The Wall Street Journal - 14.11.2019

THE BEST

AIRPORTS 2019

The WSJ ranks the 40

largest U.S. airports, R1-

lenge incumbent financial-ser-

vices firms, which fear losing

their primacy and customers.

They are also likely to stoke a

reaction in Washington, where

regulators are already investi-

gating whether large technol-

ogy companies have too much

clout. The tie-ups between

banking and technology have

sometimes been fraught. Ap-

ple irked its credit-card part-

ner, Goldman Sachs Group

Inc., by running ads that said

the card was “designed by Ap-

ple, not a bank.” Major finan-

cial companies dropped out of

Facebook’s crypto project after

a regulatory backlash.

Google’s approach seems

designed to make allies, rather

than enemies, in both camps.

The financial institutions’

brands, not Google’s, will be

front-and-center on the ac-

counts, an executive told The

Please turn to page A

Google will soon offer

checking accounts to consum-

ers, becoming the latest Sili-

con Valley heavyweight to

push into finance.

The project, code-named

Cache, is expected to launch

next year with accounts run by

Citigroup Inc. and a credit

union at Stanford University, a

tiny lender in Google’s back-

yard.

Big tech companies see fi-

nancial services as a way to

get closer to users and glean

valuable data. Apple Inc. intro-

duced a credit card this sum-

mer. Amazon.com Inc. has

talked to banks about offering

checking accounts. Facebook

Inc. is working on a digital

currency it hopes will upend

global payments.

Their ambitions could chal-

BYPETERRUDEGEAIR

ANDLIZHOFFMAN

with customers. New cars

clog roads. Everything seems

up for grabs, from plastic sur-

gery to beach vacations to

the first taste of sushi.

The windfall is a tempo-

rary balm. Vale has decided

against reopening the Cór-

rego do Feijão mine opera-

tion, which until 2016

dumped its waste into the

failed dam. The mine closure

will eliminate at least 600 of

the area’s steadiest jobs and

reduce town tax revenues by

about a fifth.

For Brumadinho, the clo-

sure amounts to an eco-

nomic calamity piled atop

personal tragedy. Still numb

Please turn to page A

BRUMADINHO, Brazil—

About 10 months ago, Natha-

lia Eleuterio’s husband, Rein-

aldo, was buried alive.

Their 2-year-old daughter,

Isabella, still asks when

daddy will be home from

work. He was among 270

people killed when Vale SA’s

mining waste dam collapsed,

spilling rock, dirt and sludge

onto the town below.

Facing hundreds of poten-

tial lawsuits, the company re-

leased a flood of cash to com-

pensate families in the

region, setting off a consumer

frenzy. Stores are packed

BYSAMANTHAPEARSON

ANDLUCIANAMAGALHAES

Vale Retreats From

The Town It Buried

Brazil’s mining giant paid compensation to

survivors but won’t have jobs for them

Source: FactSet

$150 a share

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25

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125

1990 ’95 2000 ’05 ’10 ’15 ’

1996

Capital Cities/

ABC

2006 Pixar

2012 Lucasfilm

2019 Fox

2009 Marvel

Entertainment

Walt Disney’s share price and major

entertainment acquisitions

If You Build It, They Will Cluck

iii

Mayor chases dream of world’s tallest topiary sculpture—a chicken

what he hopes will become the

world’s tallest topiary sculp-

ture: a 62-foot chicken.

The chicken will cost

$150,000, use at least 16 tons

of steel and include an apart-

ment inside that officials plan

to rent to visitors. It will

match the tallest building in

the city, which is five stories.

Paul Dunn, 90 years old,

likes the mayor’s plan. A huge

chicken made of vines and

flowers just might be what the

struggling community about

155 miles south of Atlanta

needs to bring in more visi-

Please turn to page A

FITZGERALD, Ga.—Mayor

Jim Puckett’s dream rises next

to a supermarket parking lot.

Shoppers gawk as work

crews—their drills echoing

throughout the neighbor-

hood—attach steel beams to

BYCAMERONMCWHIRTER

*** THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2019 ~ VOL. CCLXXIV NO. 116 WSJ.com HHHH $4.**

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CONTENTS

Banking & Finance.B

Business News B3,5-

Crossword.............. A

Heard on Street. B

Life & Arts.............. A

Management.......... B

Markets..................... B

Opinion.............. A13-

Sports........................ A

Technology............... B

U.S. News............. A2-

Weather................... A

World News. A8-9,

s2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

All Rights Reserved

>

What’s

News

 Trump in a summer phone

call asked about politically

advantageous investigations

he wanted the Ukrainian

president to announce, the

top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine

disclosed as the House

opened the public phase of its

impeachment probe. A1, A

 Gaza militants fired rock-

ets into Israel for a second

straight day, raising the risk

of a wider conflict as Israel

continued its own strikes. A

 Trump and Erdogan met

in Washington, but there

was no resolution of key is-

sues on which the U.S. and

Turkey have been divided. A

 Turkey’s government

used a Washington law

firm to gather information

about its critics, including

residents of the U.S. A

 A court refused to recon-

sider a ruling that allowed

a House panel to subpoena

Trump’s financial records

from his accounting firm. A

 Hundreds of mainland

Chinese students fled Hong

Kong for Shenzhen after vi-

olence on several univer-

sity campuses in the city. A

 Most new asylum seekers

would no longer be permitted

to work while they wait for

their claims to be processed,

under a proposed U.S. rule. A

 The toll from superbugs

is greater than previously

known, a CDC report said. A

G

oogle will soon offer

checking accounts to

consumers, the latest Sili-

con Valley heavyweight to

push into finance. A

 WeWork had a loss of

$1.25 billion in the third

quarter as the office-space

startup’s expenses far out-

paced revenue growth. A

 U.S.-China trade talks

have hit a snag over farm

purchases, as officials seek to

lock down alimited deal. A

 Powell told lawmakers

the Fed saw little need to cut

rates further after making

three reductions since July. A

 Alibaba said it applied

for a secondary listing in

Hong Kong, aiming to

raise roughly $13 billion. B

 Disney’s new streaming ser-

vice has signed up 10 million

users, the company said the

day after Disney+ launched. B

 Icahn is pushing for the

union of Xerox and HP, saying

a combination could yield

big profits for investors. B

 Facebook reported gains

in detecting hate speech and

other forms of objectionable

content on its platforms. B

 The Dow rose 0.3% and

the S&P 500 inched higher,

both closing at records.

The Nasdaq slipped. B

 Yahoo Japan and chat

app Line are in talks over a

combination that could ex-

pand SoftBank’s empire. B

Business&Finance

World-Wide

Office-space startup We-

Work lost $1.25 billion in the

third quarter as expenses far

outpaced revenue growth,

draining the company’s cash

ahead of a bailout by SoftBank

Group Corp. last month.

We Co., as the parent com-

pany is officially known, said

Wednesday in a report to

debtholders that revenue

surged 94% in the three

months ended Sept. 30 to

$934 million compared with

the year-earlier period.

The report of the heavy dose

of red ink compares with We-

Work’s prior record loss of

$638 million posted for the

second quarter and is more

than double the $497 million

loss a year earlier.

Behind the ballooning losses

were many of the concerns in-

vestors had with the company

when it shelved its attempted

an initial public offering in

September.

Once considered the most

valuable startup in the U.S.,

with a valuation of $47 billion,

WeWork’s attempt to go public

was widely panned by potential

investors given concerns over

its mounting losses as well as

the erratic management style

of the now-departed chief exec-

utive, Adam Neumann. With

little apparent demand from in-

vestors, the IPO was pulled and

Mr. Neumann was forced out.

For most of its existence,

WeWork has been focused on

revenue growth, impressing

Please turn to page A

BYELIOTBROWN

Loss at

We Wo rk

Blows Past

$1 Billion

WASHINGTON—President

Trump in a summer phone call

asked about politically advanta-

geous investigations he wanted

the Ukrainian president to an-

nounce, the top U.S. diplomat

in Ukraine disclosed Wednes-

day as the House opened the

public phase of its seven-week-

old impeachment probe.

The initial hearing in only

the fourth such inquiry in U.S.

history lasted more than six

hours in an ornate room in a

House office building. The wit-

nesses—William Taylor, the

acting ambassador to Ukraine,

and George Kent, a senior State

Department official—both had

already testified in private but

offered some new disclosures

Wednesday.

The hearing marked the

first time any witnesses pub-

licly faced questions from both

Please turn to page A

BYREBECCABALLHAUS

DJIA 27783.59À92.10 0.3% NASDAQ 8482.10g0.05% STOXX 600 405.86g0.3% 10-YR. TREAS. À11/32, yield 1.870% OIL $57.12À$0.32 GOLD $1,461.70À$9.60 EURO $1.1009 YEN 108.

Public Hearing Surfaces New Claim

Envoy discloses

additional Ukraine call

as impeachment

inquiry opens up

Google Makes Push

Into Banking With

Checking Accounts

Disney Clocks 10 Million Sign-Ups

Disney’s flagship streaming service, which launched Tuesday,

drew 10 million subscribers, lifting its share price 7.3%. B

 Somber ceremony meets

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the committee, at Wednesday’s hearing. carnival theatrics..................... A

SAUL LOEB/PRESS POOL