Stock Market News: Jobs report, Lululemon surges, Target fallout

Barclays Chief Executive C.S. Venkatakrishnan held a virtual town hall this week to address management changes that have led to about two dozen U.S. investment bankers fleeing in the last few weeks, people familiar with the matter said.

The bankers have left for rivals including Citigroup Inc, UBS Group AG and Jefferies Financial Group Inc, Reuters has reported. Venkatakrishnan’s intervention underscores the pressure that the British bank is under to protect its U.S. investment banking franchise.

Barclays slipped to 14th from sixth in Refinitiv’s Americas mergers and acquisitions league table in the first quarter of 2023, even as it jumped from ninth to fifth in the Europe, Middle East and Africa league table, as its U.S. dealmakers struggled to preserve market share amid a slowdown in transactions.

Venkatakrishnan promised during the meeting to invest in the investment banking business to boost morale, the sources said.

Boeing Co. CEO Dave Calhoun on Friday said progress on resolving supply chain problems has been “frustratingly slow” even as airlines’ demand for planes has bounced back to pre-pandemic levels.

Boeing has seen progress in certain elements of its supply chain, such as engine forgings and castings, Calhoun said.

But the ability for aircraft makers like Boeing and European rival Airbus to meet customer demand for new planes will still be constrained “five years from now,” he added.

“We’ve got to be smart about how we manage supply against that demand spike,” Calhoun said at the Bernstein annual strategic decisions conference.

The U.S. economy added a whopping 339,000 jobs last month even as the unemployment rate ticked higher creating a new wrinkle for the Federal Reserve.

While other retailers, such as Macy’s, struggle with a pullback in consumer spending, Lululemon is seeing just the opposite.