News

Adidas Explores Possible Sale of Reebok Brand

Adidas AG, the German sportswear giant, is exploring a sale of its Reebok brand.

The company will decide in the coming months whether to proceed with a sales process, said the person, who asked not to be identified because deliberations are private. The internal review is in the early stages, the person said. 

A spokeswoman for Adidas said the company doesn’t comment on market rumors. Adidas shares rose as much as 3.4% in Frankfurt trading. 

Since taking over as chief executive officer of Adidas in 2016, Kasper Rorsted has repeatedly parried rumors that he was looking to sell the brand. He closed under-performing Reebok stores and allowed some licensing deals to expire, cutting sales at the long unloved sporting label but cutting expens even more. 

After Reebok finally regained profitability by early 2019, Rorsted expressed hope that he could now generate sales growth with new footwear lines like the CrossFit Nano and the FloatRide ...

TreeCard raises $1m from Ecosia ahead of 2021 launch

TreeCard, a new fintech start-up, has raised $1 million in seed funding from tree planting search engine Ecosia.

The start-up was founded by 23-year-old CEO, Jamie Cox. He previously exited a Y Combinator start-up called Cashew.

TreeCard aims to launch next year, and is made of sustainable cherry tree wood.

The debit card will be made in partnership with Mastercard.

Ecosia, the search engine, has planted more than 110 million trees.

Ecosia notes on its website that TreeCard’s free debit card will use 80% of its profits to plant trees across Ecosia’s reforestation projects.

TreeCard’s donation will come from its interchange fees — the main revenue source for challenger banks — to deforestation initiatives.

Partnering with Ecosia means that for every £45/$60 spent on the card, the company can plant a tree and care for it for three years through the search engine’s existing network of 38 tree-planting locations worldwide.

Ecosia has 15 million users worldwide and is ...

Wärtsilä to supply a major LNG/bioLNG production plant for CO2-neutral transport fuels

The technology group Wärtsilä has been awarded a major contract to supply and construct a plant for production of CO2-neutral liquid transport fuels. The plant will liquefy gas from the natural gas grid to produce carbon-neutral LNG. It will have a capacity of approximately 100,000 tons per year and located in Cologne, Germany. The order with Wärtsilä was placed in September 2020.

Wärtsilä’s vast experience and state-of-the-art technologies developed for the process design, fabrication, and delivery of gas liquefaction plants and mature gas treatment solutions prior to liquefaction, were key factors to secure the contract.

The feedstock for bioLNG is based on biological waste material e.g. liquid manure and food waste. The feedstock is fed to an anaerobic digestion reactor that produces biogas, which is then upgraded to biomethane and injected into the natural gas grid. Green gas certificates are issued along with the injected biomethane, which then permits operators at other ...

Syngenta Crop Protection acquires biologicals company Valagro

Swiss agrichemicals company Syngenta Group announced that its subsidiary Syngenta Crop Protection has acquired biologicals group Valagro.

The financial details of the transaction have not been disclosed by the company.

With 40 years of experience as an innovation pioneer in the field of Biologicals, Valagro will continue to operate as an independent company in the market.

Through the acquisition, Syngenta’s subsidiary is expected to be positioned as one of the global companies poised to shape the growing Biologicals market that is set to be doubled in size in the next five years.

The company said that the deal is in line with its strategy to provide extra complementary products and technology choices to the farmers to care for their crops by managing resistance, enhancing soil health, reducing residues in crops, and addressing consumer demands. 

/Source: NS AGRICULTURE/

Noble Energy shareholders approve merger with Chevron

Noble Energy shareholders have approved the $13 billion merger with Chevron Corp., Kallanish Energy reports.

The approval “marks an important milestone on the path to becoming part of an even stronger global energy platform. We thank ourt shareholders and other stakeholders for recognizing the many benefits that will be realized and the significant value that will be created through this combination,” he said.

The company said the final vote totals will be filed soon with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

With the Noble approval complete, the merger is expected to close early in the fourth quarter 2020, the companies said.

Last July, Chevron announced it was acquiring Noble Energy in a $5 billion all-stock deal that totals $13 billion with debt.

The deal boosts Chevron in the eastern Mediterranean with offshore natural gas assets in Israel and adds to its U.S. shale holdings in the DJ Basin in Colorado and Wyoming and the Permian ...

Japan plans to build a hydrogen fuel plant on the moon

In Japan, they are considering the possibility of building a plant on the lunar surface where the production of hydrogen fuel will be carried out. The project is planned to be implemented by 2035.

These plans were announced by representatives of the JAXA agency. According to the plans of specialists, a factory may appear in the region of the south pole of the Earth's satellite, where ice deposits are concentrated. It is the latter that will serve for the production of fuel, hydrogen and oxygen. H2 will act as fuel for movement on the lunar surface and for some similar purposes. It is assumed that through the implementation of the project, it will be possible to significantly reduce the cost of transporting fuel from the Earth, contributing to more active space exploration.

In recent years, Tokyo has been actively cooperating in this direction with the United States. The countries have agreed ...

The global M&A market in 2020 is approaching to $ 2 trillion

According to the Investor`s news, in 2020, the volume of transactions worldwide mergers and acquisitions (M & A) totaled $ 1.97 trillion.

The publication noted that major transactions between IT-companies account for almost one fifth of the total.

According to the global data provider and stock market infrastructure Refinitiv, the volume of the deals of technology companies is 17.8% of the total, or $ 351.4 billion. This level is now the highest since the dotcom boom of 2000.

The leadership of the IT sector in the M&A market shows the significant impact of the coronavirus crisis – mass transition of all those who found themselves in isolation to online platforms for shopping, work, study, medical consultations and communication. This is likely to contribute to the fact that some of these changes may become permanent.

In second place – financial companies with transactions amounting to $ 283.8 billion, or 14% of total.

Amenably to analytical data ...

Immunomedics shares double after Gilead agrees to buy the cancer drugmaker in $21 billion deal

Gilead Sciences will acquire biotech company Immunomedics in a $21 billion deal that will expand Gilead’s availability of cancer treatments, the companies announced on Sunday. 

The deal will provide Gilead access to the drug Trodelvy, a Food and Drug Administration-approved treatment for metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.

Gilead said it will acquire Immunomedics for $88 per share in cash. The offer will be funded through about $15 billion in cash on hand and $6 billion in newly issued debt. The transaction is anticipated to close in the fourth quarter of 2020, according to the statement. 

Immunomedics has a market value of roughly $10 billion after the company’s shares nearly doubled this year. 

The deal comes as Gilead’s hepatitis C business has struggled in recent years and its overall sales have fallen as the coronavirus pandemic weakens demand for some drugs. Gilead’s sales fell 10% during the second quarter to $5.1 billion.

/Source: CNBC/

Nestle will invest $ 30 million in the disposal and recycling of plastic waste

This year the company Nestle has established a venture fund package for $ 260 million, but it is just a part of a wider initiative of $ 2.1 billion for abandonment of primary plastic.

Two years ago, Nestle that will make all its packaging suitable for recycling or re-use and intends to reduce the use of primary plastic by one third to 2025.

For example, in 2018 Nestle has used 1.7 million metric tons of the plastic packaging. Currently, the company consumes an average of only 2% of recycled plastic worldwide. In general, slightly more is used for underwater bottles that contain 5% of the recycled plastic.

Nestle intends to use the investment in Closed Loop, to ensure the supply of environmentally friendly packaging, as the demand for recycled plastics for food increases.

The fund of the Closed Loop Partners aims to increase the level of recycling of the plastic waste in the United ...

The six biggest tech stocks have lost more than $1 trillion in value in three days

The six biggest tech stocks have lost over $ 1 trillion in the past three days alone, but that’s really just a dent from a huge rally that peaked last week.

Apple, which reached a market cap of $ 2 trillion on August 19, is down about $ 325 billion during that time. Microsoft fell $ 219 billion, Amazon fell $ 191 billion, Alphabet fell $ 135 billion and Tesla, which fell 21% on Tuesday to mark its worst single-day loss in history, lost 109 billion dollars in the past three days. Finally, Facebook lost $ 89 billion.

Despite the huge numbers, it’s worth keeping in perspective given the massive increase in the value of tech giants this year.

At the start of 2020, the six biggest tech companies were worth around $ 5 trillion. On Wednesday, September 2, they peaked at a value of $ 8.2 trillion. After Tuesday’s close, they have ...