Lala, Mexico’s biggest dairy producer led by Chairman Eduardo Tricio Haro, started six decades ago as a dairy farmers’ collective in northern Mexico and now has 53 percent of formally tracked milk sales in the country

Lala Gains in Mexico Trading Debut After $938 Million Dairy IPO

Grupo Lala SAB (LALAB), Mexico’s biggest dairy producer, rallied in its first day of trading after raising at least 12.2 billion pesos ($938 million) in an initial public offering.

Lala gained 7.4 percent to 29.53 pesos at 9:25 a.m. in Mexico City, compared with a 0.4 percent advance for the country’s benchmark IPC index of 35 companies. The stock sold for 27.50 pesos yesterday, the top of a projected price range of 23.50 pesos to 27.50 pesos. The company offered 444.4 million shares, without considering a 15 percent overallotment option for underwriters. Read more of this post

LVMH Needs to Mix and Match; The French Fashion House Depends Heavily on Its Louis Vuitton Brand, Which May Cause Problems for Investors Unless It Can Find Another Star

LVMH Needs to Mix and Match

The French Fashion House Depends Heavily on Its Louis Vuitton Brand, Which May Cause Problems for Investors Unless It Can Find Another Star

JOHN JANNARONE

Updated Oct. 16, 2013 3:21 p.m. ET

These days, investors in LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton MC.FR -4.25% could do with a little variety. Shares of the French fashion house fell 4.3% Wednesday after the company issued disappointing third-quarter revenue. The culprit: a mere 3% rise in currency-adjusted sales from the key fashion and leather-goods division, which makes almost all of its profit from the Louis Vuitton brand. While LVMH has some other red-hot brands such as Celine, they were unable to make up for a soft performance from Louis Vuitton, which accounts for about half of operating profit overall. Read more of this post

Crocodile Bites Show Why Your Birkin Bag Is So Expensive; Exotic animal skins make up almost 10 percent of the total revenue from handbag sales for luxury brands, at least double their share a few years ago

Crocodile Bites Show Why Your Birkin Bag Is So Expensive

Crocodile-skin handbags can be to die for. Really.

As demand from the world’s elite surges for the skins, luxury-goods companies from LVMH Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy SA to Gucci-owner Kering SA are making acquisitions to secure supply of the beasts, whose habits can make simply collecting their eggs a matter of life and death. Raising the reptiles from hatchling to arm candy without scratches from other crocs is another major challenge. Read more of this post

Japan’s TDK gets lifeline from China’s rising smartphone stars

Japan’s TDK gets lifeline from China’s rising smartphone stars

10:58am EDT

By Reiji Murai and Sophie Knight

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s TDK Corp, an electronics parts maker that has struggled to make a profit while several of its peers grew rich in the smartphone boom, has found help rebuilding its fortunes with the rise of China’s smartphone makers. Once a leading brand in cassette tapes that later prospered in magnetic heads for hard disk drives until the PC business headed south, TDK fell behind rivals such as Murata Manufacturing Ltd in making tiny, high-spec parts for mobile gadgets like Apple Inc’s iPhones and iPads. Read more of this post

Wal-Mart Takes a Pause in China; Retailer Plans to Close About 25 Underperforming Stores

Wal-Mart Takes a Pause in China

Retailer Plans to Close About 25 Underperforming Stores

LAURIE BURKITT and SHELLY BANJO

Updated Oct. 16, 2013 11:28 a.m. ET

BEIJING—After years of furiously opening stores in China, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.WMT +1.65% has concluded that a couple dozen of them just aren’t working. As a result, the retailer on Tuesday told investors it will be closing about 25 stores in China, even as it continues to open others. Based on its current expansion plans, China would still add more stores than it subtracts. Wal-Mart is set to open about 30 stores this year as part of a three-year, 100-outlet expansion effort, which will continue to 2015. Currently, Wal-Mart has 398 China-based stores. Read more of this post

Yellow Tail Maker Plans $100 Wine, Spritzers in Profit Hunt

Yellow Tail Maker Plans $100 Wine, Spritzers in Profit Hunt

Casella Wines Pty., the maker of Yellow Tail wine, is developing a label costing $100 a bottle as well as packaged spritzers as it seeks new markets amid narrowing industry profit margins. The winemaker, whose signature product sells for about $7.50 a bottle in U.S. stores and inspired the growth of low-priced, easy-drinking Australian “critter labels,” will charge about 13 times as much for the Casella 1919 brand when it’s released later this year, Managing Director John Casella said in an interview in Sydney yesterday. Read more of this post

Fed Weighs Surcharge on Banks’ Physical Commodity Businesses

Fed Weighs Surcharge on Banks’ Physical Commodity Businesses

Fee Could Spur Firms to Pare Involvement in the Sector

MICHAEL R. CRITTENDEN and JUSTIN BAER

Updated Oct. 16, 2013 6:10 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON—Federal Reserve officials are considering imposing a new capital surcharge on Wall Street banks that own oil pipelines, metals warehouses and other lucrative physical-commodities assets, according to people familiar with the matter. Such an approach could encourage banks to pare back their involvement in physical commodities, which has increasingly raised concerns among regulators and lawmakers. Read more of this post

Fiscal Uncertainty Chips Away at U.S. Prestige; Dysfunction Is Limiting U.S. Position Abroad, Observers Say; ‘Sadness From Our Trading Partners’

Fiscal Uncertainty Chips Away at U.S. Prestige

Dysfunction Is Limiting U.S. Position Abroad, Observers Say; ‘Sadness From Our Trading Partners’

THOMAS CATAN

Oct. 15, 2013 7:10 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON—As the world’s pre-eminent economic power, the U.S. has been the cornerstone of the global financial system since World War II. Now, observers say that prestige may have been badly dented by Washington’s latest display of fiscal dysfunction, limiting the U.S.’s ability to get things done abroad. Laurence Fink, chief executive of the world’s largest asset manager, New York-basedBlackRock Inc., BLK +2.91% said Friday that he detected “a pronounced sadness from our trading partners and our friends” as he tried to explain the fiscal impasse during his recent travels abroad. Read more of this post

Warren Buffett: Debt limit is a ‘political weapon of mass destruction’

Warren Buffett: Debt limit is a ‘political weapon of mass destruction’

By Jim Puzzanghera

October 16, 2013, 6:13 a.m.

WASHINGTON — Billionaire investor Warren Buffett on Wednesday called the U.S. debt limit a “political weapon of mass destruction” and said both political parties should pledge never to use it as leverage because of the financial damage it can cause. As lawmakers and the White House scrambled to raise the $16.7-trillion debt limit before a Thursday deadline, Buffett said it would be “asinine” for the U.S. to risk its hard-won reputation for paying its bills on time. Read more of this post

Real-Time Economic Data Could Be a Game Changer; Startup Uses Phone Photos to Track Grocery Inflation

Real-Time Economic Data Could Be a Game Changer

Startup Uses Phone Photos to Track Grocery Inflation

SUDEEP REDDY

Oct. 15, 2013 12:32 a.m. ET

The world of economic data may be headed for a substantial revision. Private companies are deploying new technology to overhaul a half-century-old approach to tracking changes in the global economy, promising constantly- updated gauges to guide major corporations, hedge funds and governments. The latest entrant, Premise Data Corp., is the first to create real-time inflation data using hundreds of people snapping photos of store shelves and produce carts around the world daily to track price changes. Read more of this post

Asia’s Waning Competitiveness Seen in Trade Disconnect: Economy

Asia’s Waning Competitiveness Seen in Trade Disconnect: Economy

Asia’s exporters are failing to benefit from a recovery in advanced nations, putting the onus on policy makers to shift reliance to domestic demand as a driver of economic growth. China’s exports unexpectedly fell last month, while overseas shipments from Taiwan and South Korea also declined. Asia’s export-led growth engine is showing “signs of serious defects,” according to Frederic Neumann, Hong Kong-based co-head of Asian economics at HSBC Holdings Plc, who says the region’s trade data has disappointed over the past couple of years and may be evidence of a loss in competitiveness. The region’s export recovery is faltering even as Europe emerges from its longest recession on record and U.S. manufacturing (NAPMPMI) grows at the strongest pace in more than two years. The International Monetary Fund this month lowered its forecasts for growth in developing Asia for 2013 and 2014 while leaving projections for advanced nations unchanged. Read more of this post

IMI Sells Dispenser Arm to Berkshire Hathaway for $1.1 Billion

IMI Sells Dispenser Arm to Berkshire Hathaway for $1.1 Billion

IMI Plc (IMI) agreed to sell its beverage and snack vending machine business to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A)’s Marmon Group for about $1.1 billion in cash to focus on industrial valves and fluid control systems. IMI’s announcement that it would explore options for its merchandizing unit prompted Marmon to make an approach, the Birmingham, England-based company said in a statement today. Shareholders will receive 620 million pounds ($991 million) of the proceeds, with an additional 70 million-pound pension contribution, it added. The disposal is a landmark transaction for Martin Lamb as he prepares to step down as chief executive officer at the end of the year, after 13 years in the role. He’s betting that focusing on equipment for offices and control systems for chemical plants will help IMI tap demand for energy efficiency. “The disposal of Retail Dispense is a major step for IMI,” Lamb said in a statement. “It positions IMI as a highly differentiated, market leading flow-control business focused entirely on industrial-end markets.”  Read more of this post

Hong Kong Home Prices to Fall Up to 25%, Bank of America Says, bringing prices back to the level around 2011, but even at that, many people would still find it difficult to buy properties

Hong Kong Home Prices to Fall Up to 25%, Bank of America Says

Hong Kong home prices will fall as much as 25 percent from their peak as housing supply increases and the possibility of rising interest rates grows, according to Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch unit. Prices will drop 5 percent this year and another 15 percent in 2014, Raymond Ngai, a property analyst, told reporters at a briefing in the city today. He declined to give forecasts beyond 2014. UBS AG said yesterday that it expects prices to decline 5 percent in 2013 before dropping 15 percent to 20 percent next year. Read more of this post

South Korea Sees Won-to-Bond Risks as U.S. Impasse Adds Stress

South Korea Sees Won-to-Bond Risks as U.S. Impasse Adds Stress

South Korea warned of risks of volatility in the won and stresses within the nation’s bond market as the U.S. grapples with the threat of a default that could roil the global economy. Prolonged tension over U.S. fiscal policy adds to the danger of increased volatility in financial markets, the finance ministry said in a report prepared for a parliamentary audit today. Bond issuance by companies with low credit ratings may wither, the report said, amid a criminal probe and financial crisis at the Tong Yang Group. Read more of this post