CHICAGO (Reuters) -American Airlines is prepared to match the pay rates and profit-sharing formula that rival Delta Air Lines has provided in its new pilot contract, Chief Executive Robert Isom said on Tuesday.

Isom told American pilots that matching Delta’s deal will result in a contract worth more than $7 billion for them.

“A deal like this would be a game changer for our pilots,” he said.

Delta’s pilots last week ratified a new contract that is widely expected to be a benchmark for contract negotiations at rival carriers.

The Atlanta-based carrier’s new contract provides a 34% cumulative pay increase, a lump-sum one-time payment, reduced health insurance premiums and improvements in holiday pay, vacation, company contributions to 401(k) and work rules.

To match Delta’s deal, Isom said American pilots would receive on average pay increases of 21% in the first year of contract. Total pay increases in the fourth year of the contract deal would be 40%, he said.

(Reporting by Rajesh Kumar SinghEditing by Chris Reese and Aurora Ellis)

By Svea Herbst-Bayliss

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Activist investor Legion Partners Asset Management is pushing for four new directors to join Primo Water Corp’s board, arguing they could help the water company’s share price triple over five years.

Legion nominated experts in water delivery, beverage operations, marketing and capital allocation as director candidates for election to the U.S.-Canadian company’s 10-person board to help reverse “chronic underperformance,” according to a letter seen by Reuters.

“Substantial shareholder-driven change in the boardroom is long overdue and necessary at the 2023 Annual Meeting in order for Primo to achieve its full potential,” Legion’s managing directors, Chris Kiper and Ted White, wrote to fellow Primo Water shareholders.

Legion, which helped place directors onto boards at Bed Bath & Beyond and Kohl’s, said it owns a 1.5% stake in Primo Water and has been an investor in the past.

Legion said it is “very excited” about the company’s future, but is concerned about past performance. It cited questions about why Primo’s customer base has not grown more robustly and about its large capital expenditures and high operating expenses.

Legion estimates the company has spent $220 million on tuck-in acquisitions since 2018 but said “this has translated into near zero customer growth” because the company has not been able to grow its home and office delivery customers substantially.

“If our nominees are elected and their ideas are fully implemented, Primo may be able to triple its share price over the next five years, and produce EBITDA of over $630 million in fiscal 2027,” the letter said. Primo, which is headquartered in Tampa, Florida, is valued at $2.5 billion and its stock price closed at $15.37 last week.

The numbers could improve if the company sold off non-core assets, tactically shrinks its working capital, and adopts a “prudent capital spending program” so the return on invested capital grows to 12% from its current level below 5%, the letter said.

Primo said in a statement to Reuters it was “disappointed and surprised that Legion has decided to take this action without first having a meaningful conversation with us to share its perspective on our Board composition and strategy.”

It added that it has had “no substantive outreach or contact from Legion in two months.”

The company, however, also said it welcomed Legion’s views and is “always open” to ideas that may support its success.

Demand for bottled water is expected to grow strongly in the coming years, research groups say, citing a greater appetite for water instead of carbonated soft-drinks as well as worries about drinking tap water amid concerns about municipal water supplies.

Primo Water offers home and office water delivery, water exchange, where customers return their empty water jugs and buy new ones at retailers, and water refill, its most affordable offering, where customers refill jugs themselves.

Legion nominated Henrik Jelert, former president and chief executive officer of Primo rival ReadyRefresh USA, Lori Tauber Marcus, a former marketing executive at PepsiCo and Keurig Green Mountain, Derek Lewis, a former president of PepsiCo Multicultural Organization, PepsiCo Beverages North America, and Timothy Hasara, chief investment officer of investment management firm Sinnet Capital.

(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; additional reporting by Kanjyik Ghosh; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Edwina Gibbs)

By Andrea Shalal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The White House on Tuesday underscored the importance of waiting for more data as the Federal Reserve signaled it could push interest rates higher than expected given less progress than central bankers had hoped in lowering inflation.

Asked about Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s comments earlier in the day that it would be appropriate to raise rates more than expected in the face of those setbacks, and possibly at a swifter pace, a White House official, who declined to be named, said it was vital not to rely too much a single month’s data.

“The White House isn’t going to interfere with the Fed’s management,” the official said, reiterating the independence of the U.S. central bank. “But we’re dealing with one month of data and people need to sit back and take a breath.”

The White House is reliant on Powell, a moderate Republican, to steer the economy to a soft landing as Democratic President Joe Biden gears up for a second presidential campaign that will focus on job creation and new investment.

Inflation has been a huge factor in driving down Biden’s approval ratings.

Powell, in the first of two days of testimony to Congress, earlier had bemoaned the “partial reversal” of the progress Fed officials thought they had seen in inflation coming down through the end of last year.

A raft of data covering January released over the course of last month, including reports showing more than half a million new jobs, robust consumer spending and stronger-than-expected readings of inflation, showed the economy may not be slowing to the degree Fed officials believe is needed to bring inflation down to its targeted level of 2% annually.

Powell told the Senate Banking Committee the data had come in stronger than expected, which suggested interest rates would “likely be higher than previously anticipated.”

His testimony prompted BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, to forecast the Fed could raise interest rates to 6% and keep them there for an extended period of time.

Tuesday’s hearing highlighted the gap between the Fed’s focus on achieving its 2% inflation target and the White House and progressive Democrats’ push for more, better-paying jobs.

Senator Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats grilled Powell on the impact of rate hikes on jobs, and the impact of company profit-taking on inflation.

Powell said the Fed would be prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes if the “totality” of incoming data ahead of the Fed’s next rate-setting meeting in two weeks “indicate that faster tightening is warranted.”

MESSAGE TO MARKETS

Biden administration officials said they were not surprised by Powell’s comments and understood he was sending a strong message to financial markets that the fight against inflation is not over. Biden himself has repeatedly hailed progress in easing inflation while acknowledging more work is needed.

“The Fed is independent and we do not comment on their policy,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, when asked about Powell’s remarks Tuesday. She said Biden “believes that it’s important to give the Fed the space needed to make decisions on monetary policy.”

White House economists see recent moderation in inflation and strong jobs data as “evidence that the president’s economic plan is working,” she said. “That’s what we’re focused on.”

The February jobs report scheduled for Friday could provide more clues about future Fed actions after January’s monthly employment report showed blisteringly fast job growth and sustained wage inflation, followed by strong reads of consumer spending and business activity.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other administration officials have noted the January data may have been influenced by unseasonably warm weather and other factors. 

Since last March, the Fed has raised rates from near zero to the current range of 4.50-4.75% to bring inflation down from 40-year highs hit in mid-2022. It slowed the pace of increases to a quarter percentage point at its last meeting after a string of outsized increases through much of last year, but analysts say it may have to go back to half-percentage point hikes.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Heather Timmons, Deepa Babington and Chris Reese)

By Wayne Cole

SYDNEY (Reuters) -The head of Australia’s central bank on Wednesday said it was closer to pausing its aggressive cycle of rate increases as policy was now in restrictive territory, and suggested a halt could come as soon as April.

Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Governor Philip Lowe did reiterate that further tightening was still likely to tame inflation, having lifted rates to an 11-year high of 3.60% at a policy meeting on Tuesday.

However, Lowe noted the Board had discussed the long lags in monetary policy, the effects of the 10 hikes already delivered and the impact of higher borrowing costs on households.

“We also discussed that, with monetary policy now in restrictive territory, we are closer to the point where it will be appropriate to pause interest rate increases to allow more time to assess the state of the economy,” Lowe said in a speech on recent data and inflation.

“At what point it will be appropriate to pause will be determined by the data and our assessment of the outlook.”

Answering questions after the speech, Lowe said the Board was ready to react month to month and if coming economic data supported a pause, it could choose to do so at the next policy meeting on April 4.

The dovish message saw markets scale back the likely peak for rates to 4.10%, compared to 4.35% a week ago.

It was also in stark contrast to the head of the U.S. Federal Reserve who warned on Tuesday that rates there might have to rise faster and higher than expected to get inflation under control.

That divergence had already seen the Australian dollar slide 2.2% overnight to a four-month low of $0.6580 as its U.S. counterpart surged across the board.

Asked about the divergence, Lowe said the outlook for inflation and wages in Australia was not as troubling as in the United States, and markets should understand that.

Lowe said recently released data on Australian monthly consumer prices supported arguments that inflation had peaked, while wage figures had been softer than expected.

“These data suggest that the risk of a prices-wages spiral remains low,” said Lowe.

The figures also showed household consumption had slowed markedly in the December quarter, bringing demand back into better balance with supply.

“The bounce-back in spending following the pandemic has now largely run its course,” said Lowe.

“More fundamentally, the combination of cost-of-living pressures, higher interest rates and the decline in housing values is weighing on consumption.”

(Reporting by Wayne Cole and Stella Qiu;Editing by Chris Reese and Sam Holmes)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Federal Trade Commission asked Twitter to turn over some internal communications related to owner Elon Musk and other detailed information about business decisions as part of an investigation into the social media company, according to a report put out by two House of Representatives committees.

The FTC has sent more than a dozen letters to Twitter and its lawyers since Musk’s takeover in October. Among the requests were the company “identify all journalists” who were granted access to company records and to provide information about the launch of the revamped Twitter Blue subscription service, the report said.

The FTC also wants Musk to testify in connection with the probe, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Musk, in a tweet, said it was “a shameful case of weaponization of a government agency for political purposes and suppression of the truth!”

Twitter did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

The FTC said “it should come as no surprise that career staff at the commission are conducting a rigorous investigation into Twitter’s compliance with a consent order that came into effect long before Mr. Musk purchased the company.”

The staff report by the House Judiciary Committee and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government said while some of what the FTC had asked for was relevant to its probe regarding Twitter, other elements went too far.

“There is no logical reason why the FTC, on the basis of user privacy, needs to analyze all of Twitter’s personnel decisions. And there is no logical reason why the FTC needs every single internal Twitter communication about Elon Musk,” the report said.

The agency has been asking Twitter if it has the required resources to comply with the privacy consent decree, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters last year.

One of the FTC’s concerns was whether Twitter had the staffing needed to abide by a May 2022 settlement with the U.S. regulator in which it agreed to improve its privacy practices and place responsibility on people who held certain positions. The concerns had been prompted by mass layoffs at the firm.

Twitter in May agreed to pay a fine of $150 million to settle allegations that it misused private information, and also improve its compliance practices.

(Reporting by Eva Mathews in Bengaluru and Diane Bartz and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri, Himani Sarkar and Chris Reese)

By Sinéad Carew and Sruthi Shankar

(Reuters) – U.S. stock indexes closed sharply lower on Tuesday after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told Congress the central bank will likely need to raise interest rates more than previously expected as it seeks to rein in stubbornly high inflation.

Of Wall Street’s three major indexes, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost most ground with a 1.7% decline, while the S&P 500 fell 1.5% and the Nasdaq Composite lost almost 1.3%.

Powell sent stock investors fleeing when he told U.S. lawmakers earlier in the day that the Fed is prepared to hike rates in larger steps if future economic data suggests tougher measures are needed to control rising prices.

The remarks followed recent data showing an unexpected inflation increase in January and an unusually large jobs gain for the month.

Traders dramatically raised their bets for a 50-basis-point rate hike in March after Powell’s comments, with money market futures last pricing in a more than 70% chance of such a move, up from around 31% on Monday, according to CME Group’s FedWatch tool.

While many investors had worried that the Fed would consider higher rates for longer than previously expected, “hearing it directly from Powell is a little different to inferring it from the data,” said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Independent Advisor Alliance.

“From a risk-rewards standpoint investors have to recalculate their desire to be invested with this new paradigm,” said Adam Sarhan, chief executive of 50 Park Investments, based in Orlando, Florida. “It’s the realization the Fed is going to err on the side of being more hawkish.”

Graphic: Odds surge for larger Fed rate hike in March https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-RATES/FEDWATCH/egpbyowyqvq/chart.png

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 574.98 points, or 1.72%, to 32,856.46; the S&P 500 lost 62.05 points, or 1.53%, at 3,986.37; and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 145.40 points, or 1.25%, to 11,530.33.

All 11 major S&P sectors closed lower, led by economically sensitive financials which finished down 2.5%. Declining least was the consumer staples index, down 0.97%.

Powell, who will testify again on Wednesday before the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, also added that the Fed would not consider changing its 2% inflation target and the job market does not suggest an economic downturn is close.

Data influencing the Fed’s rate hiking path will include Friday’s closely watched nonfarm payroll additions for February. Economists polled by Reuters are expecting an increase of 200,000 jobs compared with the much stronger-than-expected 517,000 jobs reported in January.

While traders were flipping bets in favor of a 50 basis point rate hike this month, Scott Ladner, chief investment officer at Horizon Investments, said the size of the hike would depend on the upcoming payrolls data and inflation numbers.

But John Lynch, chief investment officer for Comerica Wealth Management, argued that with employment and consumption showing strength so far, investors should have been expecting Powell’s more hawkish tone.

Meanwhile, the yield on two-year Treasury notes, which best reflects short-term rate expectations, hit 5% for the first time since July 2007. [US/]

Rising bond yields tend to weigh on equity valuations, particularly those of growth and technology stocks, as higher rates reduce the value of future cash flows.

Big individual stock moves included a 14.5% tumble for Rivian Automotive after the electric automaker unveiled plans to sell bonds worth $1.3 billion.

Dick’s Sporting Goods rallied 11% after the retailer forecast annual earnings above Wall Street estimates and more than doubled its quarterly dividend.

Shares of Tesla Inc closed down 3%, failing to get a lift after CEO Elon Musk told an investor conference he saw a clear path to producing a smaller vehicle at half the production cost of the Model 3.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers on the NYSE by a 4.00-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.21-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

The S&P 500 posted 10 new 52-week highs and nine new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 55 new highs and 146 new lows.

On U.S. exchanges 11.17 billion shares changed hands, up from the 10.98 billion average for the last 20 sessions.

(Reporting by Sinéad Carew in New York, Sruthi Shankar and Bansari Mayur Kamdar in Bengaluru, graphic by Noel Randewich in San Francisco, additional reporting by Ankika Biswas by Shristi Achar A; Editing by Vinay Dwivedi and Richard Chang)

(Clarifies Fineqia is a crypto-focused investor)

By Hannah Lang and Lisa Pauline Mattackal

(Reuters) -For investors living on the digital edge, bitcoin is starting to look a little old-fashioned.

Hooked on high growth, some are turning away from the original cryptocurrency – designed as an alternative to regular cash – in favor of its descendants created as native tokens of blockchain platforms that host smart contracts and apps.

MarketVector’s Smart Contract Leaders Index, which tracks major tokens of this kind – including ether, dot and solana – is up 36% in 2023, outpacing even bitcoin’s 33% rise. Solana’s token is up 76% this year.

Bundeep Rangar, CEO of crypto-focused investor Fineqia, said he expected the biggest crypto returns to come from smart contract tokens on platforms that support decentralized finance (DeFi) apps.

“Those are ones that you will find capital appreciation, similar to what a growth stock will be,” he added.

Some investors in the $1 trillion world of digital assets appear to agree, according to CoinShares data which shows investment products tracking ether and solana have seen small inflows even as bitcoin products suffered four consecutive weeks of outflows.

Around seven of the top 20 biggest crypto assets are smart contract tokens, including ether and dot, solana and cardano.

BofA analysts also pointed to smart contract tokens and the blockchain-based applications they power as similar to growth stocks in the equities world, typically technology shares.

“We expect 2023 to be the year of token price divergence,” analysts at Bank of America wrote in a Feb. 24 research note.

BITCOIN STILL BOSS

Bitcoin has long traded in tandem with tech stocks, but that cord may be fraying just as smart-contract tokens increasingly take up its crypto super-growth mantle.

The cryptocurrency’s 30-day correlation with the Nasdaq turned negative on Feb. 23 for the first time since early December, where a measure of 1 indicates the two assets are moving in lockstep.

Some crypto watchers say the relative strength in smart-contract tokens this year points to a solid performance by the most established DeFi protocols despite the market ructions of 2022. They caution, though, that the global macro outlook and central bank policy could hit the growth of crypto projects and their associated tokens.

James Butterfill, head of research at CoinShares, warned it was also too early to call a major divergence in crypto. Indeed, bitcoin’s shadow still looms large over the sector, with its share of the total crypto market capitalization up slightly to 40%, from 38% at the start of the year.

But on the other hand, Butterfill said such departures could be a potential sign of the cryptoverse growing up.

“We should be increasingly adopting the view that the market, as it evolves, will become more sophisticated and more mature, and we will start to see that price divergence.”

(Reporting by Lisa Mattackal in Bengaluru and Hannah Lang in Washington, D.C.; Editing by Vidya Ranganathan and Pravin Char)

By Rajesh Kumar Singh

CHICAGO (Reuters) – A U.S. federal lawsuit to block JetBlue Airways Corp’s purchase of Spirit Airlines has raised hurdles for future airline deals, making it harder for companies to pursue growth and manage costs.

The U.S. Justice Department’s lawsuit on Tuesday comes at a time when U.S. carriers are struggling to boost capacity because of shortages of pilots and aircraft. They are also facing higher costs following a run-up in fuel and labor bills.

Mergers and acquisitions are a time-honored way for companies to both boost revenue and profit through cost cutting. But the DOJ lawsuit could send a chill through airline boardrooms, said Addison Schonland, partner at consulting firm AirInsight.

But the cost pressures are so onerous, airlines will have no choice but to keep kicking the tires on deals, he said.

“The hurdle has gone up clearly,” Schonland said. “This is going to slow things down, but it won’t stop it.”

If the Justice Department scuttles the $3.8 billion JetBlue-Spirit deal, he said the two airlines may look at other ways to collaborate, including codeshare agreements in which airlines market and sell tickets on the same flight under their own name and flight number.

Some Democratic lawmakers are not in favor of a further consolidation in the industry on concerns it would harm consumer interests. American Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines control 80% of the domestic market.

“Americans want more choices and lower prices for airline tickets, not another giant merger,” U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren said on Twitter on Tuesday.

Any airline seeking a merger under the Biden administration will have to be “very careful” about its choices and the way it plans to create value for the traveling public, said Henry Harteveldt, founder of travel consultancy Atmosphere Research Group.

“The government has said that it is not going to rubber- stamp mergers,” he said.

The lawsuit against the JetBlue-Spirit deal was widely expected because of the Biden administration’s crackdown on large deals between publicly listed companies, analysts said.

In fact, Spirit kept citing it as a risk when it initially spurned JetBlue’s offers.

Yet the New York-based carrier refused to give up its pursuit of Spirit as it viewed the deal as a way to expand its domestic footprint. It tried to buy Virgin America in 2016, but lost out to Alaska Air Group Inc.

JetBlue has argued the Sprit deal, which would create the fifth-largest U.S. carrier with a market share of 9%, was good for competition and would allow it to better compete with the big airlines.

“By coming together, we will expand JetBlue’s unique offering – where customers do not have to choose between a low fare and a great experience – to boost competition nationally,” the airline said on Tuesday.

The Justice Department said the planned merger will result in “higher fares and fewer seats, harming millions of consumers on hundreds of routes.”

(Reporting by Rajesh Kumar Singh in Chicago; Editing by Ben Klayman and Matthew Lewis)

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Walmart’s unit in Mexico and Central America, known as Walmex, plans to boost spending in the region 27% from last year to total around 27 billion pesos ($1.49 billion) in 2023, it said on Tuesday.

Just under half of the investment will go to remodeling and maintenance on existing stores, while nearly 30% will be used for new stores and clubs, Walmex said in a filing following an event with investors and analysts.

The planned investments are up from the 21.3 billion pesos Walmex spent in 2022. However, last year’s capital expenditures came in under estimates as some projects were deferred due to supply chain disruptions, the company said last month.

Some 12% of investments in 2023 will go to “expand and modernize the company’s supply chain,” Walmex said.

Walmex also said it had received approval Monday from Mexican authorities to purchase a Mexican electronic payments provider.

The company also said during the event it would launch a new health membership product, making use of the almost 1,500 pharmacies and 500 doctor’s offices across stores in the region.

“For $30 pesos, our customers can have access to unlimited remote medical service 24/7, nutrition services, ambulance in case of emergency, discounts on specialists and… a 5% discount at our pharmacies and get consultation at our doctor’s offices,” said growth lead Beatriz Nunez.

Nunez added that last year, the company delivered health solutions to over 1 million patients, excluding pharmacy customers.

“In 2023 we want to develop Health as a strong vertical, it is still in very early stages, but we know how relevant it is for our customers,” she added.

($1 = 18.1026 Mexican pesos)

(Reporting by Kylie Madry; Editing by Daina Beth Solomon, Bill Berkrot and David Gregorio)

By Karen Freifeld and Stephen Nellis

(Reuters) -Nvidia Corp, Advanced Micro Devices Inc and other tech firms are scrambling to assess whether they must halt sales to units of China’s Inspur Group Ltd after its addition to a U.S. export blacklist last week.

The United States last week added Inspur to its trade blacklist for allegedly acquiring U.S.-origin items in support of the China’s military modernization efforts. The listing means that companies cannot sell Inspur items like semiconductors, which are made with U.S. tools, unless they apply for and get licenses, which are likely to be denied.

A U.S. Department of Commerce spokesperson told Reuters on Tuesday that it “is reviewing Inspur Group Co Ltd’s Entity List entry and will update it as appropriate,” referring to the official name of the export blacklist.

Executives from AMD and Nvidia were questioned about dealings with Inspur Group Co Ltd. at an investor conference on Monday. AMD said it was seeking clarification on the rules.

While not a household name, Inspur’s Chinese-listed subsidiary had nearly $10 billion in sales in 2021 and Inspur Group is the world’s third-largest supplier of the servers used in data centers that power cloud computing, according to market research firm IDC figures for the third quarter of 2022, the most recent available.

But chip industry insiders and their advisers said firms are trying to assess whether they must halt supplying Inspur’s subsidiaries, including Inspur Electronics Information Industry Co, which is not automatically subject to the restrictions.

U.S. regulators could view unlicensed shipments to that subsidiary as a violation of last week’s listing if there is a risk of the goods going from the unlisted subsidiary to the listed parent.

Inspur Electronics Information Industry Co has the same corporate address as the blacklisted parent company. The company on Monday proposed changing its address in a filing. The proposal, which shareholders will vote on later this month, did not specify a new address.

“Shipments to related entities constitute a ‘red flag’ due to the risk of diversion,” the Commerce Department spokesperson said in a statement.

Inspur did not return a request for comment. Last week, an official from the Chinese Embassy in Washington told Reuters that China was “firmly opposed” to the placement of Inspur and 27 other companies on the trade blacklist.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson last week also said the U.S. was “once again cracking down on Chinese companies under false pretexts through unfair means.”

Dan Fisher-Owens, an export law attorney at Berliner Corcoran & Rowe who works with chip firms, said many of his clients have paused shipments to Inspur’s subsidiaries to assess the situation.

At an investor conference in San Francisco on Monday, Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said the company will “follow export controls very closely” but did not comment on whether Nvidia has stopped shipping to Inspur subsidiaries.

    “We will probably be working with other partners,” Kress said. An Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment beyond her remarks.

An AMD spokesperson did not return a request for additional comment on AMD Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster’s remarks made at the same conference.

Inspur’s listing is even more restrictive than many other companies on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s “entity list,” and may be comparable to the curbs placed on China’s blacklisted telecommunications company, Huawei Technologies, one person familiar with the matter said.

As with Huawei, the listing restricts the shipment of products to Inspur even if they are made in a foreign country but with U.S. technology. Those products also cannot go to Inspur’s subsidiaries if the blacklisted corporate parent is considered a party to the transaction, under a broad definition of the term, the person said.

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis and Jane Lee in San Francisco, Alexandra Alper in Washington, Karen Freifeld in New York and Josh Horwitz in Shanghai; Editing by Mark Porter and Anna Driver)