It’s to be the biggest IPO of the year. Payments
processing company First Data is going public and expected to raise more
than $3 billion, at $18 to $20 a share. That would give the company a
market valuation of up to $18 billion. It’s a big week but a tough year for IPOs:
ten companies are set to raise more than $5 billion this week alone,
but 10 out of the last 11 public offerings have priced below
expectations.
***
You can keep filling up. Oil prices won’t be going
up for a while, projects the International Energy Agency. “A projected
marked slowdown in demand growth next year and the anticipated arrival
of additional Iranian barrels… are likely to keep the market
oversupplied through 2016,” reads the IEA’s monthly report. With crude around $50 a barrel, “almost everything is for sale”
in the oil industry, says another analyst. There are about 400 buying
opportunities and $200 billion worth of assets on the auction block at
the moment from oil companies trying to meet their debt obligations.
Come all, ye flush investors!
***
US retail sales for September are out this morning. They’re expected up slightly: low oil prices free up income for other purchases but reduce sales receipts at gas stations.
***
It’s not just us. Jennifer Lawrence isn’t getting
paid as much as her male co-stars and while she acknowledges her
problems aren’t those of the average working woman, she’s speaking up
for them. The Sony Pictures hack revealed she and American Hustle
co-star Amy Adams received 7% of the profits for the film, while male
actors Bradley Cooper and Christian Bale and director David Russell
received 9%. She wrote a thoughtful and blunt op-ed
on negotiating pay and giving up too soon, wanting to get her due but
wanting to be liked, and the double standards applied to a professional
woman who speaks her mind.
“I’m over trying to find the “adorable” way to state my opinion and still be likable! F*** that. I don’t think I’ve ever worked for a man in charge who spent time contemplating what angle he should use to have his voice heard. It’s just heard.” Read more.
***
Move over, Joneses. The world’s largest middle class is now China’s, clocking at 109 million adults to the US’s 92 million, according to a Credit Suisse report spotted by Quartz.
The middle class -- defined here by wealth from 2x to 20x the annual
median income -- represents about 14% of the world population and is
growing fastest in Asia, though most wealth is still concentrated in
Europe and the US. China’s middle class has nearly doubled in this
century on the back of record growth, but things are slowing down: third-quarter growth is expected at 6,8%, the country’s lowest since the financial crisis.
Speak up. After the first televised debate, the Democratic presidential field is still very much the Clinton show. Meanwhile, we find out it takes less than 30 social media comments or posts to get a lawmaker’s attention,
according to a vast majority of congressional aides surveyed by the
Congressional Management Foundation. For more than a third of them, it’s
even less than 10. The citizens who are most heard are those who
respond right away to a lawmaker’s actions or statements: their teams
monitor social media closely in the first six hours but attention drops
entirely after 3 days.
by Isabelle Roughol
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