By and March 27, 2018, 9:01 AM EDT Updated on March 27, 2018, 7:24 PM EDT The continuing economic expansion and pending benefit from U.S. tax cuts offer a crucial window for companies to reduce leverage and get ready for the next downturn, according to $808 billion asset manager Aberdeen Standard Investments.“There is too much U.S. corporate debt to cope with a U.S. recession,” Craig MacDonald, the firm’s global head of fixed income, said in a telephone interview from Melbourne, while noting that he still sees a “relatively strong” global economy. “It’s very important that this deleveraging occurs, as over-levered corporates pose a tail risk to markets,” he said.Ballooning company debt is unnerving investors as short-term borrowing costs rise, concerns of a trade war persist and central banks move to take back unprecedented liquidity. Guggenheim Partners reckons the next recession will originate in the highly leveraged … [Read more...] about Companies Must Pay Down Debt Now, $800 Billion Fund Manager Warns
Companies
Twitter Falls on Citron’s Bet Against Company
Twitter Inc. plunged to its lowest price in six weeks after short-seller Citron Research said it was betting against the company because of potential privacy regulations.Citron said it’s taking a short position in Twitter stock, meaning it’s borrowing shares with the bet that the price will fall and it will be able to buy them at a lower price to replace those it borrowed. The firm pointed toward the criticism of rival social network Facebook Inc. after reports that a political consulting firm associated with Donald Trump’s 2016 U.S. presidential campaign improperly gained access to the personal data of 50 million Facebook users.“Of all social media, they are most vulnerable to privacy regulation,” Citron wrote of Twitter. The firm said an increasing portion of Twitter’s revenue is coming from its data licensing business, which “makes this money from selling user data even from private messages.”Twitter shares fell 12 percent to $28.07 at … [Read more...] about Twitter Falls on Citron’s Bet Against Company
Companies Seek Ways to Hold On to Customer Data Under New EU Privacy Law
Nicholas Oliver gathers reams of personal information about users of his mobile app: age, sex, location, profession, relationship status, and more—and uses it to send them targeted advertising. It sounds like just the sort of business model that might be in jeopardy once the European Union’s sweeping General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) takes effect on May 25.But Oliver’s not worried. His London startup, People.io, which provides market research for companies and gives them a pool of potential recipients of targeted advertising, makes it clear to customers why they are handing over their information. It even pays them to do so.Consumers accrue points for answering questionnaires and for viewing advertisements that brands push through the app. The points can be cashed in at merchants such as Amazon, Apple, and Netflix. “We don’t want to hide the monetary value of people’s data,” Oliver says. “We want to make it explicit.”A … [Read more...] about Companies Seek Ways to Hold On to Customer Data Under New EU Privacy Law
Mark Zuckerberg shows why giving company founders total control can be disastrous
Then there are cases like the game company Zynga, which went public around the same time as Facebook with a stock structure that gave founder Mark Pincus and his insider pals 98.2% of the company's voting power. Zynga peaked shortly after its IPO at $14.69, and currently is trading below $4. Snap Inc., the creator of the Snapchat app, gave its 20-something co-founders, Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, nearly 89% voting control. Snap closed at $24.48 the day of its IPO a year ago; it's now trading around $16, amid questions about whether it's got much of a future. … [Read more...] about Mark Zuckerberg shows why giving company founders total control can be disastrous
This 220-Year-Old German Bank’s Considering a Robo-Adviser for Companies
(Machine translation provided by Google and reviewed by Bloomberg editors.)220-year-old Hamburg-based private bank M.M.Warburg & CO, which now uses an online asset manager to also attract private clients with smaller wallets, might expand this offer to semi-institutional customers by the end of the year, according to investment chief Christian Jasperneite.The company’s so-called Warburg Navigator, which was launched last year, accepts private clients with a minimum investment of just 20,000 euros. For a fee of 1.2 percent, the bank handles the investment of assets, such as ETFs and actively managed funds. In the financial industry, the term robo-adviser has prevailed for such offers, however Warburg claims to rely not only on algorithms, but also to incorporate its own market forecasts in portfolios."This could be interesting for semi-institutional clients too, and we see a gap in the market here," Jasperneite said in in an interview with Bloomberg. He pointed to foundations … [Read more...] about This 220-Year-Old German Bank’s Considering a Robo-Adviser for Companies