US MARKETS:

S&P 500 futures up 0.1% at 2,944.75
Brent Futures down 0.7% at $71.67/bbl
Gold spot down 0.4% at $1,281.70
US Dollar Index down 0.02% at 97.98

GLOBAL NEWS:

Earnings season. Alphabet, NXP Semiconductors, Spotify, Deutsche Boerse, Philips, Kuka, Bank of China, DBS Group or China Telecom are among companies reporting earnings today.

Towards a stock market war? Reuters has learned that Anadarko has reportedly decided to start discussions with Occidental Petroleum, which has proposed a higher takeover bid than Chevron. The latter could improve his proposal... or simply pocket the "break-up fee", the break-up penalty, which amounts to... 1 billion dollars!

Saudis buy Schlumberger’s drilling business. Saudi Arabia’s TAQA drilling subsidiary is to acquire Schlumberger’s Mideast drilling rigs business for a reported $415 million. This will create a new entity with 58 onshore and 9 offshore rigs operating across Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Iraq and Pakistan.

Musk under guardianship. Elon Musk has agreed to have his communications validated on Tesla before publishing them, in an agreement to avoid prosecution that has yet to be approved. The project provides that any public release of Musk (including on Twitter) will have to be validated by a specialized lawyer, who may have a lot to do with the stirring leader.

The DB wants to bounce back. The president of Deutsche Bank defended, in the columns of the Financial Times, the current strategy of his institution, after the failure of discussions with Commerzbank.

Chip business. Apple is reported to have discussed the acquisition of part of Intel's modem chip business, according to the Wall Street Journal. Intel is now thinking about the future of its lightweight division after the Apple brand turned its back on it by burying the hatchet with Qualcomm. A buyback is therefore no longer on the agenda.

Olive branch. Renault is expected to offer Nissan an apex company to put the two automakers on an equal footing, despite the unfavorable capitalist cross-linkages in Japan, Reuters says. The French car manufacturer's objective is to achieve a higher level of integration than it currently is. The Japanese media believe that the new entity could be registered in a third country, perhaps in Singapore. As relations between the two manufacturers are not well established, it is difficult to know whether this more than equitable approach will have an impact in Tokyo.

Rebellion. Bayer AG shareholders, in a rare rebellion, voted against the ratification of the board's decisions in 2018, in a show of opposition to the merger with Monsanto, which caused the stock price to fall. The vote is not binding but illustrates the extent of the discontent. However, after the general meeting, the Supervisory Board issued a press release to give its unanimous support to the management.

In other news. Walt Disney's "Avengers: Endgame" raised $1.2 billion in five days. American pilots want more in-depth training on Boeing 737 MAX. The Scandinavian airline SAS AB cancelled more than 1,200 flights on Monday and Tuesday. The deadline for Alitalia's takeover offers has been set for Tuesday.