Here’s what you need to know:
Companies are reversing pandemic pay cuts for top executives.
As economies reopen, companies that cut salaries in the dark days of March and April have already started to reinstate them, notes Michelle Leder in today’s DealBook newsletter.
Rollins Inc., the parent company of the Orkin pest-control brand, recently disclosed that it was restoring the executive salaries it had cut by as much as 35 percent two months earlier. Rollins is one of dozens of companies that slashed top managers’ paychecks as sales fell and costs rose in the early stages of the pandemic.
Darden Restaurants, which runs the Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse chains, was one of the first companies to restore its executives’ salaries, which it had cut in early April. On May 28, the company disclosed that it was reinstating on June 1 the $1 million salary of its chief executive, Gene Lee, along with the salaries of four other executives who had taken 50 percent pay cuts.
Other companies have made a point of maintaining some of the reductions to top executives’ pay. Dick’s Sporting Goods recently said that in addition to reinstating its dividend, it was also ending temporary pay cuts and furloughs for many of its employees — “except for certain executives.” Another retailer, The Buckle, said that its chairman and chief executive, who gave up their salaries in late March, would receive 50 percent of their pay in June and July.
Although airlines are showing some modest signs of recovery, executive pay cuts are likely to stick around for longer. United Airlines, which initially said that its top two executives would forgo their base salaries through June 30, has now extended that for the remainder of the year.
Wall Street is set for an upbeat open while global markets drift.
U.S. stock futures rose while European markets wavered on Monday, as investors’ hopes for the reopening of economies vied with persistent worries about the ability of global leaders to stop the coronavirus from spreading further.
Futures for the S&P 500 were up nearly 1 percent, signaling a positive start to the week on Wall Street. The major stock markets in Europe opened lower but then rose through the morning, eventually breaking into positive territory. Asian markets ended mixed.
Prices for U.S. Treasury bonds, usually seen as an investor safe haven, were mixed. Oil prices too were mostly unchanged.
Investors were watching the spread of cases in the United States, where a top adviser to President Trump said on Sunday that officials are preparing for a possible second wave of infections. They were also watching potential trade tensions between the United States and China, after Beijing said it was temporarily suspending poultry imports from a Tyson Foods slaughterhouse that has had coronavirus cases among its workers.
It was not clear whether the spate of bad news would be enough to dissuade investors entirely. There were signs on Monday that governments were taking steps to further ease restrictions. In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was said to be preparing to announce a relaxation of lockdown rules sought by restaurants and other businesses seeking to open, and on Sunday, Spain reopened its borders to European travelers.
Stocks have risen in recent weeks on hopes of economic recovery as governments around the world stepped up lending and spending to fight the damage from the pandemic. Though markets took heavy losses in some weeks, the S&P 500 index is down only about 4 percent year to date.
Here’s the business news to watch this week.
📉 The International Monetary Fund updates its economic forecasts on Wednesday. Gita Gopinath, the organization’s chief economist, said last week that the numbers were likely to show negative growth rates even worse than previously estimated.
🛒 Albertsons is expected to price its I.P.O. on Thursday, raising up to $1.3 billion. The grocery chain, which has been owned by the private equity firm Cerberus since 2006, scrapped a previous effort to go public a few years ago.
👟 Nike is the highest-profile company disclosing earnings this week, with its report on Thursday expected to show a steep drop in sales because of store closures around the world. It may also be asked for details on its $40 million commitment to support black communities and other initiatives to improve “diversity, inclusion and belonging.”
🔀 The annual rebalancing of FTSE Russell stock indexes, which takes place on Friday, is usually one of the heaviest trading days of the year. With trillions of dollars linked to the indexes, investors try to anticipate the comings and goings, with health care and tech stocks expected to feature prominently among the stocks winning promotions in the indexes.
Nursing homes are evicting vulnerable residents.
RC Kendrick, an 88-year-old man with dementia, was living at Lakeview Terrace, a nursing home in Los Angeles with a history of regulatory problems. But on April 6, the nursing home deposited Mr. Kendrick at an unregulated boardinghouse — without bothering to inform his family. Less than 24 hours later, Mr. Kendrick was wandering the city alone.
According to three Lakeview employees, Mr. Kendrick’s ouster came as the nursing home was telling staff members to try to clear out less-profitable residents to make room for a new class of customers who would generate more revenue: patients with Covid-19.
More than any other institution in the United States, nursing homes have come to symbolize the deadly destruction of the coronavirus crisis. More than 51,000 residents and employees of nursing homes and long-term care facilities have been killed, representing more than 40 percent of the total death toll in the United States.
But even as they have been ravaged, nursing homes have also been enlisted in the response to the outbreak. They are taking on coronavirus-stricken patients to ease the burden on overwhelmed hospitals — and, at times, to bolster their bottom lines.
But nursing homes nationwide are kicking out old and disabled residents — among the people most susceptible to the coronavirus — and shunting them into homeless shelters, rundown motels and other unregulated facilities, according to 22 watchdogs in 16 states, as well as dozens of elder-care lawyers, social workers and former nursing home executives.
The Bundesliga’s new TV deal could mark the end of an inflationary bubble.
Germany’s top soccer league returned to action in May after a two-month hiatus, offering a model to other leagues pressing forward with their own returns.
Now the league, the Bundesliga, has become the first major European soccer competition to sell its domestic broadcast rights since the coronavirus outbreak. But the clues from Germany this time are far less reassuring.
The Bundesliga’s four-year deal, which will be announced on Monday, generated less than the record 4.6 billion euros ($5.1 billion) that the league earned under its current agreements, but not by a significant amount, according to two people with knowledge of the sale. The pool of broadcasters narrowed, too.
The modest decrease in the new deal’s value could be encouraging for other leagues and clubs that are entering negotiations uncertain if games will be played on schedule, in front of fans — or even if they will take place at all.
But the reduced fee and smaller pool of interested bidders may also be a sign that a yearslong inflationary bubble for elite-level sports programming may be over, even as premium sports properties are likely to command large fees for the foreseeable future.
China halts some Tyson Foods poultry imports.
China on Sunday said it was temporarily suspending poultry imports from a Tyson Foods slaughterhouse that has had coronavirus cases among its workers.
A public notice by China’s General Administration of Customs provided the registration number of a Tyson facility in Springdale, Ark. On Friday, the company said that 13 percent of the 3,748 employees at its facilities in northwestern Arkansas had tested positive for the virus. Almost all were asymptomatic.
Tyson released a statement saying that it was “looking into” China’s action and that it was operating in compliance with all government safety requirements.
“It is important to note that the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, U.S.D.A. and the U.S. Food & Drug Administration agree that there is no evidence to support transmission of Covid-19 associated with food,” the company aid.
Safety limits on food imports from the United States could make it even harder for China to meet its promise to buy more American goods as part of the first phase of a trade agreement signed with the Trump administration in January.
Scientists have said that the coronavirus appears to spread mostly through the air, not contaminated meat. But China has already curbed almost all transmission of the virus within its own borders and is looking to stamp out even low-probability risks.
The once-stable U.S. cheese market takes a volatile turn.
The wholesale market for Cheddar is typically a mild one. But the vagaries of supply and demand during the pandemic have caused sharp swings in cheese prices, which rose to record highs this month — just weeks after plummeting to nearly 20-year lows.
Consumers are buying way more cheese, even as the usually huge demand from restaurants and schools has fallen off. Dairy farmers and prepared-food companies, which supply ingredients to cheese makers or buy their products, have seen disruptions in their businesses. Together, these countervailing forces have fueled the up-and-down trading in the market.
“It’s the most volatility that we’ve seen in the cheese market ever,” said Phil Plourd, president of Blimling and Associates, a dairy commodity consulting firm in Madison, Wis.
This month, as restaurants around the country slowly reopened, companies that supply cheese began to stock up to ensure an adequate supply. So much so, some cheese factories have struggled to meet demand, as dairy farmers who cut production during the worst of the downturn were unable to supply them with enough milk.
Shoppers continue to buy 20 to 30 percent more cheese at stores than they did last year, according to data from IRI, a market research firm in Chicago. The return of demand has again pushed cheese prices higher, where they hover roughly 3 percent below record levels.
“The orders fell off literally in days, and they came back literally in days,” Mr. Umhoefer said. “It was all at once, very much a roller coaster.”
The pandemic is expected to bring more lawsuits, and more backers.
If there is one thing that is almost always guaranteed in an economic downturn, it’s an increase in litigation.
Businesses are going to sue businesses. Tenants are going to sue landlords, who will sue their tenants right back. Insurance companies will contest claims, and start-ups will try to defend their intellectual property from more established companies.
Yet in this recession, one industry that was just getting started during the 2008 downturn has come into its own and is attracting wealthy investors looking for outsize returns.
Meet litigation finance, an esoteric, high-risk investment strategy that lures with the siren song of double-digit returns. It’s an industry with a few publicly traded behemoths, but it remains the preserve of private-equity-style funds that invest in cases, back law firms and act as financial intermediaries when settlements have been reached.
And the pandemic could be its time to emerge from its little-known niche.
“We have the wind to our backs in this unusual environment,” said Howard Shams, the chief executive of Parabellum Capital and an early practitioner in the industry.
Reporting was contributed by Matt Phillips, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Jason Karaian, Amy Julia Harris, Michelle Leder, Tariq Panja, Michael Ives, Keith Bradsher, Mohammed Hadi, Gillian Friedman, Carlos Tejada and Paul Sullivan.
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