Sponsored by

The theme of next week’s world-famous-news-haiku-competition™ is how the “Nostradamus of AI” didn’t predict his own failure. Send me your entry — to haiku at cheddar dot com — by noon ET Thursday, for consideration by your Cheddar peers.

Now: News…

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

Table of Contents

• AstraZeneca Mulls Merger with Bristol Myers Squibb

• UEFA Threatens Legal Action After FIFA U-turn

• Why We’re All Ghosting Bud Light

• California Lettuce Growers Plow Crops Back Into Gr …

• Spidey Swings Past the Superhero Slump

• Poll of the Day: Infant-ile-o?

• Poll of the Day: Greed Is the Problem, It Seems

What’s the Stock Market Up To, Eh?

$SPX ( ▲ 1.48% )  $DJI ( ▲ 1.32% )  $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies Mentioned in Today’s Newsletter

 $AZN ( ▼ 6.88% )  $PFE ( ▲ 0.08% )  $BMY ( ▲ 0.25% ) $BUD ( ▼ 2.81% )  $SONY ( ▼ 2.71% )  

AstraZeneca Mulls Merger with Bristol Myers Squibb

A decade ago, AstraZeneca’s $AZN ( ▼ 6.88% ) Chief Executive Sir Pascal Soriot valiantly fended off a nearly $94 billion takeover attempt by Pfizer $PFE ( ▲ 0.08% ) to protect his company's independence. Now, he’s casually chatting up U.S. rival Bristol Myers Squibb $BMY ( ▲ 0.25% ) for a mammoth $400 billion tie-up. If consummated, this transatlantic corporate marriage would spawn the world’s fourth-largest drugmaker.

Just last week, Soriot confidently told reporters that AstraZeneca did not “need M&A to deliver” on its wildly ambitious $80 billion revenue target for 2030. Apparently, a $400 billion mega-merger doesn’t count.

And what exactly is AstraZeneca buying? BMS has recently been branded an "industry laggard," still nursing the financial hangover of its $74 billion Celgene acquisition in 2019 and sweating over massive potential revenue losses from core drugs going off-patent. It seems Soriot has a penchant for incredibly expensive fixer-uppers.

Likewise, trying to build an oncology drug monopoly isn’t exactly a walk in the park. Both companies have massive cancer divisions, meaning antitrust regulators are going to have a field day. As Evan Seigerman, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, astutely pointed out to the Financial Times, the “significant business overlap” between their cancer drug portfolios “could reduce the odds of a successful merger.” He specifically noted that BMS’s Opdivo and AstraZeneca’s Imfinzi are essentially staring each other down as direct competitors in the “lung cancer space,” which, let’s be honest, is not a space anyone wants to hang around in for too long.

Throw in the inevitable British political panic over AstraZeneca potentially re-domiciling to the U.S., especially after dealing a blow to the London stock market with a direct New York listing this year, and it’s quite the deal.

Quote of the Day

UEFA Threatens Legal Action After FIFA U-turn

Last week, FIFA boss Gianni Infantino tried to pull off the ultimate corporate heist in world football, only to get spectacularly tackled by his own governing bodies. The FIFA president’s grand masterplan involved carving out a shiny new $20 billion commercial entity from the Swiss non-profit and flogging a 20 percent stake to private investors for $4 billion.

I know. What football really needs right now is more private equity. The lead buyer for this venture, hilariously named "FIFA Forward Enterprise," was set to be an investment fund controlled by tech investor Joshua Kushner, who just happens to be the brother of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law.

But UEFA, the European football body, was having none of it. Instead of quietly nodding along to this blatant monetization of the sport's soul, European football’s governing body threatened to boycott future World Cups, forcing Infantino to back down and issue a sheepish statement confirming his multibillion-dollar brainchild "will not proceed,” over the weekend.

This week, UEFA fired off a delightfully aggressive letter, warning Infantino that they are "actively considering legal action, arbitration, and/or regulatory complaints" over the scheme. Their July 31 letter sternly ordered Infantino to "identify, locate, and preserve all documents and electronically stored information" related to the aborted venture. The U-turn wasn't enough.

Why We’re All Ghosting Bud Light

Bud Light was once the undisputed king of American fraternities, backyard barbecues, and sticky dive bars. No longer. Owner Anheuser-Busch InBev $BUD ( ▼ 2.81% ) is now treating Bud Light like an embarrassing relative, leaving it out of promotional activities for the near future.

The “easy to drink” (for some of us) lager lost its crown as America's top-selling beer in 2023, following a spectacularly punishing conservative meltdown over an online promo with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. In a sweaty, desperate attempt to win back its alienated demographic, the brand pivoted so hard it nearly gave itself whiplash, heavily sponsoring a UFC cage fight at the White House for Donald Trump’s birthday. As David Steinman, an executive editor at Beer Marketer’s Insights, summarized the company's damage control strategy to the FT, “Bud Light is football, it’s country music, it’s live music, it’s grilling, and that’s essentially it.”

But it turns out the political drama was just the catalyst for a much harsher, simpler truth: Bud Light is incredibly easy to replace. Ellie Thorpe, a director at Kantar, hit the nail on the head, noting that the boycott "highlighted what can happen when a brand with broad awareness, but limited differentiation, comes under pressure." She added, “Beer is a category where switching costs are low and consumers can easily substitute one light lager for another.”

Former Anheuser-Busch employee and analyst Robert Ottenstein drove the point home, “Eventually beer brands just get too big, in that they can’t become all things to all people. There is a limit. Bud Light showed that big time.”

Drinkers have simply moved on to low-calorie options like Michelob Ultra, legal cannabis, or frankly, just about anything else. The result? Bud Light’s sales are projected to plummet to just 12.7 million barrels in the U.S. this year — a tragic, watered-down fall from its glory-days peak of 41 million. We’d pour one out for you, Bud Light, but nobody actually has any in the fridge.

Song of the Day: Denise Julia, ‘Speechless’

Here’s some smooth 2000s-inspired R&B production and raw storytelling about secret romances. So, it’s just like this newsletter.

California Lettuce Growers Plow Crops Back Into Ground

The current hottest farming trend in California’s Salinas Valley is taking hundreds of thousands of pounds of perfectly crisp, healthy lettuce and aggressively plowing it straight back into the earth.

The salad massacre is happening because a cyclospora parasite outbreak traced to shredded iceberg lettuce from Central Mexico has terrified American consumers into boycotting the entire salad aisle. Despite the FDA confirming that domestic lettuce hasn't been implicated, shoppers are acting like every leafy green risks explosive diarrhea.

For Larry Cox, who runs Coastline Family Farms, it means destroying 300,000 pounds of romaine hearts. “It is incredibly demoralizing,” Cox told the Wall Street Journal, adding, “I would’ve been better off taking a vacation in the South of France than planting the crop.” Honestly, Larry, a French Riviera trip sounds superb around now.

The panic has become so irrational that Joelle Mosso of Western Growers noted, “Consumers aren’t sure what’s right anymore so, out of an abundance of caution, they’re just passing on everything.” And she means everything. Max Teplitski, chief science officer for the International Fresh Produce Association, observed a "fundamental effect on the entire fresh produce aisle," with sales even tanking for innocent bystanders like carrots, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts.

Even Taco Bell had to bribe its customers back with $1 "lettuce-free" Mexican pizzas after foot traffic plummeted 21% over the last few weeks. So, as California farmers turn their fields into massive, depressing compost heaps, what is a grower to do? “You can’t afford to be downcast very long,” Cox reasoned. “You better pick yourself up, dust yourself off and keep pushing forward.”

That’s the spirit.

Spidey Swings Past the Superhero Slump

Hollywood’s superhero boom has been on life support for a while now. After suffering through a relentless assembly line of box office disasters in 2023, including The Flash, The Marvels, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, audiences seemed collectively ready to retire the spandex. But apparently, Peter Parker simply didn't get the memo.

Sony just unleashed Spider-Man: Brand New Day, astoundingly the 11th big-budget Spider-Man film since 2002, and instead of inducing superhero fatigue, it saw a staggering $927 million global opening weekend. The demand is so unhinged that some American multiplexes devoted half their screens to the film, running it every 15 minutes. As Tom Rothman, chairman of Sony’s Motion Picture Group $SONY ( ▼ 2.71% ) , succinctly put it while sounding suitably shellshocked, “It’s a runaway train.”

So, why is a 24-year-old repeatedly rebooted franchise suddenly the savior of cinema? Because it perfectly weaponized Gen Z’s existential dread. Greg Durkin, an entertainment researcher, noted that the movie’s appeal hinges on themes that stoke young audiences, including “mental health challenges, loneliness, and being unseen by the ones you love.” Nothing sells popcorn like that combination. Although casting Tom Holland and Zendaya doesn’t hurt either, it turns out.

Free Yourself From Advertising Forever!

Should You Check Your 401(k) Today?

👍️ 

Yes, go on, then. I know, I can hardly believe it either.

Poll of the Day: Infant-ile-o?

Poll of the Day: Greed Is the Problem, It Seems

We asked: Should we have predicted that the "Nostradamus of AI" might fail?

You answered:

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ Yes, Obviously. A 24-year-old with literally zero prior trading experience, whose resume features working for Sam Bankman-Fried’s collapsed FTX and getting fired from OpenAI? Wall Street handed a $24 billion portfolio to a kid who wrote an essay. (160)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ No, Who Could Doubt the Genius? Absolutely not! When a twenty-something guru confidently declares on a podcast that "not blowing up is sort of like task number one and two," you implicitly trust that profound financial wisdom. Er... (9)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Blame Wall Street's Greed. Let's be real, the only thing easier to predict than this kid blowing up was Wall Street's desperate urge to crown him. (176)
345 Votes via @beehiiv polls

Need2Know is covered by Cheddar’s Terms of Service

P.S. So, you remember the cheese puns that used to open this newsletter? Suffice to say, they were divisive. Now, thanks to a thing called “dynamic content options,” I can offer you the option to see cheese puns again, if you’re one of the thousands who got in touch bemoaning their departure six months ago. All you need to do is answer “true” on this survey, and submit it. If you never want to see cheese puns in this newsletter again, don’t click that link, don’t fill out the survey, don’t submit it. Just keep reading and pretend this conversation never happened. Mmmkay? Thank you.