Friday newspaper round-up: Amazon, Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola
Amazon’s massive investment in faster shipping paid off for the tech company over the Christmas holidays with record sales and four times as many customers taking advantage of its free one-day shipping offer over the shopping season compared with last year. Amazon is spending billions making one-day shipping the default for its Prime members and the gamble helped drive its revenues up over $87bn for the final quarter of 2019, or $29bn a month, compared with $72.4bn in the fourth quarter of 2018. – Guardian
A California judge has ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay nearly $344m in penalties for deceptively marketing pelvic mesh devices for women, as the state attorney general accused the company of putting “profits ahead of the health of millions of women”. Eddie Sturgeo, a San Diego superior court judge, ruled against the medical company in a lawsuit brought by the California department of justice in 2016. A Johnson & Johnson spokeswoman, Mindy Tinsley, said the New Jersey-based company planned to appeal the decision. – Guardian
Business leaders have backed Britain to prosper on the day of the UK’s historic departure from the European Union as bankers look forward to a £100bn-plus dealmaking surge in the City. Chief executives across a gamut of sectors from finance and infrastructure to retail and property hailed an end to damaging political infighting since 2016, saying the nation would be “stronger” outside the EU. – Telegraph
Sports drinks and “enhanced” water helped to send Coca-Cola’s fourth-quarter results higher but Sprite, Fanta and Coke took centre stage as it beat Wall Street’s sales forecast. The shares climbed as much as 3.5 per cent to an intraday high after it said that organic revenue, which excludes acquisitions, divestitures and currency swings, rose 7 per cent in the last three months of 2019 compared with the same period the year before. – The Times