Alibaba sign outside the company’s office in Beijing on April 13, 2021.
Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images
Chinese billionaire
Jack Ma
courted controversy last year when he criticized banking regulators, and then he disappeared from public life for weeks. Now, his fintech firm Ant Group may be making moves for him to part ways.
It was Ant Group that had to scuttle its highly anticipated $37 billion initial public offering in November after Ma’s critical comments rained regulatory scrutiny on Ant and Ma’s affiliated e-commerce giant Alibaba.
Reuters reported on Monday that Ant is exploring options that would allow Ma to divest of his stake and give up control. Meetings with regulators signaled such a move could help lower the regulatory heat on Ant, Reuters said, citing people familiar with the regulators’ thinking.
The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Ma offered during a November meeting with regulators to hand over parts of Ant to the Chinese government.
Shares of Alibaba fell 1.6% on Monday and are up just 0.9% this year compared to the nearly 11% gain for the S&P 500.
Over the same weekend, Alibaba reached a $2.8 billion settlement with regulators, who have been investigating it for antitrust since last fall.
While a record amount, Wall Street analysts who follow the stock said it wouldn’t affect Alibaba’s financials and was “closure” for investors.
On Monday, Truist Securities analyst
Youssef Squali
lowered his price target on Alibaba to $315 but maintained a Buy rating.
The hefty settlement does not dampen the secular trends of the last few years: Consumers continue to use e-commerce sites in greater numbers and merchants have adjusted their business to take advantage of that.
It may help Ma and Alibaba move on from months of turbulence, however. Ant’s move to become a financial holding company could dampen its valuation if it tries to go public again.
Ma’s Ant stake in Ant could be sold to existing investors or to shareholders of Alibaba, Reuters reported, quoting a source with company ties. He could also transfer his stake to a Chinese investor affiliated with the state, a second source told Reuters.
The Reuters report said officials from the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), and financial regulator China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) have held talks Ma and Ant separately since the beginning of this year, including discussing the possibility of Ma’s exit from the company.
The report quoted an Ant spokesman disputing that last point. “Divestment of Mr. Ma’s stake in Ant Group has never been the subject of discussions with anyone,” an Ant spokesman told Reuters.
single-dose Covid-19 vaccine worked safely and should be authorized for use in the U.S., a panel of experts advised federal health regulators Friday.
The advisory committee’s vote in support of the vaccine’s authorization is the last step before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issues a decision, which is expected Saturday.
The panel, a group of 22 medical specialists in fields like internal medicine, pediatrics, vaccines and epidemiology, regularly advises the FDA about experimental vaccines. It voted to recommend shots from
During the all-day public meeting, representatives from the FDA and J&J discussed the safety and effectiveness of the company’s vaccine in a 44,000-plus subject study, as well as how effective the J&J vaccine is in preventing new cases caused by variants.
The give-and-take of questions and answers can be valuable in bolstering public confidence in the shot, according to FDA officials.
The vaccine was 66% effective at protecting people from moderate to severe Covid-19, an FDA review found, and even more effective at preventing severe disease alone.
“If authorized, Janssen’s vaccine candidate would play a pivotal role in the global effort to fight Covid-19,”
Johan Van Hoof,
global head of vaccines research at J&J’s Janssen pharmaceutical unit, said during the panel’s meeting. “A single-dose regimen offers the ability to vaccinate a population faster.”
As highly transmissible coronavirus variants sweep across the world, scientists are racing to understand why these new versions of the virus are spreading faster, and what this could mean for vaccine efforts. New research says the key may be the spike protein, which gives the coronavirus its unmistakable shape. Illustration: Nick Collingwood/WSJ
A rollout of the J&J vaccine could add enough shots in the U.S. by the end of March to boost the total number of people vaccinated by 20%. Health authorities are pushing to inoculate enough people as quickly as possible so that business, schools and other establishments can fully reopen.
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J&J has said it would deliver about 20 million doses for U.S. use by the end of March.
The FDA often convenes public meetings of outside experts to scrutinize experimental drugs, devices and vaccines up for agency approval, in part to boost public acceptance of the products should they be cleared for wide use.
J&J’s vaccine appeared to be safe in its pivotal study, the FDA found, aside from being effective.
“The known and potential benefits of Ad26 outweigh the known and potential risks,” Macaya Douoguih, head of clinical development and medical affairs at J&J’s Janssen unit, said during Friday’s meeting, using a code name for J&J’s vaccine.
FDA medical officer Yosefa Hefter said there are still unknowns about the vaccine, including the duration of immune protection and the safety and effectiveness in children.
An FDA analysis for the committee meeting also said rare cases of deep vein clots and of blockages in lung arteries were slightly more common in vaccine recipients than in placebo patients, and that the FDA considers these as “of clinical interest.”
The vaccine was effective “across demographic subgroups,” the FDA said. The demographic subgroups in the large study of J&J’s vaccines included racial and ethnic groups such as Black, Latino and Asian people, and age groups such as those 60 years and older.
Researchers also assessed efficacy in people who had underlying medical conditions including obesity and high blood pressure before entering the clinical trial. Sometimes vaccines don’t work as well in older people because of weakened immune systems.
One exception was that the vaccine appeared to be less effective in people 60 and older who had certain underlying medical conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure.
The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines also worked effectively across various demographic subgroups.
The vaccine was less effective in South Africa, where a more-transmissible Covid-19 variant has thrived, than in the U.S. J&J is among the companies working on new shots targeting the new strain, against which several current vaccines don’t appear to work as well.
J&J’s Covid-19 shot was, however, very effective against severe and critical cases in South Africa. The vaccine was 73.1% effective in preventing such cases occurring at least 14 days after vaccination, and 81.7% effective in preventing such cases at least 28 days after vaccination.
How Viral Vector Vaccines Work
Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine relies on a different mechanism for conferring immunity than traditional vaccines.
Traditional Vaccines
1. In classic vaccines, such as those against measles and polio, the patient is inoculated with weakened or inactivated versions of the virus. This triggers the immune system to produce specialized antibodies that are adapted to recognize the virus.
2. After vaccination, the antibodies remain in the body. If the patient later becomes infected with the actual virus, the antibodies can identify and help neutralize it.
Johnson & Johnson’s Vaccine
Scientists have isolated the genes in coronavirus responsible for producing these spike proteins. The genes are spliced into weakened, harmless versions of other viruses.
Instead of using the whole virus to generate an immune response, these vaccines use only coronavirus’s outer spike proteins, which are what antibodies use to recognize the virus.
Weakened virus with
spike protein genes
When injected into a patient, the genetically engineered viruses enter healthy cells where they produce coronavirus spike proteins.
The spike proteins produced by the cells prompt the immune system to mount a defense, just as with traditional vaccines.
Vaccine-generated antibody response
1. In classic vaccines, such as those against measles and polio, the patient is inoculated with weakened or inactivated versions of the virus. This triggers the immune system to produce specialized antibodies that are adapted to recognize the virus.
2. After vaccination, the antibodies remain in the body. If the patient later becomes infected with the actual virus, the antibodies can identify and help neutralize it.
Johnson & Johnson’s Vaccine
Scientists have isolated the genes in coronavirus responsible for producing these spike proteins. The genes are spliced into weakened, harmless versions of other viruses.
Instead of using the whole virus to generate an immune response, these vaccines use only coronavirus’s outer spike proteins, which are what antibodies use to recognize the virus.
Weakened virus with
spike protein genes
When injected into a patient, the genetically engineered viruses enter healthy cells where they produce coronavirus spike proteins.
The spike proteins produced by the cells prompt the immune system to mount a defense, just as with traditional vaccines.
Vaccine-generated antibody response
1. In classic vaccines, such as those against measles and polio, the patient is inoculated with weakened or inactivated versions of the virus. This triggers the immune system to produce specialized antibodies that are adapted to recognize the virus.
2. After vaccination, the antibodies remain in the body. If the patient later becomes infected with the actual virus, the antibodies can identify and help neutralize it.
Johnson & Johnson’s Vaccine
Scientists have isolated the genes in coronavirus responsible for producing these spike proteins. The genes are spliced into weakened, harmless versions of other viruses.
Instead of using the whole virus to generate an immune response, these vaccines use only coronavirus’s outer spike proteins, which are what antibodies use to recognize the virus.
Weakened virus with
spike protein genes
When injected into a patient, the genetically engineered viruses enter healthy cells where they produce coronavirus spike proteins.
The spike proteins produced by the cells prompt the immune system to mount a defense, just as with traditional vaccines.
Vaccine-generated antibody response
1. In classic vaccines, such as those against measles and polio, the patient is inoculated with weakened or inactivated versions of the virus. This triggers the immune system to produce specialized antibodies that are adapted to recognize the virus.
2. After vaccination, the antibodies remain in the body. If the patient later becomes infected with the actual virus, the antibodies can identify and help neutralize it.
Johnson & Johnson’s Vaccine
Instead of using the whole virus to generate an immune response, these vaccines use only coronavirus’s outer spike proteins, which are what antibodies use to recognize the virus.
Scientists have isolated the genes in coronavirus responsible for producing these
spike proteins. The genes are spliced into weakened, harmless versions of other viruses.
Weakened virus with
spike protein genes
When injected into a patient, the genetically engineered viruses enter healthy cells where they produce coronavirus spike proteins.
The spike proteins produced by the cells prompt the immune system to mount a defense, just as with traditional vaccines.
Vaccine-generated antibody response
J&J, citing preliminary evidence in an analysis released by the FDA, said the vaccine was 65.5% effective in preventing asymptomatic infections in a subset of study subjects.
Health authorities have been watching whether Covid-19 shots can stop people without symptoms from transmitting the virus. The virus has largely been spread by people who were infected but didn’t realize it because they had no symptoms.
The vaccine was less effective in South Africa, where a more-transmissible Covid-19 variant has thrived, than in the U.S. J&J is among the companies working on new shots targeting the new strain, which several current vaccines don’t appear to work as well against.
The index of blue-chip stocks fell 200.94 points, or 0.7%, to 30015.51, marking its largest one-day point and percentage decline in December. The S&P 500 slid 7.66 points, or 0.2%, to 3687.26 to extend its losing streak to a third session.
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The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, in contrast, rose 65.40 points, or 0.5%, to 12807.92, a new all-time high.
Much of the stock market has lost steam this week as some nations began taking steps to curtail travel in an effort to contain the emergence of a fast-spreading variant of coronavirus from England. The U.K. imposed stringent restrictions on social and business activity, prompting concern that more countries may be required to adopt measures that would hamper the global economic recovery.
“It would be a brave man to suggest this will just remain a U.K.-specific issue,” said
Derek Halpenny,
head of research for global markets in the European region at MUFG Bank. “Are we going back into another phase of more pronounced global lockdowns again?”
Meanwhile, the yield on the 10-year note ticked down to 0.917%, from 0.941% Monday, as some investors looked to the relative safety of U.S. government bonds. Yields fall when prices rise.
would likely work against the new variant and is being tested. If a new mutation would make the current vaccine ineffective, BioNTech can develop another tailored to the new variant in six weeks, he said.
Technology stocks traded higher on Nasdaq, in contrast to declines for the S&P and Dow.
Photo:
Michael Nagle/Bloomberg News
“The big unknown is to what degree could the new strain make the efficacy of the vaccine lower,” said
Peter Garnry,
head of equity strategy at Saxo Bank. “If it just turns out to be more infections, and it doesn’t have an effect on the vaccine, then the market will be less concerned.”
Late Monday, a fresh $900 billion fiscal stimulus package was passed by Congress, ending weeks of anticipation from investors about whether lawmakers could end their stalemate. The bill, which includes direct checks to households and relief for small businesses, is expected to be signed by
President Trump.
Even so, the bill’s passage wasn’t enough to propel the broader stock market higher.
“We’ve had the positive news on the vaccines and the fiscal deal, so there’s probably not a catalyst to drive stocks meaningfully higher in the next few weeks,” said
Brian Levitt,
global market strategist at Invesco.
When Is the Market on Holiday?
Select stock-market closures through year’s end
Thurs. Dec. 24: U.S. stock market closes at 1 p.m. ET
Fri. Dec. 25: Markets closed
Mon. Dec. 28: London stock market closed
Fri. Jan. 1: Markets closed
Still, Mr. Levitt noted that he maintains a positive outlook on equities.
“In my opinion, betting against stocks over the next year and beyond is betting against medicine, science and policy makers,” he said. “And I’m not willing to make those bets.”
gained $16.82, or 12%, to $161.21, hitting a new all-time-high, after it agreed to buy commercial fitness-equipment provider Precor for $420 million in cash.
Travel stocks and shares of energy companies tumbled.
tumbled $9.52, or 1.5%, to $640.34, extending its losses for the week to nearly 8%. The electric-car maker made its S&P 500 debut Monday.
Moves in stocks could be big and markets may be especially choppy in coming days because fewer people are trading as the holiday period starts, said
Salman Ahmed,
global head of macro at Fidelity International.
The final stretch of trading in December is historically positive for the stock market. But this week’s losses may be a sign that investors are starting to take profits after a blockbuster year, especially as they consider the possibility of tax changes after President-elect
chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade. The S&P 500 is up 14% in 2020, and the Nasdaq Composite has catapulted 43% higher.
Footage shows empty supermarket shelves while trucks bearing cargo get stuck at the border after France imposed a travel ban on Britain following the spread of a new coronavirus strain. Other countries have also barred passengers from the U.K. Photo: Neil Hall/EPA/Shutterstock
Additionally, Mr. Kinahan noted, Tuesday’s worse-than-expected consumer confidence report may also be weighing on markets.
The Conference Board, a private research group, said its index of consumer confidence dropped to 88.6 in the first two weeks of December, from a revised 92.9 in November. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected a level of 97.5.
Still, there were small signs of optimism. Data from the Commerce Department showed Tuesday that U.S. gross domestic product—the value of all goods and services produced across the economy—increased at an annualized rate of 33.4% in the third quarter, slightly stronger than the previous estimate issued last month.
Overseas, European shares rebounded after Monday’s losses. The pan-continental Stoxx Europe 600 gained 1.2%.
Major stock indexes in Asia closed lower. China’s Shanghai Composite fell 1.9%, and South Korea’s Kospi declined 1.6%.
