the bottomline
WASHINGTON:
Sweeping changes to US tax law led to a $6.53 billion loss at Fannie Mae last quarter, putting the government-controlled mortgage company in the position of seeking cash assistance from taxpayers for the first time since it emerged from the housing crisis six years ago.
Fannie Mae said Wednesday its net worth sank to a negative $3.7 billion after it had to “remeasure” its deferred tax assets to the tune of $9.9 billion as required by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump just before the end of the year.
Due to the tax charge, Fannie Mae reported 2017 net income of $2.46 billion for 2017, down from $12.31 billion in 2016. But its pretax income was $18.45 billion, slightly better than the $18.33 billion in 2016. (AP)
OMAHA, Nebraska:
Billionaire Warren Buffett’s company on Wednesday revealed a new investment in struggling Israeli drugmaker Teva Pharmaceuticals and trimmed its holdings in oil refiner Phillips 66 by selling 35 million shares back to the company for $3.3 billion.
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. disclosed those moves and several other tweaks to its stock holdings in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Berkshire said it held 18.9 million shares of Teva at the end of the year, worth about $360 million. (AP)
SAN FRANCISCO:
Qualcomm said Wednesday its board would “promptly” consider a hostile $121 billion takeover bid by Singaporebased Broadcom following a meeting of top executives of the two computer chipmaking giants.
“We met with representatives of Broadcom for two hours earlier today, and listened carefully to what they had to say,” Qualcomm said in a statement.
“The Qualcomm board will promptly meet to discuss the meeting and to determine next steps.” (AFP)
MONTREAL/WASHINGTON:
An independent US trade body on Wednesday said it rejected hefty US duties on Bombardier’s CSeries jets partly because Boeing lost no sales or revenue when Delta Air Lines ordered the aircraft in 2016 from the Canadian planemaker.
The International Trade Commission published its reasoning three weeks after announcing the decision.
The ITC said the 110-seat CSeries jets ordered by Delta and Boeing Co’s smallest 737 MAX 7 plane do not compete. It also said Bombardier Inc’s CSeries sale to Delta did not come at Boeing’s expense as the planemaker did not offer any new aircraft to the No. 2 US carrier. (RTRS)
NEW YORK:
Media company Gannett Co. on Wednesday named Arizona Republic’s top editor Nicole Carroll as USA Today’s editor in chief.
Carroll has been executive editor and vice president of news at the Arizona Republic since 2015.
She replaces Joanne Lipman, who was USA Today editor in chief and chief content officer and left in December after serving less than a year.
Carroll joined the Republic in 1999 and held a variety of roles, from city editor to planning editor to managing editor for features, before being named executive editor in 2008. She takes over at USA Today next month. (AP)
PARIS:
Shares in European plane maker Airbus flew higher on Thursday after the company reported improved earnings and was more upbeat about the future following problems to several of its key aircraft programs.
The company said that it surged to a net profit of 1 billion euros ($1.25 billion) in the fourth quarter, from a loss of 816 million euros a year earlier, while revenue was stable around 23.8 billion euros. Airbus delivered a record 718 aircraft last year and expects that figure to rise further in 2018, to 800.
CEO Tom Enders credited “very good operational performance, especially in the last quarter.” (AP)
GENEVA:
Swiss food and beverage giant Nestle said Thursday that it is ending its agreement with the wellheeled Bettencourt family of France over the L’Oreal cosmetics empire and is exploring options for its Gerber Life Insurance business.
The announcement came as the Vevey, Switzerland-based company reported net profit fell nearly 16 percent to 7.18 billion Swiss francs ($7.7 billion) last year, compared to 8.53 billion in 2016. The company said the drop was mostly due to accounting of cash-flow issues at Nestle Skin Health.
Nestle said revenues edged up 0.4 percent to 89.8 billion francs, while underlying profit rose 4.6 percent to 3.55 billion francs. (AP)
OSLO:
Low-cost airline Norwegian Air Shuttle said on Thursday that rising fuel prices and the cost of replacing aircaft and opening up new routes pushed it into the red last year.
Norwegian, Europe’s third largest low-cost carrier after Ryanair and Easyjet, said in a statement it flew into a loss of nearly 300 million kroner (nearly 31 million euros, $38.7 million) in 2017 from net profit of 1.14 billion kroner the year before.
The numbers sent the airline’s share price into a tailspin and it nosedived by more than nine percent on the Oslo stock exchange.. (AFP)
PARIS:
US online shopping giant Amazon said Thursday it plans to create 2,000 permanent full-time jobs in France this year as consumers are making more and more of their purchases via the internet.
“The jobs are at all levels of skills” even if “the overwhelming majority of the positions are for fulfilling orders,” Amazon’s director in France Frederic Duval told AFP.
The new jobs will be across Amazon’s distribution centres in France, as well as its offices in the Paris region, and take overall staff to 7,500.
Amazon said it has invested more than two billion euros ($2.5 billion) in France since 2010 and created more than 1,500 jobs in France last year.
However Amazon, along with other US tech companies, has also been at loggerheads with French authorities over taxes as they structure sales to pass through other European countries where tax rates are lower. (AFP)