BUSINESS BRIEFS
Early stock rally mostly fades on Wall Street; tech, banks rise
Stocks indexes gave up much of an early rally ended with meager gains Monday. Large-company stocks did better than smaller ones. The Dow Jones industrial average and the S&P 500 indexes ended higher, but smallercompany stocks lagged behind.
Technology companies and banks rose more than the rest of the market. Apple and Google’s parent company, Alphabet, each rose 1 percent.
The S&P 500 rose 8 points, or 0.3 percent, to 2,613. The Dow average increased 46 points, or 0.2 percent, to 23,979. It had been up as much as 440 earlier. The Nasdaq composite added 35 points, or 0.5 percent, to 6,950.
The Russell 2000 index of smallercompany stocks ended little changed.
Bond prices fell. The yield on the 10year Treasury note rose to 2.78 percent.
Trump says he’ll ‘make it up’ to farmers hit by China tariffs
President Donald Trump says he’s going to “make it up” to farmers who would be affected by China’s proposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports. Trump says: “It’s not nice when they hit the farmers specifically because they think that hits me.”
Trump promised during a Cabinet meeting Monday that American farmers “will be better off than they ever were” over the past eight years, despite China’s threat to place duties on pork and soybean imports from the U.S.
China is threatening the tariffs in response to Trump moving to enact protectionist measures as punishment for Chinese theft of U.S. intellectual property.
Swiss giant Novartis to buy US-based AveXis in $8.7B deal
Swiss pharmaceuticals giant Novartis says it has agreed to buy the U.S.based gene therapy company AveXis Inc. for $8.7 billion, part of its goal to become a leader in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. The two companies say their respective boards have voted unanimously to approve the deal, to be paid for through cash and shortterm borrowing.
The tender offer for $218 per share announced Monday marks a whopping 88 percent premium from AveXis’ closing price in Nasdaq trading Friday.
Basel, Switzerland-based Novartis called the deal set to close in mid-2018 a “financially attractive acquisition with multibillion-dollar peak sales potential” even if it isn’t expected to add to core operating income until 2020.