MCD - McDonald's Corporation
194.46 +0.46 (0.24%)
Pre-market: 5:32AM EST
| Previous close | 195.00 |
| Open | 195.23 |
| Bid | 194.47 x 1000 |
| Ask | 194.70 x 1100 |
| Day's range | 193.16 - 195.50 |
| 52-week range | 169.04 - 221.93 |
| Volume | 3,063,832 |
| Avg. volume | 3,905,224 |
| Market cap | 147.4B |
| Beta (3Y monthly) | 0.48 |
| PE ratio (TTM) | 25.47 |
| EPS (TTM) | 7.62 |
| Earnings date | 28 Jan 2020 - 3 Feb 2020 |
| Forward dividend & yield | 5.00 (2.56%) |
| Ex-dividend date | 2019-11-29 |
| 1y target est | 221.89 |
- GlobeNewswire
McDonald’s Corp. Investigated by Block & Leviton LLP For Breach of Fiduciary Duties
BOSTON, Nov. 14, 2019 -- Block & Leviton LLP (www.blockesq.com), a securities litigation firm representing investors and whistleblowers nationwide, is investigating whether.
- Bloomberg
Five Things You Need to Know to Start Your Day
(Bloomberg) -- Want the lowdown on what's moving European markets in your inbox every morning? Sign up here.Good morning. U.S-China talks hit another snag and economies are slowing due to trade tensions, but oil is bouncing back. Here’s what’s moving markets.SnagU.S.-China trade talks hit a snag over the agricultural purchases the pair have been negotiating, news that sent cyclical shares tumbling for a second day on renewed jitters about how the talks are going. Asian stocks dipped a little on this, along with Chinese data and worries about the situation in Hong Kong. Beyond those snags in the U.S.-China talks, U.S. President Donald Trump said he wants to strike a trade deal with Turkey and described Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a pariah in Washington over his country's military offensive into Syria, as a “good friend.”SlowdownIf one were looking for evidence of the impact those trade tensions are having, economic data from China and Japan lays it bare. China’s economy slowed further in October, with trade concerns and subdued domestic demand offsetting the piecemeal stimulus the government is pumping in to shore things up. Worryingly, economists say the slowdown there is yet to hit the bottom. Japan’s economy, meanwhile, slowed sharply in the third quarter with exports falling, all as its government considers the size of a stimulus package it intends to launch to counter the weakness.Bounce BackIt's been a busy week for energy traders, what with Saudi Aramco’s initial public offering and the International Energy Agency’s views on when crude demand will peak spooking parts of the market, but oil is bouncing back. Crude futures are up for a second day after a report that the OPEC cartel sees a potential reduction in supply coming from non-OPEC members along with an “upswing” in the forecast for demand growth. This as the U.S. Energy Information Administration raised its forecast for crude output in 2020, even as the pioneers of the shale boom think production growth will slow.Election LandThe parties fighting the U.K.’s election continue on with what has been an uneasy campaign thus far. Conservative leader Boris Johnson faced flood-hit communities in northern England and said Brexit is holding back the country’s economy. The Liberal Democrats, who support remaining in the European Union, see an opportunity after the Brexit Party’s retreat from hundreds of seats. Social media pasts are haunting many of the candidates, the Netherlands is making a play to take London’s spot as the top restructuring hub and Brexit has cost the U.K. a Tesla factory. Just another day in Brexit election land.Coming Up…Investors will be digesting yesterday’s first day of public testimony in the impeachment probe into Trump. There are a large number of central bank officials speaking, beyond the Federal Reserve’s Jerome Powell testifying at a House Budget Committee meeting. Central bankers from the Fed, European Central Bank and Bank of Canada are all on the slate. Euro-area and German GDP data are due too and there will be an interest rate decision from Mexico later.What We’ve Been ReadingThis is what’s caught our eye over the past 24 hours. WeWork’s quarterly loss doubled as its IPO faltered. There’s a flaw in McDonald’s ordering kiosks. Mental health is still a “don’t ask, don’t tell” subject at work. A genetics company wants everyone to live to 99. Mongolia is a hotbed for road rage. Open-source code can survive the apocalypse. Travel hacks from the youngest person to visit every country.Like Bloomberg's Five Things? Subscribe for unlimited access to trusted, data-based journalism in 120 countries around the world and gain expert analysis from exclusive daily newsletters, The Bloomberg Open and The Bloomberg Close.Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal. Find out more about how the Terminal delivers information and analysis that financial professionals can't find anywhere else. Learn more.To contact the author of this story: Sam Unsted in London at sunsted@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Phil Serafino at pserafino@bloomberg.netFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Zacks
3 Dividend Paying Stocks to Consider as Stock Market Looks to Mark Sixth Week of Gains
As equities look to continue their remarkable run but nothing has been set in stone regarding the trade war, dividend paying stocks may be a solid route to take as things progress.
- Financial Times
History rhymes
It also doesn’t solve the bigger issue in the market today, which is that the corporate debt bubble is starting to burst. SoftBank, the oversized Japanese venture fund that helped to inflate values and expectations for Uber and WeWork (both have disappointed), is looking shaky. Although the FT’s own Alphaville blog says that Son has impressive plans to rehabilitate it, in a piece that I think might be satire.
- Financial Times
Office romance in the #MeToo era
In May, the race for the Democratic presidential nomination took an unlikely detour through the McDonald’s drive-through. Mr Easterbrook is divorced and McDonald’s has said the relationship was consensual.
- Zacks
"Merry Coffee": Starbucks Debuts 2019 Holiday Cups
Starbucks (SBUX) just debuted their highly-anticipated holiday cups for 2019, kicking off the holiday season for the coffee giant (and consumers).
- Bloomberg
Former McDonald's CEO Gets to Keep His Classroom. What's His Lesson?
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Steve Easterbook, the now-former CEO of McDonalds, will retain his role as a visiting fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation, reports Business Insider. At first blush this may seem deliciously ironic — a corporate titan, fired for having a relationship with a subordinate, giving lectures on PR! But I’d be more interested in hearing what he has to say now than I would have been before his ouster.Think about it. Who better to give lectures on corporate reputation than someone who has stumbled? Too many of these lectures are full of pious platitudes from people with squeaky-clean pasts. It’s like a nun giving a lecture on sex education. (No offense to nuns.) It would be more educational to hear from someone who has faced the public spotlight’s unforgiving glare, someone who has made mistakes and lived to learn from them.Moreover, while the McDonald’s board was right to show Easterbrook the door for violating company policy — which unambiguously forbids leaders from having romantic relationships with subordinates, whether they’re direct reports or not — there’s been no indication that this relationship was otherwise improper. A single man having a consensual relationship is not the kind of thing that should get one blacklisted from every corporate board or side project, even if it did violate the organization’s rules.But it’s very easy for confounding factors to cloud this particular case. First, there are our still-raw feelings over MeToo.For corporate America, MeToo provided catharsis. For too long, too many women had been belittled, intimidated and violated. Too many powerful men had been protected, often at great cost to their firms. Too many good guys were oblivious to what was happening.MeToo is also what social scientists call a “norms cascade” (a useful phrase I learned from law professor Joan Williams). What used to be OK suddenly isn’t anymore, and now no one knows how to act. It’s natural, after a norms cascade, to question which behaviors should be jettisoned and which are still acceptable. So it’s healthy to take stock of things like consensual work relationships with power differentials, which can be tricky to navigate even in the best cases.But we can’t forget that MeToo was about harassment, not sex. It might seem that a great way to eliminate harassment would be to ban sex, but they’re two different things. And given that about a third of people have dated a coworker — and about one in three of them ended up getting married — I hope no overzealous compliance officer tries anything as silly as banning workplace romances entirely. Finding love is hard enough already.The second confounding factor in Easterbrook’s case is executive compensation. In an era of well-publicized income inequality, lots of us have capital-F Feelings about CEO pay. Much has been made of Easterbook’s $42 million going-away gift from McDonalds, a company where burger-flippers can earn less than $10 an hour.According to the Economic Policy Institute, CEO compensation is up almost a thousand percent since 1978, while worker pay has risen only 12%. CEOs today earn more than 200 times what the typical schmo earns — even as recently as 1989, they made only 58 times as much.It makes sense that the rest of us might feel a certain schadenfreude when CEOs stumble. After all, sanctimony is one of life’s free pleasures. It also seems reasonable to hold chief executives to a relatively high standard of behavior, perhaps one that’s approximately 58 times higher than what goes for the rest of us.Even so, for Easterbrook, losing such a high-profile job is surely punishment enough. Let the man keep his Oxford lecturing side-hustle. He probably has more insight to share now than he did a couple of weeks ago.To contact the author of this story: Sarah Green Carmichael at sgreencarmic@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Mary Duenwald at mduenwald@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Sarah Green Carmichael is an editor with Bloomberg Opinion. She was previously managing editor of ideas and commentary at Barron’s, and an executive editor at Harvard Business Review, where she hosted the HBR Ideacast. For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Zacks
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Shake Shack, Grubhub, McDonald???s and Chipotle
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Shake Shack, Grubhub, McDonald???s and Chipotle
- Yahoo Finance
Papa John's CEO: We want to conquer lunch
All options are on the table for Papa John's to boost sales and profits, says Papa John's CEO Rob Lynch.
- Yahoo Finance
McDonald's is in a leadership crisis, but investors are sticking with the stock
Quite the week for McDonald's, headlined by a new CEO taking the helm. Here's why one investor is sticking with the stock.
- Zacks
Shake Shack's Shake Up
The retail food & restaurant industry has traded down over 6% since the beginning of October, with some of America's favorite restaurant stocks falling even futher.
- Market Realist
Wendy’s Stock Rose Due to Q3 Beat, Unlike Peers
Wendy’s (WEN) stock was trading more than 4% higher in the pre-market session. Today, the company posted stronger-than-expected third-quarter results.
- Zacks
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Verizon Communications, McDonald's, TOTAL, Broadcom and UPS
The Zacks Analyst Blog Highlights: Verizon Communications, McDonald's, TOTAL, Broadcom and UPS
- Yahoo Finance
Papa John's reports strong sales, announces management shakeup
Papa John's reported positive same-store sales growth in North America for the first time in two years during its third quarter.
- Bloomberg
Does Every Car Need a Steering Wheel and Seat Belts? A Tech Lawyer Says No
(Bloomberg) -- When I first met Silicon Valley lawyer David Estrada in 2014, he was an executive at Lyft Inc. who was tussling with New York City regulators. Lyft wanted to allow its drivers to ferry passengers around the city without special licenses. He lost that battle but won the war, helping to persuade dozens of states and countries to change their laws and usher in the age of ride-hailing.It turns out that Estrada’s two years at Lyft were just one part of a 15-year slalom through some of Silicon Valley’s most disruptive companies. He had previously worked at Google X, crafting the first autonomous vehicle legislation in states like California, Florida and Nevada. After Lyft, he moved to Kitty Hawk, Larry Page’s secretive flying car company, and then became the head of legal and policy at Bird Rides Inc., nudging more than 100 U.S. cities and several countries to accept (though not necessarily embrace) street-side electric scooter rentals.Now Estrada is taking on a new role at Nuro Inc., a Mountain View, California-based self-driving car startup founded by two of his former Google colleagues and backed by nearly $1 billion from SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund. Nuro envisions autonomous cars not only without drivers but without passengers, either. Its goal is to create lightweight vehicles designed for delivering packages, groceries and meals to people’s homes.“My hope is that I can help Nuro achieve the first commercial success with autonomous vehicles, which is really what I set out to do when I started on this path back at Google,” says Estrada, who must first convince regulators and citizens who will likely be skeptical of another wave of Silicon Valley-style disruption in their communities.Nuro completed a pilot program to deliver groceries this year in Scottsdale, Arizona. Next year in Houston, it plans to start delivering food from Kroger Co. and Domino’s Pizza Inc. via an upgraded electric vehicle prototype that can travel up to 25 miles per hour.Estrada will eventually have to navigate a tangle of state and federal authorities. States license individual drivers and oversee their roads and highways, while the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regulates federal motor vehicle safety standards. The Feds must be convinced to accommodate an entirely new class of self-driving delivery vehicles that theoretically don’t need steering wheels, seats, seat belts, windshield wipers or rear-view mirrors. Nuro’s application for an exemption from safety standards for its vehicles is pending.Estrada plays up the safety of Nuro cars, which are designed to tolerate damage to its cargo in collisions (what’s a few broken eggs in a crash?) while minimizing the impact to other vehicles, pedestrians and pets.He’ll face other concerns as well. In addition to further congesting already clogged city streets, driverless delivery vehicles threaten to put more than 400,000 delivery drivers in the U.S. out of business.Estrada argues that Nuro cars won’t supplant existing delivery people but expand the overall market while creating more jobs inside supermarkets and restaurants and lowering the cost of home delivery services like DoorDash and UberEats. Of course, he’ll have to deliver that message at a time when Amazon.com Inc. is trying to eliminate cashier jobs with its Go store, and chains like McDonald’s Corp. are working on automating functions like the drive-through.Which is why Silicon Valley companies pay him the big bucks. Nuro co-founder and President Dave Ferguson acknowledges the formidable regulatory and PR challenges and says he hopes Estrada can “push us over the finish line.”This article also ran in Bloomberg Technology’s Fully Charged newsletter. Sign up here.And here’s what you need to know in global technology newsUber braces. Many early investors and employees can sell their stock for the first time on Wednesday.FCC inquires. The agency want to know if equipment from Huawei has been installed near sensitive military bases.Match Group dumped. Shares plummeted after the online dating giant disappointed investors with a lackluster financial report.To contact the author of this story: Brad Stone in San Francisco at bstone12@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Milian at mmilian@bloomberg.netFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Zacks
Top Analyst Reports for Verizon, McDonald's & TOTAL
Top Analyst Reports for Verizon, McDonald's & TOTAL
- IPO-Edge.com
How Former McDonald’s CEO Easterbrook May Leave with a Supersized $60 Million
McDonald’s Corporation Former CEO Easterbrook Departed without “Cause” So Keeps Valuable Stock and Options By John Jannarone At first glance, it might appear that Stephen Easterbrook left his post as CEO of McDonald’s Corporation with peanuts. But a closer look reveals he may keep restricted stock and options worth over $60 million. On Sunday, the […]
- Yahoo Finance
Shake Shack has a Grubhub problem
Shake Shack expects sales disruption in the near term following a transition to an exclusive delivery partnership with Grubhub.
- Bloomberg
McDonald’s CEO Had to Go in Era of Zero Tolerance Policy
(Bloomberg) -- McDonald’s Corp. has been working hard to fend off accusations it overlooks workplace harassment and abuse. So when it came to light that its chief executive officer was in a relationship with a colleague, the board had little room to maneuver: Steve Easterbrook had to go.The world’s biggest restaurant chain announced Sunday it replaced Easterbrook with Chris Kempczinski, the head of U.S. operations. A day later, David Fairhurst, the company’s global people officer, was out the door. Mason Smoot, a senior vice president who oversees strategic alignment and staff, stepped into the HR role on an interim basis.Easterbrook also resigned as director from the board of Walmart Inc., the retailer said in a Nov. 4 filing.The rapid shake-up shows how executives’ behavior is under a microscope in the MeToo era -- and transgressions that may once have been considered minor are no longer swept aside, even for star performers. At McDonald’s, which for years has been a target of activists because of its wage and labor practices, the scrutiny is especially intense.“If the CEO is allowed to engage in policy violations on this topic, the message to employees and to other stakeholders is that McDonald’s is not really committed to providing those protections promised in the policies,” said Lynne Anne Anderson, a partner at Drinker Biddle who advises companies and represents them in misconduct cases. “The level of conduct that is being required from executives in this MeToo era is to set the tone and to lead by example.”Markets ReactMcDonald’s shares rose as much as 0.9% in Tuesday trading as of 9:39 a.m. The previous day, they slipped 2.7% to close at the lowest level in seven months.Easterbrook, who took the reins in 2015 amid a sales slump and oversaw market-beating share gains, put McDonald’s in an uncomfortable position -- even though the relationship was consensual. As a bellwether for the fast-food industry, McDonald’s has become a principal target of groups like Fight for $15 and the American Civil Liberties Union, who say McDonald’s has tolerated workplace harassment and ignored safety issues. They say the company has failed to prevent misconduct including groping, inappropriate comments from supervisors and retaliation for speaking up.The announcement quickly gave fuel to critics’ arguments.Fight for $15 said on Twitter that the company “has refused to listen to us” when it came to fighting sexual harassment. “With the firing of Steve Easterbrook, we now know why.” The group added “it’s clear McDonald’s culture is rotten from top to bottom.”Hotline, TrainingThe company has countered criticism by revamping policies to include training for workers to deal with harassment and starting a hotline for victims, including other measures. But critics, including Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have said McDonald’s moves “fall short” and send “the wrong message” by merely “encouraging” the franchisees who run most of the chain’s stores to adopt new policies, rather than requiring them to.“What the research shows is basically if you’re in a position of power over somebody else, you’re really bad at recognizing the power you wield over them and how hard it is for them to say no to you,” said Vanessa Bohns, an organizational behavior professor at Cornell University. Such relationships can also undermine how the more junior employee is perceived by coworkers, she said, and fuel concern about favoritism at work.In departing, Easterbrook acknowledged that the relationship was a mistake. McDonald’s said on Sunday that the board determined he had “demonstrated poor judgment” by engaging in the consensual relationship.Even so, McDonald’s gave Easterbrook severance of $675,000, as well as letting him keep stock awards worth more than $37 million -- far more generous than what’s usually offered to fired employees. Anderson, at Drinker Biddle, said the reason he got severance pay was likely because he was only determined to have violated a company policy, not broken sexual harassment law.McDonald’s declined to elaborate on Easterbrook’s severance and departure beyond its public statements and filings.Nell Minow, vice chair of ValueEdge Advisors, a shareholder consulting firm, said the severance is problematic.‘Terrible Message’“A middle manager who did that would be escorted out with all his belongings in a shoe box, and it sends a terrible message -- not just to the employees and the investors and consumers but to society about how there are two rules: One for the powerful, one for the not,” Minow said.Since 2012, the Service Employees International Union has mounted a high-profile “Fight For $15” campaign demanding fast food giants raise pay and let workers unionize. McDonald’s has been the top target of the multifront effort, which includes a battery of litigation, legislation and worker walkouts. The campaign has helped secure $15 wage laws in states like California, and spurred response from McDonald’s, which this year announced it would no longer lobby against across-the-board wage hikes.McDonald’s caught a big break with the 2016 election of Donald Trump, which led to a Supreme Court ruling that squeezed unions’ finances and a slate of business-friendly appointments at the National Labor Relations Board. But the conflict has raged on nonetheless.Keep the HeatIn a sign activists plan to keep the heat on McDonald’s, Fight for $15 and other groups plan to take out an advertisement in USA Today’s Southern California edition Wednesday to reach the Association of National Advertisers Multicultural Marketing Convention attendees to highlight issues it sees at the chain.“If you see a McDonald’s representative at this week’s conference, ask them to meet with worker-survivors, their advocates, and experts to solve the company’s sexual harassment problem,” a copy of the planned advertisement viewed by Bloomberg News reads.McDonald’s, which has been navigating pressure from politicians on its wages, has been trying to revamp its image. The new training and anti-harassment measures create “a clear message that we are committed to creating and sustaining a culture of trust where employees feel safe, valued and respected,” Easterbrook said in a May letter to Senator Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat, who had sent an inquiry to the company amid a rise in claims of sexual harassment and misconduct.‘Me Too McDonald’s’Despite McDonald’s new policies aimed at protecting workers and eliminating harassment, the pressure hasn’t relented.At the Wall Street Journal Global Food Forum in New York last month, Kempczinski, then head of U.S. operations, was interrupted as he spoke about McDonald’s being a “responsible actor.” Protesters chanted “Me Too McDonald’s, Me Too McDonald’s,” startling Kempczinski.“So I think that’s the MeToo movement,” he said, eliciting laughter from the audience, before referring to the company’s “whole initiative” to address safety and harassment. He said he was proud of McDonald’s work on topics like climate change and workplace safety, while acknowledging that “there’s a lot of different voices out there.”(Updates with shares trading)\--With assistance from Deena Shanker.To contact the reporters on this story: Leslie Patton in Chicago at lpatton5@bloomberg.net;Josh Eidelson in Palo Alto at jeidelson@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Anne Riley Moffat at ariley17@bloomberg.net, Jonathan Roeder, Lisa WolfsonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Yahoo Finance
Shake Shack plunges after Q3 sales miss expectations
Shake Shack reported earnings that beat expectations; however, revenue and same-store sales fell short of Wall Street estimates.
- Market Realist
McDonald’s Stock: Analysts Worry after CEO Exit
McDonald’s (MCD) stock fell 2.7% on Monday. Notably, the company's board fired president and CEO Steve Easterbrook on Sunday.
- Bloomberg
McDonald’s Fires CEO Steve Easterbrook Over Relationship With Employee
(Bloomberg) -- McDonald’s Corp. fired Chief Executive Officer Steve Easterbrook because he had a consensual relationship with an employee, losing the strategist who led the company’s charge into online ordering and delivery.The burger chain’s board voted Friday to terminate Easterbrook, 52, after investigating the relationship, which violated company policy, according to a statement Sunday. McDonald’s policy doesn’t allow the CEO to have a relationship with anyone in the company. Chris Kempczinski, who runs U.S. operations, was promoted to president and CEO.“This was a mistake,” Easterbrook said of his actions in an email sent to employees. “Given the values of the company, I agree with the board that it is time for me to move on.”Easterbrook resigned as director from the board of Walmart Inc., the retailer said in a Nov. 4 filing adding that the decision to leave was not due to any disagreement over its policies or practices.McDonald’s shares fell as much as 2.9% in New York Monday, hitting its lowest point since April. The stock had almost doubled since Easterbrook took over in March 2015, more than twice the gain in the S&P 500 Index, giving the company a market capitalization of $147 billion.Easterbrook was seen as relentless in his push to capture a new generation of customers who would be willing to order through smartphone apps, pay online, and choose to have food delivered to home or work instead of venturing into outlets. To stress urgency, he tied executives’ compensation to the speed and breadth of the delivery rollout, and worked with vendors including UberEats.His strategies are paying off: Same-store sales, a key metric of success, recovered with the arrival of all-day breakfast, and he axed poorly selling items and added new ones while creating lower priced value menus to draw in diners.Strong Argument“You can make a very strong argument that Easterbrook was the best CEO in the restaurant industry,” said Michael Halen, who covers the sector for Bloomberg Intelligence.He is eligible for 26 weeks of severance pay -- equal to about $675,000 based on his annual salary of $1.35 million -- and 18 months of health benefits, according to filings on Monday. He also signed nondisclosure and noncompete agreements and will keep some options and equity awards. Kempczinski, meanwhile, will receive a base salary of $1.25 million with an target annual bonus of 170% that amount.Will Slabaugh, an analyst with Stephens Inc. said Easterbrook’s departure will likely “come as a fairly significant negative for investors, given his history of impressive and consistent global results,” including turning around the core U.S. business and driving stock gains.However, he cited Kempczinski’s established relationship with franchisees and past involvement in strategy and development as a positive for the incoming leader.Higher ExpensesHis relationship with restaurant owners will be crucial, because Easterbrook’s changes caused some franchisees to chafe at the expenses being pushed down from the corporate headquarters in Chicago.McDonald’s independent group of franchisees, the National Owners Association, didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment. Store owners are scheduling a private conference call to discuss how to respond and protect the brand, according to a person familiar with their plan who asked not to be identified.“Large public companies are less likely to tolerate such behavior because of reputational risk concerns,” said Yuen Teen Mak, a professor at NUS Business School in Singapore wrote in an email. “The nature of the business may also be a factor -- after all, their target customers are families and children.”Regardless of Easterbrook’s successes, the company’s board had little room for error in how it handled the British executive’s transgression at a time when even consensual relationships draw scrutiny -- and especially when there’s an imbalance of power. In May, the company revamped its harassment policy after coming under pressure from employees, labor advocates and members of Congress.In a letter responding to an inquiry from U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth, from the chain’s home state of Illinois, Easterbrook said the company has improved its policy and is committed “to ensuring a harassment and bias-free workplace.”“In the current MeToo climate, it will be even more difficult for corporations to retain a CEO in such situations,” said NUS’ Mak. “It is absolutely the right thing for McDonald’s to do and to do it swiftly.”For the first time in 19 years, more CEOs were dismissed for ethical lapses than for financial performance or board struggles in 2018, according to a study by one of the PriceWaterhouseCooper’s units that analyzed CEO turnovers in the world’s 2,500 largest companies.Must ForfeitExecutives who depart after violating company policy typically don’t get to collect severance and must forfeit any unvested long-term compensation. Easterbrook held unvested shares and stock options worth roughly $31.3 million as of Friday’s close in New York, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.Easterbrook is divorced, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.At the time, the American Civil Liberties Union and the union-backed Fight For $15 just announced a handful of new lawsuits and 20 complaints to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. They accused the company of failing to prevent misconduct including groping and inappropriate comments from supervisors, as well as retaliation for speaking up.With Easterbrook now out of the picture, it’s left to Kempczinski to continue the push into delivery and electronic ordering. He joined McDonald’s in 2015 to oversee global strategy, business development and innovation. He most recently served as president of the U.S. business and, like Easterbrook, was deeply involved in the drive to expand online delivery.‘Important Partner’“Chris has been an important partner to me over the last four years and is the ideal person to take on the role of CEO,” Easterbrook said in his departure note. Joe Erlinger, who joined the company in 2002, will become president of the U.S. business. He will receive $775,000 in base salary with a target annual bonus set at 100% of that amount.Kempczinski, who helped implement many of the recent changes as head of U.S. operations, will maintain his predecessor’s focus on technology and believes the company’s investments will pay off, according to an interview with the Wall Street Journal.“There isn’t going to be some radical, strategic shift. The plan is working,” the new CEO told the Journal, adding that he wants to discuss any concerns with franchisees.Kempczinski, who’s also joining McDonald’s board, is taking over a behemoth chain, with more than 38,000 locations in 100 countries, including 14,000 in the U.S.He’ll have to contend with stagnant customer traffic across the restaurant industry. Growth has been fueled in recent quarters by higher prices, but chains have struggled to bring in larger volumes of diners. Competition has intensified as consumers eat out less and buy more prepared foods from grocery stores.In recent quarters, McDonald’s has been one of the industry’s best performers, with same-store sales rising 5.9% globally in the latest quarter, more than analysts had projected.Comfortable FootingIt hasn’t been quite as easy in its home market, where heavy discounting by rivals and more competition at breakfast has made it harder to get customers in its doors, resulting in a slowdown in customer traffic last quarter. But those who do come in are spending more and more, keeping the company on comfortable footing.The company has sought to renovate its image by remodeling its locations -- but franchisees have complained about the high costs associated with changes like building a wall to hide the kitchen operations behind the cash registers. In 2018, it slowed the pace of remodels, letting operators complete them by 2022 instead of the initial goal of 2020.The improvements have also included self-ordering kiosks and even extra drive-thru lanes in some locations.While the company’s fundamentals are solid, the CEO change could presage additional disruption, Piper Jaffray analyst Nicole Miller Regan said in a note.“Our experience leads us to take a more cautionary view, noting the potential lack of momentum and time involved in formalizing a new team,” she said.(Updates with details on Easterbrook’s resignation from the board of Walmart in the fourth paragraph.)\--With assistance from Hailey Waller, Anders Melin, Ari Altstedter and Lisa Wolfson.To contact the reporters on this story: Matthew G. Miller in New York at mmiller144@bloomberg.net;Jonathan Roeder in Chicago at jroeder@bloomberg.net;Leslie Patton in Chicago at lpatton5@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: James Ludden at jludden@bloomberg.net, ;Rachel Chang at wchang98@bloomberg.net, Kevin Miller, Bhuma ShrivastavaFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Financial Times
FirstFT: Today’s top stories
that the US and China are close to agreeing a trade deal. The Trump administration is debating whether to roll back levies on $112bn of Chinese imports — including clothing, appliances, and flatscreen monitors — as a concession in a partial deal that would pause the trade war with Beijing as early as this month.
- Yahoo Finance AU
Fired McDonald’s CEO scores massive payout
Steve Easterbrook will leave McDonald's with a massive severance pay packet.
- Bloomberg
U.S. Stocks Rise to Records as Treasuries Slump: Markets Wrap
(Bloomberg) -- U.S. stock benchmarks climbed to all-time highs, while Treasuries tumbled as trade optimism fueled demand for risk assets.The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed Monday to claim its first record since July. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes also hit new highs after a report that the U.S. and China are closing in on a partial trade deal and the Federal Reserve cut interest rates last week. The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 1.78% and the dollar advanced versus major peers.In company news, McDonald’s Corp. fell after firing its chief executive and Under Armour Inc. sank after disclosing an accounting probe -- both declines weighing heavily on consumer shares. Banks and industrial firms led the Stoxx Europe 600 Index toward a four-year high after the U.S. commerce secretary said tariffs on importing vehicles into the American market might be unnecessary. All major Asian markets advanced. A gauge of emerging-market stocks was set for its biggest gain in three weeks.Investors are trying to push up stocks for a fifth successive week and add to the 18% gain this year already notched by a global gauge of equities. Earnings continue to roll in around the world, with Uber Technologies Inc. and Marriott International Inc. still due Monday. In China, trade data at the end of this week will give details for October against a backdrop of easing tensions on negotiations with U.S. counterparts.“The earnings season primarily has been so much better than we expected it to be,” JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade, said by phone. “Not that it’s an unbelievable earnings season, but it’s been so much above expectations. The rhetoric on tariffs has been mostly positive and we continue to see positive numbers out of particularly employment, but really in general about the economy.”Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross expressed optimism the U.S. would reach a “phase one” trade deal with China this month and said licenses would be coming “very shortly” for American companies to sell components to Huawei Technologies Co. President Donald Trump told reporters Sunday that a trade deal, if completed, will be signed somewhere in the U.S.Elsewhere, crude-oil futures climbed. The initial public offering process for Saudi Aramco officially started on Sunday, with the stock likely to begin trading in Riyadh next month. Valuations vary widely.Here are some key events coming up this week:Earnings are due from companies including: Uber and Marriott International on Monday; Singapore Airlines on Tuesday; SoftBank and BMW on Wednesday; Walt Disney, Toyota, Deutsche Telekom on Thursday.U.S. durable goods data is due Monday along with factory orders.Regional Fed presidents including Charles Evans, John Williams and Patrick Harker speak at events on Wednesday.Central bank monetary decisions are due Tuesday in Australia and Thursday by the Bank of England.The USDA World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates Report for November comes out FridayThese are the main moves in markets:StocksThe S&P 500 Index rose 0.4% as of 4 p.m. New York time; the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 0.4%.The Stoxx Europe 600 Index jumped 1% to a four-year high.Germany’s DAX Index surged 1.4% to a 17-month high.The MSCI Emerging Markets Index rose 1.3% to the highest in more than four months.CurrenciesThe Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index increased 0.3%, the biggest gain in five weeks.The euro fell 0.4% to $1.1127.The British pound fell 0.5% to $1.2884.The Japanese yen weakened 0.4% to 108.62 per dollar.BondsThe yield on 10-year Treasuries rose seven basis points to 1.78%.The two-year rate added four basis points to 1.59%.Germany’s 10-year yield rose three basis points to -0.35%.Britain’s 10-year yield climbed six basis points to 0.725%.CommoditiesThe Bloomberg Commodity Index jumped 0.5% to a seven-week high.West Texas Intermediate crude increased 0.6% to $56.52 a barrel.Gold weakened 0.4% to $1,508.53 an ounce.\--With assistance from Haidi Lun, Ravil Shirodkar and Adam Haigh.To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah Ponczek in New York at sponczek2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Jeremy Herron at jherron8@bloomberg.net, Andrew DunnFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
