10 things you need to know in markets August 20

German
Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin
give statements ahead of a meeting at the German government guest
house Meseberg Palace in Gransee, Germany August 18,
2018.

REUTERS/Axel
Schmidt

Good morning! Here’s what you need to know in markets on Monday.

1.
Beverage and snack giant PepsiCo announced Monday plans to
acquire at-home carbonated drink-maker SodaStream for $3.2
billion. CNBC reports that the New York-based
company agreed to pay $144 per share in cash for SodaStream’s
outstanding stock, a 32% premium to its 30-day volume weighted
average price.

2.
Asian share markets crept cautiously higher on Monday as
investors awaited developments on proposed Sino-US trade talks
while keeping a wary eye on the Chinese yuan and Turkish lira for
any new signs of strain. Japan’s Nikkei share index
closed down 0.31%, while the Hong Kong Hang Seng is up 1.04% at
the time of writing (7.15 a.m. BST/2.15 a.m. ET), and China’s
Shanghai Composite is up 0.25% at the same time.

3.
Venezuela has announced another series of desperate measures to
try and save its economy from collapse. The
government will devalue to Venezuelan bolivar by 95%, and peg it
to the government’s oil-linked cryptocurrency.

4.
Brussels plans to force companies including Facebook, YouTube,
and Twitter to identify and delete online terrorist propaganda
and extremist violence or face the threat of fines.
The Financial Times reports that the European Commission has
decided to abandon a voluntary approach to get big internet
platforms to remove terror-related videos, posts and audio clips
from their websites, in favour of tougher draft regulation due to
be published next month.

5.
PIF, the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund that Tesla CEO Elon
Musk has said could help him fund a $72 billion deal to take his
electric car maker private, is in talks to invest in aspiring
Tesla rival Lucid Motors, people familiar with the matter said on
Sunday. Reuters reports that talks between
privately-held Lucid Motors and PIF underscore the latter’s
appetite to invest in electric car makers to diversify the
oil-rich Middle Eastern kingdom’s investment portfolio.

6.
As investors take time off during the summer, they’re also taking
their eyes off several things that point to a “likely correction”
in the stock market, according to Morgan Stanley’s global
investment committee. There’s proof of their
complacency in the S&P 500 put/call ratio, which has risen in
the past month but remains below average.

7.
Rocket Internet’s finance chief Peter Kimpel had resigned to
pursue a new management challenge, the German company said in a
statement on Monday. Kimpel, who joined Rocket from
Goldman Sachs in 2014 and helped oversee the group’s initial
public offering, will leave effective at the beginning of
October.

8.
Greece emerged on Monday from its third and last bailout after
years of austerity, although officials warned that the country
still has a “long way to go.” The Guardian reports
that the European Union, the European Central Bank, and the
International Monetary Fund loaned Greece a total of €289 billion
($330 billion) in three programmes, in 2010, 2012, and 2015.

9.
The head of securities and exchanges at the Swiss stock exchange
says his biggest piece of advice for fintech startups that want
to work with established financial services companies is for them
to “learn the regulations.” SIX Group’s Thomas Zeeb
told Business Insider: “I go to conferences and people say: what
would you tell us to be more successful? One thing, learn the
regulations.”

10.
The market is facing a growing number of alarming comparisons
between the dot-com era and current conditions. The
most recent observation, from Leuthold Group, relates to the
jagged, uninspiring recovery by US stocks since their 11%
correction earlier this year.