World's Largest Ag Trader To Cut Thousands Of Jobs

The big traders don't lay-off workers at the top of the markets they specialize in so this action probably means it is time to start watching for signs of a bottom in agricultural commodities.

From Bloomberg, December 2:

Cargill to Cut Thousands of Jobs Globally as Profits Shrink

• Largest private US firm will slash about 5% of workforce
• Most cuts will be made this year, CEO says in internal memo 

Cargill Inc. is cutting thousands of jobs globally after the largest privately held company in the US missed profit targets.

The Minneapolis-based firm, the world’s largest agricultural commodities trader, will cut about 5% of its 164,000-strong workforce as part of its 2030 strategy, according to an internal memo seen by Bloomberg. The reductions won’t affect its executive team, but will impact a number of next level senior leaders, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.

Cargill and crop-trading rivals such as Bunge Global SA and Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. have seen earnings shrink after bumper crops sent corn and soybean prices tumbling. For Cargill, the squeeze has been compounded by the smallest US cattle herd in seven decades. The company has spent much of the past decade turning itself into the third-largest US beef processor.

“The majority of these reductions will take place this year,” Chief Executive Officer Brian Sikes said in the memo. “They’ll focus on streamlining our organizational structure by removing layers, expanding the scope and responsibilities of our managers, and reducing duplication of work.”

Read more: Cargill Supply Chain Head and Treasurer to Retire Amid Shakeup

Cargill had already told employees earlier this year that it would reduce the number of business units to three from five after less than one-third of its businesses reached their earnings goals in fiscal 2024. It also cut about 200 tech jobs in various locations.

The company’s profits fell to $2.48 billion in the year through the end of May, the lowest since 2015-16, Bloomberg Opinion’s Javier Blas reported. That’s less than half the record net profit of about $6.7 billion it made in the 2021-22 fiscal year....

....MUCH MORE

Previously:

• Farm Country: "Cargill’s annual revenue falls for the first time in years"
• Javier Blas: "Bumper harvests in wheat, corn and soybeans mean food prices are falling"

"Ukrainian Grain Exported Through Tax-Avoiding ‘Shell Firms,’ Robbing Country of Wartime Revenue"

From the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, July 5:

Reporters looked into who imported millions of euros of Ukrainian “black grain” into the European Union. They found liquidated companies, proxies — and multinational agribusiness giants.

• Ukraine is investigating hundreds of firms, many created since Russia’s full-scale invasion scrambled the grain market, for allegedly failing to properly document their trading in Ukrainian grain or to pay taxes on it.
• Some of the EU companies that imported this grain from Ukraine raise serious questions themselves.
• Several had been ordered shut down by Hungarian authorities but continued trading. Some of the men listed as their owners and directors were patients in psychiatric hospitals; one is an aspiring TikTok influencer.
• The Romanian subsidiaries of major international agribusiness traders — COFCO International, Bunge, Viterra, and Ameropa Holding — also imported grain through Ukrainian companies under investigation.

This April, hundreds of Romanian farmers used tractors to block the Halmeu border crossing with Ukraine, protesting a flood of cheap grain from their war-torn neighbor. “We want to help, but not at any price!” they chanted.

“The imports from Ukraine are a big loss for us,” said David Gheorghe, a farmer who is also the mayor of the nearby town of Moftin. “They’ve filled the country with Ukrainian grain, and for us this is unfair competition.”

With Ukraine’s seaports blocked since Russia’s full-scale invasion last year, the number of grain trucks crossing Halmeu has skyrocketed: From just 10 per month in the early days of the war to 1,600 per month last fall.

In response to the farmers’ protests, Romania and other countries temporarily banned Ukrainian grain imports.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has criticized the European restrictions as a threat to his country’s economy.

But Ukraine’s agricultural sector has also been damaged by the country’s own corruption, a new investigation by OCCRP and RISE Project, OCCRP’s Romanian member center, has found. Trade data obtained by reporters shows that, in the first seven months of Russia’s full-scale invasion, much of the grain passing through Halmeu and other border crossings was exported by dubious Ukrainian companies that are accused of tax evasion and other crimes.

These companies are among more than 300 under investigation by the Ukrainian authorities since last September. Prosecutors say they defrauded the state of at least $140 million last year alone.

As part of the investigation, authorities have seized tens of thousands of tons of grain from some of the companies, according to court records seen by reporters. Some have challenged these seizures, and the court cases are ongoing.

Multiple high-ranking officials are accused of abusing their positions to help set up the tax evasion mechanism, including senior customs officers working at ports in the Odesa region....

....MUCH MORE

"Bunge to merge with Viterra to form $18 billion agriculture trader"

Although not nearly as large as  Cargill you can be sure that this tie-up has raised some concerns at the "Grain merchant to the world."

From Reuters via Yahoo News, June 13:

U.S. grains merchant Bunge and Glencore-backed Viterra on Tuesday announced an $18 billion deal to merge, creating one of the world's largest agriculture trading firms.

The deal brings Bunge closer in global scale to leading rivals Archer-Daniels-Midland and Cargill and will be examined closely by antitrust regulators.

Bunge is already the world's largest oilseed processor and analysts said it and Viterra's crushing businesses could face regulatory scrutiny in Canada and Argentina.

Bunge last year was the largest corn and soybean exporter from Brazil, the world's top source of the staple crops for making animal feed and biofuels, according to data from shipping agent Cargonave. Viterra was the third-largest corn exporter and No. 7 soybean shipper.

Combined, the companies accounted for about 23.7% of Brazil corn exports in 2022 and 20.9% of Brazil soybean exports, Cargonave data showed.

In the United States, Viterra's business of buying and selling grain expanded via its purchase of Gavilon last year. The merger would enhance Bunge's grain exporting and oilseed processing businesses in the world's No. 2 corn and soy exporter, where it has a smaller presence than ADM and Cargill....

....MUCH MORE

We have so many posts on both Viterra and Bunge (along with Grain Corp+AWB, Gavilon and the rest of gang) that it is easier to simply link to search blog' results.

This one has always amused me. From 2017 referring back:

Early in the current decade we were pitching the idea that George Soros should use his position in Gavilon to acquire Bunge:

August 12, 2011
At What Price Does George Soros Find Bunge Attractive? (BG)

No, that's not a reference to the Brazilian girlfriend who's suing him for $50 mil., it's a ref. to Mr. Soros' love affair with all things ag.

We'll have more next week. BG at $61.11, down 24 cents....

 Gavilon was purchased by Viterra in 2022.

"Food Supply Stays Tight as Disappointing U.S. Harvest Adds to Global Challenges"

With the exception of corn we aren't seeing much in the way of extraordinary recent price trends to corroborate the conclusion but on the other hand futures on the three largest U.S. crops remain 50% to 75% above their January 2020 prices.

From The Wall Street Journal, September 20:

Agriculture executives say at least two years of bumper crops are needed to relieve pressure from drought and the war in Ukraine

A lackluster U.S. harvest this year is setting back efforts to relieve a global food supply that has been constrained by Russia’s war in Ukraine, agriculture-industry executives said.

Senior executives from companies such as Bayer AG , Corteva Inc., Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Bunge Ltd. said worldwide crop supplies remain tight, and some said at least two more years of good harvests in North and South America are needed to ease the pressure. Persistent drought conditions in the U.S. and agricultural countries in South America, along with uncertainty over crop production in Ukraine, are making that harder, they said. “When it comes to the global food-supply situation, I think things are going to continue to be tight for the time being,” said Werner Baumann, Bayer’s chief executive.

High temperatures this summer exacerbated drought conditions in the U.S. West and the country’s Great Plains. Intense heat in states such as Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma set in as corn crops were pollinating in many parts of the Grain Belt, when the plants require the most water. Some corn crops were also planted late this year after a wet spring, causing some yield loss, according to agriculture analysts....

....MUCH MORE

Although the big traders sometimes don't talk their book, usually they do. The same, of course, is true of hedge funds so keep your wits about you.

 Love,

George

Here's three years of CME corn prices via TradingView:

Review: Blas & Farchy's "The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources"

I'm guessing that our readers have indeed heard of these companies and could list them in revenue order, but this is still a nice little overview of the book.

From The National Interest, April 24:

Who Really Owns the World? Meet the Merchants of Power You’ve Never Heard Of

Javier Blas and Jack Farchy’s The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources offers a probing look at one of the most overlooked sectors in modern global markets and geopolitics.

Javier Blas and Jack Farchy, The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources (Oxford: Oxford University Press). 416 pp., $29.95.

WHEN I was an undergraduate studying at Georgetown University, I used to listen to Al Jazeera English’s (AJE) coverage of global events—the Arab Spring was still in full swing at the time, and AJE’s reporting was second to none. On a May afternoon in 2011, one particular segment on Kamahl Santamaria’s show, Counting the Cost, stood out. Kamahl introduced a company that I had never heard of before: Glencore.

The company is a commodity trader—a business that focuses on the buying and selling of physical commodities, like grain, oil, copper, and so on. Most would dismiss this as relatively inconsequential; buying and selling commodities is one of the oldest kinds of trade in the world. What made Glencore stand out, Kamahl emphasized, was that “when one company has this much influence, through its size, and some say even its practices, then there is a concern.” He laid out the numbers: at the time, Glencore controlled 3 percent of the world’s oil market, 50 percent of the global copper market, 60 percent of zinc, and 9 percent of the world’s grain. “Think about the effect that would have on food prices,” Kamahl cautions, “the absolute basics for so many people around the world.” If controlling the food supply of entire nations isn’t a significant form of power, then what is?

Glencore, and other commodity traders like it, are the focus of The World for Sale: Money, Power and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources, a recent and rather instructional book by journalists Javier Blas and Jack Farchy. Blas and Farchy’s thesis is straightforward: far from being ordinary merchants, commodity traders are key players in the contemporary international economy—actors whose “control over the flow of the world’s strategic resources has also made them powerful political actors.” Yet despite wielding this immense wealth, influence, and structural power, this industry remains a relatively unknown force to most people—even fewer know its history, evolution, adaption to changing markets and technology, and modus operandi.

Drawing on over a hundred interviews with current and retired commodity traders, Blas and Farchy deliver an informed and eye-opening dive into the field of commodity trading—a world of swashbuckling merchant-adventurers, African dictators, Swiss bankers, and the suave yet ruthless empire-builders who may yet hold the future of global geopolitics in their hands. 

THE WORLD for Sale opens up at the twilight of the Second World War, when an age of peace, combined with ruined cities and nations needing rebuilding, opened the door to a hitherto unprecedented bonanza for raw materials. The reader is introduced to the pioneers of the modern commodity trading business: the Hamburg-born Theodor Weisser, who crossed the Soviet border (despite having been a former Soviet war prisoner) seeking a deal to export Communist diesel and oil to the West; American John H. MacMillan, who went from learning the family grain business (Cargill) on the floor of the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce to unleashing America’s grain upon the world, including to the Communist Bloc; and Ludwig Jesselson, who fled to America from Nazi Germany’s genocidal campaign against Jews and went from trading scrap in New York to being the veritable founding father of a dynasty of commodity trading companies—including Glencore—that exists to this day. These three men created the business model and professional culture that has guided the commodity traders over the past eighty-plus years.

The reader is taken on a whirlwind tour of significant events in the industry. For instance, the Great Grain Robbery—probably the first time that both governments and the public at large were exposed to the importance of the commodity trading business—is retold in delicious detail. Suffering from crop shortfalls in 1971–2, the USSR dispatched Nikolai Belousov—the head of the Soviet grain trading agency—to the West with a single mission: secure a food supply. Belousov met with John MacMillan’s successor at Cargill and negotiated an agreement to buy 2 million tons of grain over the next year. Blas and Farchy succinctly summarize the mood: “It seemed, at the time, like a good deal all round.”....

....MUCH MORE

For more on the Great Grain Robbery we have last November's "That Time The CIA Completely Missed A Soviet Crop Failure And Allowed The Sovs To Buy American Wheat On The Cheap." Which was referenced in March's "Did The CIA Foresee The Effect On Wheat Markets Of The Russia Invasion And The Effect Of Sanctions?."

And traders in general

• "10 top global commodity trading firms: Smart money or bad boys?" 
• Glencore, Bunge Eye Sale of Soros-backed Gavilon 
• WTF? "Bunge to Buy Climate Change Capital" (BG)

I'm still trying to figure out why the ICE didn't get sued for bailing out Al Gore, Goldman Sachs and President Obama's pal Richard Sandor by way of their $604 million purchase of Climate Exchange, PLC..

• War and Debt: Glencore, Vitol, Cargill, Dreyfus Cash In
• Japanese Trading Giants Emerge As Leading Candidates to Buy Soros-backed Gavilion
• Goldman Reverses March 10 "Downside Risk to Crop Prices" After Corn Hits 2 1/2 Year High (GS)
• Glencore, Dictators and Spies: A Giant Among Giants
• How Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis (GS)
• FACTBOX: The world's top oil trading houses 

Looking at the Sotheby's New York sales, mentioned a week ago, I actually thought, for a split-second, that this painting had something to do with Goldman Sachs:

Instead it is Lot 23, Picasso's Femme nue couchée, which was hammered down for 67,541,000 USD

"Agriculture Giants Are Finally Making Money From Trading Again"

 From Bloomberg, October 27:

The world’s largest agricultural commodity firms are finally making money from trading again.

After years of lackluster returns as bumper crops curbed the volatility traders need to thrive, the stars seem to have aligned for the likes of Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. and Bunge Ltd. China is loading up on American corn and soybeans, profits from oilseeds processing have rebounded, and a drought in Brazil is boosting prices. Even the beleaguered biofuels market is improving.

“There’s really strong demand and a fight for execution, so it’s a better operating environment because of the improved demand outlook,” Paul Maass, chief executive officer of U.S. grain handler Scoular Co., said in an interview. “I think the whole market feels that.”

That’s a stark turnaround for an industry that was stuck with thin margins as farmers increased storage capacity and gained access to more information, relying less on grain handlers at a time when seed development meant big yields year after year. Facing smaller commodity profits, traders diversified into everything from beef to pet food, fish feed and veggie burgers.

Soybean futures have jumped to a four-year high in Chicago and wheat last week touched the highest in almost six years. Corn has rebounded 36% since sinking in April to the lowest level in a decade...

....MUCH MORE

"U.S. Meat Crisis Is Latest Blow for World’s Largest Crop Traders"

From Bloomberg:

The world’s largest agricultural commodities traders, already contending with the closure of restaurants, now have one more thing to worry about: the slowdown of American meat plants.

Lockdowns from New York to Los Angeles already meant people were eating more at home, hitting demand for cooking oil made from soybeans. Now shutdowns and slowdowns at American meat plants are forcing farmers to cull their animals, cutting the need for soy meal, a key ingredient in feed rations.

Bunge Ltd., the top processor of soybeans globally, has already slowed crushing operations in the U.S. by 10%, according to Chief Executive Officer Greg Heckman. Rival Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. reduced utilization rates of its factories in North America by 5 percentage points, the company said last week.

“We’ll run for margin and we’ll run the crush to meet demand,” Heckman said in an earnings call Wednesday. In the U.S., between maintenance and adjusting to demand, “we’ve cut crush almost 10%,” he said.

Soybean processing yields oil, which is used for cooking and biodiesel, as well as the meal that goes into animal feed. With both markets being upended by the novel coronavirus, profits from crushing the oilseed have already tumbled to their lowest level in about six months.

President Donald Trump recently ordered meat plants to stay open and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said facilities that previously closed should be up and running in 10 days. Still, many will operate at slower-than-usual rates for social distancing, meaning producers will continue to euthanize animals. As many as 7 million pigs are expected to be killed in the second quarter, according to CoBank, a lender to the agriculture industry....MORE

Agriculture: Billionaires Betting Big

From TechCrunch:

With fresh support from its billionaire backers Pivot Bio is ushering in a farming revolution

In the first decade of the twentieth century two German chemists, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, invented fertilizer — the nitrogen compound which ushered in modern agriculture and saved the world from potential starvation.

Now, over a century later, a new group of scientists backed by government-owned international investment funds and some of the world’s wealthiest men and women is trying to save the world from their invention.

In the hundred years since companies began manufacturing fertilizer at an industrial scale, the chemical has become one of the main sources of the pollution that’s choking the planet and putting millions of the lives its use has helped to feed at risk from severe droughts, fires, floods, and storms caused by climate change.

That’s why investors including Breakthrough Energy Ventures (the investment fund backed by Mukesh Ambani, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Masayoshi Son) and the Singapore-owned investment fund Temasek along with DCVC; Prelude Ventures; Spruce Capital Partners; Codon Capital; Bunge Ventures; Continental Grain Company; Tekfen Ventures; Pavilion Capital; and individual investors Alan Cohen and Roger Underwood have backed Pivot Bio with a new $100 million investment.

Pivot uses genetically edited microbes to replicate the work that naturally occurring bacteria had done for millions of years to fix nitrogen in the soil, where it could be absorbed through plants’ root structures....MUCH MORE

As far as ag investments go, nine-figure rounds are not that common, a couple salmon farmers and a handful of "plant-based protein" (it's all plant-based) companies and maybe two of the vertical farm companies.

We keep an eye on what Temasek is doing. They aren't as flashy as their Silicon Valley brethren but they have a nose for sniffing out where the money will flow, both in venture and in private equity.

Nestlé is expanding its plant-based 'meat' offerings: DiGiorno and Stouffer's

As the realization sinks in that Beyond Meat will not be the only game in town,

FinViz

and that some of these would-be competitors are pretty big (Cargill, Tyson, Smithfield, Bunge, ConAgra etc. etc) BYND is down ~68%.
From Engadget:

DiGiorno and Stouffer's bring plant-based 'meat' to frozen Italian food

It's not meat, it's DiGiorno.

Nestle is expanding its plant-based 'meat' offerings to a category seldom covered in the meatless world: the frozen Italian food you buy when you'd rather not order in or start from scratch. It's introducing both a DiGiorno pizza (the Rising Crust Meatless Supreme) and a Stouffer's lasagna (the Meatless Lasagna) that use Sweet Earth's Awesome Grounds in place of ex-animals. While Nestle hasn't outlined their exact nutritional value, the mix of yellow pea protein, wheat gluten and multiple veggie oils promises the usual meat-like taste while delivering plenty of protein, fiber and, of course, reduced guilt.

Awesome Grounds by themselves typically offer 16g of protein and 4g of fiber per serving....MORE

Nestlé is the world's biggest food and beverage company.

"Big Ag wants a cut of booming fake-meat market"

Very big. the introduction to last Wednesday's "Cargill pumps funding into meat & fish alternatives" (BYND)":
Cargill is quite large.
$113 billion in revenues, $5.19 billion in operating cash flow, an intelligence operation that makes the CIA envious: human intelligence from spies in just about every country on earth and satellites to watch over it all.
Beyond Meat is about to discover what the Harvard Business Review, back in 2001, called "First Mover Disadvantage"....


And today's deep dive from Reuters:

Bunge Ltd, one the world’s biggest grain traders, recently disclosed the 1.6% stake it had purchased in the fast-growing fake-meat startup Beyond Meat. 

The play looked smart after the stock surged more than 250% since the faux burger and sausage maker’s initial public offering in May. Indeed, Beyond Meat’s (BYND.O) market capitalization of $9.9 billion is now larger than Bunge’s (BG.N), a 201-year-old firm with 31,000 employees.

No wonder many top agricultural firms want to grab their cut of the booming market for plant-based fake meat. Bunge’s investment is just one example of how grain traders and seed companies are trying to capitalize on a market that now accounts for 5% of U.S. meat purchases - a share expected to triple over a decade, according to investment management firm Bernstein. That growth would mirror the fast ramp-up of milk substitutes made from crops such as almonds.

“I definitely think this is going to continue to drive demand,” said Vince Macciocchi, president of the nutrition group at Archer Daniels Midland (ADM.N), one of Bunge’s chief rivals.

ADM and privately-held grain trader Cargill are selling processed peas and soy proteins to consumer food companies and restaurants that use them to make vegetable burgers, sausages, fish substitutes and other faux-meat products. They are also getting into the business through acquisitions and corporate partnerships or by leveraging their labs and research capabilities to help make new plant-based products for clients including food and beverage makers.

Seed company Corteva (CTVA.N) - which spun off in June after a merger of Dow Chemical and Dupont (DD.N) - is studying potential vegetable seed offerings.

Grain traders and seed-makers are following the lead of Beyond Meat and another startup, Impossible Foods, along with traditional meat producers such as Tyson Foods (TSN.N) and Maple Leaf Foods (MFI.TO) that have cashed in on plant-based meat substitutes. Demand for meat alternatives has soared as consumers add plant-based protein to their diets for health reasons and out of concern for animal welfare and environmental damage from livestock farming.

Tofu, made from soybean milk, is the best known meat alternative and has been around for decades. But in recent years, other crops such as black beans, peas, lentils, canola, beets and sunflower have become popular in products made to taste like or replace meat....

....MUCH MORE

Has China Really Stopped Buying U.S. Soybeans? (its complicated)

Following up on May 3's "It appears China has stopped buying soybeans from the US altogether because of trade fight":

Soybeans are used as a major food source for pigs and there are reasons to think China has hit "peak pork" so the country doesn't need as much feed, regardless of source. This is what we were getting at in last week's "China and Pigs and Soybeans: It's Complicated" although I am told I didn't explain the thinking as well as I should have. More after the jump....

From AgWeb, May 4:

The world’s largest oilseed processer alleges China has stopped purchasing soybeans from the United States but industry leaders say the statement is more complex.

According to Bloomberg, Bunge’s CEO Soren Schroder said this week China has essentially stopped buying U.S. soybeans due to trade spat with the United States.

The statement was made the same week delegates from the Trump Administration traveled to Beijing in an effort to smooth out trade tension between the two countries. In a tit-for-tat trade dispute, China is threatening to slap a 25 percent tariff on shipments of some U.S. commodities, including soybeans.
Industry experts say there is a dispute whether the sale is a reduction or a halt.

“There is certainly evidence that there is a decrease,” said Mike Steenhoek, executive director of the Soy Transportation Coalition. “There are differences of opinion whether it is more of a dramatic pull-back in purchasing or if it’s simply a reduction. Either way, that’s of concern to us. Certainly Bunge has very much a 30,000 foot perspective on this.”

“[China has largely] stopped purchasing U.S. soybeans for now,” said John Baize, president of John C. Baize and Associates, a consultant for the U.S. Soybean Export Council (USSEC). "They normally import very little now."

Baize says a shipment of 193,000 tonnes of U.S. soybeans were shipped to China the week ending on April 26.

The latest trade data released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) shows China’s traders are already cancelling shipments of several agricultural commodities, including U.S. soybeans. According to the data, there were net reductions of 133,700 tonnes of U.S. soybeans to China for the week ended April 26. Part of the shipment was cancelled. Another 66,000 tonnes were redirected to Vietnam.

However, Both Steenhoek and Baize say it’s not unusual for China to reduce its purchases during this time of year. Historically, China purchases soybeans primarily out of South America since the crop is ready to be harvested.

“Last year, the U.S. exported 36.25 million tons of soybeans to China. Of that amount, only 3.3 million tons were shipped to China in April through August, the last five months of the marketing year,” said Baize....MORE

"It appears China has stopped buying soybeans from the US altogether because of trade fight"

Soybeans are used as a major food source for pigs and there are reasons to think China has hit "peak pork" so the country doesn't need as much feed, regardless of source. This is what we were getting at in last week's "China and Pigs and Soybeans: It's Complicated" although I am told I didn't explain the thinking as well as I should have. More after the jump.

From CNBC, May 2:

• "Whatever they're buying is non-U.S.," Soren Schroder, CEO of New York-based Bunge, the world's largest oilseeds processor, told Bloomberg in a phone interview.
• China canceled a net 62,690 metric tons of U.S. soybean purchases in the two weeks ended April 19, the Bloomberg article pointed out, citing USDA data for the current marketing year.
• The country is the second largest market for U.S. agricultural exports, and soybeans have historically have been one of the top products sold to the Asian giant, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service.

China is apparently no longer buying U.S. soybeans amid the rise in trade tensions, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

"Whatever they're buying is non-U.S.," Soren Schroder, CEO of New York-based Bunge, the world's largest oilseeds processor, told the news outlet in a phone interview. "They're buying beans in Canada, in Brazil, mostly Brazil, but very deliberately not buying anything from the U.S."

A Bunge representative did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.
China canceled a net 62,690 metric tons of U.S. soybean purchases in the two weeks ended April 19, the Bloomberg article pointed out, citing USDA data for the current marketing year.
Soybean futures fell 1 percent Wednesday, but are up 8 percent on the year.

In response to the Trump administration's proposed tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese imports, China's Ministry of Commerce announced duties in early April on 106 U.S. products, including soybeans. No effective date was announced at the time....MORE

For years we've marveled at what The Economist once called 'The Empire of the Pig' and were able to forecast the purchase of the largest US pork processor, Smithfield, as a result of all that marveling.

Then last year we started seeing stories similar to this at Fortune, June 20: "Increasingly Affluent Chinese Want Healthier Food and that Has Big Implications for Meat Producers".

Here's the ten second tutorial on Ag cycles, first posted in 2008:

The Hog Cycle
No not Harley-Davidson, although I imagine some econ grad student has written the paper.
Wheat and hogs are two commodities with long price series. We mentioned the hog cycle back in January:

The hog price series is one of the longest we have records for, back to the 1200's. The cycle is:
slaughter begets scarcity begets higher prices begets breeding begets over-supply begets slaughter. It's been going on for a while....

And some of the the more recent stuff, March 3:

"China Unveils How It Will Retaliate To US Tariffs, USDJPY Snaps"

If I was a pig in the Midwest I'd be tempted to vote for Donald Trump in 2020.
And I'm not talking deplorables.
As my favorite translator of Mandarin tells me, Chinese people love pork. And we've been babbling on about China's Strategic Pork Reserve for over a decade. Here's 2010's '"...Pork Signals Record Meat Prices' and China's Strategic Pork Reserve (SFD)":

I just threw Smithfield's symbol into the headline, neither story directly mention's the country's largest hog and pork producer. We first mentioned the Strategic Pork Reserve in an October 2007 post "Is China Going to Own the World?".

As it turned out, Smithfield was purchased by China's largest protein processor, Shuanghui International Holdings (now WH Group), in 2013 in a move that triggered a national security review in the U.S., I kid you not,

Anyhoo, China has been playing power politics for something like 5000 years and should President Trump go through with the threatened tariffs the Chinese will strike directly at his base while the porkers breathe a little easier as a major export market is taken off the table, so to speak....

Pork prices, with the exception of 2014 have been trading between $60 and $100 for a decade:

In 2014 you had the American bacon binge (2011 - 2014) combined with  porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PED).
When it was realized PED was not as deadly as rumored/feared (but still quite messy) prices came back down.
Finally both the stock price and comments of China's largest soy buyer, New Hope Group belie the headline of Bloomberg's March 3 story "China Pig Feed King Says U.S. Trade War Will Hurt":

..."In case of a trade war, we are able to find other solutions," said Liu, who is also chairman of New Hope Liuhe, a publicly traded animal feed producer controlled by New Hope Group. “We have to raise pigs, and citizens have to eat pork.”...

It seems to be more a logistics problem than a scarcity situation.

"Shipping's Baltic Exchange turns to grains, gas and even air freight"

Action baby, action!
From Reuters:

The Baltic Exchange, owned by Singapore Exchange, plans to launch new indexes for grains, gas and potentially air freight in its biggest shake-up for more than a decade, according to executives and two sources familiar with the matter. 

The London-run company operates the world’s leading shipping freight index, which tracks rates for vessels transporting dry bulk commodities including iron ore and coal. It is looking to diversify its business after a near decade-long shipping downturn hit trading volumes and profitability.

“We are only going to make real money through volume, so we have got to increase our reach,” said Baltic Exchange Chief Executive Mark Jackson. “Everything we are doing now is about increasing our reach.”

For its listed owner, the far larger Singapore Exchange (SGX), the new products are part of a drive to expand its own global presence and increase its market share, particularly in Asia.
The centuries-old Baltic told Reuters it was developing two new grain freight indexes as well as a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) index.

The grain indexes, which the company aims to launch this year, will be tradable instruments, allowing investors to take a position on freight rates at a point in the future, known as forward freight agreements or FFAs.

The new products will target users including gas and grains players, moving the company beyond its traditional shipping base, which it hopes will help counter future market shocks.

Some of the biggest grains traders such as U.S. groups Cargill [CARG.UL], Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge and China’s COFCO International have been consulted on the development of the new grains indexes, according to the two sources, who declined to be named, citing market sensitivity....MORE

"Why China's Soybean Tariff Changed Everything"

I was asked why we didn't cover last week's USDA grains and soyabeans inventory and planting intentions report when it was so bullish for corn and especially beans. We didn't understand how the market could be so enthusiastic with the sword o'Damocles trade war potential hanging over things. So we said nothing.
Here's the last couple week's action via FinViz:

And the headline story from ZeroHedge:

While markets are being somewhat drama queen-ish this morning, China's trade war retaliation was telegraphed well in advance, and as we reported nearly two weeks ago, "China About To Launch "Tens Of Billions" More In Tariffs." As such it should not have come as a surprise that China did just that overnight, when it announced 25% tariffs on $50 billion in 106 US imports.

What was a surprise, was the unexpected announcement that China would also include US soybean exports in the list of items impacted by tariffs, something which we noted earlier opens up the door to a new, third round of tariffs by the US, which would assure that a "nuclear" trade war has indeed broken out.

It is the presence of soybeans in the tariff list that has startled China watchers and analysts, such as Capital Economics' Julian Evans-Pritchard, who writes that "China’s rapid and aggressive response to the proposed US tariffs has raised the stakes for both sides."

What makes the inclusion of soybeans so surprising?
Perhaps nothing more than the fact that while China is seeking to hurt US exporters, it will also substantially and materially impair its own domestic producers and supply chains, will struggle to replace U.S. soybean supplies "inflicting severe financial pain on domestic companies, analysts and executives at feedmakers said" according to Reuters, and potentially risk sparking runaway food inflation as surging feedstock prices send pork prices through the roof.

To be sure, from a trade war perspective the inclusion of soybeans makes perfect sense: for China, the world's top importer of the oilseed in the world, soybeans are considered one of the most powerful weapons in Beijing’s trade arsenal because a drop in exports to China would hurt Iowa and other farm states that backed U.S. President Donald Trump. As the chart below shows, soybeans were the biggest U.S. agricultural export to China last year at a value of $12 billion.

Incidentally, for those who wish to trade, either buy or sell, the biggest corporate suppliers of soybean to China, here is a list of the top sellers, courtesy of Bloomberg:

1. Bunge
2. Marubeni
3. Cofco
4. Cargill
5. Dreyfus

...MORE

We'll have more on the ag commodities.This was Agrimoney's coverage of the market's reaction to the March 29 USDA report:
Corn, soybean prices soar as US farmers plan sowings cutbacks

Continental Grain Increases Stake in Bunge (BG)

From the World Grain Council:

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, U.S. — It appears Continental Grain Co., a powerful force in the global grain industry for many years, could play a key role in the potential sale of U.S.-based agribusiness giant Bunge.

Multiple media outlets on March 5 reported that Continental Grain, an investor in agricultural and food businesses, has filed with regulators about a previously undisclosed position in potential takeover target Bunge and plans to hold discussions with the U.S. agricultural commodity trader about a potential sale.

Continental, which owns 1% of Bunge, has secured approval from U.S. regulators to buy more shares, according to reports.

Under the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, if a group or individual purchases more than $84 million of stock in a company its investment is considered “non-passive,” it needs clearance to increase its position, which would allow it to hold talks with that company about things such as strategy.

Bunge, which has a market valuation of about $11 billion, has been a takeover target during the past year. In early 2017, Glencore, a swiss miner and commodity trader, approached Bunge with an offer but was rebuffed. More recently, Archer Daniels Midland Co. (ADM) reportedly held discussions with Bunge about a possible deal that would combine two of the world’s largest grain traders....MUCH MORE

Grain Traders

From the Streetwise Professor, Jan. 23:

Why Are ABCD Singing the Blues?

It’s pretty clear that the major agricultural trading firms, notably the ABCDs–ADM, Bunge, Cargill, and Dreyfus–are going through a rough patch of tight margins and low profits.  One common response in any industry facing these conditions is consolidation, and in fact there is a major potential combination in play: ADM approached Bunge about an acquisition..

I am unsatisfied with most of the explanations given.  A widely cited “reason” is that grain and oilseed prices are low due to bumper crops.  Yes, bumper crops and the resulting low prices can be a negative for producers, but it does not explain hard times in the midstream.  Ag traders do not have a natural flat price exposure. They are both buyers and sellers, and care about margin.
Indeed, ceteris paribus, abundant supplies should be a boon to traders.  More supply means they are handling more volume, which is by itself tends to increase revenue, and more volume means that handling capacity is being utilized more fully, which should contribute to firmer margins, which increases revenues even further.

Greg Meyer and Neil Hume have a long piece in the FT about the potential ADM-Bunge deal. Unfortunately, they advance some implausible reasons for the current conditions in the industry. For example, they say: “At the same time, a series of bumper harvests has weakened agricultural traders’ bargaining power with customers in the food industry.” Again, that’s a flat price story, not a spread/margin story.  And again, all else equal, bumper harvests should lead to greater capacity utilization in storage, logistics, transportation, and processing, which would actually serve to increase traders’ bargaining power because they own assets used to make those transformations.
Here’s how I’d narrow down where to look for more convincing explanations. All else equal, compressed margins arise when capacity utilization is low. In a time of relatively high world supply, lower capacity utilization would be attributable to increases in capacity that have outstripped gains in throughput caused by larger crops.  So where is that increased capacity?

There are some hints of better explanations along these lines in the FT article.  One thing it notes is that farmer-owned storage capacity has increased.  This reduces returns on storage assets.  In particular, when farmers have little on-farm storage they must sell their crops soon after harvest, or pay grain merchants to store it.  If they sell their crops, the merchant can exploit the optionality of choosing when to sell: if they store at a local elevator, they pay for the privilege. Either way, the middleman earns money from storage, either in trading profits (from exploiting the timing option inherent in storage) or in storage fees. If farmers can store on-farm, they don’t have to sell right after harvest, and they can exploit the timing options, and don’t have to pay for storage.  Either way, the increased on-farm storage capacity reduces the demand for, and utilization of, merchant-owned storage. This would adversely impact traders’ margins.

The article also mentions “rivals add[ing] to their crop-handling networks.” This would suggest that competitive entry/expansion by other firms (who?) is contributing to the compressed margins.  This would in turn suggest that ABCD margins in earlier years were abnormally high (which attracts entry), or that the costs of these unnamed “rivals” have gone down, allowing them to add capacity profitably even though margins are thinner.

Or maybe it’s that the margins are still healthy where the capacity expansions are taking place. Along those lines, I suspect that there is a geographic component to this. ADM in particular has its biggest asset footprint in North America. Bunge has a big footprint here too, although it also considerable assets in Brazil.  The growth of South America (relative to North America) as a major soybean and corn exporting region, and Russia as a major wheat exporting region, reduce the derived demand for North American handling capacity (although logistical constraints on Russian exports means that Russian export increases won’t match its production increases, and there are bottlenecks in South America too).

This would suggest that the circumstances of the well-known traders that have more of a North American (or western European) asset base are not representative of the profitability of grain trading overall. If that’s the case, consolidation-induced capacity “rationalization” (and that’s a major reason to merge in a stagnant industry) would occur disproportionately in the US, Canada, and western Europe.  This would also suggest that owners of storage and handling facilities in South America and Russia are doing quite well at the same time that owners of such assets in traditional exporting regions are not doing well....MUCH MORE

What to Watch Before Glencore Results:Dividends, M&A and Congo

Two things to keep in mind when appraising any story on DR Congo is the country's mineral wealth was estimated in 2009 at $24 Trillion and the per capita GDP is estimated at between $450 and $800 per year depending on your source and whether you prefer nominal or purchasing power parity.

Life is cheap and there is enough loot to kill for, much less lie, cheat and steal.

From Bloomberg via Swissinfo.ch:

With Glencore Plc expected to report a record profit Wednesday, the market will be looking for signs of what the world’s biggest commodities trader plans to do with all the money it’s raking in.

"The question will be how much cash do they return to shareholders and how much cash could they invest in M&A?" said Macquarie Group Ltd. analyst Alon Olsha.

A chunk of that cash comes from its powerful marketing business, which will have delivered its strongest trading performance since the global financial crisis if it tops last year’s earnings of $2.82 billion.

Dividends
The company has a new policy of paying out a minimum of $1 billion plus 25 percent of industrial free cashflow, which will probably work out to about $2.1 billion to $2.2 billion, Macquarie estimates.

Anything above that might signal Glencore’s appetite for big-ticket acquisitions is diminished, Olsha said, although he added that’s unlikely.

Dealmaking
While Glencore’s competitors such as Rio Tinto Group have shied away from dealmaking in the last 12 months, making record returns to shareholders instead, Chief Executive Officer Ivan Glasenberg has continued to do what he knows best. Glencore announced acquisitions worth more than $4 billion in 2017 in copper, oil, zinc and coal.

That’s likely to continue, said Investec Plc analyst Hunter Hillcoat.
"There’s always been a mantra that Glencore prefers deals to dividends and I don’t expect that to change."

Last year Glencore was rebuffed when it approached U.S. grain giant Bunge Ltd. and is still on the hunt to expand its agriculture business.

Though any new announcement in Wednesday’s results is unlikely, agriculture and trading are the most probable targets in the next 12 months over traditional mining assets, Macquarie’s Olsha said.

The Congo Question
On a results day that analysts say is unlikely to deliver many surprises, one big question mark hanging over Glencore is the potential impact of proposed legal changes in the Democratic Republic of Congo on its African copper business. The company has positioned its Congo mines as central to its market-leading position in the supply of metals to the electric-vehicle industry....MORE

"Glencore takeover of Bunge 'could be possible this year'"—Credit Suisse (GLEN; BG)

Early in the current decade we were pitching the idea that George Soros should use his position in Gavilon to acquire Bunge:

August 12, 2011
At What Price Does George Soros Find Bunge Attractive? (BG)

No, that's not a reference to the Brazilian girlfriend who's suing him for $50 mil., it's a ref. to Mr. Soros' love affair with all things ag.

We'll have more next week. BG at $61.11, down 24 cents. 

But then Mr. Soros and Ospraie Management ended up selling Gavilon to Marubeni for $3.6 billion and we got bored watching Bunge, the worst-managed of the ABCD grain traders, current price, almost six years to the day later: $77.56, which, as Warren Buffet might say:

“Now I’m known as a long-term investor and a patient guy, but that is not my idea of a big move.”*

Anyhoo, on to the headline story from Agrimoney:

A takeover by Glencore of US-based ag giant Bunge "could be possible this year", Credit Suisse said, cutting its scepticism on a deal after the commodities group unveiled some wriggle room in its financial guidance.

Credit Suisse analysts - who last month flagged a "diminished risk" of Glencore succeeding in the takeover, after using up financial firepower on the acquisition of a stake in Hunter Valley coal operations – said that a Bunge could in fact be possible "in the near term".

The analysis followed Glencore comments on Thursday, as the group unveiled a return to first-half profit, signalling some potential for raising its debt above its self-proclaimed ceiling of $16bn

Steven Kalmin, the Glencore finance director said that while $16bn was "a pretty robust cap that we've been looking to manage the business around, I'm not saying we're going to die in a ditch" if it is breached in the short term.

"It's not going to go to $27 billion or whatever," Mr Kalmin, but signalled that it might "temporarily" exceed the cap, depending on the asset acquired it taking out the debt.

Sugar division sale?
Credit Suisse said, following the comments, that "we therefore infer that a Bunge acquisition could be possible this year [and] that the company is keen on exploring ways to do it".

A deal could be facilitated by Glencore taking on "a bit more debt", although the bank added that "we would think management would not want to do this in a significant way, say out to $18bn and then soon back".

The acquisition of Bunge, which has a stockmarket value of some $11bn, could also be enabled by making the US group a smaller target, through the sale of some operations....MORE

*That was Warren commenting on the secular bear market that ended in August 1982:

December 31, 1964: DJIA 874.12
December 31, 1981: DJIA 875.00

Previously on It's a small world after all:
February 2012
WTF? "Bunge to Buy Climate Change Capital" (BG)

I'm still trying to figure out why the ICE didn't get sued for bailing out Al Gore, Goldman Sachs and President Obama's pal Richard Sandor by way of their $604 million purchase of Climate Exchange, PLC.....

...Last week, James Cameron, founder and vice chairman of CCC, told Reuters the company was being sold "at a low point" in its valuation....MORE

It sure as hell better be.
As a side note, we don't own any Bunge but think it would be a good fit with either Louis Dreyfus or Glencore. 

March 2012
Glencore, Bunge Eye Sale of Soros-backed Gavilon
March 2012
Grain Handler Viterra gets Takeover bid from Glencore, report says (VT.tsx; GLEN.L)
August 2014
Commodities: "More Bumper Crops, Fewer Bumps at Bunge" (BG)

Nothing since.

Agriculture: Agrimoney LIVE Conference--Diary

This is Monday's blog, Tuesday after the jump. Pics here.

Agrimoney LIVE as it happens - day one conference diary

8.45am The conference has not kicked off proper, and already Agrimoney LIVE has a (minor) scoop – that one of the major speakers used to be a motorbiking fiend, and indeed rode a Honda around the UK in 1981, reaching Land's End.

He (it is a he, and not a UK national) still has a moped.

Which speaker? Guesses (and other comments) to 

11.06am India, Africa trump China

Is China really such a big, and positive, theme for commodities and agriculture?

Many observers seem to think so. But Erik Norland, senior economist at CME Group, takes a more jaundiced view.

"A further slowdown in the Chinese economist will likely negatively impact commodity prices, including iron ore, of which China consumers two thirds of the world supply," he says.

"This in turn could put downward pressure on the economics of commodity-producing nations like Australia."

In ags, the zeitgeist is "no longer going to be about China.

"India looks very interesting. And Africa is going to huge population growth."

11: 37am 'Scary sugar short'

Agricultural commodities are a boon for momentum traders, says Fiona Boal, director, commodities at Fulcrum Asset Management.

This is because of the lag between markets signalling a supply imbalance, and producers' being able to respond by raising or lowering output.

"It needs time for higher prices to work back to production," or for lower prices to turn the supply taps down, Ms Boal says.

"This makes agricultural markets are particularly well suited to momentum strategies."

The "scary" shorting for instance, in sugar, prices of which have tumbled on expectations of a potential return to a production surplus ahead, has produced "positive" results, she says.

12:18 Weather outlook

Lots of interesting snippets from Kyle Tapley, of MDA Weather Services.

On El Nino, it looks like if one does develop this year, it will be a weak one, and will "probably come too late to have a big impact on northern hemisphere growing conditions", he says.

That is not necessarily a positive for northern hemisphere farmers, given that El Nino gives a 4.2% boost to US corn yields, compared with trend, and a 3.3% lift to soybean yields, on MDA estimates. (It is La Nina which is the danger to the Corn Belt.)

Indeed, the US looks set this summer for "widespread above-normal temperatures that could lead to heat stress", with dryness looking an issue for the southern Plains and southern Midwest.

…but not that much of an issue. MDA sees the US corn yield coming in at a very respectable 170.8 bushels per acres this year, and the soybean yield at 49.0 bushels per acre.

Where Mr Tapley sees a bigger threat is to the Black Sea, where dry conditions in the summer may "stress corn and sunflowers", but likely come too late to affect wheat potential.

In Europe too, "dry weather this summer in Spain, Romania, and Bulgaria may stress corn and sunflowers", with – importantly – France, the bloc's most important corn grower, being mentioned in dispatches too.

13.55 'Fake' beef strides ahead

Synthetic proteins are a bigger threat to the meat industry than the growing popularity of vegan diets.

According to Marc Sadler from the World Bank, the main issue with synthetic proteins has been their texture.

"This has always been the issue with meat substitutes, as 60-70% of the experience of eating is to do with texture.

"Some companies are breaking through - in their blind tastings it has been impossible to tell the difference between real and synthetic meat."

14.30 'Spend more on tech'

More money needs to be spend on developing artificial intelligence in agriculture, said Arnaud Petit, director commodities and trade at farmer co-operative body Copa-Cogeca.

Speaking at a session at Agrimoney LIVE he said farmers already had technology which could tell them how much fertiliser to apply or where to apply pesticides, but that they needed something which connected all of these and provided interlinked advice.

He also talked of big losses in winter grains in northern Europe (Scandinavia) – maybe 20%. Copa Cogeca will produce quarterly estimates in a few weeks' time....MORE

Agrimoney LIVE as it happens - day two conference diary

09:00 What to make of Glencore approach to Bunge?

For some reason, big news in ag always breaks when Agrimoney is having a conference.

This time, it is Glencore's revelation that its part-owned ag division has made an "informal approach" to trading giant Bunge. (What made it informal? Were the Glencore suitors not wearing ties?)

To one senior delegate at Agrimoney LIVE, this looks like the latest episode in the consolidation wave that started in seeds and chemicals, with the rash of tie-ups with DuPont-Dow, ChemChina-Syngenta, Bayer-Monsanto and BASF, um…

And could it be a sign that the ag sector is on the up again?

"It looks a sign that sector valuations are attractive, if there is all this consolidation going on," the delegate says, flagging the dent to profits in sector from the decline in crop prices.

There is more on sector M&A scheduled in the Agrimoney LIVE programme. Stay tuned....

...LIVEblog site

Finalists For The 2016 Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism

Per the eligibility specs consideration is limited to items/elements published or broadcast in the United States in the calendar year 2015.
My interest this year was whether the Wall Street Journal's John Carreyrou would be a finalist for his series on Theranos.
He is.

From UCLA's Anderson School of Management via BusinessWire:

Judy D. Olian, chairman of the G. and R. Loeb Foundation Inc. and dean of UCLA Anderson School of Management, today announced the finalists of the 2016 Gerald Loeb Awards for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. She also announced the recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Lawrence Minard Editor Award.

The 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient is Paul Ingrassia, former managing editor of Reuters. This annual award recognizes an individual whose career exemplifies the consistent and superior insight and professional skills necessary to further the understanding of business, financial and economic issues.

Amy Stevens, executive editor, professional news at Reuters, will receive the 2016 Lawrence Minard Editor Award, named in memory of Laury Minard, founding editor of Forbes Global and a former final judge for the Loeb Awards. This award honors excellence in business, financial and economic journalism editing, and recognizes an editor whose work does not receive a byline or whose face does not appear on-air for the work covered.

Ingrassia and Stevens will receive their career achievement awards at the 2016 Gerald Loeb Awards banquet and celebration on Tuesday, June 28, 2016, at Capitale in New York City. Winners in the 12 competition categories will also be announced during the banquet.

The banquet and celebration is attended by the most influential journalists, publishers and producers in the nation. This year’s event will be hosted by Tyler Mathisen, co-anchor of CNBC’s Power Lunch. The official invitation, with ticket, table, sponsorship and advertising information can be viewed at http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/loebawardsbanquet.

The following #LoebAwards finalists were chosen from more than 490 entries submitted by local, regional and national outlets:
Audio Category Finalists

• Dana Wolfe, John Donvan, Robert Rosenkranz, Clea Conner Chang, Kris Kamikawa, Alison Russell, Amy Krafft, Adelaide Mandeville, Lia Matthow, Shea O’Meara, Taylor Quimby, Rob Christiansen, Damon Whittemore, and Katie Kemple for “Central Banks Can Print Prosperity” – Intelligence Squared U.S.
• Rebecca Plevin for “Navigating the Costly World of Health Care” – KPCC
• Chris Arnold, Uri Berliner, Neal Carruth, Lori Todd, and Heidi Glenn for “Your Money and Your Life” – NPR
• Colleen DeBaise, Sue Williams, Victoria Wang, Nusha Balyan, Sam Shinn, and Michelle Ciotta for “Succeeding as a Woman in Tech – Shaan Kandawalla, Melody McCloskey, Amy Sheng” – The Story Exchange

Beat Reporting Category Finalists

• Dan Murtaugh, Lynn Doan, Harry R. Weber, and David Wethe for “The Shale Boom Blows Up” – Bloomberg News
• Jenny Deam for “Healthcare Reporting” – Houston Chronicle
• Paul Kiel, Annie Waldman, and Al Shaw for “The Color of Debt” – ProPublica
• John Carreyrou, Michael Siconolfi, and Christopher Weaver for “Testing Theranos” – The Wall Street Journal

Breaking News Category Finalists

• David McLaughlin, Todd Shields, Gerry Smith, Lucas Shaw, Alex Sherman, and Ed Hammond for “Cable Cut” – Bloomberg News
• Kavita Kumar, Adam Belz, Mike Hughlett, Joe Carlson, and Kristen Leigh Painter for “Target Exits Canada” – Minneapolis Star Tribune
• Jason Del Rey, Kurt Wagner, and Kara Swisher for “Jack Dorsey’s Third Act” – Re/code
• John Hilsenrath, Ben Leubsdorf, Greg Ip, Sudeep Reddy, Josh Zumbrun, Jeffrey Sparshott, Patricia Minczeski, Martin Burch, Elliot Bentley and Rachel Louise Ensign for “Fed Rate Increase” – The Wall Street Journal
• David Benoit, Jacob Bunge, Dana Cimilluca, Dana Mattioli, and Dennis K. Berman for “Inside the Dow-DuPont Merger” – The Wall Street Journal

...MORE

Loeb Awards homepage at Anderson