People’s Bank of China said Sunday that the world’s largest stockpile of foreign currency plunged by $99.5 billion last month, to $3.23 trillion. The drop follows a record $107.9 billion plunge in December and continues a decline that picked up speed in August, as China’s exchange-rate policies started to appear in flux.

In mid-August, the central bank suddenly devalued the yuan, saying it wanted to bring its value more in line with market forces. But the action backfired, as investors panic-sold the currency, forcing the Chinese central bank to dig into the reserves to stabilize it.

Last month, the central bank again had to dig deep into the reserves in the wake of a botched effort to guide the yuan weaker, a move that sparked fears of a deeper-than-expected slowdown in China’s economy, setting off a sharp selloff across global markets for stocks and commodities.

Many investors and analysts are questioning the central bank’s ability to continue such interventions. Already, the central bank is finding itself in a vicious cycle: As it repeatedly draws on the reserves to prop up the yuan, doubts grow about its ability to keep the currency stable, which then causes more money to leave the country, eroding the reserves further.

“It likely will be a long battle,” said an official at China’s central bank. The official cited the difficulties of stabilizing the currency and managing investors’ expectations as the economy slows. “But China still has sufficient reserves to withstand any external shocks,” the official said.

The notion that China has lost a measure of control over its currency is new to a country long criticized for its iron grip to ensure the yuan didn’t appreciate in a way detrimental to its exporters. Similarly, the recent plunge in China’s reserves is a contrast to years of buildup in the pile of cash as China’s economy and export sector boomed.

One question now is how much foreign currency China actually needs to have in reserve.

When the reserves peaked in mid-2014 at nearly $4 trillion, Chinese officials were concerned that the stockpile had become too big to manage efficiently. Much of China’s reserves are parked in low-yielding U.S. government bonds.

The current $3.23 trillion still gives Beijing a large war chest to meet its obligations to foreign creditors. About half of China’s external debt outstanding, which currently stands at $1.53 trillion, is yuan-denominated debt raised overseas, data from the central bank show.

But the reserves appear to be less than abundant if gauged by another measure -- the ratio of the currency reserves to M2, the broad money supply, which includes assets such as savings deposits and money-market funds as well as cash. The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and others use the ratio to gauge the sufficiency of countries’ exchange reserves. The higher the ratio, the lower the likelihood of massive flight into other currencies.

Based on that measure, China should maintain between $2.13 trillion and $4.26 trillion worth of currency reserves to fend off any destructive capital outflow, estimates Zhang Ming, a senior economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank.

“Whether China can keep adequate foreign-exchange reserves will depend on what the central bank is up to,” Mr. Zhang said. If the central bank intends to continue to intervene heavily to keep the yuan stable, he said, “the current level of reserves may not be adequate enough.”

The notion that China has lost a measure of control over its currency is new to a country long criticized for its iron grip to ensure the yuan didn’t appreciate in a way detrimental to its exporters. Similarly, the recent plunge in China’s reserves is a contrast to years of buildup in the pile of cash as China’s economy and export sector boomed.

One question now is how much foreign currency China actually needs to have in reserve.

When the reserves peaked in mid-2014 at nearly $4 trillion, Chinese officials were concerned that the stockpile had become too big to manage efficiently. Much of China’s reserves are parked in low-yielding U.S. government bonds.

The current $3.23 trillion still gives Beijing a large war chest to meet its obligations to foreign creditors. About half of China’s external debt outstanding, which currently stands at $1.53 trillion, is yuan-denominated debt raised overseas, data from the central bank show.

But the reserves appear to be less than abundant if gauged by another measure -- the ratio of the currency reserves to M2, the broad money supply, which includes assets such as savings deposits and money-market funds as well as cash. The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and others use the ratio to gauge the sufficiency of countries’ exchange reserves. The higher the ratio, the lower the likelihood of massive flight into other currencies.

Based on that measure, China should maintain between $2.13 trillion and $4.26 trillion worth of currency reserves to fend off any destructive capital outflow, estimates Zhang Ming, a senior economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank.

“Whether China can keep adequate foreign-exchange reserves will depend on what the central bank is up to,” Mr. Zhang said. If the central bank intends to continue to intervene heavily to keep the yuan stable, he said, “the current level of reserves may not be adequate enough.”