Every movie on the 2021 Warner Bros. release calendar — including big-budget extravaganzas like “Suicide Squad 2,” “Godzilla vs. Kong,” “Dune” and “The Matrix 4” — will arrive simultaneously in theaters and on the HBO Max streaming service in the United States, WarnerMedia said on Thursday. HBO Max subscribers will get instant access to 17 movies in total, a slate that easily represents more than $1 billion in production costs.
In explaining why an entire year’s worth of movies would not receive exclusive runs in cinemas (a significant break from Hollywood’s traditional business model), WarnerMedia, which is owned by AT&T, pointed to the coronavirus pandemic. Even with a widely deployed vaccine, which is expected in the coming months, the company does not believe that moviegoing in the United States will recover until at least next fall, a gloomy assessment that stands in sharp contrast with what other major movie studios have signaled.
“We know new content is the lifeblood of theatrical exhibition, but we have to balance this with the reality that most theaters in the U.S. will likely operate at reduced capacity throughout 2021,” Ann Sarnoff, the chief executive of the WarnerMedia Studios and Networks Group, said in a statement. “We can support our partners in exhibition with a steady pipeline of world-class films, while also giving moviegoers who may not have access to theaters or aren’t quite ready to go back to the movies the chance to see our amazing 2021 films.”
She called it a “unique one-year plan.”
But it will likely be impossible to go back to the old way of doing things. For a start, audiences trained to expect immediate gratification may not want studios to return to the days of giving theaters roughly 90 days of exclusive playing rights. AT&T also wants to continue growing HBO Max. Two weeks ago, the company said that “Wonder Woman 1984” would simultaneously arrive in domestic theaters and on HBO Max on Christmas Day, a move that many analysts saw as a crossing-the-Rubicon moment.
“Our content is extremely valuable, unless it’s sitting on a shelf not being seen by anyone,” Jason Kilar, WarnerMedia’s chief executive, said in a statement. “We believe this approach serves our fans, supports exhibitors and filmmakers, and enhances the HBO Max experience, creating value for all.”
The 17 movies will receive traditional theatrical releases outside of the United States, where HBO Max is not yet available. In addition to big-budget movies, Warner’s 2021 slate includes “The Little Things,” a thriller starring Denzel Washington; “In the Heights,” a musical from Lin-Manuel Miranda; Clint Eastwood’s “Cry Macho”; “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It”; and a “Sopranos” prequel called “The Many Saints of Newark.”
Delta Air Lines said Thursday that it would assist federal coronavirus contact tracing efforts, becoming the first airline to do so after the industry spent years resisting government requests for help.
Starting Dec. 15, Delta will ask all passengers flying into the United States to voluntarily provide their names, email addresses, destination addresses and phone numbers — information that it will share with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We want customers to feel safe when they return to travel, and this voluntary program is another way we can provide additional reassurance to customers and employees alike,” Bill Lentsch, Delta’s chief customer experience officer, said in a statement.
For more than a decade, the U.S. government has pressured airlines to collect such information to help contain contagious viruses. But the industry had rebuffed those requests, saying that it would be too expensive and time-consuming. Earlier this year, airlines helped to thwart a Trump administration effort to require such data collection, even as Congress approved $50 billion in aid for passenger airlines. Instead, the industry offered to set up a website and mobile application where passengers could provide information to the government, but talks with federal officials fell apart this summer.
At the start of the pandemic, the United States had few known cases and government officials were most focused on keeping the virus from getting into the country. But with millions infected and the virus spreading widely, it’s unclear how useful the information collected voluntarily, only from international arrivals and by a single airline, will be.
Christopher Waller, a regional Federal Reserve official nominated by President Trump to the central bank’s seven-member Board of Governors in Washington, was confirmed to the post by a narrow margin on Thursday, as Republicans scramble to fill open slots before President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. comes into office.
Mr. Waller, a conventional choice, had been up for Senate confirmation alongside Judy Shelton, an unorthodox economist whose long-held preference for the gold standard and apparent skepticism of Fed independence hurt her chances of confirmation. Mr. Waller made it through, but just barely, with a vote of 48-47.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader and a Republican of Kentucky, tried but failed to bring Ms. Shelton’s nomination to a vote in recent weeks. Her path to confirmation became less likely after Mark Kelly, the newly elected Democrat from Arizona, was sworn in earlier this week — she already faced opposition from several Republicans, and Mr. Kelly’s likely “no” vote could kill her razor-thin chance of passing.
Ms. Shelton’s confirmation is “unlikely” after the changeover, Senator John Thune told reporters Thursday.
Mr. Waller’s confirmation passed by the narrowest margin of any Governor going back to at least 1980, based on data collected by George Washington University professor Sarah Binder, and probably the narrowest ever.
Mr. Waller is a seasoned economist who has worked in academia and, most recently, as research director at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. His nomination was first announced in the summer of 2019, and he was confirmed to an unexpired 14-year term that stretches through early 2030.
Mr. Waller’s research has covered topics including central bank independence — “the key tool to ensure a government will not misuse monetary policy” — and he has laid out a rationale for keeping borrowing costs cheap when prices are increasing slowly, as they have been in recent years. The Fed raises or lowers interest rates to slow or speed up the economy, hoping to keep inflation slow and stable while maximizing employment.
Before joining the Fed in 2009, Mr. Waller was a professor in the economics department at Notre Dame. He has a doctorate from Washington State University.
The Senate’s move to confirm Mr. Waller during a presidential transition period is historically unusual. He is the first Fed nominee to be confirmed during a so-called lame-duck session, the stretch of time after a presidential election but before the new administration takes the White House, according to the Fed historian Peter Conti-Brown.
His selection means that Mr. Biden will take office with a Fed stocked with picks from Mr. Trump, who has now chosen five of the central bank’s six sitting governors, including appointing Jerome H. Powell, as its chair.
Boeing said on Thursday that it had struck a deal to sell 75 of its 737 Max jets to Ryanair, the low-cost European airline, weeks after a global ban on the plane came to an end. The sale is the biggest vote of confidence in the troubled plane since it was grounded early last year.
Ryanair expects to start taking deliveries of the Max this spring and aims to have 25 to 30 of the jets on hand by next summer, when it hopes a travel recovery will be underway. The plane offers the airline better fuel efficiency and more seats over its existing fleet, Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s chief executive, said at a news conference Thursday.
“This aircraft is going to transform Ryanair’s future, it’s also going to transform short-haul flying in Europe,” he said. “Our customers are going to love this aircraft.”
The Max was grounded worldwide in March 2019 after 346 people were killed in crashes. The Federal Aviation Administration last month became the first major regulator to allow the plane to fly again. It has since been joined by regulators in Brazil, and the European aviation authority recently signaled its intent to lift its ban within weeks.
The grounding dealt Boeing a devastating blow and led to the ouster of its chief executive, several contentious congressional hearings and intense scrutiny from aviation authorities around the world. The end of the ban allows Boeing to start delivering and selling the plane again. Last week, Alaska Airlines said it would lease 13 Max jets.
Ryanair operates an all-Boeing fleet and is one of the manufacturer’s largest customers. It has ordered and is awaiting the delivery of 210 planes in total from the company. When the airline announced a large Boeing 737 order after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Mr. O’Leary joked that the deal was so good, “I wouldn’t even tell my priest what discount I got.” When asked on Thursday what markdown he received this time, Mr. O’Leary said “not enough.”
At Thursday’s news conference, he expressed confidence in the safety of the plane, calling it “the most scrutinized, most audited aircraft in history.” He also voiced optimism that travel demand would recover soon because of the distribution of coronavirus vaccines, which will begin this month in the United States, Britain and elsewhere.
American Airlines is expected to be the first U.S. carrier to put the Max back in circulation, with plans to use the plane for a week’s worth of daily round trip flights from Miami to New York’s La Guardia Airport, starting on Dec. 29. Gol, a Brazilian airline, said it plans to begin using the Max in the coming weeks.
Boeing’s stock price was up more than 7 percent Thursday afternoon.
Federal regulators warned in a report to Congress on Thursday that the risks to financial stability in the United States are “elevated” and that the outlook for the global economic recovery remains uncertain.
The Financial Stability Oversight Council, a group of top financial regulators led by the Treasury secretary, said that market conditions had improved significantly since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic — the result of extraordinary measures employed by Congress and the Federal Reserve. However, mounting business debt and bankruptcies pose a threat to the financial system, as the severity and the duration of the pandemic remain unclear.
“Though policy actions to minimize the effects of the pandemic have been effective at improving market conditions, risks to U.S. financial stability remain elevated compared to last year,” the council said.
The report comes as Congress and the White House continue to haggle over providing additional fiscal support to the economy and as several of the Fed’s emergency lending programs, which the regulators credit for stabilizing markets, are set to expire.
The imminent rollout of vaccines has offered hope that the economy could begin to normalize, but that will depend largely on the pace of the delivery of the vaccines and their effectiveness.
The F.S.O.C. pointed to soaring corporate debt levels as a potential vulnerability, suggesting that they could threaten the financial system if businesses could not meet their loan obligations and if the financial sector was unable to absorb losses. It noted that nearly $2 trillion in nonfinancial corporate debt has been downgraded since March and that default rates on leveraged loans and corporate bonds have been rising. Strains on the bankruptcy system, as filings rise, could force more businesses into liquidation.
Regulators also singled out money market funds as a potential source of ongoing vulnerability, noting the rapid redemptions they experienced in March. And they called for an additional review of the role that leveraged investors, such as hedge funds, might have played in exacerbating volatility in the Treasury markets because of the way their investments were set up.
“The Council also recommends that, if warranted, regulators take appropriate measures to mitigate these vulnerabilities,” they said.
While the F.S.O.C. does not have rule-writing power, it can act as a collective force to prod regulators into addressing market vulnerabilities and also has the ability to designate certain entities or activities as “systemic” and in need of stricter oversight.
The real estate markets, both residential and commercial, also remain areas of concern. The council said that rising default or forbearance rates on mortgages could “impose significant strains on nonbank servicers.” Declining valuations and rising defaults in the office sector could lead to tighter credit, potentially creating a drag on the broader economy.
The trajectory of the economic recoveries in countries around the world will also have an impact on the United States. The council said that the rising government debt levels in Europe could strain its financial institutions, potentially destabilizing America’s financial system. Ultimately, it said, the recovery would depend on the ability of countries to control the spread of the virus with vaccines and therapies while avoiding lockdown measures.
Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, talked Thursday about must-pass government funding legislation and a new coronavirus relief package amid pressure from rank-and-file members for a bipartisan compromise.
A spokesman for the Democratic speaker, Drew Hammill, said the conversation early Thursday afternoon focused on “their shared commitment to completing an omnibus and Covid relief as soon as possible.”
Mr. McConnell, a Republican, had been largely removed from discussions with Ms. Pelosi over a new stimulus bill since the two chambers enacted a sweeping $2.2 trillion package in March. Instead, as he worked to wrangle Republican support behind a series of targeted bills, Trump administration officials led discussions with Ms. Pelosi over a possible deal.
The phone call between the two congressional leaders came after Mr. McConnell left the door open to reaching a deal on a new round of stimulus to address the pandemic, but stopped short of endorsing a $908 billion compromise plan Democrats embraced on Wednesday, saying it did not represent a genuine concession.
Mr. McConnell said it had been “heartening to see a few hopeful signs” this week in stimulus relief negotiations.
“Compromise is within reach,” Mr. McConnell said in a speech on the Senate floor. “We know where we agree. We can do this. Let me say it again: We can do this, and we need to do this. So let’s be about actually making a law.”
Some Republican senators signaled openness to embracing the $908 billion framework that Democratic leaders had endorsed as a baseline for restarting negotiations.
“I’ve never been more hopeful that we’ll get a bill,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
Nearly 714,000 people filed initial claims for state unemployment insurance, compared with 836,000 in the prior week, before statistical adjustments. With seasonal swings factored in, the figure was 712,000, a drop of 75,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
The decline came after two consecutive weekly increases, though the level of claims remained at levels unseen in previous recessions.
The numbers are likely to have been artificially depressed by the Thanksgiving holiday, said Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm Grant Thornton in Chicago. “People don’t apply as much when there are holidays,” she said. “There is a natural falloff that occurs, but we just don’t know how big it was.”
She compared the effect to the drop in hospitalization data for the coronavirus that has been noted on Sundays and holidays. Although the decline in the claims number was seemingly good news, the Thanksgiving-related drop could cause a measure of catch-up when next week’s numbers are released.
“It’s still bad,” she said, noting that 25 states reported more than 1,000 layoffs each last week. “They are broad-based and concentrated in the same sectors we saw when people pulled back in March — food services, health care, retail and hotels.”
Almost 289,000 new claims were tallied under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which provides support to freelancers, gig-workers, the self-employed and others not ordinarily eligible for unemployment insurance.
Pandemic Unemployment Assistance is one of two emergency federal jobless benefit programs set to expire at the end of the month. Millions will be scrambling to make up for the lost funds, even as the absence of those dollars in consumers’ pockets dampens overall economic growth.
Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill continue to spar over the size of any new stimulus package, with G.O.P. leaders opposed to the kind of multitrillion-dollar relief effort envisioned by Democrats.
The prospect of vaccines to combat the virus is a hopeful long-term signal, but the economy will face serious challenges until inoculations can begin on a mass scale in the spring, said Michael Gapen, chief U.S. economist at Barclays.
He is looking for a U.S. economic growth rate near zero in the first quarter, followed by a rebound later next year as consumer spending picks up.
“I think the economy is on a solid footing, but we may just hit a couple of bumps between now and the end of the first quarter,” Mr. Gapen said. “Stimulus would be helpful, of course.”
As stores reopened in England following a monthlong lockdown, shoppers at one of the country’s biggest retailers have been met with an unwelcome surprise.
Arcadia Group, which filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday, restricted the value of its gift cards to no more than 50 percent of a total purchase. So a £10 card would be worth only £5 when making a £10 purchase, or up to £10 when making a £20 purchase. Any balance can be used another day.
People shopping online are further out of luck. Arcadia, which owns fashion brands including Topshop, Miss Selfridge and Burton, told customers that it wasn’t able to redeem gift cards online. “We hope to be able to offer this in the near future,” a notice on Topshop’s website read on Thursday.
Arcadia has 444 stores in Britain and said on Monday that they would be open while Deloitte, acting as administrators, seeks to rescue to the company. The company has blamed the pandemic and the forced store closures for its financial troubles.
The restrictions have left customers upset and searching for advice from Martin Lewis, a popular personal finance journalist.
Can’t believe I have a gift voucher for @Topshop and I’m now only entitled to 50% of it. I’m fuming 😤
— Sanem (@Sanemkoseoglu) December 3, 2020
@MartinSLewis I'm looking for some advice my daughter has a £30 gift card for OUTFIT which covers all of the Arcadia Brands she has tried to use it on line @Topshop but they have stated she cannot redeem it now! I have contacted @Topshop but no response
— Miriam Henshaw (@MiriamHenshaw) December 2, 2020
Just three weeks before Christmas, what is normally an easy gift has become more trouble than it is worth. Owners of gift cards from any troubled retailer are being urged to spend the vouchers as quickly as possible.
Debenhams, a venerable department store chain that began closing down on Tuesday after failing to secure a buyer while under bankruptcy protection, said it was still accepting gift cards as a method of payment online and in stores, but not selling new ones. It will keep selling to clear out stock and its 124 stores will probably close early next year. Since the announcement, the Debenhams website has become overwhelmed with some shoppers unable to complete purchases and others having to wait in long virtual waiting lines.
By: Ella Koeze·Source: Refinitiv
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Stocks were unchanged on Thursday, in another day of quiet trading following one of Wall Street’s best monthly rallies in decades.
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The S&P 500 posted a small decline. The Stoxx Europe 600 index was flat, while Britain’s FTSE 100 rose slightly. In Asia, the Nikkei 225 in Japan closed little changed, while the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong rose 0.7 percent.
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Boeing climbed 6 percent after it said Ryanair, the low-cost European carrier, would purchase 75 of its 737 Max jets.
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The S&P 500 has climbed less than 1 percent this week, after the index rallied nearly 11 percent in November, its best monthly showing since April and one of its best months of the past three decades.
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Initial claims for state unemployment benefits in the United States dipped last week, after rising for two consecutive weeks as a surge in virus cases prompted curfews and other social restrictions across the country. Nearly 714,000 people sought government assistance for the first time last week, highlighting the ongoing economic crisis and adding pressure on Congress to deliver a fiscal relief package soon.
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On Thursday, Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, left the door open to reaching a deal, but stopped short of endorsing a $908 billion compromise plan Democrats have embraced, saying it did not represent a genuine concession.
Last year, Nestlé pledged to reduce its net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050. Today, it released a detailed 27-page plan on how it will get there.
Nearly two-thirds of the Swiss food giant’s emissions come from agriculture, where reducing emissions requires working with some 500,000 farmers and 150,000 suppliers. That’s more complicated than simply switching to renewable electricity or offsetting business travel (which Nestlé is also doing).
Mark Schneider, the company’s chief executive, spoke with the DealBook newsletter about how he won support from more than 290,000 employees — and how he will sell investors on paying now to meet a goal 30 years in the future.
Long-term investors see the net-zero pledge as “future-proofing the company,” Mr. Schneider said, especially as environmental laws become stricter and consumers increasingly seek climate-friendly products. For investors with shorter horizons, the pledge is “earnings neutral,” he added: Despite costing around $3.6 billion over the next five years, these investments will be financed by operational efficiencies and will, eventually, enable the company to “charge a premium for better products.”
“There is also a revenue upside,” Mr. Schneider said. “The margin is not going backwards.”
After announcing the targets with “great fanfare,” it will become “a matter of honor” to meet them, he said. Still, the executives making these commitments will probably have retired by 2050. To give the plan teeth, starting next year the company will tie part of its executive committee’s annual bonuses to quantifiable environmental factors. “We’re putting our money where our mouth is,” he said.
Nestlé made the net-zero commitment about six months before the pandemic, which has had two major effects on the pledge, Mr. Schneider said.
On the positive side, the urgency of addressing climate change has intensified. “People see what can happen if you wait too long, and that you better fight a problem early on and get a handle on it,” he said. And being confined at home has given people time “to think through what really matters,” he added.
On the negative side, the financial stimulus to rescue the global economy — which was necessary, Mr. Schneider emphasized — has left the world with huge, unexpected debts. That means less “leeway from the public point of view” to spend on measures like long-term greenhouse gas reductions.
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