Monday, 30 June 2014

GLOBAL FOOD TRENDS: Top 25 Global Food Retailers 2013

Top 25 Global Food Retailers 2013

SN's Top 25 worldwide food retailers for 2013 include annual sales for food, nonfood and wholesale operations; sales were based on current exchange rates. Store counts include franchised or licensed locations and may include nonfood outlets. Source: Planet Retail (www.planetretail.net)

                                                    


CROP REPORT UPDATE: North American grain/oilseeds review: canola, soybeans down sharply after bearish USDA report



North American grain/oilseeds review: canola, soybeans down sharply after bearish USDA report


By Terryn Shiells and Dave Sims, Commodity News Service Canada
WINNIPEG – ICE Futures Canada canola contracts ended sharply lower on Monday, following the losses in Chicago soybeans and soyoil after the release of a bearish USDA report on Monday morning, analysts said.
The USDA said that farmers planted a record amount of 84.8 million acres of soybeans this spring, which was above last year’s 76.5 million and average trade guess of 82.2 million acres. Stockpiles as of June 1, 2014 were also higher than expected at 405 million bushels.
Recent strength in the value of the Canadian dollar and reports of good growing conditions for the US soybean crop added to the bearish tone.
However, slow farmer selling, paired with steady demand helped to limit the losses.
Concerns about flood damage seen in parts of Western Canada over the weekend were also supportive. One broker estimated that 12 to 15 per cent of total Prairie production has been lost to unseeded and flooded acres because of excess moisture this spring.
About 25,393 contracts traded on Monday, which compares with Friday when 16,712 contracts changed hands. Spreading accounted for 10,042 of the trades made.
Milling wheat, durum and barley futures were untraded, though the Exchange moved wheat prices lower after Monday’s close.
CORN futures in Chicago sank to a four-month low on government estimates that domestic corn stockpiles were nearly 40 percent higher than last year at the same time.
Prices were down anywhere from 15 to 23 cents per bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade.
According to the USDA report, domestic corn supplies totalled 3.85 billion bushels as of June 1. This exceeds initial forecasts of 3.71 billion bushels.
Farmers are estimated to have planted 91.6 million acres of corn this spring which is lower than the previous four years. However, favourable weather conditions are leading analysts to believe production could surpass last year’s.
SOYBEAN futures at the Chicago Board of Trade plummeted Monday, falling 31 to 72 cents per bushel, after the USDA released its acreage report which showed larger estimated supplies of soybeans than initially thought.
According to the report, farmers in the US will plant a record 85 million acres this year, higher than previous estimates of 82 million acres.
Planting conditions were said to be “much improved” compared to a year earlier.
Soybean stocks from last year’s harvest were pegged at 405 million bushels as of June 1, which exceeded expectations.
SOYOIL futures were sharply lower following soybeans.
SOYMEAL futures were lower after the bearish USDA report.
WHEAT futures in Chicago also fell sharply Monday, falling 12 to 20 cents per bushel and 15 to 21 cents per bushel on the Kansas City Board of Trade as the USDA’s estimates for planted acres exceeded previous projections.
The USDA estimates US farmers planted 56.47 million acres, topping previous estimates of 55.82 million acres.
However, inventories of US wheat in storage were pegged at around 590 million bushels, this is less than the 603 million bushels analysts had previously estimated, giving values some support.
• Wheat purchases on Egypt’s domestic market were extended by 10 days, according to the country’s agricultural wing. The government intends to purchase 4 million tonnes.
• China is planning to develop 53.3 million hectares of drought/flood resistant farmland in a bid to protect domestic wheat crops and other supplies, according to a report.
• Indonesia is moving forward with a plan to cut its 20 percent import tariff on wheat flour next month in favour of a quota system, an analyst said.
ICE Futures Canada settlement prices are in Canadian dollars per metric ton.

GLOBAL AGRI-FOOD TRENDS: Global M&A at seven-year high as big corporate deals return

This year’s merger boom is being led by cash-rich corporations with strong balance sheets, such as Pfizer, Comcast and General Electric. (Mark Lennihan/AP)

Global M&A at seven-year high as big corporate deals return Add to ...

Investor support for large acquisitions and a desire to trump rivals in consolidating markets have led chief executives to strike big transactions so far in 2014, raising year-to-date global deal volumes to their highest level in seven years.
Corporate buyers did not shy away from going hostile if their targets proved unwilling to sell, while more U.S. companies rushed to buy overseas peers to lower tax rates and access cash held offshore in a practice known as inversion.

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“Companies have strategic imperatives to do deals, they have the cash to do deals, and they can borrow additional cash at record-low rates,” said Frank Aquila, a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. “It really is a bit of a perfect storm when it comes to dealmaking.”
The deal making frenzy could last for several months absent geopolitical or economic shocks, with buyers keen to take advantage of their strong stock prices, ample cash reserves and cheap available financing.
Unlike the most recent heyday of dealmaking, which was back in 2007 when private equity used cheap money to load up companies with debt, this year’s merger boom is being led by cash-rich corporations with strong balance sheets, such as Pfizer Inc, Comcast Corp and General Electric Co.
“What is notable about the deal activity we have seen in the first half of the year is the blue-chip nature of the companies who are doing the acquiring. We have finally seen the return of the strategic acquirer,” said Gregg Lemkau, co-head of global mergers and acquisitions at Goldman Sachs Group.
Year-to-date global deal volume as of June 26 surged to $1.75-trillion, up 75 per cent from the year-ago period, according to Thomson Reuters data. That was the highest level since 2007, when deal volume reached $2.28-trillion.
This year’s increase came despite the number of global deals dropping slightly to 17,698 from 17,820 the year before.
At over $1-trillion, the second quarter of 2014 was the highest in deal volume since the second quarter of 2007 and was up significantly from the $680-million in the first quarter of 2014.
Thirty-eight unsolicited or hostile bids, worth more than $150-billion, were launched in the first six months of the year, compared with 19 such deals worth $8-billion in the same period last year.
Pfizer made an abortive $118-billion bid for AstraZeneca Plc, Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc is trying to buy Botox maker Allergan Inc for more than $50-billion, and AbbVie Inc plans to appeal to Shire Plc’s shareholders after an unsolicited $46-billion bid was rebuffed.
“With both the target and acquirer’s stock generally up after deals are announced, buyers see value creation and tend to be more aggressive even if targets are not willing to sell,” said Ravi Sinha, executive vice chairman of global corporate and investment banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
More CEOs and boards are willing to pull the trigger on transactions that have been contemplated for a while, with a view that financing conditions are at their peak and unlikely to improve, said Marc-Anthony Hourihan, co-head of Americas M&A at UBS AG.
RISING VALUATIONS
Risk-taking has been generally rewarded by investors, at a time when low cost of capital means buyers can obtain immediate boosts to their earnings from those deals.
Nearly 70 per cent of announcements of U.S. acquisitions worth $1-billion or more in the first half were followed by gains in the stock prices of the buyers, up from 60 per cent in the same period last year and compared with a seven-year average of 55 per cent, Thomson Reuters data showed.
“In the early stages of an M&A wave, the returns to acquirers tend to be positive, but as the M&A wave matures, the returns turn negative as people get overconfident,” said Bob Bruner, dean of the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business Administration and author of the book “Deals from Hell.”
“It would seem that we are still at the early stage of the wave,” he said.
With stock markets at record-high levels, the average premium buyers paid over target companies’ four-week stock prices was 24.8 per cent so far this year, down from 28.1 per cent in the same period last year and 30.3 per cent in 2012.
But on an earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) basis, valuations climbed.
Buyers on average paid targets 13 times EBITDA in the first half of the year, compared with 11.8 times in the same period last year. That was the highest level since 2008, according to Thomson Reuters data.
“On an (earnings per share) accretion basis, nearly every deal looks great. However, on a return-on-invested-capital basis, values appear pretty high,” Goldman Sachs’ Lemkau said.
“Many boards are being forced to think about whether their traditional return on invested capital thresholds remain appropriate in an environment where the cost of capital is so low,” he added.
The red-hot equity markets and rising deal valuations also forced buyout firms to the sidelines, with private equity-backed leveraged buyouts declining 9 per cent to $120.3-billion so far this year, representing 7 per cent of the M&A market. Private equity firms, however, took advantage of the M&A boom to sell more of their companies for top-dollar amounts.
“It’s a great debt market but the issue for private equity is that it has inability to do highly levered transactions, compared to the leverage levels in 2006 and 2007, given the federal limitations,” UBS’s Hourihan said.
Goldman Sachs was the top M&A adviser worldwide, with $623-billion worth of deals so far this year. Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citigroup Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co rounded out the top five.
INVERSION TREND
Inversions by U.S. companies, which allow them to be domiciled in countries that have a lower corporate tax rate, have moved center-stage in the healthcare sector, which was the busiest industry for dealmaking this year.
Such transactions also helped boost cross-border M&A volume, which surged 132 per cent so far this year to account for 39 per cent of global activity.
U.S. medical device maker Medtronic Inc struck a $42.9-billion deal for Ireland-based rival Covidien Plc in June, in one of the largest attempted inversions.
Pfizer’s bid for AstraZeneca, as well as AbbVie’s takeover offer for Shire, would also enable these companies to cut their tax bills by moving to a country with a lower corporate tax rate while also allowing them to access the cash held offshore without paying U.S. taxes.
Even excluding Pfizer’s AstraZeneca bid which has been put on hold for now, healthcare deals more than tripled to $317.4-billion so far this year, representing 18.2 per cent of total deal volume, Thomson Reuters data shows.
Some companies that are still without a foreign domicile are now trying to catch up with rivals that have already gone offshore and taken advantage of their more favorable tax status to strike even more deals.
“I think you will continue to see inversion transactions being contemplated. This is particularly relevant to the Healthcare and TMT sectors, where you have a lot of cash trapped offshore,” Goldman’s Lemkau said.
Gary Posternack, head of Americas mergers and acquisitions at Barclays Plc, added that while there are a large number of U.S. companies interested in exploring inversions, finding the right partner at the right valuation can be a challenge.
“The limiting factor for inversions will likely be the ability of U.S. companies to find attractive and willing partners,” he said.
The second-busiest sector for dealmaking this year was media and entertainment, which had deal volumes nearly triple to $220.7-billion on the back of two mega-mergers: Comcast Corp’s $45.2-billion bid for rival Time Warner Cable and AT&T Inc’s proposed acquisition of DirecTV for $48.5-billion.
The broader telecom sector is likely to get another boost in the near future as Sprint Corp and T-Mobile US Inc are in advanced talks about a deal that would combine the third– and fourth-largest U.S. wireless operators.
“The tone in the boardroom has changed from one that was doubtful about strategic M&A activity to one that is questioning the status quo,” Posternack said.
“With all of the recent deal activity and the positive associated market reaction, the question now being asked is why are we not acting on the logical transactions?”
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Sunday, 29 June 2014

SMALL BUSINESS OPTIMIZATION: Four sales mistakes you're likely making and how to address them


Four sales mistakes you're likely making and how to address them





Let’s face it, we all make mistakes. What’s important, however, is learning from our mistakes and avoid any errors in the future.
For sales professionals, it’s important to recognize mistakes and address them right away, otherwise they could have a significant impact on the bottom line which could have many negative impacts throughout the organization.

These four mistakes need to be addressed by every sales professional responsible for bringing new opportunities to table.I work with sales professionals every day of the week and have seen a number of mistakes come to the surface repeatedly by a large majority of professionals and it is affecting their ability to drive opportunity in a big way.

1. Lack of preparation before a sales meeting. In sales, it’s your job to come into a meeting as prepared as possible. At the very least, you should examine the prospects website, search for them on your search engine of choice, and if possible look at case studies to understand, how they make money.
All of these basics are important for forming a picture of the prospect in your head, but do not stop there, create a list of questions that will help you get more insight on your prospect.
These questions should two things: go beyond what you already know and they need to make the prospect think deeply about their own situation. Some sample questions might include:
  • Why is your current service/product/technology/situation/issue no longer working for you?
  • You mentioned your current provider is not able to deliver XYZ. If you work with us, what are you hoping will be different?
  • What does success look like for you, your business or this project?
2. Not focusing on clients. This is a common issue that many sales professionals fall victim to because they love their product or service so much and spend too much time talking about their offerings. This is a terrible mistake because you’re jumping directly into solution selling before you can even identify the key challenges or reasons behind why the prospect and you are meeting in the first place.
It’s okay to introduce yourself, what you do and who you’ve helped to make sure the prospect knows about you, but after that, get right into your questions and understand what the client needs. Once you are able to paint a complete picture of the client and their needs, you can begin to offer up some solutions for the prospect.
3. Believing that ‘no’ is the end of the road. What’s your first instinct when a prospect says no? Do you assume this means the prospect is not interested and you completely erase them from your sales database? If so, this is a big mistake.
The reality of the situation is that a ‘no’ is not a roadblock, it’s an opportunity for a seasoned salesperson to uncover the prospect’s concerns by probing even deeper.
If you’re in accounting and you call a prospect that tells you they are not interested, you need to ask them questions that make them question their current provider and learn about the key benefits of working with you.
A sample response question could be, “how much does your current firm save you on taxes a year? I ask because our firm focuses heavily on ensuring our clients know all the ins and outs so we can maximize their savings every year. One client, similar to you, saved X amount last year because of what we did for them. Would you like to hear more?”
4. Not having the persistence to make something out of nothing. One of the most common things is that those who persist are annoying, cross the line, or are going to do more harm than good. Let me ask you this: how many people are you going to get through to by calling or e-mailing once or twice? Chances are very few.
Following up is one of the most important factors in penetrating accounts and closing sales. It’s not about being the best or having the cheapest price. The one who wins in most cases is the one who works the hardest at getting in front of the client, understanding their business and driving value through consistent communication.
If you want to win more in business and capture more sales, you need to stop listening to those who play it safe and say following up too much will do harm than good, because they are just plain wrong.
I get criticized often for telling people that I followed up with a prospect 102 times before they became a client of mine. What those people see is a sleazy salesman trying to close a sale and move on to the next.
What they do not see is the creativity behind each follow up, the lifelong relationships, and the great results that came about because of persistent follow up. When someone is able to approach, follow up knowing all of this is possible, follow up doesn’t become a dirty word – it becomes a passion, something someone does to unlock a future filled with many wonderful possibilities.
My challenge to you: If you’re currently making any of these sales mistakes, I want you pick one and try your hardest to avoid making it again. We are already at the halfway point of 2014, so use the remaining six months to eliminate one of these mistakes from your sales habits. I know that if you are able to do this, you will be much more successful as a result.
Ryan Caligiuri is the president of Ryan Caligiuri International, a consultancy focused on driving revenue growth through creative growth strategies for professional services firms. Mr. Caligiuri is also the founder of The Growth Networka program that provides sales/marketing resources & training to help grow professional services firms.
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Saturday, 28 June 2014

NUTRITIONAL LABELING: : Adding Added Sugars and Nutrition Facts

Adding Added Sugars and Nutrition Facts
 - Blogs
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The food and beverage industry is poised to shift into high gear once the new Nutrition Facts label goes into effect. And one of the most contentious and yet-to-be-resolved issues is the proposal to create a new line listing the amount of added sugars. It was certainly a lively discussion point as the FDA hosted a Nutrition Food Label public meeting on June 26.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the proposed rules aimed at updating nutrition information and serving size requirements on the Nutrition and Supplement Facts labels.  One portion of the meeting featured a panel of experts and stakeholders comprised of: Donna M. Garren, PhD, vice president of regulatory and technical affairs American Frozen Food Institute, Frank Hu, MD, Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology, Harvard Medical School, Michael Jacobson, PhD, executive director, Center for Science in the Public Interest, and Pepin Tuma, Esq., director of regulatory affairs, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND). (I suggest looking each panel member up to determine which belong in the stakeholder column, and which in the expert.)

In general, the group agreed to disagree. All were amenable to adding nutrients of public health significance (potassium and Vitamin D) and making vitamin A and C labeling voluntary. All generally saw the need to revise serving sizes although not necessarily which ones and how and thought the change in the way the Daily Value is to be presented is confusing.

But when it came to the proposal to add a line on the Nutrition Facts, the panel was all over the map:
Hu: Yes, citing research that indicates added sugar is associated with adverse health effects and empty calories.
Jacobsen: Yes, but wants no total sugar listing because he said most naturally occurring sugars are “inoccuous," but the label should also designate sugars from juice as these are unhealthful.

Garren: No, given there is no physiological distinction between added and intrinsic sugar. (Hu disagreed explaining sugars in whole fruits are absorbed more slowly—as if sugars are never added to foods that contain other macronutrients including fiber or their source is the reason for nutritional distinction). She also noted, in terms of enforcement that no reliable analytical methods exist to differentiate between added and intrinsic sugars.

Pepin: Yes, but total sugars should be included along with the added level, as excessive sugar consumption is to be avoided. However, AND is struggling with having insufficient data to set a DRI for sugars.

In the Q&A later in the meeting, some of the audience added comments. Unsurprisingly the representative from the sugar industry was against the addition of an added sugars line.
But ultimately nothing has been settled. The final FDA panel at the meeting noted that the agency would be conducted consumer research on the added sugars notation, as well as what will be included in and the proposed footnote section. Still, there was a consensus that the education portion of the NLEA needed to be stepped up, not only for sugar nutrition, but for the Nutrition Facts label and nutrition in genera so the public could make best use of all of the label information.
In closing one of the FDA representatives thanked everyone for their thoughts but stressed that the agency considers submitted comments the most useful for establishing the final rules. For those who want to contribute to the discussion and the policy, August 1, 2014 is the closing date to submit either electronic or written comments to FDA’s Division of Dockets Management. For the Nutrition Facts Label Proposed Rule, see Docket No. FDA-2012-N-12105. For the Serving Size Proposed Rule, see Docket No. FDA-2004-N-02586.
   -Lynn A. Kuntz