OLIVER ZIPSE NAMED
NEW BMW CEO
Oliver Zipse, top production manager
at BMW, has been named CEO of the
luxury automaker. Zipse will succeed
Harald Krueger on Aug. 16 and help
the company grow in new segments
such as electric vehicles. Krueger had
earlier said that he would not seek to
renew his contract when it expires next
May. During Krueger’s four-year term,
BMW lost its global lead in luxury auto
sales to Mercedes and failed to push
its 2013 electric vehicle i3 to grab the
market share in premium battery cars.GILEAD BETS BIG
ON GALAPAGOS
US drugmaker Gilead Sciences will
invest $5.1 billion more in Belgian-
Dutch biotech firm Galapagos. Gilead
first invested in the company in 2015,
scooping up 12.3 per cent stake. It
is now raising that stake to 22 per
cent by spending $1.1 billion in equity
investment and $4 billion on R&D and
product commercialisation. Post the
deal, Gilead will have exclusive rights
to sell Galapagos treatments outside
Europe. It will also receive warrants to
increase its stake to 29.9 per cent.
GLOBAL BUSINESSMICROSOFT RISES ON
CLOUD POWER
Microsoft posted better-than-expect-
ed fourth-quarter results as its fast-
growing cloud business continued
to rise. Its sales grew 12 per cent to
$33.7 billion compared to the year-ago
period while profits stood at $13.2
billion during the period. Intelligent
Cloud (including Azure) became the
company’s largest revenue genera-
tor in this quarter. For the fiscal year
ended in June 2019, Microsoft’s sales
rose 14 per cent YoY to $125.8 billion,
and net profits stood at $39.2 billion.SLOWDOWN HITS CHINA
China’s economy grew 6.2 per cent in the second quarter of
2019 compared to a year ago, the slowest in almost 30 years.
Exports also contracted in June, dragging down overall
growth. However, the growth rate is in line with China’s target
of 6-6.5 per cent for the entire year. The Chinese government
is taking steps to boost the economy and offset the damag-
ing impact of the trade war with the US. More government
spending on infrastructure, tax cuts and increased bank lend-
ing at lower interest rates have contributed to strong factory
output and retail sales. Meanwhile, the ongoing trade talks
between the US and China have reportedly reached a stale-
mate as the latter wants all restrictions on Huawei to be lifted.
The Chinese tech giant, which relies on US suppliers for many
of its products, has been blacklisted over security issues.
THE DEUTSCHE BANK REVAMP
Germany’s Deutsche Bank is shrinking and reshaping its
global operations to revamp its loss-making business. The
lender is exiting equities business, moving $83.2 billion
of risk-weighted assets into a special unit, cutting about
18,000 jobs by 2022 and shelving its dividend for the next
two years. The bank also will downsize other operations,
slash costs and reduce risks. Mark Fedorcik will head cor-
porate finance and advisory at the investment bank while
Ram Nayak will lead fixed income and currency sales and
trading. Both will report to CEO Christian Sewing. Earlier,
Deutsche and its domestic rival Commerzbank AG made a
last-ditch attempt to merge and create a mega-lender that
would be too big to fail. But the merger fell through, and
both are now compelled to scale down.20 I BUSINESS TODAY I August 11 I 2019