Bank of America Corp. (BAC) saw its profit plunge 48% in the first three months of the year as the U.S. investment bank set aside a $3.6 billion provision for potential losses in anticipation of a deteriorating economic outlook.First-quarter pre-tax income fell to $4.5 billion, or 40 cents a share from the year-ago period. Credit loss provisions in the quarter increased to $4.8 billion from $1 billion a year ago, fueled by a $3.6 billion reserve buffer to cover for potential losses as a result of the economic impact induced by the coronavirus pandemic. Revenue slid to $22.8 million from $23 million. Net interest income decreased 2% to $12.1 billion, as interest rates dropped.“Despite increasing our loan loss reserves, we earned $4 billion this quarter, maintained a significant buffer against our most stringent capital requirement, and ended the quarter with more liquidity than when we began,” said Bank of America Chairman...
(Bloomberg) -- No one is feeling the pain of an oil collapse more than the shale producers. Except, perhaps, their suppliers.Take Stacy Locke, chief executive officer for Pioneer Energy Services Corp. Locke says he had no choice but to abandon drilling in the Bakken shale basin after roughly 20 years there as plunging oil prices slashed activity, and a major customer in the region -- Whiting Petroleum Corp. -- went bankrupt. The end result of a tough year for oil: Pioneer will lose the last 6 rigs it has in the Bakken, with each one ending jobs for 20 or so workers.Since the start of 2019, the oilfield services sector has lost almost 50,000 jobs, or about 13% of its workforce. Meanwhile, the falloff in fracking -- the technology used to shake loose oil from shale -- is forecast to face its worst year ever with at least half of all...
As part of the urgent global race to tackle the coronavirus outbreak, Novavax (NVAX) is due to commence Phase 1 testing for its SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, NVX-CoV2373, within the coming weeks.According to the statement, this is the third confirmed global Covid-19 vaccine trial and the first in Australia.“The urgent global race to develop a vaccine against the COVID-19 pandemic drove our rapid identification and selection of an optimal, highly immunogenic vaccine candidate,” said Stanley C. Erck, President and CEO of Novavax.The Phase 1 in-human trial of NVX-CoV2373 is expected to begin in mid-May with preliminary immunogenicity and safety results in July, and will take place at Nucleus Network’s Melbourne and Brisbane clinics.“Novavax’s early development efforts on vaccines for two other recent coronavirus epidemics – severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), along with prior work on Ebola – allows them to leverage their understanding of coronaviruses and adapt their research to create...
