1.NISSAN :-Workers at the Renault-Nissan plant in southern India will not report for work on Monday over coronavirus-related safety concerns, according to a union letter to the company seen by Reuters, and two sources familiar with the matter.
Ford and Hyundai have also shut plants in the south over the last week following protests over COVID safety concerns.
“It will not be secure for workers to report to work on Monday the 31st of May, 2021,” the Renault-Nissan India workers union said in a letter sent late on Sunday.
Two sources said the union would continue to discuss its demands on Monday. They did not wish to be identified as they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Hundreds of workers near Chennai have fallen ill with COVID-19 and dozens have died this year, labour unions say.
On Sunday, union leaders told Renault-Nissan its demands on adequate social distancing measures, rehabilitation of families of deceased workers and on medical treatment of those affected by Covid-19 had not been met.
“The union’s request … to ensure social distancing through reduced footfall has not been accepted,” the letter to Renault-Nissan’s managing director and vice-president of human relations read.
The union also said Renault-Nissan had only vaccinated 200 workers with a first dose. The company told a local court last week the plant had a workforce of more than 8,000.
Nissan , which owns a majority stake in the plant, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. The company said last week it had vaccinated employees over 45 years and was willing to inoculate those under 45 based on availability.
The state government on Saturday allowed carmakers to continue operating despite protests by workers, but urged companies to follow social distancing protocols and vaccinate all employees within a month.
2.AMAZON –Amazon.com Inc should review how it is addressing racial justice and equity after a shareholder proposal on the topic won strong backing, New York state’s top pension official said on Friday.
A filing on Friday showed 44% of votes cast supported a call for a review of the company’s impact on equity, diversity and other areas proposed by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli at Amazon’s annual meeting on May 26, a high total for such a measure.
DiNapoli said the measure would have received a majority but for the 14% stake held by CEO Jeff Bezos, a sign of investor dissatisfaction at the leading online retailer.
“Shareholders sent a loud message to Amazon that they want the company to do more to address racial diversity, equity and inclusion. It’s time for Amazon to listen to its investors,” DiNapoli said in an emailed-statement.
Amazon had previously said the measure did not win a majority but it did not give the voting breakdown.
An Amazon representative said the company has “initiated numerous programs to assess and address racial justice considerations across key aspects of our operations that we believe fully address the objectives of this proposal.”
3. AMC: Shares of movie theater chain AMC Entertainment closed lower on Friday, snapping a four-day rally that saw them gain 116% on the week.
After vaulting to a record high during the session, AMC’s shares finished down 1.5% at $26.12. The stock’s weekly gain was its largest since January.
Shares in GameStop, meanwhile, closed down 12.6% on Friday at $222 after hitting a session peak of $268.79. For the week, GameStop shares registered a gain of 25%, their biggest weekly advance since mid-March.
The video game retailer has been at the heart of the so-called “stonks” retail-trading mania this year.
“This is confirmation we’re seeing retail investors coming back into the equity market after being sidelined,” said Viraj Patel, global macro strategist for Vanda Research. “It feels like a deja-vu of what happened in January,”
Investors betting against AMC and Gamestop had a rough week with AMC short-sellers suffering $1.2 billion in mark-to-market losses for the week while GameStop shorts were down $518.6 million, according to the latest data from S3 Partners.
Retail traders’ shift into so-called meme stocks – shares favored by the denizens of online communities such as Reddit’s WallStreetBets – comes on the back of a selloff in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies whose prices have slumped in recent weeks.
Bitcoin, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency, was up about 1% for the week.
AMC saw some $127 million in net inflows from retail investors on Thursday, its biggest single-day net inflows since Jan. 27, according to data from Vanda Research. AMC rose 35.5% on Thursday, adding more than $3.3 billion to its market value, according to data from Refinitiv.
With 656 million shares changing hands on Friday, AMC was the most traded stock on U.S. exchanges for the second day in a row.
Data also showed the cinema operator was the most traded stock on brokerage Robinhood’s popular trading app, as well as on that of UK-based Freetrade, where buy orders have outnumbered sell orders two-to-one.
4.NESTLE:-Nestle said on Monday it was working on updating its nutrition and health strategy after the Financial Times reported an internal document at the food giant described a large portion of its food and drinks as unhealthy.
The newspaper said it had seen an internal presentation circulated among top executives early this year stating that more than 60% of Nestle’s mainstream food and drinks portfolio could not be considered healthy under a “recognised definition of health”.
The paper said this assessment applied to about half of Nestle’s overall portfolio because categories like medical nutrition, pet food, coffee and infant formula were excluded from the analysis.
Kepler Cheuvreux analyst Jon Cox said that including these categories would significantly reduce the proportion of products potentially considered unhealthy.
“Given the group’s confectionery, ice cream, and pizza businesses, the real figure for the group based on 2021 estimates would be 28%, which is hardly a surprise,” he said in a note. He said the report could point to changes in the product portfolio, notably an exit from mainstream confectionary.
5. H&M – Swedish online second-hand shop Sellpy, which is majority-owned by fashion giant H&M, said on Monday it was opening in 20 more European countries, in a bet demand for sustainable fashion will keep growing.
The start-up handles the entire sales process from picking up the goods from sellers’ homes, to photographing, selling and shipping. The expansion will take its number of markets to 24 after it first launched in 2014 in Sweden.
Sellpy said in a statement second-hand was one of the fastest growing market segments within the fashion industry.
“Every garment bought pre-owned saves resources for our planet. Demand in our new markets is growing rapidly”, Head of Expansion Gustav Wessman said.
As consumers become increasingly conscious about the origins and sustainability of their clothes, the fashion industry is coming under scrutiny for fuelling a throwaway culture.
The H&M group, which is on the outlook for additional revenue streams following a few rough years with slowing sales in many H&M stores, bought its first stake in Sellpy in 2015.
H&M has invested more than 20 million euros ($24.38 million) in Sellpy and owns around 70% of the company, Wessman told Reuters.
Sellpy said it had started a collaboration with H&M that gives it access to an H&M warehouse in Poland, as well as service around distribution, quality control of garments and order handling.
Earlier this month, Lithuania-based Vinted raised 250 million euros ($305 million) to expand further in Europe and beyond, and said the fundraising put a pre-money valuation on the business of 3.5 billion euros.
