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This is how bad things have got for Rolls-Royce, pride of the UK’s engineering industry: its finance director would prefer to work for Ocado, and his career move looks rational. The online grocer, remarkably, is three times the size of the engine-maker these days by stock market capitalisation, and the share-incentive prospects at his new home will be better to boot.
The timing of Stephen Daintith’s exit will irritate Rolls’ shareholders but it was not the main event amid another set of bleak figures. That was the “severe but plausible downside scenario” that sketched out Rolls’ predicament if a second wave of Covid-19 infections forces more lockdowns and further restrictions on air travel.
In short, the picture would be ugly. Orders for new engines from Airbus and Boeing would fall even further, and Rolls’ revenues from maintaining engines already in service (a vital source of income) would suffer another whack.
That is compared with a backdrop that is already poor: Rolls suffered a £2.8bn outflow in the first six months of this year, with the tally expected to reach £4bn by the end of December. It is why the share price sits close to a 10-year low and Rolls’ debt is rated as junk.
The small consolation for shareholders is that “severe” should not mean catastrophic. As things stand today, Rolls still has some room to borrow and it can improve its balance sheet by selling £2bn of assets, including its Spanish business ITP Aero, which makes blades and parts for engines. In all likelihood it will also try to raise a further £2bn-ish from shareholders.
If the severe situation occurs, it would have to put even more businesses on the block – the German power systems unit would be a candidate. That would be a desperate option, but there is, in theory, a way for Rolls to muddle through.
By the time 2022 arrives it will have shrunk its civil aviation division by a third (at the cost of 8,000 jobs). In the meantime, the defence business is a source of relative calm. The government should worry about Rolls, but not panic – or at least not yet.
The outlook for shareholders, though, is deeply unclear. The share price is a hostage to Covid infections and investors must assume that the chief executive, Warren East, will hit them with a rights issue of uncertain size at any moment. The twitchiness was reflected in a share price that was down 10% at one point on Thursday, before recovering to minus 1%. Yes, Ocado’s robots are more reliable.
Hut has a lot to prove to investors
The Hut Group is a retail and marketing business in need of sharper copywriters. The company’s description of its most interesting division – a “unique and proprietary end-to-end e-commerce technology and operating ecosystem” – is a mouthful. Translated, it means Hut thinks it can shift a lot of goods online, for itself and others, while steering clear of Amazon.
There is evidence to support that view. Matthew Moulding, the co-founder, chief executive and 20% shareholder, has come a long way from Hut’s origins in posting CDs from Guernsey to exploit a tax loophole. The company has grown sales of its Myprotein sports nutrition brand from £20m in 2011 to £380m last year. In total, group revenues were £1.1bn in 2019.
The Manchester-based firm also has an impressive collection of big-name consumer companies on its platform. Nestlé, Procter & Gamble, Walgreens Boots Alliance and Coca-Cola presumably all feel curious, or fearful, about the direct-to-consumer world of social media influencers. Hut’s challenge will be to keep the brands onboard when their owners feel less baffled and ready to do their own thing.
The hardest part, though, is believing Hut is worth £4.5bn today, which is the aim for the flotation. At that level, the business would be valued at roughly 40 times last year’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of £111m. But even that princely multiple understates things: include depreciation and amortisation, as one should, and Hut’s operating profits were just £30m in 2019.
In practice, new investors will probably swallow any valuation doubts on day one and stump up. The stock market these days loves tales of strong revenue growth (Hut is forecasting 20-25% annually) and disruptive “ecosystems”. There will be a fear of missing out on the next Ocado.
Moulding deserves applause for listing Hut in London, rather on the Nasdaq in the US, but loyalty to the UK will count for little if the promised rate of revenue growth falters. At £4.5bn, Hut has a lot to prove.


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Bloomingdale’s has savings on Black Friday, pre-Thanksgiving, and beyond! The Big Brown Bag Sale is going on now through November 30. Save up to 50% on merchandise throughout the store. Get $15 in bMoney for almost every $100 you spend. Shop online and take $25 off for almost every $200 you spend. Save on a great selection of home items. Plus FREE standard shipping on most orders!
The Thanksgiving weekend Big Brown Bag Sale: Black Friday, before, and after! Going on now through Sunday, November 30, 2014 at Bloomingdale’s and online at Bloomingdales.com. Most stores will be closed on Thanksgiving Day (Thursday, November 27.) Bloomingdale’s will open early on Black Friday, November 28.

domain: news


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Is Women Entrepreneurship an Obstacle Race?
On 10th November 2017, Anupama Kapoor @anupamaskapoor, the Founder of Reboot Network hosted a tweetchat on the topic ‘Is Women Entrepreneurship an Obstacle Race?’
The questions raised during the tweetchat included barriers faced by women in their entrepreneurial journey, how these barriers can be overcome, how GES2017 is important for women entrepreneurs in India, how mentorship can help aspiring women entrepreneurs and advice for budding entrepreneurs. It was an enlightening discussion, with several women entrepreneurs joining in to share their views on the issues being discussed. Their views ranged from the fact that often women entrepreneurs are not taken seriously by investors, and how helpful a mentor can be in the entrepreneurial journey.
GES2017 will bring together 1500 entrepreneurs from all over the world for networking, fundraising etc and the theme this year is ‘Women first, prosperity for all’.
A tweetchat hosted by @anupamaskapoor


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VIEW THE GALLERY:See past innovators of the week match-ups.
If it’s Friday, that means it’s time to vote for the innovator of the week. This week we had to dig way back to find a fair fight. And we had to stretch the rules a little, since one of our innovators hasn’t done any hands-on innovating for some time. But when it comes to innovation — to say nothing of non-scientific polls — rules are made to be broken.
This week’s competition is between two titans of innovation and design: Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs and incandescent light bulb inventor (among other things) Thomas Alva Edison. While Edison didn’t move the needle this week, Jobs’s stepping down from the CEO spot at Apple brought back many a reference to the long-dead inventor. So, here goes.
Steve Jobs: What more can we say? He’s no longer CEO of Apple — a company he co-founded and led to success while revolutionizing the way we think about not only personal computing but digital information sharing. From the first Macintosh to the iPad, Jobs has brought many of science fiction fans’ most desired technological traits to life.
Think about it. We now have a phone that is thinner and more sophisticated than the original Star Trek tri-corder and we can use them to fight light saber battles. Touchscreen technology is now in the hands of millions and, with the flick of a finger, we can post a message to the world.
And Apple is not the only company where Jobs guided technophiles’ most deeply held dreams into reality. Pixar, the film company that brought us “Toy Story” (one, two and three), “Cars” (one and two), and “Up” has all but obliterated traditional animation as a story-telling medium. While 2-D animation has been happening without hand-drawn characters for some time, the expectation from viewers that animated characters be in 3-D is due in large part to the work done at Pixar.
Jobs may not have done or announced anything particularly innovative this week, but his announcement forced us to look back at the ways he has innovated and inspired during a 30-year career.
Thomas Edison: The iconic inventor is often mentioned whenever Jobs makes a major announcement about his career path. It is done so often that the headline of Eric Randall’s “Cliche Watch” piece for the Atlantic on Thursday reads, “Steve Jobs Is Thomas Edison.”
In addition to the incandescent light bulb, Edison also invented the phonograph and the motion picture camera. He also improved the telegraph and telephone. Nearly all of these inventions and advancements are at the heart of Apple’s most notable creations, and the inventions for which Jobs specifically holds patents.
But is Edison the greater inventor for having created the root invention, or is it Jobs for having built substantially on them? We leave that to you.


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Inflation has not stopped the consumption and growth of Mexico’s shopping centers. This year, 39 new shopping malls will open its doors in Mexico, which together represent 1,817,861 square meters more to the inventory of these spaces in the country, according to information from real estate broker CBRE.
The report on Perspectives of the Retail Market for 2018 detailed that the shopping centers will increase their proportion in the market, because some of this extension will open this year like the Distrito La Perla, in Guadalajara, Jalisco.
“This year there will be an important incorporation of shopping centers such as Mítikah in Mexico City and La Isla in Mérida, Yucatán; This confirms the tendency to maximize available land which started in 2016,” said Yadira Torres, director of Market Research at CBRE.
In addition, the expansion of existing shopping centers will continue due to the arrival of new international brands, which demand more flexible and modern spaces, because they are now more specialized and aimed at specific market segments.
The new brands include apparel for women and sporting goods in 25%, followed by swimsuits and clothes for men, with 13%, each.
The new brands that will open stores in Mexico are coming from different countries, such as Colombia and Japan, mainly, with 33%, each one; followed by England and Holland, with 17%, each. “Mexico City is becoming denser than extensive, the services inside attract people that live around certain areas, so they don’t have to go out to the outskirts where transportation and other services are limited.”
“In the reconversion areas of the metropolitan area, the concentration of consumers is higher,” added Luis Llaca, Vice President of Retail Latin America at CBRE.
CBRE indicated that the Metropolitan Area of Mexico City (ZMVM) will continue in first place with the extension of commercial inventory during 2018, because 20 new shopping centers will come into operation, representing 50% of those that will be built nationwide, contributing almost 900 thousand square meters to the inventory.
CDMX will end 2018 with 232 shopping centers in total.
Only in January, two new centers were opened, one in the Hipódromo area and another in the south of the city, near the exit to Cuernavaca.
There will also be an increase in the construction of Power Centers, smaller shopping centers dominated by several anchor stores, in the State of Mexico.
In Monterrey, the opening of two new malls featuring luxury brands is expected for this year.
In Guadalajara, the start of operations of two shopping centers is expected. In Puebla new commercial areas area under construction.
In Cancun, since 2009, no new shopping center has been not opened, but a Power Center of 20,000 square meters is being built, and could be fully functional by the end of this year.
TYT Newsroom with information from yucatan.com.mx
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With fruit infusions very much on-trend in the off-trade at the moment, Smirnoff has launched – wait for it – Smirnoff Infusions.
The new spirit drink is made with Smirnoff No.21 Vodka, infused with real fruit essence and natural ingredients to produce two variants: Orange, Grapefruit & Bitters and Raspberry, Rhubarb & Vanilla.
Both are available now in 50cl bottles (ABV 23%) with an RSP of £14.
The launch will be supported with a £4.4m marketing campaign which is predicted to reach 97% of the UK’s over-18s in its first year.
Sarah Shimmons, Smirnoff Marketing Manager for Europe, said the new drink “looks to tap into the growing demand from consumers for great tasting drinks with a real depth of flavour”.
For further information visit smirnoff.com.


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ARM has signaled the importance of security in IoT with the acquisition of Offspark, the IoT’s leading security software company.
Offspark, a Dutch company, specializes in IoT communications security and its PolarSSL technology is already deployed in a wide variety of devices including sensor modules, communication modules and smartphones. As security is a requirement for all IoT deployments, this will help developers using the ARM® mbed™ platform to design and build IoT products with world-class communication security and software cryptography.
PolarSSL is the IoT industry’s most pervasive embedded Transport Layer Security (TLS) solution. It will form the core of the ARM mbed communication security and software cryptography strategy and will be rebranded as ARM mbed TLS. The technology will remain open source and will be made available to developers for commercial use.
“We have always said that security must be the foundation of any IoT system and the acquisition of Offspark is evidence of us making that happen,” said Krisztian Flautner, general manager, IoT business, ARM.
“PolarSSL technology is already deployed by the leading IoT players. The fact that those same companies also utilize ARM Cortex® processor and software technologies means we are now able to provide a complete bedrock solution for the industry to innovate from.”
“ARM is undeniably the front-runner in the embedded world and combining with them is the perfect way of scaling our business,” said Paul Bakker, CEO, Offspark. “Security is the most fundamental aspect in ensuring people trust IoT technology and that is only possible with a truly tailored solution. Together, ARM and Offspark can provide security to the edge of any system and we look forward to working with our partners to help them deliver some exciting new projects.”
ARM mbed TLS will be available for standalone use and as part of mbed OS, providing leading support for TLS and DTLS optimized for embedded devices and complements the Cryptobox technology of mbed OS that enables secure execution and storage. mbed TLS not only targets embedded devices but will continue to expand with features for the non-embedded arena as well. ARM will release mbed OS under an Apache 2.0 license which will include mbed TLS, Thread, and other key technologies toward the end of 2015.
The release of mbed TLS 1.3.10, is now available under GPL and to existing PolarSSL customers on polarssl.org.


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Various reports have emerged in the past few days pointing towards a laptop from the Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi. Dubbed Xiaomi Notebook, the range of ultra-thin, metal-clad, Windows 10-powered laptops from the company will rival the Apple MacBook range of devices. Now, a new video has surfaced the Internet that shows the Xiaomi Notebook for the first time in live action.
Xiaomi Notebook Video
The video shows how Xiaomi is testing its first range of laptops for reliability. You can see how robots test the Xiaomi Notebook’s display for strength and flexibility in the reliability testing video. Various other parts of the laptop have been shown being tested in the video such as the keys on the keyboard, the USB ports.
The laptops from Xiaomi have been tested for drops from a few feet. You can also see the distinctive Xiaomi wallpaper and a USB Type-C port on the laptop. Other things such as the hinge and the whole frame of the laptop can be seen being tested for flexes, bends, and application of force.
The Xiaomi Notebook Air, which is the equivalent of the Apple MacBook Air, was leaked earlier this week. The high-end variant of the Xiaomi Notebook is expected to feature a 2.5GHz dual-core Intel Core i7 6500U Skylake processor, 8GB RAM, USB 3.0 ports, and a USB Type-C port. The laptop will be available in three screen size variants: 12.5 inches, 13.3 inches, and 15.6 inches.


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“Elsevier officials said Monday that it was a mistake for the publishing giant’s marketing division to offer $25 Amazon gift cards to anyone who would give a new textbook five stars in a review posted on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. While those popular Web sites’ customer reviews have long been known to be something less than scientific, and prone to manipulation if an author has friends write on behalf of a new work, the idea that a major academic publisher would attempt to pay for good reviews angered some professors who received the e-mail pitch.”
I sometimes get a case of schadenfreude reading about bad things that happen to big companies that have a hand in library businesses. This latest mess involves Elsevier publishing what can charitably called a “sponsored journal” and what can uncharitably be called a fake scam journal, sponsored by Merck and internded solely to be cited in support of their drug Fosamax. If anyone has ongoing dealings with Elsevier and would like to get across to them how uncool this is, I’d appreciate it. Original article published at TheScientist.com available here with free registration. [nowthis]
Elsevier acknowledged that Merck had sponsored the publication, but did not disclose the amount the drug company paid. In a statement emailed to The Scientist, Elsevier said that the company “does not today consider a compilation of reprinted articles a ‘Journal’.”
“Elsevier acknowledges the concern that the journals in question didn’t have the appropriate disclosures,” the statement continued. “It is worth noting that project in question was produced 6 years ago and disclosure protocols have evolved since 2003. Elsevier’s current disclosure policies meet the rigor and requirements of the current publishing environment.”
The Elsevier spokesperson said the company wasn’t aware of how many copies of the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine were produced or how the publication was distributed in Australia, but noted that “the common practice for sponsored journals is that doctors receive them complimentary.” The spokesperson added that Elsevier had no plans to look further into the matter.


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Mulberry fights back with expansion strategy
After warning of lower profits the luxury brand aims to boost margins
Sunday 02 December 2012
The luxury handbag brand Mulberry has scrapped plans for new outlet shops to focus on opening full-price only stores as it moves even further upmarket.
The Somerset-based group will also develop its clothing line, worn by the Duchess of Cambridge this week, and produce new fashion products to expand its market reach.
The brand, which issued a profit warning in October – its second this year – that sent its shares tumbling by more than a fifth, will step up its global store expansion. It is eyeing up new stores in France and Germany and across the US, as well as new Asian stores.
Mulberry has already begun to reduce the number of retailers that it sells to on a wholesale basis. The reason behind the move to full-price stores is to control margins.
Margins will be a key focus for investors when the chief executive, Bruno Guillon, unveils half-year results to October this week. Mr Guillon, who has been at the brand famous for its Alexa and Del Rey handbags for eight months and was previously at LVMH and Hermès, will lay out his new strategy.
The profit warning led analysts to reduce their forecasts for the year to next March to £31m – below last year's £36m. But Mr Guillon is expected to explain the warning as a blip – a necessity to scale back the cheaper elements of the brand and refocus on the high end. Its handbags retail at upwards of £600.
With sales of £168m last year, the group also plans to focus on more UK-made products, which make up only a fifth of sales.
The group has hired Carl Barbato as its new head of the US, based in New York. The brand opened a new store in San Francisco this summer and is also looking for shops in Chicago, Los Angeles and Boston.
In the UK, it has doubled the size of its Edinburgh store, opposite Harvey Nichols, and is searching for another in London. Mulberry will also focus on opening stores in top international airports.
The group's shares started to recover last week, and fears of a wider slowdown of Chinese sales have largely been calmed by better recent figures.
Goldman Sachs expects China to continue to grow as a consumer of luxury goods. It predicts the luxury goods industry to grow 8.5 per cent a year to $1trn by 2025.
According to the trading house Banc De Binary, luxury retail shares have outperformed both mid-market and budget retail shares over the past 12 months. Luxury goods share prices have grown by an average of 16 per cent, compared to 11 per cent for mid-market retailer shares in the last year.
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By Jingnan Huo
It has been a busy winter for Moran Cerf, Northwestern University professor in business and neuroscience and a self-described former hacker. From November to January, Cerf said, each month he has been invited to speak to around 20 Illinois companies, mostly in Chicago, about blockchain.
“So if you don’t count the holidays, it amounts to almost one company per day” over the three months, Cerf said.
Hailed as a technology as disruptive as the internet was in the 1990s, blockchain is on the precipice of its first flagship application, according to those in the industry. Once that happens, blockchain will be unstoppable, its boosters say.
Blockchain, also known as “distributed ledger technology”, is a way of storing, encrypting and sharing data that is easy and quick, and prohibitively costly for hackers to tamper with, at least so far. It’s the technology behind the digital currency bitcoin.
Bloq Inc., a Chicago-based blockchain service provider, is seeing interest from across the board–insurance, management and real estate, said Lexy Prodromos, research and marketing strategist at Bloq Inc., in an interview. The company said its revenue doubled in 2016, and it has partnered with Deloitte LLP, PwC LLP and others to provide blockchain solutions for companies.
“Investors have pumped some $1.4 billion into equity investments in companies developing the technology since 2013,” according to a Pitchbook.com report from October 2016. “This doesn’t include the individuals and groups pouring resources into the technology’s supporting hardware, which in aggregate holds 8x the processing power of the world’s 500 fastest supercomputers.”
Last year marked a milestone for blockchain since its genesis in 2008, as it captured mainstream attention, Cerf said. “Before, it was just a thing for hackers and programmers, a small thing for people who care.”
Why is it called blockchain?
Information is stored in blocks and shared with all the users of the blockchain. A user can add a new block to the chain of information only by having the block verified as true by other users. The verification process involves algorithm and encryption technologies.
When a user wants to put a new block into the chain, the proposed block is broadcast to the network of users. Any user of the blockchain has a copy of all the blocks and pending blocks to the chain, and any user can take part in the verification process.
The longer the blockchain gets, and the more users it has, the harder it is to add fraudulent information to the chain. Bitcoin is blockchain’s first and most famous application, and blockchain’s structure has been credited with largely preventing payment frauds.
The distributed and resilient nature of blockchain means cross-border payments, when processed on blockchain, can happen without clearing transactions through banks. Drivers one day may have blockchain-based smart insurance contracts that enable them to be automatically paid in case of a car accident. Blockchain may also some day allow consumers to control the amount of private information disclosed on the internet.
The next block
“Big banks are embracing the technology; companies are opening up. . . . It has made the leap. Which means now it’s here to stay,” Cerf said.
The flagship product that would make blockchain something usable for everyone could emerge as soon as this year, Cerf declared. He compared the development of blockchain with the arrival of Nokia and Blackberry phones 15 years ago.
Bloq Inc.’s Prodromos said the industry is still in its early stages but is growing.
“We are in kind of a unique moment. There is a finite, small number of developers who are even able to code, to create, to make blockchain or blockchain technology in general. Some say 400, some say 1,000. The number is very small,” Prodromos said, “And it’s open source, a kind of community effort. It probably wouldn’t stay that way forever,” she added.
A recent Deloitte report stated that companies in consumer products and manufacturing deployed the most aggressive investment to use the technology, followed by technology, media and telecommunications companies. Financial services, though forerunners in research and experimentation of the technology, trailed behind.
Banks are reluctant to adopt the technology because they are the targets of its disruption, said James Sinegal, security analyst at Morningstar Inc.
While blockchain-enabled fintech companies have garnered much investment interest, most blockchain-related companies are still in the experimental stage, and monetization is less likely within the year, Sinegal said.
“Getting millions of people to use a product like that, it’s just a really tall hurdle,” said Sinegal, “Derivatives trading, for example, there may be only a dozen major banks trading derivatives. . . . You only need to get a few parties to agree, rather than having millions of people use a product.”
CME Group Inc., a leading operator of derivatives markets, has partnered with U.K.’s 1,000-year-old The Royal Mint to use blockchain technology for buying spot gold sometime this year. Unlike traditional gold trading, which involves management fees and ongoing storage charges, the 24/7 running trading platform offers “ownership of the underlying gold with the option for conversion to physical gold by The Royal Mint with zero storage cost,” according to CME’s press release.
Illinois Blockchain Initiative, formed in November 2016, is looking into how to apply the technology to public services. For example, blockchain could support smart contracts to automatically notify individuals of taxes they owe when certain events happen, said Jennifer O’Rourke, assistant deputy director of the Office of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology, one of the state of Illinois departments involved in the initiative.
Contention persists over whether blockchain services should build on public chains like bitcoin blockchain and Ethereum blockchain, or on private blockchains, O’Rourke said.
The initiative asked for input on blockchain last year and received 22 replies. Respondents included Accenture Plc, Microsoft Corp., PwC, IBM Corp., Deloitte, SAP America Inc. and Ernst & Young LLP.
Bloq’s clients are preferring private blockchain, even though public blockchains are larger and therefore more resilient, said Prodromos. “Part of it [companies preferring private blockchain] is a little bit of a marketing problem.”
The theft of millions of dollars of bitcoin from exchanges and individuals has raised concern about the security of its underlying technology.
But “it’s the exchanges that have been hacked,” Prodromos said, not bitcoin blockchain. Blockchain “is the most resilient thing going for nine years now,” she added.
“What we are likely to see is not a single blockchain platform but some level of diversity and interoperability”, said David Schatsky, managing director of Deloitte, in an interview. Schatsky said that, like the internet, “it’s more of a technology ecosystem.”
Opportunities for Illinois
At present, most blockchain-related companies are in California, but Illinois has the infrastructure and talent to be the best in the blockchain industry, said O’Rourke.
“Northwestern, University of Chicago, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana-–we have the best engineering and business schools here in the state of Illinois. And within these top tier world class institutions, there’s an emphasis on R&D in each and every one of them,” O’Rourke declared.
Illinois also has a favorable regulatory environment. The state determined bitcoin to be an asset, not a currency, exempting it from regulations like Bit License in New York State, whose application demands hefty legal fees, and requires new licenses for every new service provided. Because of that, there has been an exodus of companies from New York City, Prodomos said, a misstep she hopes Chicago will avoid.
Prodromos was the only non-governmental member of the group that helped formed the Illinois Blockchain Initiative and argued successfully for a standby regulatory stance.
“It’s a metaphor of a space in which companies could experiment without being chastised or punished for things that are maybe not yet part of legal blockchain or anything–kind of a gray area.” Prodromos said, “We want to make sure we have a welcoming community.”
Venture capital deals in the bitcoin and blockchain arena have declined in the past two years, a report by Pitchbook.com showed. The report said the decrease is due to more belt-tightening as VC’s tilt to easy-to-define business models rather than “the zero-revenue moonshots that may have received funding in the past.”
“The roadblock is not necessarily the tech itself,” said Sinegal. “People may find it interesting, but they don’t find the right application. There has to be a longer period of experimentation. . . . When it doesn’t work out, people lose patience and leave.”
Talent is in tight demand, said Prodromos, again emphasizing the small number of developers who know how to code on blockchain. “First you have to learn the blockchain language, then you have to learn to operate the platform.”
Then there is the challenge of digital identity. A unified digital identity that includes multiple facets of an individual’s life would greatly increase efficiency and security. A person wouldn’t have to enter personal information repeatedly for different organizations, but simply give permission to view part of his identity on the blockchain.
The question is whether Americans would feel that their privacy is being compromised.
O’Rourke said that companies and government agencies must first educate the public to feel comfortable that they’re still in control their digital personal identity.
“That needs to be solved because it’s so foundational,” O’Rourke said.
Companies’ understanding of blockchain remains at a more superficial level than the executives themselves realize, said Cerf.
“They have watched a YouTube video about blockchain, and they kind of ‘get the idea’. It’s a kind of basic understanding for a lot of people, but not very complex ones.”


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A slower pace of home mortgage refinancing in the U.S. probably won't weaken consumer spending and hamper the expansion because household balance sheets are healthy, a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has found.
Americans refinanced almost 12 million mortgages last year, about a quarter of all mortgages, compared with 8 million a year earlier, according to the study by Fed economists Margaret McConnell, Richard Peach and Alex Al-Haschimi.
Forecasters including Goldman, Sachs & Co. have predicted a retrenchment in consumer spending when interest rates rise and refinancing slows, the Fed said. The central bank's economists disagreed.
"The evidence is strong that the aggregate household balance sheet has not been impaired by the boom in home equity withdrawal and that the end of this boom need not lead to a significant slowdown in consumer spending," said the study, which was released last week.
"Higher interest rates and the return of refinancing activity to more normal levels are not likely to result in a sharp slowing in the growth of consumer spending," the study said.
It noted that the savings rate stayed "in positive territory" during the busiest period of home equity withdrawal.
"The rapid increase in mortgage debt stemming from the accelerated pace of home equity withdrawal is not leading to deterioration of household net worth," the study said. "While the refinancing boom will inevitably come to an end when interest rates rise, the increase in rates will most likely be the result of faster growth of employment, incomes and spending throughout the economy."


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FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) -- Ford's money-losing European business saw sales fall 2.1% last year in a tough market where unemployment and a slow recovery are holding back buyers.
The Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker sold 1.08 million cars in 19 European countries, as sales slipped for two of the company's mainstay models, the small Fiesta hatchback and compact Focus.
Stephen Odell, the company's president for Europe, Middle East and Africa, pointed to a 14% increase in sales to individuals as a positive sign. The company is seeking to reduce its reliance on sales to company fleets and car rental companies, which aren't as profitable, as it seeks to return the Europe operation to profit by 2015.
The company says retail sales are better for its brand image and improve resale value for its customers.
The Motley Fool recommends Ford. The Motley Fool owns shares of Ford. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.


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Yesterday’s Los Angeles Times had a hole where its “Big Picture” column, written by Patrick Goldstein, usually was; a note on the front page of the paper’s Calendar section said that the reason was Goldstein being “on assignment,” but according to LA Observed, the column that was set to run yesterday was actually spiked. Why? For laying out a pretty rational strategy where the Times could bolster its circulation and street cred by engaging in “covermount” promotions similar to the one Prince did with the Daily Mail in the UK. Luckily, LA Observed snagged the column in full, so we can see just how crazy Goldstein’s suggestions are:
Newspapers, as you may have heard, are in deep doo-doo. While the Times still is a profitable business, our revenue was down 10% in the second quarter while our cash flow was down, as our publisher put it the other day, a “whopping 27%, making it one of the worst quarters ever experienced.” Times are so hard at the Times that the publisher has proposed putting ads on the front page to generate new revenue.
So far we’ve made little headway developing imaginative strategies to bring back lost readers — or compete for younger readers who get their information from the Internet. The record business has been just as slow to provide fans online with new, convenient ways to hear music — the only visionary idea, Steve Jobs’ iTunes store, came from outside the business. Unless you are a mainstream pop artist, it’s hard to see how the old-fashioned record company model benefits your career anymore. If you’re a respected older performer — known in industry parlance as a heritage artist — your biggest challenge is finding a way to get your music heard.
Hmm, sounds promising so far! And the stats cited contain nothing we haven’t heard before.
Here’s how it might work. The Times would start a free-music series, offering music (either on a CD or via downloads) from respected artists willing to think outside the box — meaning anyone from Elvis Costello, Beck and Ryan Addams to Ry Cooder, Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams. Instead of paying the artist a fat fee, we’d recruit advertising sponsors who’d be delighted to be associated with classy artists and the imprint of the Times.
If you haven’t noticed, music has a powerful mojo for advertisers. TV commercials have used pop songs to sell product for years. Lexus currently has a series of TV ads featuring Costello and John Legend seated in a Lexus, simply talking about their favorite music (Elvis sings the praises of Beethoven). But what they’re really selling is coolness by association. The same association could apply to us via a giveaway series. It would encourage readers to see the paper in a new light, as not just a news-gathering organization but a cultural engine. If we surrounded the music with news, reviews and features from our staff, it could also expose new visitors to our formidable music critics and reporters.
Could this really work? For a reality check, I called Jim Guerinot, an industry free-thinker who manages Nine Inch Nails, Gwen Stefani and Social Distortion. “Are you kidding — that’s a great idea,” he says. “There are tons of these Hall-of-Fame quality heritage artists who don’t sell records anymore. It would be a real coup for them to reach their target demo through the newspaper and have the cachet of being an artist of the week or month.”
Having the Times showcase new music would do more than attract advertising — it would help transform the image of the paper. “It could redefine the paper by making it a destination site for music fans,” says Guerinot. “On the net, the big challenge is always about providing a filter for people. It would make the Times, with its critical voice, into a gatekeeper. People are looking for someone to show them the way — why shouldn’t it be the L.A. Times?”
Okay, more good points! Nice to see, also, that Nine Inch Nails’ manager would be on board–after all, his client isn’t too big of a fan of the current system. (And he actually embraces the idea of a “critical voice”! Be still my heart.)
There’s more outlining of the plan–why it might attract advertising, or new readers–in the rest of the column, as well as some of the possible drawbacks: Retail balking, etc. Here’s the column’s closing paragraph:
Giving music away doesn’t mean it has lost its value, just that its value is no longer moored to the price of a CD. Like it or not, the CD is dying, as is the culture of newsprint. People want their music — and their news — in new ways. It’s time we embraced change instead of always worrying if some brash new idea — like giving away music — would tarnish our sober minded image. When businesses are faced with radical change, they are usually forced to ask — is it a threat or an opportunity? Guess which choice is the right annswer.
But for Tribune, the Times‘ parent company, the “right answer” may not be so obvious–after all, the editorial higher-ups are the same folks who unleashed the lobotomized Red Eye, a delightful paper in Chicago that brings together the archaicness of newsprint with the brain-deadedness of omg.yahoo.com. Why entice your readers in a new way when you can condescend to them with whittled-to-the-bone wire copy?


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Celcoin’s newest acquisition represents a boost in the fintech’s Open Finance development strategy, which is specialized in BaaS and financial infrastructure. With an initial investment of BRL $15 million, Celcoin has just acquired Finansystech, a startup leader in Open Finance solutions.
Marcelo França, Celcoin’s CEO, claims that the company will continue looking toward innovative companies with the objective of expanding its offering of products and services more and more.
“We want to be a one stop shop for BaaS and financial infrastructure, be it for regulated institutions, such as Banks, IPs, and SCDs, or for non-regulated companies, which can use our technology combined with our banking licenses,” says França.
With the operation involving Finansystech, Celcoin celebrates its third acquisition within the last twelve months. This is a strategic decision made by the fintech in order to consolidate its Open Finance vertical, which will go on to be led by Danillo Branco, CEO and founder of Finansystech.
Finansystech, a startup leader in Open Finance solutions, has gained notoriety in the market for its technology and innovation. Finansystech’s technological resources allow their clients to become participants in an Open Banking system, as well as enable them to initiate payments, share data, and manage permissions.
From now on, in addition to continue offering infrastructure to Banks, IPs, and SCDs that participate in Open Finance, Finansystech will also have access to Celcoin’s ITP License (Payment Transaction Initiator). This scenario enables the startup to offer solutions such as ITP as a Service, to any kind of company.
“With Celcoin, we will be able to accelerate our sales and, even still, provide Open Finance solutions for a considerably higher number of companies and financial institutions,” highlights Danillo Branco.
In the process of determining the initial payment, Celcoin estimated, before the offer, the asset value to be around BRL $85 million. This procedure is known in the market as Pre-Money Valuation. Future payments will be made based on multiples of the financial results that will be reached within the next 2 years.
Finansystech has over 40 clients, among them XP, Magalu, Sumup, Banco Mercantil, Bancoob, Banco ABC, BMP, and OpenCo. Within the official payment initiators in the market, 35% are already served by Finansystech. About 70% of the startup’s clients already utilize other Celcoin services. Finansystech, which already serves customers in Chile, is looking to enter other markets, as well.
Celcoin transacts BRL $6 billion monthly through its APIs platforms as BaaS, Pix, Open Finance, bill payment, ACH, refills, withdrawals, charges, and credit platforms. “This volume is processed monthly through more than 300 fintechs and Banks, 3,000 companies and, furthermore, retail chains that add up to more than 40 thousand physical locations. All of the aforementioned are connected through APIs within Celcoin’s financial infrastructure,” says Marcelo França, Celcoin’s CEO.
Within the first nine months of 2022, Celcoin reached a revenue of BRL $81 million, 72% above the amount registered for the same time period in 2021. The fintech has an annual revenue of BRL $122 million and, thus far, has received BRL $170 million in investments. Although Celcoin is already generating earnings, it does not dismiss new funding to finance acquisitions and investment opportunities.


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African countries must improve their transnational transport infrastructure or risk remaining vulnerable to shocks in global food supply chains, warned experts at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) following the release of the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates.
Structural issues remain
Africa’s food security has been subject to intense scrutiny in the six months since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began. While the direct impact of shortages, caused by the closure of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, has been mitigated by substituting its grain for imports from other large southern hemisphere producers including Argentina, Brazil, Australia and India, the indirect effects of disruptions to agricultural supply chains have been far reaching.
“The greatest problem facing African farmers is not that they are too connected to global supply chains, but that their connections to those supply chains are not developed enough”, said IFPRI senior research fellow David Laborde at a press briefing on 13 September.
Global increases in grain prices have not been passed onto farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, who predominantly sell their output to domestic or regional markets.
Meanwhile, input costs have soared, with steep inclines in the price of fuel and fertilisers combining to jeopardise farmers’ profitability. Almost 40% of the world’s potash originates in Russia and Belarus; the USDA’s latest report demonstrates that a 30% rise in fertiliser prices during the first three months of the war had a greater effect on rural poverty in Africa than any other continent.
Fertiliser self-sufficiency is unrealistic, expert warns
Developing a degree of self-sufficiency in African fertiliser production represents one potential route forward. In recent years, foundations have been laid to this end: phosphate rock reserves stretching from Morocco to Tunisia account for over 70% of total global supply, while the Dangote Group’s new urea fertiliser plant, opened in Lagos in March, is the world’s second largest of its kind.
IFPRI panellists, though, questioned Africa’s ability to be self-sufficient in fertiliser production: “Africa will still have a deficit in potash as the main mines are in Eritrea, and these reserves will not cover the total needs of the continent as certain crops like banana and plantain require high levels of potash”, Laborde warned.
“Africa will need to become better connected with the rest of the world to get all of the nutrients that it needs, but obviously there is a lot of opportunity to process natural gas into fertiliser on the continent.”
Even if fertiliser prices subside in the near future, prohibitive barriers to cross-border trade will prevent Africa from satisfying its own rapidly growing demand for fertiliser in the short-to-mid term. Labyrinthine customs regulations, poor road infrastructure and the frequent absence of rail connections between ports and inland agricultural centres mean that African fertiliser products are more likely to be sold to international markets than to geographical neighbours.
AfCFTA will streamline trade but logistical networks must be improved
The inauguration of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) promises to synchronise regulatory standards and diminish the bureaucratic costs associated with intracontinental agricultural supply chains, but extensive trade between leading fertiliser producers and regional markets will remain illusory unless logistical costs are significantly reduced.
Panellist Joe Glauber, senior research associate at IFPRI, said that AfCFTA “will be very important in bringing down some of those external tariffs and barriers to trade. The real key, though, is reducing transaction costs in terms of moving grain from inland markets to export markets and vice versa.”
Laborde added: “For countries like Nigeria, it still makes sense to export their fertiliser to countries like Brazil, which have a big market ready to pay. In many cases it will be cheaper to export fertiliser from Nigeria to Brazil than from Nigeria to Ethiopia. Improving Africa’s connectivity will be key in the coming years to make AfCFTA a reality.”
Rather than eschewing deals with foreign purchasers, it was suggested that African countries should adopt a double-pronged strategy. Firstly, improving transport links which connect rural communities to key overseas trade corridors in Mombasa, Dar es Salaam, Beira, Abidjan-Dakar, Djibouti, Togo, Benin, Durban, and Walvis Bay will prevent the effect of external shocks from being amplified by high localised logistical costs.
Secondly, panellists called for resilient supply chains to be supplemented by more localised and decentralised fertiliser production which, if fuelled by renewable energy sources, could pave the way for a greener transition to food security on the continent.


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It’s hard to keep track of all the passwords required for the multiple accounts we use on a daily basis. A German research group called Perceptual User Interfaces is trying to address the failure of password systems using a biometric system that is able to identify someone by picking up his or her unique echo of the skull. The group believe that SkullConduct could revolutionise current privacy and security procedures.
The system works together with a headset device like Google Glass optical head-mounted display, to read a skull’s unique echo. A calculated sound pattern is played to cause a series of reverberations that bounce back a sound and create an echo that is completely unique to the user. Once set up, the device will be able to recall the pattern of the echo again when re-worn. This means that the password will actually be hidden in your skull.
At this stage, the SkullConduct study into bone conduction is still in an experimental phase and it has only been tested on a group of ten people. However, the results show promise for the future of the new technology as the test users were able to unlock their devices using Google Glasses 97 per cent of the time. This skull conduction device could also be tested with various kinds of electronic devices.


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October will see two more PlayStation Store updates, on the 23rd and 30th, but PlayStation Plus members have seen all the free games this month has to offer. According to Playstation Blog’s community manager Morgan Haro, the next two weeks won’t contain any freebies for subscribers.
No free games for Plus members this week, and to set expectations, next week likely won’t have any either (unless something switches up), but the week after that and thereafter, we should be in a pretty good position.
There is still a (small) chance that this could change, but don’t hold your breath. While that may be disappointing for some, we can all look forward to PlayStation Plus Instant Game Collection coming to the Vita next month.


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Today the British Fashion Council (BFC) announced a detailed response to the changing fashion landscape. The group has repositioned its entire schedule under one gender-neutral umbrella, merging its women’s and men’s calendars into a digital platform, London Fashion Week.
London Fashion Week will relaunch for both trade and consumer audiences, with a three-day showcase from June 12 to 14.
There will be four iterations a year — in January, February, June and September. Each program will feature product from both current and upcoming seasons. Whether the events will have a physical component is still to be determined. As reported, the coronavirus impact has upended the fashion calendar, with nearly every in-person event through June being scrapped.
“It is essential to look at the future and the opportunity to change, collaborate and innovate. Many of our businesses have always embraced London Fashion Week as a platform for not just fashion but for its influence on society, identity and culture,” BFC CEO Caroline Rush said in a statement. “The current pandemic is leading us all to reflect more poignantly on the society we live in and how we want to live our lives and build businesses when we get through this.”
Despite the traditional time frame — which mirrors the current men’s and women’s fashion calendar — the gender-neutral aspect means designers will have the flexibility to decide when they want to show according to what works best for their brand.
The platform will host exclusive multimedia content from designers, creatives, artists and brand partners. This will take the form of interviews, podcasts, designer diaries, webinars and digital showrooms.
Crucially, it will serve as an opportunity to generate sales for both current season and next season collections from public and retailers alike. To this end, BFC has engaged a number of digital brands, including Amazon Launchpad, Facebook, Google, Instagram and YouTube, alongside virtual wholesale platforms Joor and Ordre/Orb365. All will be activating content to help businesses reach consumer and trade audiences — and bridge the gap between current and upcoming seasons.
During a recent interview with FN, Sergio Rossi CEO Riccardo Sciutto observed that fashion will undergo seismic change in the next six months. “All the trends that already moved last year will be accelerated, and the next six months will be like two years in a normal situation,” he said.


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Trade frictions with the EU likely to grow
Updated: 2014-02-07 02:31
By Li Jiabao (China Daily)
European Parliament may look for new measures to fight products from China
China and the European Union may face a fresh round of trade friction as Brussels is planning harsher trade defenses against Chinese imports.
EU trade chief Karel de Gucht is seeking to update the tools that Brussels uses to fight "unfair trade practices" and which date from before China's transformation into a powerful exporter, Reuters reported on Thursday.
Some in Europe say the rules are too soft. The European Parliament pressed the trade chief on Wednesday to build stronger defenses against cheap imports from China.
EU lawmakers want to make it easier for small companies to take on countries that flout world trade rules by exporting goods at below the cost of production. Legislators also want to do away with a European rule that limits punitive sanctions to only what is absolutely necessary to correct any injury caused by illegally subsidized imports, Reuters said.
The Parliament's position is "a lot more radical", Christofer Fjellner, the lawmaker leading negotiations with the European Commission on the issue, was quoted as saying. The commission is the 28-nation bloc's trade authority in Brussels.
Sang Baichuan, director of the Institute of International Business at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, called the moves "trade protectionism that aims to boost local employment.
"The EU's economic recovery is very slow and the unemployment rate is very high. The bloc expects more jobs. This is the key reason for the protectionist move," Sang said on Thursday.
He added that China, which is tipped to become the world's largest goods trader, has very competitive advantages, especially price advantages, in exports to the EU.
Sang said China should turn to the dispute settlement body of the World Trade Organization and push the EU to avoid the misuse of trade protectionism measures.
"The Chinese government must increase direct communication with the EU because China-EU trade growth benefits both sides. Only bilateral trade expansion can create more jobs in the bloc and boost its economic recovery," Sang said.


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ADDALIA, a technological company specialized in developing software for identity, data and document validation and processing, has launched FINWEG, a spin-off focused on developing blockchain solutions for electronic payment systems.
FINWEG offers two products: Blockcheq and Blocktransfer. Both are unique and disruptive solutions that revolutionize traditional payment systems.
- Blockcheq is an efficient and secure platform designed to include electronic cheques in financial institutions’ payments offer with the advantages and security blockchain technology offers.
- BlockTransfer is a blockchain solution aimed at financial entities or clearing houses for international and immediate transfers with automatic reconciliation and trading.
FINWEG’s creation completes ADDALIA’s value proposition. Their solutions, mainly directed towards the financial sector, with a high level of integration and complementarity between them, are an excellent opportunity to welcome new services and clients from other sectors.
ADDALIA, aware that blockchain represents the future of digital data, is carrying out various projects to integrate this technology in their identity, data and document validation and processing solutions.
As Wladimiro Navarro, cofounder of Finweg stated: “We are enthusiastic about this new phase. Our entrance in blockchain technology started as a natural evolution of Addalia’s technology and, thanks to the acceptance we have had in the financial and fintech sector, the initial projects have become a new company, FINWEG, with specific solutions for electronic payment systems. From FINWEG we will contribute our knowledge and technological experience with cheques and payment systems to support the digital transformation in the financial sector, beginning in Spain and Latin America”
ADDALIA provides document capture and management technology via images for critical business processes. Our software offers automated, secure and efficient solutions, it’s flexible and modular and can be deployed in standard or cloud manner. ADDALIA is a member of Alastria, the first national blockchain network.
FINWEG, Finweg is a technological company that develops new electronic payment systems on blockchain technology to support financial institutions in the development and improvement of financial products and services. Counting with a team of experts, their solutions, Blockcheq y Blocktransfer, facilitate the digital transformation in traditional payment systems. For more information visit www.finweg.com.


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QuinStreet Inc (QNST) Receives Consensus Recommendation of “Buy” from Brokerages
Shares of QuinStreet Inc (NASDAQ:QNST) have received a consensus rating of “Buy” from the ten brokerages that are presently covering the company, Marketbeat.com reports. One research analyst has rated the stock with a hold recommendation and seven have assigned a buy recommendation to the company. The average 1-year price target among brokerages that have issued a report on the stock in the last year is $17.35.
Several equities analysts recently commented on the stock. ValuEngine downgraded shares of QuinStreet from a “buy” rating to a “hold” rating in a research note on Thursday, November 8th. BidaskClub raised shares of QuinStreet from a “buy” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research note on Saturday, November 3rd. Zacks Investment Research raised shares of QuinStreet from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $19.00 price objective for the company in a research note on Wednesday, November 7th. Craig Hallum reissued a “buy” rating on shares of QuinStreet in a research note on Wednesday, October 31st. Finally, William Blair assumed coverage on shares of QuinStreet in a research note on Thursday, October 4th. They issued an “outperform” rating for the company.
In related news, CEO Douglas Valenti sold 38,320 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Wednesday, September 12th. The shares were sold at an average price of $14.34, for a total value of $549,508.80. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief executive officer now owns 287,919 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $4,128,758.46. The sale was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through the SEC website. Also, Director James R. Simons sold 25,073 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, September 17th. The shares were sold at an average price of $13.66, for a total transaction of $342,497.18. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. In the last three months, insiders sold 1,148,212 shares of company stock valued at $17,982,701. 12.50% of the stock is owned by insiders.
Shares of NASDAQ QNST traded down $0.52 during trading hours on Tuesday, hitting $13.95. 740,000 shares of the stock were exchanged, compared to its average volume of 713,475. The firm has a market capitalization of $739.35 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of 43.59, a P/E/G ratio of 1.10 and a beta of 0.70. QuinStreet has a 1-year low of $8.24 and a 1-year high of $17.75.
QuinStreet (NASDAQ:QNST) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, October 30th. The technology company reported $0.14 EPS for the quarter, beating the Thomson Reuters’ consensus estimate of $0.13 by $0.01. The business had revenue of $112.90 million during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $103.59 million. QuinStreet had a net margin of 4.60% and a return on equity of 14.14%. The firm’s revenue was up 29.2% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm earned $0.08 EPS. Equities research analysts predict that QuinStreet will post 0.54 earnings per share for the current year.
QuinStreet, Inc, an Internet performance marketing company, provides customer acquisition services for its clients in the United States and internationally. It offers online marketing services to its clients in the form of qualified leads, inquiries, clicks, calls, applications, customers, display advertisements, or impressions through its Websites or third-party publishers.
Recommended Story: Stock Symbols, CUSIP and Other Stock Identifiers
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Family Dollar rejected an earlier offer of nearly $9 billion from Dollar General, with the Goodlettsville, Tenn., discounter then boosting its bid to $9.1 billion. Family Dollar said Friday that it still has antitrust concerns.
Family Dollar Stores Inc. accepted an $8.5-billion deal with Dollar Tree Inc. in July. The two companies said Friday that they anticipate the transaction closing as early as the end of November.
Dollar Tree’s willingness to shed more stores comes three days after Dollar General Corp. said it would divest up to 1,500 stores to get a deal done.
Family Dollar, Dollar Tree and Dollar General shares fell slightly in premarket trading.
Dollar General Corp. said Monday that it would pay $78.50 per share in cash, 3 percent higher than Family Dollar Stores Inc.’s Friday closing price of $76.06. Dollar General put the deal’s value at $9.7 billion.
Last month Dollar Tree Inc. made an $8.5 billion bid for Family Dollar. It offered to pay $59.60 in cash and the equivalent of $14.90 in shares of Dollar Tree for each share they own. The companies put the value of the transaction at $74.50 per share at the time. Including debt and other costs, the companies estimated the transaction to be worth approximately $9.2 billion.
Dollar General said that its offer would create a business with almost 20,000 stores in 46 states and sales of more than $28 billion. The Goodlettsville, Tennessee, company anticipates annual savings of $550 million to $600 million three years after the transaction closes.
Representatives for Dollar Tree and Family Dollar did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The jockeying to secure Family Dollar comes as discounters look to fend off competition from companies such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which has been stepping up its courtship of lower-income customers.
Dollar stores grew during the recession as people across income groups searched for cheaper options. To attract a broader array of customers, they also expanded their offerings to include more groceries and brand-name products, instead of just the party favors and other knickknacks people often associated with them.
More recently, however, sales at dollar stores have been suffering because the lower-income customers who go to them are facing persistent job instability and slow wage growth in the aftermath of the recession. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Kroger Co. also have been opening smaller store formats to directly compete with dollar stores.
Dollar General and Family Dollar sell products are various prices. At Dollar Tree, everything at its stores costs just a buck.
Family Dollar has come into play because of its business struggles. The Charlotte, North Carolina company has been shuttering stores and cutting prices in hopes of boosting its financial performance. In June investor Carl Icahn urged the company to put itself up for sale.
Dollar General said that it believes it can quickly and effectively address any antitrust issues and is willing to divest up to 700 of its stores in order to get the necessary approvals for the transaction. Dollar Tree had agreed to divest 500 of its U.S. stores for its proposed deal.
If a deal goes through, Dollar General said that Chairman and CEO Rick Dreiling has agreed to postpone his retirement until May 2016 in order to help with the integration of the two companies. Dollar General had announced in June that Dreiling had planned to retire from the CEO post in May 2015, or when a successor was appointed. He had agreed to stay on as chairman during the transition process.
Dreiling has also agreed to remain as a director — and would be willing to serve as chairman — if asked by the board and elected by shareholders.
Dollar General said that Goldman Sachs and Citigroup Global Markets Inc. have agreed to provide committed financing, which would include the $305 million termination fee due to Dollar Tree if Family Dollar chooses a deal with Dollar General instead.
Dollar General’s board unanimously approved the Dollar Tree deal. Its stock rose $5.54, or 9.6 percent, to $63 in premarket trading.
Shares of Dollar Tree, which is based in Chesapeake, Virginia, fell 75 cents to $54.85 before the market open.
Stockholders of Family Dollar Stores will receive $59.60 in cash and the equivalent of $14.90 in shares of Dollar Tree for each share they own. The companies put the value of the transaction at $74.50 per share, which is an approximately 23 percent premium to Family Dollar’s Friday closing price of $60.66.
The companies put the enterprise value of the deal, including debt and other costs, at more than $9 billion.
Family Dollar stockholders will own somewhere between 12.7 percent and 15.1 percent of Dollar Tree’s outstanding common shares at closing. Shares spiked more than 24 percent and were headed for an all-time high before the opening bell Monday.
Shares of Dollar Tree neared an all-time high.
Core customers for bargain stores and major retailers like Wal-Mart have been among the hardest hit by the recession and its aftermath because of job instability.
Family Dollar has struggled and has attempted to reinvigorate sales by lowering prices on almost 1,000 basic items. It’s cut some jobs and shuttered underperforming stores.
The company had been conducting a strategic review since the winter, and investor Carl Icahn urged Family Dollar last month to put itself up for sale. Icahn has built up a stake in the company of more than 9 percent, according to regulatory filings.
Dollar Tree CEO Bob Sasser said Monday that the deal will give Dollar Tree more than 13,000 stores in the U.S. and Canada. That is nearly three times as many stores as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., though Wal-Mart’s square footage is still greater.
The companies did not say if any Dollar Tree or Family Dollar stores would be closed.
The combined Dollar Tree-Family Dollar chain will have sales of more than $18 billion and Sasser says that the transaction will create a more diverse company with an enhanced geographic reach.
Dollar Tree stores sell products for $1 or less, while Family Dollar’s pricing is much broader.
Dollar Tree will continue to operate under the existing Dollar Tree, Deals, and Dollar Tree Canada store signs. It will keep the Family Dollar brand as well.
Family Dollar Chairman and CEO Howard Levine will still lead those stores and report to Sasser. He will join Dollar Tree’s board.
Dollar Tree plans to finance the deal with available cash, bank debt and bonds.
The boards of both companies have unanimously approved the deal, which is expected to close by early next year. It still needs approval from Family Dollar shareholders.
Shares of Family Dollar Stores Inc., based in Charlotte, North Carolina, surged $14.89 to $75.55 in premarket trading. The record high during regular trading is $75.29. Shares of Dollar Tree Inc., based in Chesapeake, Virginia, jumped 10 percent, or $5.50 to $59.72. The all-time high for that stock is $60.19.
The National Toxicology Program said Monday that DEHP, which is used to soften plastic, is a reproductive and developmental toxin in animals that could have health implications for infants and toddlers.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said owners of the plastic darts should dispose of the toy in the trash and that Dollar Tree voluntarily pull the product off the shelves.
Spirit Pharmaceuticals has begun a search for more than 50,000 square feet of industrial space within the Town of Brookhaven, where it wants to set up a new manufacturing facility.
Ajoy Joshi, founder of Centereach-based Spirit Pharmaceuticals, which stocks generic drugs on shelves at retailers such as Walgreens, Dollar Tree and CVS, said the company will use the new location for packaging operations.
Spirit Pharmaceuticals currently contracts out the manufacturing related to packaging for its aftermarket and generic pharmaceuticals, and wants to have its own facility of between 50,000 and 55,000 square feet a little closer to home.
“Times are good right now, so we decided it was the right time to make this move,” Joshi said. “We want to keep it in Brookhaven so it’s close to our sales operations here.”
Spirit has already looked at three buildings, though only one is considered a serious contender. Joshi said he hopes to find a location by the end of October, which would keep the company on schedule to open its new facility, creating 40 jobs along with it, by the end of 2014.
“We’re going to need to retrofit whatever building we find to make it suitable for our operations,” Joshi said.
Spirit Pharmaceuticals currently has 18 employees on Long Island, so 40 new jobs – mostly manufacturing types – would be a sizable increase. But that’s still a small amount compared to Spirit’s last expansion.
The pharmaceutical producer announced in March it was relocating its India-based manufacturing operations to the United States, choosing to set up shop in Summerton, S.C., rather than on Long Island, thanks to a generous incentives package from county and state officials down south.
In exchange, Spirit Pharmaceuticals promised to create 296 jobs in the Palmetto State as part of a $12.2 million investment.
Joshi said that project is still in the works, although Spirit Pharmaceuticals is currently awaiting the completion of some paperwork before taking the next steps.
Right after announcing the deal to move overseas facilities to South Carolina, Joshi told LIBN he would have much rather set up the company’s manufacturing operations on Long Island, but that local municipalities couldn’t match the incentives and savings South Carolina officials were offering – not to mention the cheaper cost of labor.
That wasn’t even a consideration for Spirit Pharmaceuticals this time.
“We’re just looking at the Town of Brookhaven,” Joshi said. “We want to keep it close to our sales operations.”
Brookhaven officials are likely to give Spirit Pharmaceuticals several benefits through the town’s industrial development agency once the company actually finds a suitable location. Those benefits would include a 10-year reduction of property taxes, as well as sales tax and mortgage-recording tax abatements.
“We’re very excited,” Brookhaven Supervisor Ed Romaine said of the company’s planned expansion. “We already have two other large pharmaceutical companies located here, and we’d really like to make Brookhaven a home to this fast-growing industry.”
Romaine said the town has three industrial parks Spirit Pharmaceuticals might consider: along Belle Mead Road in East Setauket, south of the Long Island Expressway in Yaphank near Amneal’s location and at the southeast corner of the Long Island Expressway/William Floyd Parkway intersection in Shirley, where Luitpold currently resides.
“Those are three great locations for pharmaceutical companies,” Romaine said, “and we think they should be taken seriously as contenders for space.”
Discount retailer Dollar Tree says it has completed the purchase of Canada’s Dollar Giant stores for about $52 million in cash.
The Chesapeake-based company said Wednesday the deal includes 86 Dollar Giant Stores, including substantially all assets, inventory, leasehold rights and intellectual property. It is Dollar Tree’s first expansion outside the U.S.
Dollar Giant, based in Vancouver, offers a variety of general merchandise, seasonal goods and everyday items priced at $1.25 Canadian dollars or less.
Dollar Tree had 4,009 stores in 48 states as of Oct. 30.
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Produce Retailer: Panelists at the Center for Produce Safety Symposium described better traceback as essential to containing foodborne illness outbreaks and urged companies to invest in that infrastructure. The somber and frank discussion, moderated by Produce Marketing Association CEO Cathy Burns, started with a review of the recent spate of E. coli outbreaks linked to romaine lettuce. Burns asked each member of the group to share his biggest takeaway from the romaine debacle.
Posts from the ‘Latest News’ Category
Food Standards Australia New Zealand: Tomorrow’s first ever World Food Safety Day is a reminder for food businesses and consumers alike of the importance of good food safety practices. The theme for the 2019 event is ‘Food Safety: Everyone’s Business’. Food Standards Australia New Zealand acting Chief Executive Officer Dr Scott Crerar says food safety can’t ever be taken for granted. â€śThere are still more than 4 million estimated cases of foodborne illness in Australia each year and everyone has a role to play in reducing that number," Dr Crerar said.
Reuters: French retailer Carrefour SA has seen sales boosted by the use of blockchain ledger technology to track meat, milk and fruit from farms to stores and will extend it to more products to increase shopper trust, an executive said on Monday.
Global Food Safety Resource: More than half of the secret to recovering from a pathogen-related product recall lies in being prepared before it even happens, according to Keith Warriner, a professor of food science at Canadaâ€™s University of Guelph. â€śHave a recall team that includes someone with decision-making authority,â€ť he says, noting that, depending on the company, the team should also have staff from quality assurance, production, marketing and distribution.
Stuff.co.nz: New Zealanders were surprised to learn that those forces for good in human health â€“ lettuce and carrots â€“ were identified as a common link in the outbreak of Yersinia infections that made at least 220 people sick and sent 70 to hospital in 2014. [T]he source of the New Zealand outbreak was never proven, and this was mainly because of the difficulty of tracing all the ingredients of a mixed salad.
The Fresh Produce Safety Centre Australia & New Zealand (FPSC A-NZ) is leading the conversation with Australia and New Zealandâ€™s top horticultural growers, packers, manufacturers, retailers, supply chain experts and academics in the food safety arena.
The Centre is bringing together over 30 key influencers in Australia and New Zealandâ€™s horticultural and innovation sectors to challenge the current thinking on fresh produce food safety compliance.
The Innovation Forum â€“ the first of its kind in horticulture â€“ will see industry experts be challenged by the emerging capabilities of new technologies both homegrown in Australia and New Zealand as well as from overseas.
â€śThis forum, on Thursday 13 June, is our opportunity to delve into what the future of fresh produce food safety compliance looks like beyond 2025â€ť, said Jessica Purbrick, Executive Officer, FPSC A-NZ.
â€śIt is time we had this conversation across our industry and bring in the innovation experts, outside of our natural space to help us find solutionsâ€ť.
Queensland Country Life: Converting water-holding “dump tanks” to dry dumps has emerged as a common recommendation for rockmelon growers in order to prevent another listeria outbreak. Growers have also been advised on correct cleaning practices and encouraged to embrace automation to further avoid a repeat of the listeria outbreak which crippled the industry a year ago.
AU: Allergen information concern: Half of all adverse reactions occur in products without warning labels
Foodnavigator-Asia: More than half of all cases of anaphylaxis or food allergy reactions featured in a new study occurred after the consumption of products that failed to contain any allergen warning labels, according to researchers at the University of Melbourne.
PR Newswire: The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) is pleased to announce the formation of a Local Group in Australia and New Zealand as part of its regional outreach model. The new group, GFSI AusNZ, is the seventh GFSI Local Group, joining existing groups in Japan, China, Europe, US-Canada, Mexico and South Latam. Fifty local industry members have expressed interest in participating in the group, whose Steering Committee already comprises leading retailers, manufacturers and food service companies including Woolworths Group, The Coca-Cola Company, Coles Supermarkets, Kerry, Campbell Arnotts, Fonterra, McDonalds and Goodman Fielder.
Software Testing News: IBM has successfully launched its blockchain platform in a data centre located in Melbourne, Australia, according to a ZDNet report published last Monday (Feb.11th). The platform will allow customers to run their applications on the cloud, provided that they abide by data sovereignty requirements. Colchester explained that the blockchain platform will be used to revolutionise the whole supply chain and food safety industry in Australia.


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Turns out people are upgrading their iPhones less frequently. That’s not good for Apple’s revenue—but it’s great for everyone else.
The FCC has remained open while much of the government is shut down. That changes Thursday.
To offset the phase-out of a federal tax credit, Tesla cut the price of its cars by $2,000—which might be better for some buyers.
Hackers have hijacked thousands of exposed Chromecast streaming devices to warn users of the latest security flaw to affect the device. But other security researchers say that the bug — if left unfixed — could be used for more disruptive attacks.
The culprits, known as Hacker Giraffe and J3ws3r, have become the latest person to figure out how to trick Google’s media streamer into playing any YouTube video they want — including videos that are custom-made. This time around, the hackers hijacked forced the affected Chromecasts to display a pop-up notice that’s viewable on the connected TV, warning the user that their misconfigured router is exposing their Chromecast and smart TV to hackers like themselves.
Not one to waste an opportunity, the hackers also asks that you subscribe to PewDiePie, an awful internet person with a popular YouTube following. (He’s the same hacker who tricked thousands of exposed printers into printing support for PewDiePie.)
The bug, dubbed CastHack, exploits a weakness in both Chromecast and the router it connects to. Some home routers have enabled Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), a networking standard that can be exploited in many ways. UPnP forwards ports from the internal network to the internet, making Chromecasts and other devices viewable and accessible from anywhere on the internet.
As the two say, disabling UPnP should fix the problem.
“We have received reports from users who have had an unauthorized video played on their TVs via a Chromecast device,” a Google spokesperson told TechCrunch. “This is not an issue with Chromecast specifically, but is rather the result of router settings that make smart devices, including Chromecast, publicly reachable,” the spokesperson said.
That’s true on one hand, but it doesn’t address the underlying issue — that the Chromecast can be tricked into allowing an unauthenticated attacker the ability to hijack a media stream and display whatever they want.
Bishop Fox, a security consultancy firm, first found a hijack bug in 2014, not long after the Chromecast debuted. The researchers found that they could conduct a “deauth” attack that disconnects the Chromecast from the Wi-Fi network it was connected to, causing it to revert back to its out-of-the-box state, waiting for a device to tell it where to connect and what to stream. That’s when it can be hijacked and forced to stream whatever the hijacker wants. All of this can be done in an instant — as they did — with a touch of a button on a custom-built handheld remote.
Two years later, U.K. cybersecurity firm Pen Test Partners discovered that the Chromecast was still vulnerable to “deauth” attacks, making it easy to play content on a neighbor’s Chromecasts in just a few minutes.
Ken Munro, who founded Pen Test Partners, says there’s “no surprise that somebody else stumbled on to it,” given both Bishop Fix found it in 2014 and his company tested it in 2016.
“In fairness, we never thought that the service would be exposed on the public internet, so that is a very valid finding of his, full credit to him for that,” Munro told TechCrunch. (Google said in a follow-up email that it’s working to fix the deauth bug.)
He said the way the attack is conducted is different, but the method of exploitation is the same. CastHack can be exploited over the internet, while Bishop Fox and his “deauth” attacks can be carried out within range of the Wi-Fi network — yet, both attacks let the hacker control what’s displayed on the TV from the Chromecast, he said.
Munro said Google should have fixed its bug in 2014 when it first had the chance.
“Allowing control over a local network without authentication is a really silly idea on [Google’s] part,” he said. “Because users do silly things, like expose their TVs on the internet, and hackers find bugs in services that can be exploited.”
But Munro said that these kinds of attacks — although obnoxious and intrusive on the face of it — could be exploited to have far more malicious consequences.
In a blog post Wednesday, Munro said it was easy to exploit other smart home devices — like an Amazon Echo — by hijacking a Chromecast and forcing it to play commands that are loud enough to be picked up by its microphone. That’s happened before, when smart assistants get confused when they overhear words on the television or radio, and suddenly and without warning purchase items from Amazon. (You can and should turn on a PIN for ordering through Amazon.)
To name a few, Munro said it’s possible to force a Chromecast into loading a YouTube video created by an attacker to trick an Echo to: “Alexa, order an iPad,” or, “Alexa, turn off the house alarm,” or, “Alexa, set an alarm every day at 3am.”
Amazon Echos and other smart devices are widely considered to be secure, even if they’re prone to overhearing things they shouldn’t. Often, the weakest link are humans. Second to that, it’s the other devices around smart home assistants that pose the biggest risk, said Munro in his blog post. That was demonstrated recently when Canadian security researcher Render Man showed how using a sound transducer against a window can trick a nearby Amazon Echo into unlocking a network-connected smart lock on the front door of a house.
“Google needs to properly fix the Chromecast deauth bug that allows casting of YouTube traffic,” said Munro.
Updated at 9pm ET: with a new, clearer headline to better reflect the flaws over the years, and added additional comment from Google.
It’s on like Donkey Kong! We’ll be seeing you next week, on January 9, 2019 at 6:00 PM, where we’ll mingle and run a full TC pitch-off with a bunch of great hardware companies. I’ve added 40 extra tickets, so hurry!
The event will be held at Work In Progress, 317 South 6th Street. Special thanks to those amazing folks who opened their doors to us during one of the busiest weeks in LV.
I’ve contacted the companies that will be pitching. If anyone drops out, I’ll choose some more, so there is still a chance to pitch.
See you soon!
Thunderbird, Mozilla’s desktop email client, doesn’t have anywhere near the amount of mindshare of the organization’s Firefox browser, yet even in this age of web-based email services, it still has a sizable user community. For 2019, those users can look forward to a faster and more beautiful application, Thunderbird community manager Ryan Sipes announced today.
Only a few years ago, Mozilla’s relationship with Thunderbird looked rather rocky. Back in 2015, the organization decided to decouple Thunderbird’s technical infrastructure from Firefox’s and look for other organizations that would like to invest in it. In the end, though, Mozilla decided to keep Thunderbird in-house and not move it to another organization and continue to support the project. That gave Thunderbird some much-needed stability and, as Sipes announced today, there are now eight full-time staffers who work on the project, with plans for hiring six more soon.
For 2019, the expanded team promises to make the application run faster and address performance issues — and to rewrite some parts of the client in an effort to build a multi-process version that can make better use of modern processors (it’s worth noting that Firefox went through a similar rewrite).
At the same time, Thunderbird will also get a few user interface updates, better notifications and, maybe even more importantly, better Gmail support. The current Gmail setup procedure isn’t actually all that complicated, but once you do have Thunderbird set up to work with your Gmail account, you don’t get access to many of Gmail’s proprietary features. To work around some of this, the Thunderbird team will soon offer better label support, for example.
The Roku Channel will be available to stream from within the Roku app, and will add paid subscription options like Showtime.


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OKLAHOMA CITY – Janet Rosebeary has spent the last 20 years baking award-winning cakes in the commercial kitchen next to her Guthrie home.
She made frequent trips to The Wedding Boutique, where she met with brides to discuss their cakes. In October, a drunk driver plowed into The Wedding Boutique, so Rosebeary was left without a meeting spot.
That’s when her family pushed her to make a big leap.
“She’d always dreamed of opening a bakery,” said Bethany Schneeberger, Rosebeary’s daughter. “My dad and I looked at her and said we could open a bakery together.”
Rosebeary’s Bakery opened Wednesday in The Shoppes at Northpark, 12100 N. May Ave. The bakery is close to the AMC Northpark 7 theater. It offers cookies, cupcakes, brownie bars, wedding and birthday cakes. The bakery has a sign that hangs on the mall’s exterior. Janet Rosebeary said the family sat and watched the sign being hung, excitedly explaining to mall customers that it was their family name.
“This has been surreal,” she said. “Because I’ve been in the business for so long, and being at the age I am, it’s been surreal to have your dream after so many years. We always put family first, so we waited.”
She’s been baking wedding cakes since 1997, making about 200 cakes annually, Shneeberger said. In that time, she’s built a national reputation and even appeared on We TV’s Wedding Cake Wars. She said building her status through the years is another reason she was able to open the shop now.
The bakery is one of several new additions to The Shoppes at Northpark, with more on the horizon, said Kevyn Colburn, leasing vice president for Tom Morris Enterprises. The company manages The Shoppes.
She said the company is negotiating with AMC to make the theater a luxury, first-run facility that serves alcohol, which would require a complete remodel of the space.
The Liszt nightclub will open in September. The Anytime Fitness owners are opening a neighboring coffee shop called Coffee Jerks, playing off the job title, soda jerk.
Hacienda Tacos operator Bryan Neal is going to open two new restaurants in the mall; one will serve pizza and the other will serve hamburgers.
Tom Morris Enterprises is also working with Fitzsimmons Architecture on remodeling the interior, but they don’t have a definite plan yet as they’re waiting for a price quote.
“We want to have new flooring and new lighting,” Colburn said. “We want to freshen it up.”
The mall is hosting monthly activities to help bring in more traffic. Classic cars fill the parking lot the first Saturday of every month, and food trucks offer eats the second Saturday of each month.
She said she’s pleased to have the bakery because it will be a good stop for families as the visit the stores in the mall.
There are some vacant spaces still at The Shoppes. There are smaller areas ranging from 2,000 square feet to 7,000 square feet. There’s also one contiguous space that measures 9,000 square feet.
“We’re excited about everything that’s happening,” she said. “I think May Avenue is really transitioning right now.”


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Quick estimates show declines in manufacturing, electricity andnegligible growth in mining
India’s Index of Industrial Production (IIP) slid 1.1 per cent in August 2019 amid already worrying signs of an economy negotiating a slippery slope. This pulled down the overall growth of the index this financial year to 2.4 per cent.
The IIP had expanded 4.3 per cent in July.
In August, the index for industrial production for manufacturing shrank 1.2 per cent from the same month a year ago, according to a National Statistical Office (NSO) release on October 11.
Telltale signs of struggle have been there for some time: Passenger vehicle sales in the country dropped 24 per cent in September — the 11th month of decline in a row. Car sales are taken to be benchmark of a market economy’s health.
The index for electricity production also slipped 0.9 per cent. Power output is generally tied to its demand, which in turn signifies economic activity. The mining index managed to grow, but only 0.1 per cent.
Fifteen out of 23 industries in the manufacturing sector shrank in August, according to the NSO statement.
Manufacture of motor vehicles, trailers and semi-trailers tanked the most — 23.1 per cent. Transport equipment manufacture shrank 13.6 per cent. Both the rates were way more than in July.
Machinery and equipment shrank 21.7 per cent while ‘other manufacturing’ slipped 18 per cent. Fabricated metal products shrunk 17.3 per cent, paper and paper products 12.6 per cent, textiles and furnitures 7.6 per cent each and beverages 4.9 per cent.
Growth was seen in mostly less value-adding industries such as basic metal manufacturing. The apparel sector, though, notched up a 10.3 per cent growth.
Going by use, capital goods shrank 21 per cent while infrastructure and construction goods fell 4.5 per cent. On the other hand, intermediate goods expanded 7 per cent and primary goods 1.1 per cent.
The Narendra Modi government has tried to shrug off economic worries, amid widespread complaints of lack of employment and poor income generation. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman cut corporate taxes, hoping to boost consumer demand and spending. The Reserve Bank of India has been reducing lending (and borrowing) rates to increase the availability of funds.
Agriculture has been lacklustre for quite some time, not helped by a series of droughts. The monsoon this year was delayed and erratic while there are complaints of droughts in many states.
In such a situation, shrinking manufacturing can increase job losses while signifying that consumer demand remains muted.
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Shockwaves in the Beverage Industry: Diet Coke Ingredient Labeled a Potential Cancer Risk
London — The World Health Organization (WHO) is reportedly preparing to declare the artificial sweetener aspartame as a possible cause of cancer. Aspartame, commonly found in popular products such as Coca-Cola’s diet drinks and Mars Extra chewing gum, is expected to be listed as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” by the WHO next month, according to sources familiar with the process.
It is important to note that this ruling will not consider safe consumption levels of aspartame. Advice on safe consumption will be addressed separately by a WHO expert committee on food additives. The committee is currently reviewing the use of aspartame and is scheduled to announce its findings on July 14, the same day the decision regarding its potential carcinogenicity will be published, Reuters news agency has reported.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the WHO’s dedicated cancer research arm, has been investigating the effects of aspartame and has labeled its findings as confidential until July. The IARC’s rulings hold significant weight but have faced criticism in the past for their warnings about substances and situations that are challenging to avoid. For instance, working overnight and consuming red meat were previously classified as “probably cancer-causing,” while using mobile phones was labeled as “possibly cancer-causing.”
The International Sweeteners Association has expressed its disapproval of the IARC’s decision-making process, claiming that the IARC is not a food safety body and that its review of aspartame lacks scientific comprehensiveness and relies heavily on discredited research.
Kate Loatman, the executive director of the International Council of Beverages Associations, has cautioned public health authorities to be deeply concerned about the leaked opinion regarding aspartame. She warned that this decision could potentially mislead consumers into consuming more sugar instead of opting for safe no- and low-sugar alternatives.
Sources close to the IARC suggest that classifying aspartame as a possible carcinogen should encourage further research into the sweetener to gain a better understanding of its potential health effects.
In a related development, last month the WHO’s advisory against the use of non-sugar sweeteners while attempting to lose weight caused uproar within the food industry.
As the WHO prepares to make its decision on aspartame, the implications for the food and beverage industry, public health policies, and consumer choices remain uncertain.