Corporate

Italy’s Luxottica and France’s Essilor on Monday announced they have agreed on a 50-billion-euro merger deal to create an eyewear giant with over 140,000 employees and sales in some 150 countries.

The deal, one of Europe’s largest cross-border tie-ups, brings together Luxottica, the world’s top spectacles maker with brands such as Oakley and Ray-Ban, with Essilor, the world’s leading manufacturer of ophthalmic lenses.
By merging, the companies would have jointly reported net earnings of over 15 billion euros, based on 2015 annual results posted by the two companies, and a net combined operating profit EBITDA of about 3.5 billion euros.

UK’s powerhouse financial sector would face heightened risk and an exodus of 232,000 jobs without certainty over Britain’s Brexit deal, MPs in the House of Commons have heard. Xavier Rolet, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange Group (LSE), said two thirds of the job losses would be felt outside Greater London, with the blow coming as soon as the euro clearing operation leaves Britain’s shores.

Speaking to MPs on the Treasury Select Committee, Mr Rolet said the jobs figure came from a report produced by professional services firm EY for the LSE, which not only took into account the “few thousand” jobs lost from euro clearing itself, but the entire impact on financial services if the operation was moved outside the UK.

Richemont improved watch sales in its own stores helped luxury goods, the swiss company said Thursday; sales during the last three months of 2016 increased 6% from the previous year, offering hope that the battered luxury goods sector may have turned a corner.

The increase was driven by its jewelry unit, offsetting a slight drop in specialty watch sales.

Geneva-based Richemont said sales increased to €3.09 billion in the three months to December 31, from €2.93 billion a year earlier.

Fund manager Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management (EdRam) is to withdraw from the UK retail market less than a year after launching an ambitious expansion programme.

A spokesperson confirmed that the firm, which opened its London office in 2012, is looking to pull back from the UK despite its recent expansion drive in the country.

A number of roles will be shifted from London to Paris, Luxembourg and Geneva although there will be redundancies, including its UK head of wholesale Daniel Lee, who joined in September 2015 from Allianz.

Corporate bankruptcies are on the increase in Switzerland in 2016 which covered 6504 companies, 6.7% more than last year. According to figures released today by the Society of Economic Information Creditreform, the major cause is represented by insolvencies (4648, + 2.9%), while the closures for gaps in the organization (+ 18% in 1856) recorded the largest increase .

Creditreform assumes that the latter figure is due to increased activity of some cantonal offices of the Commercial Register. Between 2013 and 2015 the number of closures ordered by the authorities were in fact dropped.

Yahoo, one of the Internet’s most venerable companies, won’t exist for much longer. According to SEC paperwork filed on Monday, it will be rolled into a publicly-traded investment company called Altaba.

Basically, Verizon is paying $4.8 billion solely for Yahoo’s core internet business, leaving behind Yahoo’s 15% of Chinese retail giant Alibaba and a part of Yahoo Japan, which is a joint venture with Softbank. Those assets will continue to exist in a separate company that will now operate under the catchy Altaba name.

Fast food chain McDonald’s is selling a majority stake in its China business, valuing the enterprise at up to $2.1 billion.

Chinese state-backed conglomerate Citic Ltd., Citic Capital Holdings and U.S. private-equity firm Carlyle Group LP will acquire an 80 percent holding in a deal valuing the business at as much as $2.08 billion, according to a statement Monday. Citic will own 52% of McDonald’s China operations, while Carlyle will own 28%.

The new partnership plans to add more than 1,500 locations in China over the next five years. McDonald’s currently has 2,400 locations in China and 240 locations in Hong Kong. Franchising allows it to take a slice of sales while cutting operating costs.

German airline Lufthansa plans to hire more than 3,000 new staff in 2017, most of them flight attendants, it said in a statement on Wednesday.

Lufthansa Group airlines – Austrian, Swiss and Eurowings – are hiring more than 2,200 staff in total, it said. Lufthansa Technik is planning to recruit 450 new staff. 1,400 new jobs will be offered in Frankfurt and Monaco. 500 persons will work at Swiss, 200 at Eurowings and 100 at Austrian Airlines.

Lufthansa cabin crew and pilots have gone on strike several times over the last few years as the airline battles to reduce costs. Its cabin-crew union UFO said last month the latest talks over pay and working conditions had failed.