The Traderszone Network

The bids, submitted on Monday, bring P&G one step closer to shedding several assets it considers non-core, as its chief executive officer, A.G. Lafley, presses on with his cost-cutting strategy. Henkel made an offer for P&G’s haircare business, which includes the Wella and Clairol brands, and could fetch a valuation of $5 billion to $7 billion, the people said.

Marchionne has been emboldened by recent successes of activist investors at GM and sees them as a means to consolidate the auto industry, the newspaper cited the people as saying. Fiat Chrysler and GM were not immediately available for comment outside regular U.S. business hours. GM said in March had reached a deal with an investor group over its balance sheet and governance and said it would launch a $5 billion share buyback program in an effort to avert a proxy war with the investors.

HONG KONG/LONDON (Reuters) – HSBC (HSBA.L) will shed almost 50,000 jobs and take an ax to its investment bank, cutting the assets of Europe’s biggest lender by a quarter in a bid to simplify and improve its sluggish performance. The bank said on Tuesday about half the staff cuts will come from the sale of businesses in Brazil and Turkey. The cuts will leave HSBC with about 208,000 full-time equivalent staff by 2017, down from 295,000 at the end of 2010 and 258,000 at the end of 2014, although the bank said it will be hiring in growth businesses and its compliance division.

U.S. chief executive officers have become a bit more pessimistic in their outlook for the American economy in 2015 and fewer of them expect to increase sales, investment and hiring this year, a quarterly business group survey said on Monday. The Business Roundtable’s second-quarter survey, conducted before U.S. gross domestic product for the first quarter was revised down last month to show an annualized 0.7 percent contraction, found that CEOs expect 2.5 percent GDP growth this year.

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Executives at Israeli drugmaker Teva (TEVA.TA) sent an open letter to takeover target Mylan (MYL.O) on Monday, saying they remain committed to a deal and reiterated that Teva’s $40 billion takeover proposal would benefit shareholders of both firms. In the letter, addressed to Mylan executive founder Robert Coury, Teva CEO Erez Vigodman and Chairman Yitzhak Peterburg repeated that a combination would add value to both companies. The letter said Mylan had made “made grossly incorrect statements to mislead your stockholders and other stakeholders about us”.

Qatar Airways Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker said on Monday he saw no reason for Middle Eastern governments to propose any changes to transportation policy in response to U.S. airlines that allege unfair competition from Gulf carriers. U.S. airlines are trying to persuade the United States to alter “Open Skies” agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, accusing them of giving their airlines more than $40 billion in subsidies and distorting competition.