Sulzer: VR President Suzanne Thoma also takes over operationally
Suzanne Thoma, President of the Sulzer Board of Directors, at a NZZ event.
no. Suzanne Thoma, President of the Board of Directors at the Sulzer industrial group, will also take over operational business in the future. As the company announced on Monday, Thoma was appointed Executive President by the Board of Directors. She replaces Frédéric Lalanne, who announced his resignation at the end of October 2022.
The change at the operational top comes as a surprise. As Sulzer further explained, Thoma was commissioned by the Board of Directors with a “comprehensive review and realignment of the strategy”. In view of the permanently changing market environment and the associated structural shift in demand in the energy and infrastructure sector, there is a need for action.
Goldman plans major restructuring
Goldman Sachs could face its third major restructuring in four years.
(Bloomberg) As part of a major restructuring, Goldman Sachs Group plans to combine its key investment banking and trading businesses into one division, according to the Wall Street Journal. Asset and wealth management are to be combined in another unit, reports the Wall Street Journal, citing informed circles.
According to the information provided, a third department will include transaction banking, the bank’s portfolio of financial technology platforms, the special lender GreenSky and the cooperation with Apple and General Motors. The restructuring could be announced within days, according to the WSJ. A spokeswoman for Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong declined to comment.
The move would be the third major restructuring of Goldman’s businesses by CEO David Solomon in four years. Cost overruns and failure to meet profitability targets in the consumer lending business have fueled dissatisfaction within the bank and fueled discussions about a broader restructuring, Bloomberg previously reported.
Nikola founder Trevor Milton convicted of fraud
Trevor Milton on Wednesday, October 12, 2022 in New York.
gds. Trevor Milton, the founder of American electric truck company Nikola, has been convicted of fraud. This was announced by a jury in New York on Friday (14 October). Now the entrepreneur faces a prison sentence of several years.
Prosecutors argued that Milton lured retail investors into buying Nikola stock by misrepresenting the company’s products and capabilities in numerous interviews, podcasts and on television. Among other things, he greatly exaggerated Nikola’s capacity to produce trucks that run on hydrogen fuel cells.
It was “lie after lie after lie,” Deputy Prosecutor Jordan Estes told the jury in her closing argument on Thursday, according to various American news portals. Milton founded Nikola in 2015, taking the company public just five years later, where it briefly reached a market value of $3.3 billion. At the IPO, Nikola still hadn’t sold a single truck. Today, the company has a market cap of $1.33 billion.
Milton’s lawyers called the case “distorted” and claimed their client never intended to mislead potential investors. Furthermore, statements were not material enough to influence the decisions of investors.
European public prosecutor’s office investigates vaccine purchases by the EU
Via SMS to the vaccine deal? A dose of Pfizer/Biontech is prepared for use at a vaccination center.
(dpa) The EU’s billion-dollar corona vaccine purchases have come under the scrutiny of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office. “The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) confirms that it is investigating the purchase of Covid-19 vaccines in the European Union,” the authority announced on Friday (14 October). This confirmation is “due to the extremely high level of public interest”. No further details would be disclosed at this time.
During the pandemic, the EU Commission had negotiated and concluded contracts for hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine on behalf of member states. The procedure was repeatedly criticized because the contracts were only partially made public or because there were delays in the delivery of the vaccine.
What exactly the public prosecutor’s office is investigating for remains unclear. A deal for up to 1.8 billion doses from Pfizer/Biontech in spring 2021 has been particularly criticized for months. The contract volume was estimated at 35 billion euros at the time. As the “New York Times” reported, the personal contact between von der Leyen and Pfizer boss Albert Bourla was decisive for the conclusion. They are also said to have exchanged text messages.
The EU Commission refused journalists access to the text messages in question. According to a September report, the authority did not provide the European Court of Auditors with information about the transaction. The European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly sharply criticized the actions of the EU Commission.
IMF lowers growth forecast for Europe
In highly developed European countries, the economy is unlikely to grow at all in 2023. VW factory in Zwickau.
(dpa) According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Europe’s economy will grow significantly less than previously assumed, partly because of the war in Ukraine. Projected growth in advanced European economies is likely to average 0.6 percent in 2023, said Alfred Kammer, director of the International Monetary Fund’s Europe department. That is another 0.7 percentage points less than assumed in the summer. For 2022, growth is expected to be 3.2 percent.
In emerging European economies, growth should therefore average 1.7 percent. That is one percentage point less than forecast in July. “Growth will decline and inflation will remain high,” Kammer said. The forecasts for Europe are gloomy. The downside risks to growth clearly outweigh the negative ones, he added. In the case of inflation, on the other hand, there is a risk that it could be higher than previously assumed.
A complete disruption in the remaining Russian gas supplies to Europe combined with a cold winter could lead to rationing, Kammer warned. In some Central and Eastern European countries, this could lead to a decline in gross domestic product of up to 3 percent. Such a development would also further fuel inflation.
Vögele Shoes receives a debt restructuring moratorium
tsf. The Swiss shoe chain Vögele Shoes has been in crisis for years. Now the company was apparently able to avert bankruptcy at the last moment. As the See-Gaster district court in Uznach announced on Friday, the company has been granted the definitive debt restructuring moratorium.
The administrator responsible receives approval to sell the shop fittings in branches that have already been closed or are yet to be closed, or to leave them to the respective landlords as part of a settlement.
Karl Vögele AG has gone through several changes of ownership. In 2018, the Polish CCC Group, which specializes in shoes and accessories, took over the Swiss company for CHF 10 million. In June 2021, the Poles sold the company, which had meanwhile shrunk significantly, to Hanover-based cm.Shoes and the financial investor GA Europe.
In the past few months, the company has cut around 180 jobs and closed 51 branches. There are currently 28 branches.
US authorities are investigating Musk over Twitter takeover
Elon Musk is far from there on Twitter.
(Reuters) The Twitter takeover by Elon Musk is far from complete. Now the American federal authorities are also investigating Musk. As announced on Twitter, the authorities have started investigations into Musk’s behavior in the $44 billion takeover. The focus of the investigations is not clear. The filing states that Musk is under investigation, but does not say what exactly the investigation relates to. The hide-and-seek game and the deception must stop, it says only in the court application.
US bank Morgan Stanley’s profit collapses
(dpa) The American money house Morgan Stanley suffered from a sustained slump in investment banking in the third quarter and earned significantly less. Net income fell 30 percent year-on-year to $2.6 billion, Morgan Stanley said on Friday in New York. Revenues declined 12 percent to $13.0 billion. Analysts had expected better numbers. The share initially fell by almost three percent before the market.
As in the previous quarter, Morgan Stanley struggled particularly in traditional investment banking, which includes supporting IPOs and mergers. Revenue collapsed by 55 percent. Fears of inflation and recession have unsettled many companies and slowed down business. In view of the negative trend on the stock exchanges, things also went worse than expected in the important share trading division. A bright spot in the balance sheet was asset management, where revenues rose by three percent.
JP Morgan also earns less
(dpa) The largest US bank JP Morgan Chase had to accept a drop in profits in the summer despite a significant increase in interest income. At a good 9.7 billion dollars, the surplus in the third quarter was around 17 percent lower than a year earlier, as the money house announced on Friday in New York. Loan loss provisions and high write-downs on securities virtually offset the increase in earnings.
However, bank boss Jamie Dimon now expects net interest income to be even higher than before for the year as a whole: apart from the corporate and investment bank, it is now expected to rise to $61.5 billion instead of $58 billion. The stock gained around 2 percent premarket.
In the third quarter, JP Morgan posted adjusted earnings of $33.5 billion, up 10 percent from a year earlier and more than analysts had expected. Net interest income even jumped more than a quarter to $17.6 billion. However, the bank added $1.5 billion to its loan loss allowance after releasing a similar amount of provisions in the prior-year period. Write-downs on securities also hit almost a billion dollars. Nevertheless, bank boss Dimon hopes to be able to resume buying back shares in early 2023. The bank suspended its buyback program in July to meet higher regulatory capital requirements.