Happy Wednesday and welcome to your morning wrap of the latest business and political news from around the world.
First up, media and entertainment giant Warner Bros Discovery is considering an outright sale of its business following unsolicited interest, causing the company’s shares to jump 10%, Reuters reported.
Comcast is likely to kick the tyres on the firm’s media assets, a source told Reuters. Meanwhile, according to CNBC, Netflix is also among the interested parties. Paramount Skydance was also reportedly in talks to acquire the whole company.
Warner Bros is home to CNN, HBO Max and the Harry Potter franchise. It announced plans in June to split into studio-centric and cable-focused units by 2026 to untangle its growing streaming business from its lagging cable network division.
The company said overnight that the board would consider a range of options, including its planned separation, a deal for the entire company, or separate transactions for its respective businesses. As Reuters noted, a sale or split would be one of the most consequential reshaping moments in the media industry, potentially prompting other legacy media companies to consider their own structures.
Any buyer would get control of a major studio and streaming service, but also pick up the company’s roughly US$35b ($60b) in debt.
The entrance to Warner Bros Discovery’s Making of Harry Potter studio in London. (Source: Wikimedia Commons).
In other news, plans for a meeting in Budapest between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have been shelved, the BBC reported.
A White House official said there were “no plans” for Trump to meet Putin “in the immediate future”.
Last Thursday, Trump said he and the Russian president would hold talks in Budapest within a fortnight to discuss the war in Ukraine.
A preparatory meeting between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov was due to be held this week, but the pair had a phone call instead.
Donald Trump.
Back to business now, where Novo Nordisk – the drug company behind weight-loss jab Wegovy and diabetes drug Ozempic – is having a boardroom clear-out after a rift with the company’s major shareholder, the BBC reported.
The Danish company said its chair, Helge Lund, vice-chair Henrik Poulsen and five directors would not stand for re-election at an extraordinary shareholder meeting next month.
Their departures come after a disagreement between the board and its majority shareholder, Novo Nordisk Foundation, over its future governance.
The company last month cut its profit guidance for the third time this year amid increased competition from US rivals. It also announced a cost-saving programme.
As Reuters reported, the non-profit Novo Nordisk Foundation said it would propose its own chair, Lars Rebien Sørensen, for the company, as it criticised the outgoing board for being too slow to recognise shifts in the US market and too cautious on management change.
In US corporate earnings news, Coca-Cola’s quarterly earnings and revenue topped analyst expectations, but the beverage giant said demand for its drinks was soft, CNBC reported. Coke reported third-quarter income attributable to shareholders of 86 cents per share versus market expectations of 78cps. After accounting for restructuring charges and other items, Coke earned 82cps. Net sales rose 5% to US$12.46b.
Coke said low-income customers in the US had been buying fewer products, and it was also seeing higher traffic from dollar stores, in another sign that poorer consumers were feeling the pinch. The company is now trying to target them with “affordable” options, like mini cans of its soda.
Worldwide, Coke saw the largest volume growth from its water, sports, coffee and tea segment. Shares of the company climbed more than 3% in morning trading.
In commodity news, gold is on track for its biggest one-day fall since 2020, The Guardian reported.
The precious metal has dropped over 4% today to US$4,175 per ounce. It is the biggest one-day fall since November 9, 2020, when drug companies announced their Covid-19 vaccine was 90% effective in trials, triggering a surge into shares as investors moved out of so-called “safe havens”.
Capital.com senior market analyst Daniela Sabion Hathorn was quoted in The Guardian saying that easing trade tensions have hit the precious metal.
“The upside in gold and silver seems to have run out of steam at the start of the week ... The trade had become quite overcrowded and was running a little hot considering the levels both markets were at, so a reversal is not entirely out of the blue. The catalyst for the pullback has been the perception of easing tensions between China and the US after Trump said that he expects to make a trade deal after meeting with President Xi Jinping at a Pacific Rim summit in South Korea later this month."
Finally, this morning, former French President Nicolas Sarközy has entered a prison in Paris to begin serving a five-year jail sentence for criminal conspiracy to finance his 2007 election campaign with funds from Libya, Associated Press reported. He becomes the first ex-leader of modern France to be imprisoned.
Sarközy, who is 70, was greeted by hundreds of supporters when he walked out of his home earlier in the day hand-in-hand with his wife, supermodel-turned-singer Carla Bruni-Sarközy. He embraced her before getting into his car.
He will serve his sentence in solitary confinement. Sarközy contests both the conviction and a judge’s unusual decision to incarcerate him pending appeal. His lawyers said they filed an immediate request for his release
