Food crisis in the US, beer war in Asia…

While London is drowning and the rain drags down retail profits, the US continues to face a heat wave that causes futures prices of corn and soy to soar. Last week, conditions in Iowa, Illinois and Nebraska were officially called a “severe drought”, leading to a 50% price hike. If the weather continues in similar fashion next week, the drought could end up being worse than the one in 1988, which is labeled the most expansive (not expensive, though that’s probably a fair assessment as well) drought in recent history. The Midwest produces 75% of the American soy and corn output. Food crisis anyone?

Sort of on topic, Heineken has made a $4.06bn takeover bid for Asia Pacific Breweries, the producer of Tiger beer. Asia Pacific Breweries was set up by Heineken and Fraser & Neave in 1931; each companies holds a 50% stake in the joint venture. Earlier this week, Thai Beverage had made a bid for 22% of Fraser & Neave’s shares. You may be thinking, ‘What? How can the Asian market be lucrative for beer (…)?’ Well, for Heineken, this is really about Europe, which is its key market but where revenues are continuously declining.

Both Germany and Finland have approved the Spanish banking bailout; Finland has previously reached a collateral agreement with Spain. Today, there will be a conference call between the members of the Eurogroup to finalize the bailout proposal. Spain won’t recover just from that, of course. The latest to join the outcry for a bailout is Valencia, which can’t service its debts.

And while the FSA is planning to investigate even more banks with regards to the Libor scandal, those already in the dog house, decided on some group settlement action, much along the lines of Barclays’ $453m settlement. Although it is unclear which banks are considering paying a fine, the group could include Citigroup, HSBC, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan. read article

Straight talk from HSBC’s Head of Compliance for Latin America, John Root, who apparently started pointing out compliance leaks in 2007:

“What is this, the School of Low Expectations Banking? (‘We didn’t go to jail! We merely signed a settlement with the Feds for $10 million!’)” read article

Weekend reading

– More option on Marissa Mayer’s motherhood, read article

– White collar crime 2.0, read article

– Six policies favored by economists and turned down by politicians, read article

– More on proposition 6 (see above), legal pot would be as cheap as tea, read article

– North Korea’s economic reforms, read article

– From sprint to marathon, growth in the emerging markets, read article

– … and who is to blame, read article

Have a good one.

Filed under: news brief, bailout, Citigroup, debt, Deutsche Bank, emerging markets, EU, Eurogroup, food, Heineken, HSBC, JP Morgan, Libor, North Korea, Singapore, Spain, UK, US, weather, Yahoo