• Kellogg's Fake Independent Experts In a world suddenly obsessed by more momentous fake news, this may lose some of its shock value, but is still a damaging blow for company under increasing pressure from the trend towards healthier eating. Kellogg's admitted that it had paid its now-defunct "Breakfast Council" of purportedly "independent" experts to talk up its products, even to the point of editing their academic research. It also suppressed the financial aspects of their relationship when featuring the experts and their comments in Kellogg's TV ads. It should be an interesting study for the company's internal focus groups trying to work out why Big Food is struggling to retain the public's trust. Fortune • Fidelity Keeps it in the Family Abigail Johnson will take over the chair of Fidelity Investments from her father Edward C. Johnson III. That's no surprise in itself, given that she has run the company as CEO since 2014, and that he is 86. The big challenge for Abigail is keeping Fidelity relevant at a time when passively-managed funds-an area dominated by Vanguard-are bleeding its traditional asset base (AUM at Fidelity's actively-managed funds were down $41 billion in the year to September). Fortune • Boeing Hires GE Veteran to Head Commercial Division Boeing has hired General Electric's Kevin McAllister as chief executive of its commercial airplanes business, effective immediately. McAllister, 53, will succeed Ray Conner, who will continue to serve as Boeing vice-chairman through 2017. McAllister has been with GE's aviation unit for nearly three decades and was most recently chief executive of the conglomerate's $8 billion aviation services business. Fortune • Brexit - the Good, the Bad and the Ugly IBM said it will triple the number of cloud data centers it has in Britain. That's the third major investment by a U.S. tech company in the last week after big job creation pledges by Facebook and Google. Meanwhile, Credit Suisse's global wealth report reminds Brits that the foreign exchange markets have slashed their household wealth by $1.5 trillion since June. In other news, Donald Trump publicly recommended former UKIP leader and Brexiteer Nigel Farage, who failed to win election to parliament seven times, as the U.K.'s next ambassador to the U.S., in an outlandish breach of protocol that will barely get a mention given the competition for space and airtime on domestic U.S. media from other elements of the presidential transition. FT, metered access |
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