A KFC in Shanghai, where Yums’s China Division is based.
Last fall, Yum announced plans to turn the huge China Division into a standalone company, a mammoth undertaking the Louisville fast-food giant plans to complete by Oct. 31 — despite recent reports of stalled talks with two big investors.
Expenses for investment banking, legal, and other spin-related services are enormous, according to Securities and Exchange Commission documents. Yum disclosed initial expenses of $9 million in the annual report last February. They’ve mushroomed ever since, according to the most recent quarterly report:
$10 million
spent in the second quarter alone
$28 million
since the spinoff was announced in October
$58 million
projected total cost by Oct. 31
What’s at stake?
Creed
Much of Yum’s future. Based in Shanghai, the China Division has 7,200 restaurants, mostly company-owned KFCs and Pizza Huts. Last year, they accounted for 61% of Yum’s $11.1 billion in revenue and 39% of $1.9 billion in profits. Overall, Yum has 43,000 restaurants. (About Yum.)
Yum CEO Greg Creed and the board of directors agreed in October to separate the China business under pressure from activist investors, including Corvex Management Founder Keith Meister, who gained a seat on the board as part of the deal. They think the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
The spirits giant Brown-Forman depends on the U.K. for 10% of its annual sales, and the rest of Europe for another 21% — making Britain’s surprise vote to quit the E.U. especially meaningful last month. Brexit also recalled Brown-Forman’s familial ties to the Kingdom through the techie U.S. ambassador Matthew Barzun.
“Well, it’s been a big day,” he Tweeted the day after the June 23 referendum, “and as @POTUS says, our unmatched & unbreakable #SpecialRelationship will endure.”
Barzun, 45, a part-year Louisville resident, is a former technology entrepreneur from the Internet’s early days, becoming only the fourth employee of CNET Networks in 1993. He worked there until 2004 in roles including chief strategy officer and executive vice president, according to his State Department biography.
Barzun has been married to Brown-Forman heiress Brooke Brown Barzun since 1999. Her father was the late Brown-Forman CEO Owsley Brown II, and her mother is Owsley’s widow, the philanthropist Christy Brown.
A fifth-generation Brown
The company is one of Louisville’s most storied businesses. It was founded by Brooke’s great-great grandfather George Garvin Brown in 1870. The distiller employs 1,300 workers in the city and another 3,300 worldwide, where the company distributes Jack Daniel’s, Finlandia vodka and other marquee brands in about 160 countries. Tomorrow, shareholders will hold their annual meeting at the Dixie Highway headquarters; three board members up for re-election also are fifth-generation members of the family controlling the nearly 150-year-old distiller.
The Barzuns’ rarefied social and political connections were on full display in November 2013, when the couple rode in a gilded, horse-drawn carriage to Buckingham Palace to present his credentials to Queen Elizabeth II; photo, top, and in this video:
Republican Donald Trump’s $75,387 from individual Kentucky donors in June slipped past Democrat Hillary Clinton’s $73,153 in the White House race. That was a big switch for the billionaire businessman, whose skimpy Kentucky fundraising had trailed all other major Republican candidates, according to WFPL.
That trend could shift because candidates typically get a bump after a convention, University of Kentucky political science professor Donald Gross told the station. In Trump’s case, it also could mean Republicans are feeling more confident about their nominee: “If you think he has a chance to win, you start freeing up your money.”
The GOP convention ended Friday. The Democrats’ meeting started today and ends Thursday with (presumably) Clinton’s acceptance speech.
Despite June’s reversal, Clinton remains way ahead in total receipts. In the current election cycle, she’s raised $783,000 vs. $130,049, according to the Federal Election Commission. (How to look up data.)
Louisville leads
For both candidates, the most lucrative areas have been Louisville, based on Zip Codes of donors. For privacy reasons, the FEC breaks down receipts only by three-digit Zip Codes. Here are the dollar amounts for 402:
Clinton: $279,900
Trump: $24,852
Clinton’s second most-fertile ground was Zip 410, the Covington area, where she picked up $150,349. Trump’s was 405, Lexington, where he got $23,948.
Find every donor to Clinton and Trump
In sheer numbers, Clinton’s received money from more than 17 times as many Kentuckians as has Trump, through June 30. Boulevard has just compiled spreadsheets showing the names of every donor to both candidates: Clinton’s 6,521 vs. Trump’s 377.
It’s summertime at the height of the presidential nominating contest, and the nation is transfixed by civil unrest: Protestors are attacking police amid dark warnings about terrorism on the streets and claims the powerful news media is spreading liberal propaganda.
Sound familiar? It should, because that was the scene 48 years ago this summer, when Democrats gathered in Chicago for a convention to pick Vice President Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine as their nominees for the 1968 presidential elections.
On The Courier-Journal’s front page that Friday morning, Aug. 30, 1968, a headline told the story: “Angry Daley Defends Police; Assails Press.” From Chicago, New York Times correspondent R. W. Apple Jr. wrote:
Infuriated by attacks upon himself, his city and his police force, Mayor Richard J. Daley yesterday defended the manner in which anti-war, anti-Humphrey demonstrations were suppressed in downtown Chicago Wednesday night.
Daley described the demonstrators as “terrorists” and said they had come here determined to “assault, harass and taunt the police into reacting before television cameras.”
“In the heat of emotion and riot,” Daley said, “some policemen may have over-reacted, but to judge the entire police force by the alleged action of a few would be just as unfair as to judge our entire younger generation by the actions of the mob.”
A defiant Mayor Richard Daley on the convention floor reacts to criticism Chicago police were overacting to protests outside.
In fact, an independent study found four months later, the clash between 10,000 protestors and police devolved into a police riot when officers broke through and began beating one man as the crowd pelted cops with rocks and chunks of concrete. Protestors’ chants shifted from “hell no, we won’t go” to “pigs are whores.”
By then, civil unrest had come to Louisville in a different form: A popular amusement park reserved for whites for six decades had been integrated four years before. Fontaine Ferry Park would be heavily vandalized during racial turmoil less than a year after the Chicago convention.
BROWN-FORMAN announced this morning that it’s launching its own distribution network in Spain, Europe’s third-largest whiskey market and the world’s ninth-biggest overall. The Louisville spirits giant will add about 40 employees in the expansion. The current distributor is Importaciones y Exportaciones Varma S.A. under a contract that will end June 30, 2017. “Establishing our own distribution organization in Spain will support the development of the Jack Daniel’s trademark as well as our broader portfolio in this dynamic market where premium spirits are growing,” said Thomas Hinrichs, president of Brown-Forman’s Europe and Asia markets.
Spain will join Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Mexico, Poland, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey, and the U.K. as markets where Brown-Forman owns or directly manages its own distribution. (press release). The company employs 1,300 workers in Louisville and another 3,300 across the U.S. and around the globe.
Trump and Pence
GE: Haier Group has been drawn into the bitterly contested Republican race for the White House, less than two months after the Chinese company completed its $5.6 billion purchase of GE Appliances. The conservative Federalist website says Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s past support of Haier’s research and development center in Evansville, Ind., is an example of the politician’s helping China “steal” U.S. jobs. Although Donald Trump has run on a campaign attacking U.S.-China trade, the website implies his selection of Pence as running mate casts doubt on the GOP nominees’ anti-China bonafides (Federalist). In the past, the site has sparked stories in more mainstream media, including Politico and The Daily Beast.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, second from right, and Haier Group President Liang Haishan, far right, at the Evansville ribbon-cutting.
A year ago, Pence joined Haier executives at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Evansville center. The pro-trade America China Society of Indiana quoted Pence saying at the time: “When I met with Haier executives in China this spring, I was invigorated by the company’s plans to accelerate technology development in Indiana. In addition to our strong workforce and pro-growth business climate, Indiana has quickly become a center for innovation, making the Hoosier State the natural choice for this facility as Haier continues to increase its presence in the United States” (America China Society). GE Appliances employs 6,000 workers at Appliance Park in Louisville’s south end.
UPS: In Spring City, Tenn., a man was arrested and charged with drug trafficking after Rhea County Sheriff’s deputies caught him with 20 lbs. of marijuana he allegedly received via UPS from California. Sheriff’s investigator Charlie Jenkins said the man, George Robert Luttenberger Jr., told him he’d been getting pot from California since 2012 (Herald-News). In Brooklyn, a federal judge allowed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to proceed with a lawsuit accusing UPS of discriminating against male workers and job applicants who wore beards or long hair for religious reasons (Reuters).
PAPA JOHN’S fired a Denver employee who used a racial slur on a customer’s order slip and apologized to the teenager who placed the pizza order. “This action is inexcusable and doesn’t reflect our company values,” company spokesman Peter Collins told the Denver Post.
This was the second instance in less than a month where a Papa John’s employee was fired over an apparently racist order slip circulated on Twitter; the first one involved an Asian-American customer’s order at a Louisville restaurant near the end of June.
Sound familiar? It should, because that was the scene 48 years ago this summer, when Democrats gathered in Chicago for a convention to pick Vice President 
Boulevard 