Bloomberg Businessweek-Europe Edition 10/16/2017

Europe ● HelloFresh unveiled a plan to raise as much as $352m in an initial public offering in Frankfurt, despite the poor performance of rival Blue Apron, which has seen its share price fall by half since its June debut. HelloFresh shelved a similar IPO plan two years ago. ● Perfumes and handbags helped boost sales at LVMH, the world’s largest luxury goods house. Total revenue rose 12 percent in the three months ended Sept. 30, though its Champagne and cognac failed to keep pace. Britain’s BAE Systems said it would cut 2,000 jobs, about 2 percent of its workforce. In sales, the company’s Typhoon fighter planes are being outdone by French and U.S. rivals. ● Turkey and the U.S. mutually suspended all nonimmigrant visas after the arrest of a Turkish employee of…

During Xi Jinping’s first five years in office, it’s become a journalistic commonplace to describe him as the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. The signs and trappings of his immense clout are indeed apparent almost everywhere one looks in China. He’s mounted a sweeping but opaque crackdown on corruption, whose rich and powerful targets lend the campaign the appearance of a vendetta against potential sources of resistance within the system, real or imagined. He’s almost completely usurped the role of Li Keqiang, his prime minister, a post whose historical function has been to run the economy. Beyond that, Xi personally chairs almost all the so-called leading small groups, the secretive, intimately sized consultative bodies where big policy matters get decided. He’s also systematically downgraded rival power structures, such as the…

Three years after their banking union began to take shape, European Union regulators are seeking fresh powers to deal with lenders in trouble. Their plan would let them stop withdrawals from a failing bank for a few days while they address the problem, with the aim of preventing a run. But this approach could easily have the opposite effect, spreading panic to the whole financial system. There’s a better way. Instead of freezing bank accounts, EU governments should enable regulators to keep a bank going while they restructure it and search for a new owner. This will require EU governments to commit additional resources to the task. The European Central Bank and the euro zone’s Single Resolution Board have been calling for the power to freeze bank accounts—a so-called moratorium—since the swift…

On Sept. 5, executives from Tyson Foods Inc., the nation’s largest meat processor, traveled to the east Kansas town of Tonganoxie with what they figured would be welcome news for the locals. Joined by Governor Sam Brownback and other political leaders, Doug Ramsey, Tyson’s group president for poultry, unveiled plans to build a huge chicken complex outside of town. The $320 million project, Tyson’s first new plant in 20 years, would be home to a hatchery, feed mill, and processing plant—employing about 1,600 workers to package 1.25 million birds a week. “Six months ago, I couldn’t have told you where Tonganoxie, Kansas, is,” Ramsey told the townspeople assembled at the Brunswick Ballroom, a local event venue. “I can tell you today that Tonganoxie, Kansas, is the center of the Tyson universe.” To…

When soccer star Neymar signed this summer with Paris Saint-Germain FC, a mainstay of the middling French professional league, fans of the sport were stunned. It wasn’t just that one of the world’s top players was bolting from one of the globe’s most storied clubs, FC Barcelona. It was also the record €222 million ($260 million) that the Paris team’s Qatari owners shelled out to woo the 25-year-old Brazilian. So far, Neymar has shown he’s worth at least some of that, scoring goals and notching assists to help PSG remain unbeaten since he joined. The team even humbled the mighty FC Bayern Munich in September in Europe’s top competition, the UEFA Champions League, which is broadcast worldwide. But the biggest potential payoff for both Paris Saint-Germain and the French soccer…

Scotch whisky producers from the windswept shores of Islay to the banks of the River Spey have won devoted followers with offerings that emphasize the character of the grains and water that make up their spirits, helping quadruple global sales to more than $5 billion over the past three decades. Distillers across the Irish Sea have lagged in the hype sweepstakes, mostly offering blended variants—think Johnnie Walker rather than more exclusive Scottish single malts. Led by Jameson Irish Whiskey (Ireland spells it with an e while Scotland doesn’t), producers today are bolstering high-end offerings to conjure up the aura of exclusivity that has burnished Scotch’s image. Jameson—which holds 70 percent of the global market for Irish whiskey, with 2016 sales of $730 million—last spring reopened its historic distillery in Dublin after…