Get to Sleep Faster What’s News

Transcription

Get to Sleep Faster What’s News
P2JW014000-6-A00100-1--------NS
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TODAY IN PERSONAL JOURNAL
Get to Sleep Faster
TUESDAY, JANUARY 14, 2014 ~ VOL. CCLXIII NO. 11
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Business & Finance
S
untory agreed to buy U.S.
bourbon maker Beam in a
$13.6 billion deal that would
make the Japanese company
the world’s No. 3 liquor firm. A1
The Assad regime is gaining
ground as it takes advantage of
infighting between Syrian opposition groups, in a sign of how
the rise of extremists could tip
the balance in the three-year-old
civil war.
n Charter went public with a
$37.4 billion offer for Time
Warner Cable that its larger
rival had privately rebuffed. B3
n EU regulators launched a
probe of European pay-TV
channels and U.S. film studios over licensing deals. B4
n Growth is set to pick up in
most large economies in the
first half, with the exception of
India, the OECD forecast. A10
n U.S. financial regulators
are close to issuing a rule to
let banks hold some CDOs. C3
n Pizza chain Sbarro has
tapped restructuring advisers
amid business struggles. B3
n The FAA is probing how a
Southwest jet landed at the
wrong Missouri airport. B4
n Lululemon warned of
weak quarterly sales, pushing
its shares down over 16%. B3
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World-Wide
n Congressional negotiators
unveiled a compromise $1.012
trillion spending bill for this
fiscal year that restores some
domestic funding cuts. A2
n One-third of enrollees in
new health-insurance exchanges are 55 or older, a figure that could threaten coverage at current premiums. A1
n The Syrian regime is being
bolstered by infighting between moderate rebels and
extremists, with Assad’s
forces consolidating gains. A1
n Tribal sheiks and al Qaedalinked militants huddled in
Fallujah in a bid to end a
siege of the Iraqi city. A8
n The FBI doesn’t plan to
file criminal charges over the
IRS’s heightened scrutiny of
conservative groups. A4
n The Supreme Court suggested the practice of “recess
appointments” has exceeded
constitutional limits. A6
n The justices rejected an
Arizona effort to revive a
state law that bans most
abortions after 20 weeks. A6
n Democratic lawmakers in
New Jersey formed two panels
to probe bridge-lane closures
by Gov. Christie’s aides. A4, A17
n Kentucky and Ohio were
preparing for a chemical plume
drifting down the Ohio River
after the West Virginia spill. A3
n Foundations pledged $330
million to try to prevent a fire
sale of Detroit’s art trove. A2
n Probiotics seem to reduce
the chance of newborns developing colic, a study said. A3
n Died: Burton R. Lifland, 84,
bankruptcy-court judge. B2
CONTENTS
CFO Journal................. B6
Corporate News... B2-4
Global Finance............ C3
Health & Wellness D2-4
Heard on the Street C8
In the Markets........... C4
Leisure & Arts............ D5
Markets Dashboard C5
Opinion.................. A13-15
Sports.............................. D6
U.S. News................. A2-6
Weather Watch........ B6
World News......... A8-12
>
s Copyright 2014 Dow Jones & Company.
All Rights Reserved
Jack Kurtz/Zuma Press
UP IN ARMS: Antigovernment protesters took to the streets of Bangkok on Monday to shut down much of the Thai capital. Activists seeking to
drive Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra from office threatened to escalate their protests to include seizing Thailand’s stock exchange. A10
Health Sign-Ups Skew Older,
Raising Fears of Higher Costs
BY LOUISE RADNOFSKY
AND CHRISTOPHER WEAVER
One-third of health plan enrollees in new insurance marketplaces are 55 or older, the Obama
administration said Monday, a
figure that insurers said makes
the pool older than they would
need to sustain their coverage at
current premiums.
Administration officials said
they are pushing to enroll more
Bourbon
Buzz Fuels
Deal for
Jim Beam
The world is developing a
fresh taste for Kentucky bourbon.
In a $13.6 billion all-cash deal,
Osaka, Japan-based beer and
soft-drinks maker Suntory Holdings Ltd. agreed Monday to buy
Beam Inc., the owner of Jim
Beam, Maker’s Mark and Knob
Creek bourbons and the secondlargest maker of American whiskey behind Brown-Forman Corp.
By Mike Esterl in Atlanta
and Hiroyuki Kachi
in Tokyo
The acquisition would catapult
family-owned Suntory from No.
15 in global liquor dollar sales to
No. 3, behind only U.K.-based
Diageo PLC and France’s Pernod
Ricard SA, according to alcohol
industry tracker IWSR. Beam,
based in Deerfield, Ill., currently
is No. 4 globally.
Beam is positioned squarely in
a part of the liquor business experiencing a powerful global upswing: bourbon whiskey. The traditional American spirit is made
mostly from corn, aged in
charred oak barrels and typically
hails from Kentucky. Its popularity is building as some consumers
grow tired of vodka, the top-selling U.S. spirit.
Long in the doldrums, U.S.
bourbon has made a comeback in
the past decade and production
in 2012 rose above one million
barrels for the first time since
1973. Distillers have invested
roughly $300 million to boost capacity since 2011. North American whiskey—including bourbon,
Tennessee and Canadian whiskeys—accounted for more than
half of the total growth in the $21
billion U.S. spirits market in the
52 weeks ended Oct. 12, 2013, according to store tracker Nielsen.
Unlike vodka, a popular
Please turn to the next page
 Heard on the Street.................... C8
Composite
n U.S. and state officials are
expanding an investigation of
for-profit colleges and their
student-lending practices. C3
By Sam Dagher in Beirut
and Maria Abi-Habib
in Istanbul
young people before a March 31
deadline for most people to get
coverage for this year, and some
cushions built into the law mean
it won’t necessarily face trouble
right away even if the 2014 pool
of enrollees skews older.
Still, the release of the data,
showing for the first time the age
breakdown of people who had
signed up for coverage through
December, highlighted the challenge in persuading younger peo-
ple who may not have a pressing
need for health coverage to sign
up for policies that can cost about
$200 a month before subsidies.
“This is concerning to us that
we’re seeing this portion come in
so old,” said Marty Anderson,
marketing director for the Wisconsin-based Security Health
Plan, which serves rural counties
in the state.
Just under a quarter of the
roughly 2.2 million people who
signed up for private plans nationwide by Dec. 28 were between the ages of 18 and 34,
while one-third were in the 55to-64 range, just short of the age
at which most qualify for Medicare, the federal government program for the elderly. Kaiser Family Foundation, a health-policy
Please turn to page A4
 House, Senate negotiators unveil
compromise spending bill........ A2
‘AMAZON OF NIGERIA’
Germany Seeds Web Shopping
In the Developing World
BY ANTON TROIANOVSKI
LAGOS, Nigeria—The message from his boss on
the phone from Germany was straightforward, recalls Hendrik Harren, a former website manager in
Africa: “I want you to build the Amazon of Nigeria
for me.”
The caller was Oliver Samwer, an Internet tycoon in Berlin who had already cloned American ecommerce businesses for Europe’s market. By 2012,
his focus was shifting to the developing world.
Mr. Harren found his new assignment daunting.
“I had never founded an Amazon,” he says.
Two years after the call, Nigerian men on motorbikes ply the streets of the chaotic megacity of
Lagos delivering toothpaste, English soccer jerseys
and women’s wigs in a small and unprofitable, but
growing, online shopping business.
They are the vanguard in a race to hook the developing world on American-style e-commerce. It
is a contest in which the U.S. companies that
largely created the business are less dominant than
they are in the West. Playing a major role, instead,
are businesses with roots in Germany, an economy
that has excelled at refining and exporting 20thcentury technologies rather than digital innovation.
The most-aggressive player is Rocket Internet
GmbH, majority owned by Mr. Samwer and his two
brothers. The three gained a measure of notoriety
Please turn to page A12
Helping Hands Cut Through
D.C.’s Political Jargon
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In Sign of the Times, Interpreters for Deaf
Get Creative; ‘OK!OK!OK!’
BY ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON
tor whose gigs run the gamut
from court hearings and testiAt the annual National Econo- mony to political fundraisers and
mists’ Club dinner in November, the White House Easter Egg Roll.
Ben Bernanke suggested that the At all these events Mr. Painter foltarget for the federal-funds rate lows several general signing
would remain near zero for a con- rules—and many more specific to
siderable time. A man named Tra- D.C.’s dialect.
vis Painter, standing
Federal Reserve
onstage, simultaneChairman Ben Berously relayed the
nanke’s use of the
Federal
Reserve
term “forward guidchairman’s words.
ance” is one thing.
Mr. Painter is a
But what about insign-language interterpreting “nuclear
preter for the deaf,
option,” “fiscal cliff,”
a job that is no“not his first rodeo”
where more soughtand “that dog don’t
after and difficult
hunt?”
than in acronym- Mr. Painter explaining
“I absolutely just
the fiscal cliff
and-jargon-filled
love my field,” says
Washington, D.C.
Mr. Painter, an im“Terps,” as they call themselves, posingly tall 25-year-old with
are charged with re-creating in slender fingers. “I am stumped,
crystal clarity speeches often every day.”
known for nuance, importance
When lost in a minefield of jarand opacity.
gon, the rule is “Spell, and you’re
Please turn to page A6
Today, Mr. Painter is a contrac-
Pro-regime forces have consolidated recent gains in and
around the northern city of
Aleppo, Syria’s economic hub.
These forces are also geared up
to recapture more territory
around the city, in a potential
major setback for rebels after 18
months of battles to oust the regime from parts of the city that
have remained under its control.
In one area, moderate rebels
late last week succeeded in forcing extremists from Naqareen,
northeast of the city. That withdrawal enabled pro-regime
forces to move in against a
weakened rebel contingent on
Sunday.
Pro-regime forces are also
preparing for an assault on rebels in the nearby Sheikh Najjar
area—a sprawling industrial district, said a resident and opposition activists. If regime forces
were to capture the area, it
would cut off rebels inside the
city from those in the surrounding countryside.
Opposition activists and anaPlease turn to page A8
Star of the Show
FAST LANE: New GM CEO Mary
Barra stole the spotlight at the
North American International Auto
Show in Detroit on Monday. B1
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P2JW014000-6-A00100-1--------NS
n The Dow suffered its fourth
straight drop, shedding 179.11
points. Goldman warned about
lofty stock valuations. C4
YEN 103.00
Opposition Fights
Extremist Group
n Google is buying Nest Labs,
a closely held maker of “smart”
thermostats and smoke
alarms, for $3.2 billion. B1
n The Justice Department
charged three former Rabobank traders with fraud for
alleged Libor manipulation. C1
EURO $1.3672
Clashes
Bolster
Syrian
Regime
Protests in Thailand Escalate, With Threat to Stock Exchange
What’s
News
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