Proctor and Gamble sold by Trian Partners: $894.07m-Apr 23-34
Cap#2 is recent sale from Apr 20-22-$499.33m
Nelson Peltz-Trian Partners
Founded in 2005, Trian Fund Management, L.P. (“Trian”) is a multi-billion dollar investment management firm with approximately 50 employees.
Nelson Peltz (born June 24, 1942) is an American billionaire businessman and investor. He is a founding partner, together with Peter W. May and Edward P. Garden, of Trian Fund Management, an alternative investment management fund based in New York.
He is non-executive chairman of Wendy's Company, and a director of Legg Mason, Procter & Gamble, Sysco and The Madison Square Garden Company. He is a former director of H.J. Heinz Company, Mondelēz International and Ingersoll Rand and a former chief executive officer (CEO) of Triangle Industries
https://trianpartners.com/portfolio/
https://www.finviz.com/insidertrading.ashx?oc=928265&tc=7&b=2
China Brokerage Forced To Retract Report Admitting Unemployment Rate Is 20%
According to an April 24 report by analysts from Shandong-based Zhongtai Securities, as many as 70 million people could have lost their jobs due to the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, translating into an actual unemployment rate of around 20.5%. The surge in unemployment, according to Bloomberg which saw the report, was due to the outsize impact of the pandemic on services and small businesses, which provide the bulk of job opportunities, they said.
"The urban surveyed unemployment rate is obviously flawed in depicting the unemployment situation, because of China’s special condition that there is a very large group of migrant workers and that the urban surveyed unemployment rate couldn’t truly reflect the employment situation of migrant workers," the analysts admitted.
There were about 50 million fewer working migrant workers in the first quarter compared to last year, part of whom were not included in the survey, according to the 11-page original report. The problem: if accurate, this means that China is not only lying about the source of the coronavirus, and the number of casualties, but also about its unprecedented fallout on the economy. And to preserve confidence, Beijing is pretending that tens of millions of workers are employed when they are, in fact, jobless. The official unemployment rate was 5.9% in March, down from the "record-high" 6.2% in the first two months of the year, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, but of course that number is fabricated just like everything else in China. Like every other economic "data" point, the employment reading has been goalseeked in a tight range of around 5% since the series was first introduced in 2016, similar to GDP which had barely budged more than 0.1% vs the consensus number until the coronacrisis.
In any case, telling the truth was a huge mistake because just like everything else, in mainland China it is verbotten for economists to critique the official job data, a topic of extremely political sensitivity to the Communist Party leadership, especially if the truth is that China is this close to the social disorder that results from tens of millions of jobless people.
And sure enough, almost immediately after the report was published, it became inaccessible according to Bloomberg. One of the report’s authors, Zhang Chen, said by phone that it had been retracted: "Zhongtai’s attitude is that we should go by the official figures for unemployment," Zhang said, confirming indirectly that China is lying about the official data and will censor anyone who dares to tell the truth.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/china-brokerage-forced-retract-report-admitting-unemployment-rate-20
o7
Fed Will Broaden Municipal Lending Program Eligibility
The Federal Reserve said Monday it will broaden the number of local governments from which it will buy debt through a forthcoming central bank lending program.
The Fed will allow one borrower for each county of at least 500,000 people and city of at least 250,000, down from earlier cutoffs of 2 million and 1 million, respectively.
The central bank has faced pressure from lawmakers and other elected officials to expand the number of municipalities that are able to borrow through the Fed.
The Fed announced the program more than two weeks ago and initially limited participation to 76 issuers – including all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/2020042713138/fed-will-broaden-municipal-lending-program-eligibility
FRB Announcement
excerpt
The Federal Reserve is also considering expanding the MLF to allow a limited number of governmental entities that issue bonds backed by their own revenue to participate directly in the MLF as eligible issuers. Any decision to include any such additional eligible issuers would be publicly announced at a future date. The Federal Reserve will continue to closely monitor conditions in primary and secondary markets for municipal securities and will evaluate whether additional measures are needed to support the flow of credit and liquidity to state and local governments.
The MLF is established under Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act, with approval of the Treasury Secretary. The Treasury will provide $35 billion of credit protection to the Federal Reserve for the facility using funds appropriated by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/monetary20200427a.htm