London (CNN Business)Happy Sunday. A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business' Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. Just three months ago, the escalating US-China trade war and a troubling signal in the US bond market induced a global panic, sparking a selloff in stocks and, for the first time in a decade, resurfacing the dreaded r-word: recession. Now, investors around the world are shrugging off their concerns. Sentiment is improving — allowing markets to continue pushing higher and higher. US stock indexes hit all-time highs again on Friday, with the Dow climbing above 28,000 points for the first time in history. See here: "Recession concerns vanish" was the takeaway from Bank of America Merrill Lynch's most recent survey of fund managers. Expectations for global growth in the next 12 months had their biggest leap ever between the October and November. Investors are sitting on less cash while boosting their exposure to global … [Read more...] about The case for more stock market records
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Vegan cheese waits for its big moment. These companies want to make it happen.
Fridges across Europe and the U.S. are filled with almond drinks, oat milk and plant-based meat substitutes. So where's the imitation cheese? Until it starts to taste more like the real thing, it's likely to stay out of the kitchen. The global vegan cheese market was worth $1.9 billion last year, according to Future Market Insights. That's just a tiny fraction of the dairy-alternatives industry and the $121 billion in real cheese. Much of it is mozzarella or cheddar-used in cooking where the taste and feel can be disguised, rather than enjoyed on its own or accompanied by a nice chardonnay. A new breed of entrepreneurs is trying to change that by ridding fake cheese of its rubbery reputation and getting in on the boom in plant-based burgers, milk, yogurt and ice cream. One of them is New Roots, headquartered at the foot of the Swiss Alps-the home of fondue and raclette. Founded only four years ago, the 15-employee company now supplies some 80 tons of imitation camembert, cream cheese … [Read more...] about Vegan cheese waits for its big moment. These companies want to make it happen.
The world’s most valuable company: Saudi Arabia puts $1.7 trillion price tag on its oil monopoly
London (CNN Business)Saudi Arabia believes its giant state oil monopoly is worth as much as $1.7 trillion. In a statement Sunday, Saudi Aramco said it was aiming to sell about 1.5% of its 200 billion shares in a partial privatization for between 30 riyals ($8) and 32 riyals ($8.53) each. That means Aramco, the most profitable company in the world, could be worth between 6 trillion riyals ($1.6 trillion) and 6.4 trillion riyals ($1.7 trillion) — making it also by far the world's most valuable company ahead of Apple (AAPL). That won't be the only record to fall if Aramco achieves the higher price: at that level, the share sale would raise just over $25 billion, making it slightly bigger than Alibaba's (BABA) 2014 debut on the New York Stock Exchange, so far the world's biggest IPO. Saudi Arabia is selling shares in Aramco for the first time as part of an economic diversification plan aimed at weaning the kingdom off oil. Read More Aramco has vast oil reserves and … [Read more...] about The world’s most valuable company: Saudi Arabia puts $1.7 trillion price tag on its oil monopoly
Silicon Valley is churning out new paper millionaires. Nearly all are men
With companies such as Uber Technologies Inc., Slack Technologies Inc. and Pinterest Inc. going public this year, the question has been: How many millionaires will Silicon Valley mint? What’s not being asked is how much of that new wealth will go to women.The answer, according to a new study released last week, is: not much. Carta, an equity management platform, crunched data from more than 300,000 employees at 10,000-plus companies, and found 4 in 5 paper millionaires are men.The jobs that land the biggest equity packages tend to be held by men in C-suite roles, said Emily Kramer, Carta’s vice president of marketing. “As wealth goes up, the percentage of millionaires who are women go down because they are not CEOs, CFOs or founders,” she said. Chief marketing officers, the most common executive role held by women, have the lowest median equity award, 39% less than that of chief financial officers, who tend to get the most generous packages after chief … [Read more...] about Silicon Valley is churning out new paper millionaires. Nearly all are men
