Huge Bid for Starwood Hotels Puts Chinese Firm in Spotlight
Beijing — A $14 billion bid for Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc. surfaced Monday, putting a spotlight on Chinese firm Anbang Insurance Group and complicating a plan to meld Starwood and Marriott International Inc. into the largest hotel company. Starwood told Marriott on Friday that it received an unsolicited offer from a consortium led by Anbang, according to a statement released Monday by Marriott. Starwood confirmed that...
Oil Glut Expected to Last a While
Even if Saudi Arabia wins its struggle with U.S. shale producers over market share, it will face a new billion-barrel adversary. It won’t be regional nemesis Iran, a resurgent Iraq or long-standing competitor Russia. The answer will be more prosaic: Even when overproduction ends, a stockpile surplus of more than 1 billion barrels built up since 2014 will remain, weighing on prices. Inventories will keep accumulating until the end of...
Conagra Playing Catch Up With Major U.S. Food Companies
In the 10 months since taking the helm at Conagra Foods Inc., Sean Connolly has sold a private-label unit for $2.7 billion, announced plans to spin off a business that supplies potatoes to fast-food chains, and decided to move the company’s headquarters to Chicago from Omaha, Neb. So why this flurry of changes? Conagra, it turns out, has a lot of catching up to do. In recent years, other big U.S. food and beverage companies, including...
Alphabet Tops Apple in Total Value
San Francisco — Alphabet, Google’s new parent company, topped Apple as the world’s most valuable business in after-hours trading Monday after reporting surging earnings. Alphabet Inc. earned $4.9 billion in net income on revenue of $21.3 billion in the fourth quarter. If not for employee stock expenses and certain other items, Google said it would have earned $8.67 per share. That figure easily topped the average estimate of $8.10 per...
Consumer Confidential: A Big Political Battle Over Dodd-Frank Financial Reforms Is Coming in 2016
Forgive and forget. Or just pretend that banks’ greedy and reckless behavior never happened. That seems to be the sentiment behind what’s certain to be one of the biggest political battles in 2016: whether we should roll back financial reforms put in place after the financial meltdown that nearly brought the global economy to its knees. At issue is what’s known as Dodd-Frank, aka the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer...
