Diamonds and Dogs

8/27/19

J&J (JNJ) loses in the courts but wins on Wall Street. The drug company, J&J is up 3% after a Oklahoma judge on Monday ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $572.1 million to the state for its part in fueling an opioid epidemic by deceptively marketing addictive painkillers, a sum that was substantially less than investors had expected. The state's attorney general had filed the lawsuit, seeking $17 billion to address the impact of the drug crisis on Oklahoma. Good news for J&J in the short term, but lawyers for the other states and the 2,000 local governments are hoping to win billions of dollars in verdicts with a similar argument

Back together again. Philip Morris (PM) is down 10% on news the company is in talks for an all-stock merger of equals with Altria. A decade ago the two companies were spun off from one another with Philip Morris handling the international markets and Altria focused on the U.S market. Both companies are preparing for a cigarette-free future, with former customers switching to other tobacco or non-tobacco products.