Raphael Stevens

Spirit and Frontier ended their merger agreement on Wednesday.
Spirit subsequently said it would continue talks to be acquired by JetBlue Airways.
A JetBlue acquisition of Spirit Airlines would face high scrutiny from the Justice Department.

A JetBlue airliner lands past a Spirit Airlines jet on taxi way at Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport on Monday, April 25, 2022. (Joe Cavaretta/Sun Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Joe Cavaretta | Sun Sentinel | Getty Images

JetBlue Airways has reached a $3.8 billion deal to buy Spirit Airlines in a takeover that would create the country’s fifth-largest airline and remove a fast-growing budget carrier from the market.
The deal, announced Thursday morning, caps a fierce, months-long bidding war for Spirit and came hours after Spirit scrapped plans to combine with fellow discounter Frontier Airlines. Spirit lacked the shareholder support to win approval for the Frontier merger, which was first unveiled in February.

If approved by regulators, JetBlue’s takeover of Spirit would leave Frontier as the largest discount carrier in the U.S. It would also be the first major U.S. airline deal since 2016, when Alaska Airlines beat out JetBlue for Virgin America. Analysts say the deal could also open the door for more consolidation among smaller carriers.
JetBlue executives say that buying Spirit would fast-track its growth by giving it access to more Airbus jetliners and pilots and help it compete with large carriers like American, Delta, United and Southwest, which control most of the U.S. market. The New York-based carrier plans to refurbish Spirit’s yellow planes with sparse interiors in JetBlue style, featuring seatback screens and more legroom.
JetBlue said it will pay $33.50 a share in cash for Spirit, including a $2.50 prepayment if Spirit shareholders approve the deal and a 10 cent ticking fee starting next year until the deal is approved.
JetBlue’s surprise, all-cash bid for Spirit in April threw Spirit’s plan to combine with Frontier into disarray. Frontier and JetBlue then competed for Spirit, each sweetening their offers.
The Miramar, Florida-based airline had repeatedly rebuffed JetBlue’s bids and said the tie-up wasn’t likely to be approved by regulators, in part because JetBlue’s alliance with American in the Northeast, which the Justice Department sued to block last year.

The Justice Department and American Airlines didn’t immediately comment on the JetBlue-Spirit deal on Thursday.
The combined airline would be headquartered in New York City and led by JetBlue’s current CEO Robin Hayes, according to a JetBlue securities filing.
Spirit shares were up more than 3% in premarket trading after the deal was announced, while JetBlue was up 1%. Frontier was down 5%.

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An unknown automaker, VinFast, which was founded just a few years ago in Vietnam, is landing in the United States hoping to take on giants like Tesla.
Its founder, Pham Nhat Vuong, made his first fortune in dried ramen noodles and has since become Vietnam’s richest person and owner of Vingroup, the country’s largest conglomerate.

Vingroup, which pulled in about $5.4 billion in sales in 2021, owns a range of businesses including shopping centers, golf courses, housing developments and educational institutions. It also made Vietnam’s first locally produced smartphone.
Pham recently turned his attention to vehicles, which provide a country with benefits that can go beyond the balance sheet.
“His goal is to raise Vietnam economically on the world stage,” said Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting for AutoForecast Solutions. “Most countries that want to reach that level have an automotive manufacturer.”
Automakers can attract all kinds of related businesses, such as a myriad of suppliers that can translate into many additional jobs and opportunities of all kinds, he added.
Though the company faces many challenges, it is staffed with people from storied brands like BMW and it has supply partnerships with such names as ZF, Gotion, and Pininfarina.
It just needs to get Americans to consider its cars.

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Having a female CEO at the helm of a company or chairing its board tends to make a huge difference, Altrata’s latest Global Gender Diversity report said Thursday.
About 28.2% of board members are female, the study found. However, many of these women were appointed to non-executive roles, which are often centered on board oversight rather than real decision-making power.
Only 5% of CEOs are women and 19.2% of corporate leadership team members are female, according to the BoardEx data.

shironosov | Getty Images

If you want to take a good guess at a company’s gender diversity record, you might want to first look at who its CEO or board chair is, according to the findings of a new study.
Having a female CEO at the helm of a company or chairing its board tends to make a huge difference, Altrata’s latest Global Gender Diversity report said Thursday.

The report examined BoardEx data to study female representation on the boards and leadership teams of 1,677 publicly traded companies in 20 countries as of the first quarter of this year.
It found that female representation on boards and in executive suites remains woefully low. And women who occupy roles on corporate boards often do not hold the most powerful positions.
About 28.2% of board members are female, the study found. However, many of these women were appointed to non-executive roles, which are often centered on board oversight rather than real decision-making power.
Breaking board representation down even further shows about 9.9% of executive directors are women and 8.9% of board chairs are female. About a third of non-executive posts are held by a woman, the report said.
The news from the C-suite is even worse. Only 5% of CEOs are women and 19.2% of corporate leadership team members are female. (Focusing only on S&P 500 companies yields a slightly higher proportion of female CEOs, at 6.8%, the report said.)

But having a woman at the top can ripple throughout the organization. Of the companies studied, U.S.-listed Organon had the highest proportion of female board members, while Singapore-based CapitaLand Integrated Commercial Trust tops the global list for corporate leadership.
Organon was spun off from Merck about a year ago, and focuses on women’s health. Its board is dominated by female directors, with Carrie Cox as its chair. She is joined on the board by eight other women and four men.
None of the companies studied had an all-female board, but 81 had all-male boards, as of June 2022.

The gains can be fragile. As CEOs come and go, the numbers fluctuate.
Take Ulta Beauty. It ranked second on the list of global companies with the most women in leadership positions. About 70% of its top management is female. But it’s worth noting its previous CEO was a woman. After Mary Dillon’s departure in June 2021, Dave Kimbell was promoted into the top post. At the moment, women still dominate Ulta’s leadership team and half its board is female, including its chair.
It’s also worth noting that a female CEO isn’t required to have gender diversity. Etsy, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Autodesk and Bath & Body Works all have male CEOs but still have a large percentage of women in key positions.
Still, the report said having women in the C-suite is key to having more woman ascend to the CEO ranks. CEOs are often recruited from among top leadership and having women in these roles is a reflection of a company’s ability to support and train them.
“If not enough women are gaining the corporate experience necessary to qualify for the most powerful board roles, such as CEO, this may slow the progress towards achieving equity at the highest levels of corporate power,” Maya Imberg and Maeen Shaban, the report’s lead authors, wrote.
Some have advocated quotas to boost diversity. Eleven of the 20 countries in the study have either mandatory or voluntary benchmarks for female board representation. As a result, these countries have corporate boards that are 32% female. By comparison, in the nine countries without such a requirement — which includes the U.S. — the average is 24%.

According to Altrata, female representation is poised to increase even further as a result of legislative efforts. For example, Spain has yet to reach its target of 40% of directors in publicly listed companies being women. Right now, slightly more than a third of directors are female, and companies have until the end of this year to reach the target.
One argument against such requirements has been a fear that the same women would be tapped over and over to serve on corporate boards, but the study suggests that worry is overblown.
“Concerns that women may be more prone than men to ‘overboarding’ appear to be exaggerated,” the report said. The analysis found that male directors served on an average of 1.8 public companies, while women sat on an average of 2.1 boards. More

Jim Farley, CEO of Club holding Ford Motor (F), was interviewed by “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer for Wednesday evening’s show. The chief executive discussed the automaker’s plans to manage the chip shortage, cost pressures and their initiatives to scale electric-vehicle production. The interview ran after Ford reported a solid quarter after the bell. 1. ‘Scrappy quarter’ Farley described the second quarter as a “scrappy” one as consumer demand outstripped vehicle supply. “The team fought for every chip,” the Ford CEO told Cramer. “We did a great job mitigating all the uncertainty.” The CEO said he was most proud of two things: cost and cash flow. “A lot of our cash from profits is flowing into cash flow. We had to restructure the operations for so many years to get a profitable Ford and now we’re through that.” The company generated revenue of $40.2 billion, which came in solidly above Wall Street expectations, and delivered earnings of 68 cents per share versus the 45-cent consensus. There is one challenge that Farley sees as an opportunity. “We have to deliver profitability on our EVs,” Farley said. What will help Ford bring down the cost of EVs is the upcoming addition of lithium iron phosphate batteries to its EV portfolio , which are cheaper than NCM batteries the company has been using. With the addition of LFP batteries to its lineup, Ford appears to be on track to meet its 600,000 global EV run rate late 2023. 2. Dividend raise despite supply headwinds Another highlight of Ford’s second-quarter was its quarterly dividend hike by 50% to 15 cents per share. The new annualized dividend yield is roughly 4.55%, based on Wednesday’s closing stock price, compared to its previous yield around 3%. Farley said Ford decided to raise the dividend because it is confident in its earning power going forward, even as the company invests heavily in its EV expansion. “The most important part about that decision is that we have plenty of cash to fuel our transformation,” he said. The automaker plans to invest over $50 billion in EVs through 2026 . Farley expressed that Ford has plenty of cash to fund this investment even if there are more headwinds on cost. 3. F-150 Lightning 2-year wait list If you’re in the market for a new Ford, there is a good chance you’ll have to sit on the waitlist. Almost all 2022-model year vehicles sold out including the F-150 Lightning EV as Ford vehicles were “out of control” as it relates to demand, Farley said. “We are totally oversubscribed so it’s our time to scale.” He said there’s about a two year waiting list for a F-150 Lightning. To meet this demand, Ford is scaling F-150 Lightning production from 80,000 to 150,000 units over the next year, Farley said. The automaker is also coming out with a new Mustang, one of Ford’s most celebrated vehicles, along with a new Super Duty truck, which Farley referred to as a “cash-flow king at Ford.” Farley noted that while Ford is putting a lot of energy around its EV initiatives, the automaker isn’t losing sight on its internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. “We are leaning into the growth business of going digital with these EV products, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to walk away from our ICE products,” Farley said. 4. Commodity price headwinds The chip shortage isn’t the only obstacle Ford is facing. The company noted in its earnings that it could possibly see roughly $4 billion commodity price headwinds throughout the rest of the year that it could offset with higher car prices and selling a more profitable mix of vehicles. While some commodity prices have eased, including for materials like aluminum, Farley said Ford isn’t breathing easy yet. “We want to be ready for any headwinds that come our way in the next 12 months. Whatever that is. We are seeing commodities ease, but I’ve got to tell you, that doesn’t give me much comfort. We have to execute. That means building product, working with our suppliers, and we’ve got to fix our quality.” (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long F. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.

Ford CEO Jim Farley poses next to a model of the all-new Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck at the Ford Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan, April 26, 2022.
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Sebastian Vettel won four consecutive F1 world titles with Red Bull between 2010 and 2013.
The 35-year-old German will see out the final season of his career with Aston Martin.

The 35-year-old German, who spent six seasons with Ferrari after joining the Italian team in 2015, will see out the remainder of his final campaign with Aston Martin.
Mario Renzi – Formula 1 | Formula 1 | Getty Images

Four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel has announced he will retire from Formula 1 at the end of the 2022 season.
After making his debut in 2007, Vettel went on to win four consecutive world championships for Red Bull between 2010 and 2013, the first of which made him the sport’s youngest title winner.

The 35-year-old German, who spent six seasons with Ferrari after joining the Italian team in 2015, will see out the remainder of his final campaign with Aston Martin.

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Vettel is currently third on the list of all-time Grand Prix winners with 53 victories, trailing only Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher.

“The decision to retire has been a difficult one for me to take, and I have spent a lot of time thinking about it,” said Vettel, who confirmed his retirement in a video posted on Instagram on Thursday.
“At the end of the year I want to take some more time to reflect on what I will focus on next; it is very clear to me that, being a father, I want to spend more time with my family.

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