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      Boeing Seeks to Line Up Billions in Financing as Strike Goes On

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      The aerospace giant said it could raise as much as $25 billion in debt or equity over the next three years, including a $10 billion line of credit.Boeing on Tuesday announced steps to improve its financial position as costs mounted and a strike by its largest union entered its second month.In two regulatory filings, the company said that it could raise as much as $25 billion by selling debt or stock over the next three years and that it had entered into a $10 billion credit agreement with a group of banks, which it has not yet drawn on.“These are two prudent steps to support the company’s access to liquidity,” the company said in a statement. The banks are BofA Securities, Citibank, Goldman Sachs Lending Partners and JPMorgan Chase.The moves come days after Boeing revealed about $5 billion in new costs and announced a restructuring that included plans to cut 17,000 jobs, or 10 percent of its work force.The strike, which began a month ago, is costing the company tens of millions of dollars a day, according to various estimates. Most of the workers who walked out are involved in production of commercial airplanes, bringing much of that work to a virtual halt, though one major airplane program is manufactured at a nonunion factory in South Carolina.Talks between the company and the union representing 33,000 striking employees, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, broke down last week, with Boeing retracting its latest contract offer and each side blaming the other for intransigence.Julie Su, the acting labor secretary, visited Seattle on Monday to meet with Boeing and the union, the union said in a statement.The strike is very likely costing Boeing about $1.3 billion in capital a month, according to calculations by Sheila Kahyaoglu, an analyst at Jefferies, the investment bank. Given those costs and its need for more debt, raising $10 billion by selling new shares would provide the company “considerable flexibility,” she added.Last week, S&P Global Ratings also said it was considering lowering Boeing’s credit rating, depending on how long the strike lasts, to junk status, a downgrade that would raise Boeing’s borrowing costs. The company’s debt totals nearly $58 billion, up from about $9 billion a decade ago.And the chief executive of one of the world’s largest airlines, Tim Clark of Emirates, said recently that Boeing could be forced to seek bankruptcy protection if it was not able to issue more shares to improve its financial position. “Unless the company is able to raise funds through a rights issue, I see an imminent investment downgrade with Chapter 11 looming on the horizon,” Mr. Clark told The Air Current, an aerospace news publication. More

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      Tesla’s Self-Driving ‘Robotaxi’ to Enter the Spotlight

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      Elon Musk has said that the vehicle will add trillions to Tesla’s stock market value and that those who don’t believe him should sell their shares.Tesla on Thursday plans to unveil a product that Elon Musk, the company’s chief executive, has said will add trillions of dollars to its stock market value and fuel its growth.The product is a prototype of a self-driving taxi. And it will be shown at an invitation-only, evening event at the Warner Bros. studio in Los Angeles. Mr. Musk has promised that the cab, which he calls the Robotaxi, will be able to ferry passengers to any destination without human intervention, a feat that other companies have achieved in just a few places like Phoenix and San Francisco.Mr. Musk’s supporters and fans believe that the Robotaxi will open a lucrative line of business that will more than make up for Tesla’s recent struggles in the electric car market, where it has lost market share to more established carmakers. Mr. Musk has said people will be able to purchase Robotaxis for personal use and earn extra money by allowing the vehicles to ferry passengers, the automotive equivalent of listing a home on Airbnb.“An autonomous taxi platform will unlock a multitrillion-dollar market,” Tasha Keeney, director of investment analysis at ARK Invest, an asset management firm that owns shares in Tesla, said in a statement.But other analysts and autonomous driving experts are skeptical that Tesla can perfect the technology and make a profit from it anytime soon.A car capable of functioning as a self-driving taxi “is still several years away, and numerous technological hurdles, safety tests and regulatory approvals are still standing in the way,” Garrett Nelson, senior equity analyst at CFRA Research, said in a note this week.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      China Stocks Surge After Government Measures to Boost Economy

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      The government has fired up investors by encouraging banks to lend more to buyers of stock and real estate, but economists say more stimulus is needed.Share prices surged as trading resumed on Tuesday in mainland China following a weeklong national holiday, as investors rushed in to make bullish bets that Beijing’s leaders are committed to providing stimulus for the faltering Chinese economy.Before the break, the Chinese government jolted stock markets sharply higher with a package of measures aimed at halting the cycle of falling real estate prices and weakening consumer confidence.The central bank and other top financial agencies announced on Sept. 24 that they were cutting interest rates, reducing the minimum down payments for mortgages, and encouraging banks to lend more money for investors to buy shares.Two days later, the ruling Politburo issued an uncommonly blunt call for more to be done to help the economy. Several municipal governments soon followed by trimming or dismantling their restrictions on real estate purchases as a way to stabilize the housing market in their cities.

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      China’s CSI 300 Index
      As of Oct. 8, 2024 9:43 a.m. local time.Source: FactSetBy The New York TimesThe CSI 300, an index of large companies traded in Shanghai and Shenzhen, soared 25 percent in heavy trading over the five sessions before the holiday. Market operators tested their systems on Monday in anticipation of another influx of activity.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Victims of Stanford Financial’s Fraud Scheme May Soon Be Paid. Some Already Sold Their Claim.

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      Not having much insight into what may happen next in the case of a fraud orchestrated by Robert Allen Stanford, many of the victims sold the rights to any future payout.It’s been 15 years since Thomas Swingle first learned that about $1 million of his family’s savings had gone up in smoke, after the financier Robert Allen Stanford was exposed for having sold billions in fraudulent certificates of deposit to investors around the world.The memory of those days is still painful.“It was literally a life-changing event,” Mr. Swingle, 72, said of the $7 billion scheme that unraveled in early 2009. “It is like someone hit you in the chest with a sledgehammer.”Now, victims of Mr. Stanford’s company, Stanford Financial, are on the verge of recouping some of their losses, but Mr. Swingle and his wife, Cindy Finch, have to contend with another decision they made: In 2021, they agreed to sell their claim to any future settlement to an investment fund for around $60,000.That means they won’t get a penny of the funds that are about to be disbursed. Instead, it’ll all go to the claim buyer.It’s a decision fraud victims have to agonize over in the wake of a big financial scam: Large investors offer them cash in exchange for the rights to any future payment. Many small investors who don’t have much insight into what might happen next may feel they don’t have a choice but to settle for a quick lump sum, rather than wait for a future payment that may never come.When Mr. Swingle and Ms. Finch sold their claim, he said, it appeared Stanford’s defrauded customers were unlikely to get anything back at all. Had the couple held on to the rights, they might be able to claim as much as $350,000.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Stocks Tumble in Japan After Party’s Election of New Prime Minister

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      Stocks dropped after Japan’s governing party chose Shigeru Ishiba, a critic of the country’s longstanding ultralow interest rates, as its leader.Stocks in Japan fell sharply after the country’s governing party chose a leader some view as hawkish on interest rates, underlining how central bank decisions continue to set the course of the world’s fourth-largest economy after decades of easy money policy.On Friday, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party elected Shigeru Ishiba, a proponent of raising interest rates to help curb inflation, as Japan’s next prime minister.Mr. Ishiba narrowly defeated Sanae Takaichi, a disciple of Shinzo Abe, who remains committed to the former prime minister’s longstanding policies aimed at strengthening Japan’s economy by maintaining ultralow interest rates.Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index fell more than 4 percent in early trading on Monday.Some economists said the decline, which they described as the “Ishiba Shock,” was caused by the unwinding of stock trading that reflected expectations that Ms. Takaichi would be elected.The market jitters show how the recent L.D.P. election came at a pivotal moment for the Japanese economy.Following a recent surge of inflation, the Bank of Japan has raised interest rates twice this year. The bank’s governor, Kazuo Ueda, has indicated he plans to continue increasing rates, though it is unclear how quickly that might happen.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Boeing Workers Go on Strike: What to Know

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      Thousands of Boeing workers in Washington State and Oregon walked off the job on Friday in the first strike at the plane maker in 16 years.Boeing is facing a strike that threatens to disrupt plane production, after workers overwhelmingly voted to reject a tentative contract their unions had reached with the company.Thousands of workers walked off the job in the Seattle and Portland, Ore., regions on Friday, a move that is likely to stall operations at factories where Boeing manufactures most of its commercial planes. While the deal their unions struck with the company on Sunday included double digit pay raises and improvements to benefits, 95 percent of workers rejected the proposed contract, opting instead to leverage a strike to push for more.Here’s what else to know about the company’s first strike since 2008:How many workers are on strike?Boeing, one of the largest exporters in the United States, employs a total of nearly 150,000 people across the country — almost half of them in Washington State — and more than 170,000 people worldwide. The contract that spurred Friday’s strike covers about a fifth of the company’s employees.A vast majority of the 33,000 workers under the contract are represented by District 751 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Boeing’s largest union. Most of that union’s members work on commercial airplanes in the Seattle area. Workers in the Portland, Ore., area, who are represented by the union’s smaller District W24, are also on strike.What prompted them to walk off the job?The leaders of the unions representing the workers on strike reached a tentative deal with Boeing on Sunday that would have secured raises of 25 percent over four years, along with improvements to health care and retirement benefits. The company also committed to building its next commercial plane in the Pacific Northwest.But workers’ overwhelming rejection of that tentative contract reflects their willingness to fight for more, in large part to make up for concessions made in past talks, including the loss of pension benefits a decade ago. The unions started the talks by asking for raises of 40 percent.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Southwest Airlines Agrees to Board Changes After Pressure From Elliott

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      The airline has been under pressure from the hedge fund Elliott to replace its top management and make other changes to increase its profits.Southwest Airlines on Tuesday announced an overhaul of its board of directors, including the planned departure of its executive chairman, Gary Kelly, after a meeting with a hedge fund that has called for sweeping changes at the company.The board announced the changes while expressing unanimous support for the airline’s chief executive, Bob Jordan, who with Mr. Kelly had been the target of sharp criticism from the hedge fund, Elliott Investment Management. In a statement, the airline said its board was “confident that there is no better leader” for Southwest than Mr. Jordan, who became chief executive in February 2022.“Bob has a proven track record over decades and, most importantly, he has what it takes to lead Southwest through a significant transformation and usher in a new era of profitable growth, innovation and industry leadership,” Mr. Kelly, who was chief executive before Mr. Jordan took over, said in a letter to shareholders.Southwest presented its plan to Elliott at a meeting in New York on Monday. It was not clear whether the overhaul would satisfy Elliott, which has a roughly 11 percent stake in the company. Elliott has called for both Mr. Kelly and Mr. Jordan to step down and has sought to replace most of the directors on the company’s board.Shares of Southwest were down nearly 3 percent in morning trading on Tuesday.“We are pleased that the board is beginning to recognize the degree of change that will be required at Southwest, and we hope to engage with the remaining directors to align on the further necessary changes,” Elliott said in a statement. “The need for thoughtful, deliberate change at Southwest remains urgent, and we believe the highly qualified nominees we have put forward are the right people to steady the board and chart a new course for the airline.”Mr. Kelly, who was the airline’s chief executive for nearly two decades before Mr. Jordan took over, said that he planned to retire after the airline’s annual meeting in the spring. Six other mostly longstanding board members plan to step down after a meeting in November.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More