In a significant departure from decades of restrictive population management efforts, China’s ruling party will now permit couples to have three children—“ending a two-child policy that has failed to raise the country’s declining birthrates and [possibly?] avert a demographic crisis” that has “jeopardized the country’s future” - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg
Citing vaccinations, fiscal stimulus in the U.S., and “pent-up business activity and job creation,” the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development “sharply raised its forecast for global growth to 5.8 percent in 2021, up from a 4.2 percent projection in December.” Still uncertain, though, is the impact that new Covid variants and global vaccine distribution will have on an overall recovery - NYTimes
A Wall Street Journal investigation has revealed that West Virginia governor Jim Justice is “personally on the hook for nearly $700 million in loans his coal companies took out from now-defunct Greensill Capital,” a previously unreported dilemma for Justice who is already “dealing with unrelated lawsuits alleging parts of his sprawling network of coal companies breached payment contracts or failed to deliver coal” - WSJ
North America’s largest financial services co-op, Desjardins Group, will acquire the assets of Canadian investment manager Hexavest Inc. in a deal that will add $4.1 billion in institutional funds under management to its fold - Bloomberg
In other acquisition news, PE giants KKR and CD&R will pay $5.3 billion to buy Cloudera Inc., the software company that “was an early player in the open-source software framework” but that has “struggled to shift to the now-dominant public cloud, where it faces steep competition from much larger firms” - WSJ and MarketWatch
After a breakout year—yes, even in a pandemic—in 2020, purveyors of hard seltzer are banking on the Great Reopening of the U.S. to deliver a massive boost to the already popular “flavored bubbly water with alcohol” phenomenon - NYTimes
Streetwise on when inflation moves beyond transitory and becomes persistent. Some keys areas to watch: “the labor force, consumer demand and inflation expectations” - WSJ
Uber and Lyft are blaming a driver shortage for the long wait time and increased fares that a rebounding number of users are seeing as they return to the apps (and their social scenes) in summer 2021 - NYTimes
Frustrated by Deutsche Bank’s “persistent shortcomings in its anti-money-laundering controls,” the Fed has issued the German lender a warning that fines could be coming soon. Despite the “massive resources” the bank has thrown at “addressing repeated shortcomings and penalties,” the Fed said that DB is actually “backsliding” in AML compliance, prompting the threat of an enforcement action - WSJ
Some thoughts on what the recent Amazon acquisition of MGM Studios may mean for “the fates of independent Hollywood studios” like Lions Gate and Sony Pictures Entertainment that “would be a catch for larger streaming players” - Bloomberg
Six minutes and 56 seconds of John Oliver losing his mind about the lack of innovation in Big Cereal. You better believe I’m down for that - LastWeekTonight
Stay safe and get vaxxed,
MDR
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