JD.com, Inc. (JD) was up +3.92% to $89.52. Following the consensus of its board of directors, the Chinese e-commerce company listed on Wall Street to review the potential separation of the JD Cloud-AI sector in return for JD Digits shares. The Chinese authorities have also recently levied fines of $500,000 on the unfair pricing activities of JD.com, Alibaba Group Holding Limited (BABA) and Vipshop Holdings Limited (VIPS). Alibaba was up +0.9% to $238.39 while Vipshop rose by +6.44% to $27.76.
AstraZeneca PLC (AZN) was up +0.56% to $50.18. The vaccine maker gets a green light from the British authorities for selling the new coronavirus vaccine designed in collaboration with Oxford University. The consensus of the European Union on the vaccine will, however, wait a little longer, as the European Medicines Agency has found it unlikely that approval will take place in January.
Tiffany & Co. (TIF) was stable by +0.02% to $131.35. At a general meeting on Wednesday, the shareholders of the famous U.S. jeweler accepted the planned takeover by LVMH (up 0.06 percent in Paris), ending a year of uncertainty over this big luxury industry deal. Thanks to the coronavirus crisis and Franco-American trade disputes, the acquisition nearly stalled, prompting LVMH in October to cut its original bid, much to Tiffany’s disappointment.
The price of the bid was lowered from $135 per Tiffany share to $131.50, a decrease of 2.6 percent. This reflects a saving of around $430 million on the bid of a combined sum of $16.2 billion for the multinational luxury giant.
Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) was down -1.09% to $3285.85. In order to improve itself in the digital audio market, the e-commerce giant confirmed on Wednesday its plan to purchase the American podcast studio Wondery, confirming details released by the Wall Street Journal in early December.
Already present with Audible in the audiobook industry, Amazon did not indicate the volume of this purchase. The ‘WSJ’ has cited sources predicting that more than $300 million could be forked over by Amazon.
