Week of Mar 21 2014- Weekly Recap & The Week Ahead
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — Santayana
1. Ukraine Region Joined Russia — WSJ, More than 96% of Crimean voters cast their ballots to break away from Ukraine and rejoin Russia, in a referendum that raises the stakes in the most acute East-West confrontation since the Cold War.
2. Sears’ board approved the spin off of Lands’ End to take place on April 4 — Sears (SHLD) owners of record as of March 24 will receive 0.3 shares of Lands’ End – to trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol “LE” – for each share of Sears they hold. Prior to the spin-off, Lands’ End will pay a debt-financed $500M dividend to Sears.
3. CB&I’s joint venture with Japan’s Chiyoda has won a $6B contract to construct a 13.5M metric tons/year export plant in Hackberry in Louisiana for Sempra Energy (SRE) unit Cameron LNG — the deal for CB&I (CBI) and Chiyoda comes after Cameron LNG last month received conditional authorization from the Department of Energy to export domestically produced LNG to countries without a free trade agreement with the U.S.
4. FOMC ‘s Janet Yellen Rate Guidance Relies Less On Jobless — Fed Reserve policymakers broaden the scope of considerations for raising benchmark rates, using more measures of labor market conditions, inflation and financial developments while abandoning the 6.5% unemployment threshold. She also suggested a rate increase for early 2015.
5. China to Accelerate Measures to Stabilize Growth — Bloomberg, China will speed up construction projects and other measures to expand domestic demand after a slowdown in industrial-output and investment growth boosted risks of missing this year’s expansion target.
The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com:
