Briefs Cruising Cubano

●● While President Obama was touringring Havana, Carnival said the Cuban government nt had finally approved its plan to start selling berths hs to the island nation out of Miami. The U.S. signed off in July on the itinerary, which calls for ships to sail every two weeks starting in May. Fares start at $1,800 per person. Royal Caribbean Cruises and Norwegian Cruise Line are expected to join the party soon. ●● Exelon’s proposed $6.8 billion takeover of Pepco Holdings was approved by Washington regulators on its third attempt. That clears the way for the companies to form the nation’s biggest utility and allows Exelon Chief Executive Officer Chris Crane to complete his long-running quest to add Pepco’s steady, regulated earnings to offset losses at Exelon’s nuclear power plants. ●● Telecom Italia CEO Marco Patuano resigned after pressure from Vivendi, the French media giant that’s amassed a 24.9 percent stake in the phone operator. In a December campaign, Vivendi won four board seats at the formerly state-owned monopoly. ●● Nike’s shares fell after an earnings call in which the company forecast a high-single-digit growth rate for the next fiscal year—analysts had projected a rate of about 10 percent. A week earlier, Nike had unveiled the self-lacing HyperAdapt 1.0 sneaker. ●● Credit Suisse will eliminate about 2,000 jobs in its global markets unit. CEO Tidjane Thiam said he was blindsided by a buildup of risky positions in distressed debt and other securities that will probably spark a first-quarter loss. The bank this year has now cut a total of 6,000 jobs.

American Express

million

Giorgio Armani

The 2015 compensation for CEO Kenneth Chenault, down 26 percent from the year before; Chenault hasn’t earned so little since 2008.

Kpledged to stop using animal fur in its clothes, after years of protests from animal-rights activists. Armani said research has created “valid alternatives.” “Our relevancy as a company has grown through the years, as people are longing for human connection.”

Analysts say it could be more successful because it gives a better nicotine buzz than an e-cigarette and imit imitates the ritual of smoking. Sales of e-cigarettes are only about 1 perc percent of the $863 billion tobacco ma market, according to researcher E Euromonitor International. Analysts at Wells Fargo predict t that Philip Morris’s HeatSticks c could displace as much as 3 30 percent of cigarette sales in developed markets by 2025. BritishBri American Tobacco aims to start selling a similar product in the second half of 2016; Reynolds American is developing a heating device, though it reported that one tested in Wisconsin last year didn’t meet performance expectations; and Japan Tobacco is introducing a vaporizer called Ploom Tech. But Philip Morris is far ahead of the competition, says James Bushnell, an analyst at Exane BNP Paribas. “This is the closest yet that the industry has got to the holy grail of a commercially successful ‘safe’ cigarette,” he wrote in a recent report.

In Japan more than 100,000 smokers have switched to iQOS, and Philip Morris says HeatSticks accounted for 2.4 percent of the Tokyo cigarette market in January. Philip Morris says it will sell iQOS in about 20 countries this year, and it plans to submit an application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to call the device a modified-risk tobacco product, though the FDA hasn’t yet given the go-ahead to similar requests.

Philip Morris created the “embassies” to promote iQOS, given bans on tobacco advertising in many countries. Reminiscent of Nestlé’s Nespresso shops, the embassies organize events for iQOS users to socialize and spread the word. “We’re expanding our marketing toolbox,” Miroslaw Zielinski, head of the tobacco company’s “reduced-risk” business, said in a webcast in February. “This has been undeniably a much more complex undertaking than cigarette marketing.”

——Howard Schultz, CEO, Starbucks The bottom line Philip Morris says heating tobacco may be safer than burning it, but antismoking groups don’t buy it.

Edited by Dimitra Kessenides Bloomberg.com