"Times like this just show how exposed some of these companies are." 

Markets analyst Craig Erlam spoke to CGTN about the businesses losing out due to novel coronavirus, with Starbucks closing many of its stores in China, and several airlines, including British Airways and American Airlines, canceling flights to mainland China. 

The Asian markets, such as Hang Seng, continue to drop in reaction to the outbreak. The Chinese mainland stock markets will remain closed until 3 February. 

Boeing has said it's lost more than $18 billion thanks to the 737 Max crisis, leading to its first loss in more than two decades. 

Meanwhile, British businesses including Brompton (famous for folding bikes) have spoken to CGTN about the effect of Brexit - which happens on Friday (legally, at least: a transition period means little will change for another 11 months).  

And we have taken a look at luxury goods corporation LVMH's end-of-year stats - and broken down which parts of their empire have earned the most last year. Scroll to the end of the email for that graphic. 

Don't forget to tell your friends and colleagues to sign up for Global Business Daily, every weekday at 17:30 GMT. 


Happy reading,

Patrick Atack
Digital business correspondent 
 

Consumer confidence saw a hike across Europe at the start of the year, despite business confidence indicators showing disappointing figures and strikes in France affecting winter sales figures. It's thought the China-U.S. phase one trade agreement may have shored up global economic confidence.  

Hong Kong's Hang Seng stock market index fell 3 percent when it re-opened on Wednesday as investors feared the economic impact of the coronavirus. Mainland China's stock markets, the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges, will only reopen on 3 February. 

Starbucks is putting off a revision of its 2020 earnings forecast, after the coffee chain closed half of its outlets in China over coronavirus fears. Starbucks has almost 4,300 outlets in China, making it the company's largest market outside the U.S..

Portugal will put an end to its so-called 'golden visa' scheme by raising the tax rates on overseas pensions of non-habitual residents. Madonna and French designer Philippe Starck are among those reportedly attracted to the country by its NHR scheme.     

After last year's slump in iPhone sales, Apple recovered in 2019, with net income jumping 11 percent in Q4 - its first quarterly profit rise in a year. iPhone sales, app purchases, and wireless AirPod success have created the growth.  

The first test events at the 2022 Winter Olympics venue in Yanqing District, Beijing have been canceled over novel coronavirus fears. The FIS World Cup downhill and Super-G races slated for 15-16 February have been called off. 

Boeing says the crisis over its 737 Max aircraft has cost it more than $18 billion. The sum includes payments to airlines for failure to deliver their orders and costs associated with suspending production. That pushed the company to its first annual loss in more than 20 years.

Watch: British businesses have claimed that a lack of information about the UK's relationship with the EU after Brexit is preventing them from planning for the future. Juliet Mann reports.

"Hopefully, we'll be able to get health care workers and people at risk vaccinated"

Dr Paul Stoffels, Vice Chairman and Chief Scientific Officer at Johnson & Johnson, spoke to CGTN about the pharmaceutical firm's efforts to produce a vaccine for the novel coronavirus. 

How do you produce a new vaccine? How soon do you hope to be able to vaccinate patients? 

"We have been working on the corona vaccine already for a few weeks. We think within eight to 12 months we can get the vaccine to market.

"By 'to market', we mean to patients, because it needs to be tested [on a] large scale to people. In parallel, we are at the moment doing several different aspects: creating multiple vaccine constructs, working on upscaling, working on animal models, and then seeing how fast we can get to the first testing in humans.

"But we are pretty confident that within eight to 12 months we will be far along the process [of] getting to a vaccine."                   

You need expertise, you need finance. So what's your starting point?

"We have been working on the platform, which is a vector and a production platform, for more than five years. We applied this the first time on a very large scale (with) Ebola, where from a vaccine (becoming) available to getting to vaccinating in the field, it took us six months.

"But then we had the vaccine already. We had the virus, we were able to make the vector construct, which is the vaccine platform. Then we used it for Zika and then it took us 12 months to go from no information on the virus to getting the information and getting the Zika vaccine.

"We learned a lot, so we think we can do it much faster. We have everything in place to get going. We have the information. The lab scientists are working on it. We probably can be (testing) in humans a few months from now and be able to upscale in parallel and be ready in the eight- to 12-month timeframe with vaccines."

We've seen this scramble for a vaccine before, as you mentioned, with Ebola and with Zika. But what is different and perhaps more of a challenge with this outbreak? 

"Ebola is typically now in central Africa and is in the local, local, regional transmission. This is an aerosol-based, transmitted virus, which is much more infectious, much more transmittable, and as we have seen now is in many places already, in China and the rest of the world.

"So the scale and the speed of this is quite challenging, making a vaccine against a clock. We'll do it as fast as we can, but hopefully, we'll be on time to be able to get healthcare workers and people at risk vaccinated. 

"But it's really an accelerated timeframe we have to put against. And second is the capacity and the quantity. We can scale up to very large quantities, which is tens to hundreds of millions of doses. But also that needs capacity planning needs a lot of activities from that industrial complex to get this going."

Luxury goods giant LVMH has released its 2019 results, showing an increase in profits and revenue across all its major sectors. 

Below is a graph showing profits, revenue and growth. The larger the bubble, the larger the year-on-year growth. 

Fashion, which has seen the largest growth, includes houses such as Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior Couture, and Givenchy. Perfumes owned by LVMH are dominated by the fashion houses it owns, but other brands such as Fenty Beauty by Rihanna and Make Up For Ever bolster the segment. 

Much of the wines and spirits section is dominated by famous Champagne vineyards, such as Moët & Chandon, Dom Pérignon, and Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin, while Bon Marché is among its retail outlets. 

Encourage your friends and colleagues to sign up to Global Business Daily here to get top headlines direct to their inbox every weekday