This year was another interesting business with events unfolding in such extent that even a casual news reader knows the main topics that shaped not only our business but our lives.
Boeing, of course, was omnipresent. Their 737 MAX ended many lives too soon, but the tragedy came with two serious consequences: The company ended up in a very serious situation, the boss was fired, and people around the world don't want to fly that plane.
What's more, they had some other emergency landings and incidents and the situation looks very bad for them. That was, of course, a nice development for Airbus with the huge order from the Boeing's home field, the U.S.
Brexit was another point of talks from the U.S. to Pakistan. After years of pure torture, Boris Johnson managed to become the most powerful UK politicians, the one who has the strength to lead the country into the future. What will be we will see but the fact is that he had the power to end the state of misery.
The third point that everybody and his dog and his brother and his uncle and his
deaf grandmother were talking about was the U.S. trade war with China. They formally reached the deal but you never know.
The whole "I'm bigger than you" fight has more plots than the longest living soap opera with Trump's "TARIFFS! AMERICA FIRST!" and Chinese "We are sorry for that. TARIFFS TOO!" childish games that bring suffering to the whole world.
In purely business sense, this was the year of big acquisitions. And we mean big!
International Flavors and Fragrances decided it has $26.2bn available so it went to buy DuPont nutrition unit. The agreement will create a new combined company, which will now have an enterprise value of $45.4 billion. Nice.
AB InBev was hit with $225 million EU fine but that wasn't a big deal, they sold Australian unit to Asahi in $11.3 billion deal. More than enough to pay the fine. Australian unitAnd then went to collect billions from Hong Kong IPO.
Nestle got a nice sum of $4 billion after it decided to sell U.S. ice cream business to Froneri.
Berry Global Group completed acquisition of RPC Group for $4.3 billion of cash. The combination of Berry and RPC creates a leading global supplier of valued-added protective solutions and one of the world’s largest plastic packaging companies.
And the list goes on: Campbell Soup sold some operations for $2.2 billion, Mengniu Dairy got Bellamy’s for$1 billion), and we would need a special edition to count them all.
One of the biggest surprised this year was the strike in General Motors. The UAW launched a strike that lasted for 40 days and showed the management what does it mean to have a strong union. Poor company then went after Fiat Chrysler, accusing them of being Cosa Nostra, and that's, well, just pathetic
This was the year of big lawsuits and big fines. Bayer is in a very bad position with its weedkiller and it seems everybody attacks the company from every side. Considering that Roundup has carcinogenic effect, that's OK.
The health field saw some other interesting fines. Johnson and Johnson was ordered to pay $4.7 billion over talc, Fresenius Medical Care agreed to pay $231 million to resolve FCPA charges. There was no mercy for such offenders this year.
And, of course, there were storms, floods and other natural disasters. The year started with ther Tropical Storm Usman in Philippines and ends with Tropical Storm Ursula intensifies also near Philippines. The year came the full circle with numerous deaths and damages that measures in billions.
Which of course wasn't enought for world leaders to do anything about with exception of some empty words and promises. But we hope it will be better.
This year was very interesting, both businesswise and in every other sense, and we will conclude it with a simple advice: Read POST, invest wisely, and don't buy a house near the sea. On behalf of POST and myself, I wish you happy holidays and a lot of health and success in 2020! ■