Here are five things you need to know this morning:
Couche-Tard upsizes 7-Eleven offer to Big Gulp status: Alimentation Couche-Tard has reportedly sweetened its takeover offer for the Japanese owner of 7-Eleven, boosting its valuation for the convenience store giant to US$47 billion. Citing anonymous sources familiar with the bid, Bloomberg reports the sweetened offer is about 20 per cent above the initial $39 billion price tag floated last month. No talks are underway between the two sides, but the revised offer is a sign that Couche-Tard is still very interested in pursuing the ambitious merger – even if 7-Eleven owner Seven & i Holdings’ response thus far has been chillier than a 72-ounce Slurpee.
Chinese stock plunge: China’s main stock index had its worst day in more than four years today, as traders are seemingly fed up with Beijing’s dithering on stimulus spending. The CSI 300 fell by more than seven per cent, more than wiping out the gains it clocked on Tuesday after reopening after the Golden Week holiday. Concerns about Chinese equities first emerged at the end of September before moving higher after Beijing announced a slew of spending reforms.
Boeing withdraws offer to workers in dramatic turn: Things are going from bad to worse for planemaker Boeing as the company has withdrawn its most recent offer to its workers’ union as talks have broken down. Both Boeing and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers are blaming each other for the sudden break down of talks, saying the other side was asking for things that are non-negotiable. Boeing has had a 2024 to remember, with high-profile mechanical problems on planes leading to an executive housecleaning and now labour strife. The company is burning through US$10 billion in cash this year, and its shares are responding accordingly. The now-withdrawn offer included 30 per cent pay increases plus boosts to retirement benefits. It’s unclear what the next steps might be here.
Rate hikes in 2025? Forget cuts — the chief investment officer of RBC BlueBay says the policies of both presidential tickets could compel the U.S. Federal Reserve to have to raise rates next year because of resurgent inflation. So says Mark Dowding in an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday, arguing that he still expects the Fed to cut a few more times from here, but if some of tariff, immigration, employment and spending plans out there come to pass, “we could be talking about a Fed hike not a Fed cut” by the middle of 2025. Speaking of the Fed, we’ll get a look at the nitty gritty of their recent policy decision to cut rates by 50 points when the minutes of that meeting are released this afternoon.
Wall Street pay packets fell again last year: Compensation at Wall Street firms fell for the second year in a row in 2023, a new report from the N.Y. State Comptroller’s office shows. The average salary was US$471,370 last year including bonuses. That’s down 5.2 per cent from 2022’s level, which was itself down 8.7 from the halcyon days of 2021. Compensation may be trending lower, but overall profits for the industry are not. The report says pretax profits at broker dealers reached $23.2 billion in the first half of this year. That’s up 80 per cent from the prior year’s level. And even if pay packets are getting smaller, the total number of people employed in the sector is still expanding, with 214,900 jobs. That’s up 15,600 from what it was before the pandemic in 2019.