Joe Coulombe, who founded Trader Joe’s, the popular grocery known for its kitschy vibe and beloved private label wine dubbed "Two Buck Chuck,'' died late Friday at his Pasadena, California home. He was 89.
Coulombe’s son, also named Joe, said in a statement his father died following a long illness.
Born on June 3, 1930, Coulombe was raised on an avocado ranch in Del Mar, California, near San Diego. He served a year in the Air Force and got a bachelor’s degree in economics, followed by an MBA from Stanford University in 1954.
Coulombe met his wife, Alice Steere, at a party while in college. They married in 1952, when they were both in graduate school, and went on to have three children.
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Most popular grocery stores: Trader Joe's and Publix are some of the nation's most popular grocery chains
First convenience, then groceries
In 1958, Coulombe went to work for Rexall Drugs, where he was tasked with creating a group of convenience stores similar to 7-Eleven. He worked without pay in a grocery store to better understand the business.
The new chain was called Pronto Markets, and when Rexall eventually decided to shut it down, Coulombe bought the locations and ran the stores himself.
But in 1967, 7-Eleven was opening more locations in California. Rather than taking them on, Coulombe decided to launch a new, vastly different chain. He started Trader Joe’s with a store in Pasadena, California.
Trader Joe's carved out a unique persona
The grocery chain was quirky from the beginning. Coulombe based the store’s nautical décor on a book he’d read called “White Shadows in the South Seas,’’ as well as his experience visiting the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland, according to the company's website. Employees were dubbed captains and first mates who wore Hawaiian-themed shirts.
The stores were unique in other ways. His mother-in-law and father-in-law had been academics who enjoyed dining on fresh seafood and quality, yet affordable wines. Trader Joe's would cater to those with similar, sophisticated tastes who were also on a budget.
Trader Joe's became known for a selective array of premium foods available at low prices. Coulombe sampled and chose everything his stores sold and invited employees and customers to tastings.
In 1972, Trader Joe's also introduced its own private label products, starting with granola and later incorporating items ranging from coffee to apple juice to heat-and-serve entrees. Coulombe would use images from 19th-century advertisements for the labels and named the items himself.
Coulombe sold Trader Joe’s to the German grocery retailer Aldi Nord in 1979. He retired from the company nine years later.
Trader Joe's stayed true to its roots as it grew
Since then, the chain has grown from 19 stores, all based in California, to more than 500 locations in 42 states as well as Washington, D.C.
Even as it expanded, Trader Joe’s has stayed rooted in the same environmentally friendly, offbeat hallmarks that have made it one of the most popular groceries in the U.S.
In 2002, it introduced the Charles Shaw label to its wine selection. The award-winning wine became a beloved pop culture fixture known as “Two-Buck Chuck’’ because it was so affordable.
Trader Joe’s was also ahead of the curve in ensuring its private-label offerings didn’t contain artificial flavors, colors or preservatives, a standard Coulombe established starting in the 1970s. In 2007, the company said it would cut out artificial trans fats as well.
In April 2019, Consumer Reports named Trader Joe's the best grocery store based on customer satisfaction.
A busy retirement
Coulombe anchored a "Food and Wine Minute'' that aired on local radio in Los Angeles where he spoke about his visits to the world's wine regions and gave tidbits of food trivia. He ended his segments by saying “This is Joe Coulombe of Trader Joe’s.”
In retirement, Coulombe and his wife also supported a variety of cultural institutions, including the Los Angeles Opera.
Coulombe is survived by his wife, their three children, their spouses and six grandchildren.
He was a marketing whiz, a retail visionary whose chain of budget-minded specialty food stores, launched in the late 1960s with a distinctive South Seas trading post motif, developed a cult-like following on its way to becoming a Southern California institution.
Joe Coulombe, the founder of Trader Joe’s, died Friday after a long illness, said his son Joe Jr. He was 89.
Trader Joe’s, which came to be known for everything from its inexpensive Charles Shaw (“Two Buck Chuck”) wine to its use of maritime bells for in-store communication, was a quirky local retail success before spreading beyond California in the 1990s after Coulombe left the company.
Coulombe was the owner of a small chain of 18 Pronto Market convenience stores in the mid-1960s when he became concerned about a growing competitive threat: the expansion of Dallas-based Southland Corp.’s 7-Eleven convenience stores into Southern California.
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To survive, Coulombe knew he had to do something different.
The answer came in part from reading a story in Scientific American that said 60% of all people qualified to go to college were doing so, compared to only 2% in the Depression year of 1932.
Coulombe also read a newspaper article that said that wide-bodied Boeing 747 jumbo jets would be put into service in a few years, which would significantly reduce the cost of overseas air travel.
His conclusion: Target well-educated, well-traveled — but less-than-affluent — consumers who have more sophisticated and diverse tastes in food and drink.
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With the South Seas becoming more accessible, Coulombe adopted the relaxed trading post theme for his stores, which he stocked with a global cross-section of offerings.
“He put a great deal of thought into it,” his son said. “He got an early take on the emerging trends — from the ecological movement to the raising education level.”
The first Trader Joe’s opened in 1967 on South Arroyo Parkway in Pasadena, with the store decorated with fish nets, oars, pennants and other nautical trappings. The inaugural store remains in business.
Shoppers wait for the grand opening of a Trader Joe’s in Pinecrest, Fla., in 2013.
(Joe Raedle / Getty Images)
The Hawaiian-shirt wearing employees added to the trading post concept, with the manager dubbed “the captain,” the assistant manager “the first mate” and the staff “crew members.” Promotions were always from within the ranks.
Trader Joe’s became known as the place to buy reasonably priced, exotic food items such as nectarines from Chile, noodles from Thailand and whole bean coffee from El Salvador.
With research showing that the more educated people were, the more high-quality alcohol they drank, Coulombe stocked his stores with 100 brands of scotch, 50 brands of whiskey, 20 brands of brandy and 17 types of California wines. Even the ever-so-cheap Charles Shaw wine came with not only a date on when it was bottled, but an exact hour so fussy shoppers could restock with exactly the same pressing.
“I have an ideal audience in mind,” he told The Times in 1981. “This is a person who got a Fulbright scholarship, went to Europe for a couple of years and developed a taste for something other than Velveeta by way of cheese, something more than ordinary beer by way of alcoholic beverages and something other than Folgers by way of coffee.”
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Coulombe often described his target customers as “the overeducated and the underpaid.”
“What that originally meant was, everyone from underpaid musicians to out-of-work PhDs could come to Trader Joe’s and find elements of the lifestyle they aspired to for not too much money,” he told Supermarket News in 2010, the year he earned a place in that publication’s Hall of Fame.
Customers, Coulombe said, “wouldn’t find branded items, but the merchandise was always of the highest quality and priced within the reality of a schoolteacher’s salary that offered glimpses into a much more affluent lifestyle.”
Part of the appeal in shopping at Trader Joe’s is never knowing what new items have been added and what items will no longer be available.
“I learned that lesson with vintage wines,” Coulombe explained in a 2011 Times interview. “There’s only so much 1966 Lafite Rothschild. So we deliberately pursued a policy of discontinuity, as opposed to, say, Coca-Cola, which is in infinite supply.
“For example, we had the only vintage-dated, field-specific canned corn in existence, and it was the best damned canned corn there was. But there was only so much produced every year, and when you’re out, you’re out.”
Joe Coulombe with a self-painted portrait of himself and granddaughter Julia.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
Coulombe was known for having a sense of what customers want — and for spotting trends.
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“In 1971, health food became a very big thing,” Coulombe said in a 1988 Times interview. “A few years ago, frozen seafood became big. We try to stay right out in front.”
Trader Joe’s relaxed and friendly atmosphere has a lot to do with its employees.
Unlike other retailers who save money by paying lower wages, Coulombe attracted and retained the kind of workers he was looking for by paying the average full-time employee the median California family income and offering full benefits.
“He loved and believed in his employees and he wanted to keep them,” said his son. “And the only way to do that was to pay them well.”
With no money to launch a major advertising campaign when he started Trader Joe’s, Coulombe created “The Insider Report,” a customer newsletter that provided product information and which Coulombe described as “a marriage of Consumer Reports and Mad magazine.” In the 1980s, it became known as the “Fearless Flyer,” a chatty rundown on new, seasonal and offbeat offerings at the stores.
Beginning in 1976, Coulombe used radio to help raise the chain’s profile. He wound up doing more than 3,000 one-minute broadcasts on KFAC, a Los Angeles classical music station, in which he’d discuss food and wine. He closed each broadcast with “This is Joe Coulombe of Trader’s Joe’s.”
In 1979, Coulombe and his employees, who had a 45% ownership stake in the company, sold Trader Joe’s to a family trust established by Theo Albrecht, co-founder of the Germany-based discount supermarket chain Aldi.
Coulombe, however, continued to serve as chief executive until 1989.
Trader Joe’s unconventional approach to grocery shopping was part of the chain’s appeal, retail industry analysts told The Times in 1988 after Coulombe announced his plans to leave.
“It has a very distinct personality,” Ron Rotter, a retail industry analyst at Morgan, Olmstead, Kennedy & Gardner, said at the time. “It has a cult of customers who love going there to see what new wines have arrived.”
In 2000, Los Angeles magazine included Coulombe in its list of 10 influential Angelenos who have “quietly shaped whole tracts of high and low culture” over the last 40 years.
By mid-2011, the privately held Trader Joe’s had grown to more than 474 stores in 43 states and Washington, D.C. It was also facing more direct competition from chains like Whole Foods and Sprouts.
“My successors at Trader Joe’s have taken a 30-store chain nationwide with remarkable adherence to the basic concepts we started out with,” Coulombe said in the 2010 Supermarket News interview. “Though it’s certainly a different store than I left in 1989, I changed it so many times, I can’t argue with what they’ve done.”
Born in San Diego on June 3, 1930, Coulombe graduated from San Diego High School in 1947 and went off to Stanford University. With a year off for active duty in the Air Force, he graduated in 1952 and entered Stanford’s business school.
After earning his MBA in 1954, he landed a job as a researcher for the Owl-Rexall drugstore chain. In 1958, he was asked to launch Pronto Markets as a test in Los Angeles.
He was operating six of the markets by 1962 when Rexall told him to liquidate them. Instead, he found financing and bought the stores. He soon expanded the chain to 18 stores.
After leaving Trader Joe’s in 1989, Coulombe stayed involved in the retail industry.
In 1992, after working first as an independent business consultant, he became executive vice president for retailing and co-chairman of Pacific Enterprises’ Thrifty Corp. retailing unit. He oversaw the Thrifty Drug Stores chain in addition to Thrifty’s Big Five sporting goods chain and four other chains.
In the 1990s, he had a number of other corporate stints, including serving as president of Petrini’s, a supermarket chain; chief executive officer of Provigo Corp., a wholesale and retail grocer; and president and chief executive officer of Sport Chalet Inc., a sporting goods retailer.
Coulombe more recently served on the boards of Cost Plus World Market and True Religion Apparel.
McLellan is a former Times staff writer.
Staff writer Steve Marble and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Joe Coulombe envisioned a new generation of young grocery shoppers emerging in the 1960s, one that wanted healthy, tasty, high-quality food they couldn’t find in most supermarkets and couldn’t afford to buy in the few high-end gourmet outlets.
So he found a new way to bring everything from a then-exotic snack food called granola to the California-produced wines that for flavor compared with anything from France. And he made shopping for them almost as much fun as sailing the high seas when he created Trader Joe’s, a quirky little grocery store filled with nautical themes and staffed not by managers and clerks but by “captains and mates.”
From the time he opened his first store in Pasadena, California, in 1967 until his death Friday at age 89, Coulombe watched his namesake business rise from a cult favorite of educated but underpaid young people — and a few hippies — to a retail giant with more than 500 outlets in over 40 states.
A giant yes, but one that across more than half a century has never lost its reputation for friendly service from employees decked out in goofy Hawaiian shirts, a newsletter that looks like it was published in the 1890s, and rows and rows of high-quality, moderately priced healthy food and great wine, even if you sometimes can’t ever again find exactly the same thing.
“He wanted to make sure whatever was sold in our store was of good value,” said Coulombe’s son, also named Joe, who added that his father died following a long illness. “He always did lots of taste tests. My sisters and I remember him bringing home all kinds of things for us to try. At his offices he had practically daily tastings of new products. Always the aim was to provide good food and good value to people.”
He achieved that by buying directly from wholesalers and cutting out the middleman, in many cases slapping the name Trader Joe’s on a bag of nuts, trail mix, organic dried mango, honey-oat cereal or Angus beef chili. He named several products after his daughters Charlotte and Madeleine and gave quirky names to others. Among them were Trader Darwin vitamins and a non-alcoholic sparkling juice called Eve’s Apple Sparkled by Adam.
He prided himself on checking out every vintage of wine from California’s Napa Valley, including Trader Joe’s standby, Charles Shaw, affectionately known as Two-Buck Chuck because it sold for $1.99. (It still does in the California stores, although shipping costs have increased the price in other states.)
“He sold a lot of better wines too,” his son noted with a laugh, recalling trips the family made to France to seek them out.
After selling Trader Joe’s to German grocery retailer Aldi in 1979, Coulombe remained as its CEO until 1988, when he left to launch a second career as what he called a “temp,” coming in as interim CEO or consultant for several large companies in transition. He retired in 2013.
Joseph Hardin Coulombe, an only child, was born on June 3, 1930, in San Diego and lived on an avocado ranch in nearby Del Mar. After serving in the Air Force, he attended Stanford University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics, a master’s in business administration and met and married his wife, Alice.
A few years after graduation, he was hired by the Rexall drugstore chain, which tasked him with establishing a chain of convenience stores called Pronto. When Rexall lost interest in the stores, he bought them and had grown the chain to about a dozen outlets when the huge 7-Eleven company made a major push into Southern California.
“So I had to do something different,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2014. “Scientific American had a story that of all people qualified to go to college, 60% were going. I felt this newly educated — not smarter but better-educated — class of people would want something different, and that was the genesis of Trader Joe’s.”
His wife’s parents had introduced him to a world of foods previously unfamiliar to him, including fine olive oil, fresh seafood and inexpensive quality wine, and he figured things like that would be perfect for the younger audience he was seeking.
As he bargained for those products, he’d sometimes come across a particularly exceptional olive oil or vintage wine, never to find it again, and he wouldn’t stock an inferior product in its place.
He eschewed promotional gimmicks like loyalty clubs or loss-leader sales, getting the word out with brief radio spots and the Trader Joe’s “Fearless Flyer” newsletter, whose old-style appearance was inspired by another money-saving effort. He wanted to dress up the newsletter’s stories with illustrations he cut out of magazines, but he made sure he only took ones on which the copyrights had expired.
He passed such savings on not only to his customers but employees, which Trader Joe’s boasts are among retail’s best compensated, with medical, dental, vision and retirement plans and annual salary increases the company says range from 7% to 10%. Many workers have remained with Trader Joe’s for decades.
“He just had a visit yesterday from employee No. 1,” his daughter Charlotte said shortly before her father’s death.
He and his wife also became well known in Southern California philanthropic circles, contributing time and money to such causes as Planned Parenthood, the Los Angeles Opera and the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens.
Stories differ on how the name Trader Joe’s came about, with some saying it was inspired by a ride on Disneyland’s Jungle Cruise boat or a book he read called “White Shadows in the South Seas” or his favorite college hangout being a Trader Vic’s bar near Stanford.
Coulombe, who loved to travel, did acknowledge over the years that he had a fascination with the South Seas and put Trader into the name and a nautical theme inside the stores to lend that exotic appeal to customers.
In addition to his three children and wife of 67 years, Coulombe is survived by six grandchildren.
The stock market cratered again on Friday, marking the seventh day of a massive sell-off sparked by rising fears about the coronavirus epidemic. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged by 800 points at the opening bell, with the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq each falling by 3 percent.Feb. 28, 2020
The 2020 Geneva Motor Show has been canceled due to a Swiss ban on gatherings of more than 1,000 people amid coronavirus concerns.
Over 600,000 people attended the 2019 show.
(Visual China Group via Getty Images/Visual China Group via Getty Images)
The annual gathering was set to host thousands of journalists beginning on March 2, before opening to the public on March 5.
The event hosted over 600,000 visitors last year over a week and a half.
The Car of The Year award was set to be announced at the Palexpo center on Monday and dozens of automakers and companies from the automotive industry were scheduled to hold press conferences the following two days.
U.S.-based brands Ford, General Motors and Tesla did not have scheduled media events, but Fiat Chrysler Automobiles had a press conference scheduled for March 3 that included Jeep.
Switzerland has reported 15 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus. It borders northern Italy, which has seen the largest cluster of cases in Europe.
The government defined the outbreak as a "special situation" — the second-highest of three levels in the country's epidemic law. The highest level, defined as an “extraordinary situation,” would be triggered for an event on the scale of the 1918 Spanish flu.
The New York International Auto Show is the next major show on the calendar and scheduled to open to media on April 8.
1. Dow set to sink again after biggest point-loss ever
Traders work during the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on February 27, 2020 at Wall Street in New York City.
Johannes Eisele | AFP | Getty Images
U.S. stock futures were pointing to a 500-point decline for the Dow Jones Industrial Average at Friday's open on Wall Street, pushing blue chips further into a correction. Fears of a possible coronavirus pandemic crushed stocks this week, with the Dow off more than 11% and tracking for its worst weekly performance since the 2008 financial crisis. The Dow finished at a record high just 11 sessions ago on Feb. 12. As of Thursday's close, it was down nearly 13% since then. Thursday's nearly 4.4% decline for the Dow was the worst day back to February 2018. The Dow's nearly 1,200 point plunge Thursday was its worst point-loss ever.
2. 10-year Treasury yield collapses to another record low
Investors are dumping global stocks as well, with markets from Europe to Asia down 3% to 5%, and they're pouring money into the perceived safety of bonds. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield, which moves inversely to price, hit another record low below 1.2%. The 10-year yield serves as a benchmark for mortgage rates, auto loans, student loans, credit card annual percentage rates and other debt instruments. The yields on the 2-year and 5-year Treasurys were trading below 1% early Friday. Global markets have lost $6 trillion in value over the past six days, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.
3. Market expectations of Fed rate cut increasing
The carnage in stocks and plummeting Treasury yields are raising market expectations of a Federal Reserve interest rate cut. Ex-Fed Gov. Kevin Warsh told CNBC on Friday he sees a coordinated global central bank action soon in response to coronavirus. Before the outbreak, the Fed was telling the market it planned to hold rates steady for a while after three cuts of 0.25% each last year. A Fed official during the financial crisis in 2008, Warsh has been critical of Fed officials for not normalizing interest rates sooner and thus leaving themselves more room to act in times of crisis.
4. WHO warns coronavirus could reach every country
The World Health Organization on Friday reiterated its warning that COVID-19 could reach every country on Earth. On Tuesday, the WHO had warned countries around the world to be prepared for the coronavirus to be "literally knocking at the door." Infections continued to rise in hot spots outside of China — in South Korea, Iran, the U.K., Germany and Italy. The U.S. has about 60 cases. The vast majority of infections and deaths are still in China, where officials increased the count of confirmed cases to nearly 79,000, with fatalities approaching 2,800.
5. Biden looks to South Carolina and then Super Tuesday for comeback
Joe Biden leaving a campaign event in Georgetown, South Carolina on Feb. 26, 2020.
Tucker Higgins / CNBC
Heading into Saturday's South Carolina primary, former Vice President Joe Biden was leading in the polls after poor results in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. A political action committee backing the embattled former front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination invested in key Super Tuesday states. Biden is third so far in the delegate count, behind Sen. Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg. Mike Bloomberg, a latecomer to the race, will be on ballots for the first time on Super Tuesday, when a third of the party's delegates are up for grabs.
Dow Futures Extend Slump Amid Worst Stock Market Slide Since Global Financial Crisis
Wall Street looks set to extend its worst week since the financial crisis -- and the fastest correction on record for the S&P 500 -- as investors fear the coronavirus will accelerate into a global pandemic.
Global stocks near correction territory, amid the worst five-day stretch since November 2008, as health officials warn of a potential cornoavirus pandemic.
COVID-19 cases top 83,000 worldwide, with new infections in Africa and New Zealand overnight, as governments accelerate their response procedures and biotechs race to find an effective vaccine.
European stocks extend slump, taking the Stoxx 600's five-day decline to 11.6%, with basic resource and tech shares leading the decline.
Benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yields hit fresh all-time low of 1.15% in overnight trading, with 2-year notes slipping below 1%, as investors bet on central bank support and Fed rate cuts amid the fastest correction on record for the S&P 500.
The CBOE's VIX volatility index hits a two-year high of 45.67, sending stocks reeling as investors dump risk in markets around the world.
U.S. equity futures suggest further opening bell declines on Wall Street ahead of earnings from Foot Locker before the start of trading and January inflation data at 8:30 am Eastern time.
Wall Street's historic rout looks set to continue Friday, with futures prices pointing to extended declines for the three major benchmarks amid the worst week for world stocks since the financial crisis, as investors prepare for what could be a global coronavirus pandemic.
Asia stocks were pummeled in overnight trading, following on from last night's sell-off on Wall Street that hived more than 1,000 points from the Dow Jones Industrial Average for the second time this week, pulling the MSCI World stock benchmark closer to correction territory, wiping out more than $5 trillion in equity value and setting up its worst five-day run since November 2008.
With Moody's Investors Service warning of the potential for a coronavirus-lead global recession, supply chains disrupted by China's ongoing health crisis and the lingering effects of its trade war with the United States and government bond yields around the world testing fresh all-time lows, risk appetite was in short supply Friday, with gold price rising, oil extending declines and fund manager cash piles expanding.
More than 83,000 people -- mostly in China but in rising numbers around the world -- have been infected by the respiratory virus, officially known as COVID 19, with new cases confirmed overnight in Nigeria, New Zealand and Lithuania.
"This virus has pandemic potential," World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu said Thursday. "This is not a time for fear. This is a time for taking action to prevent infection and save lives now."
With an unknown lethality and a rising infection rate, COVID 19's impact on the global economy is unknown at this stage, but with U.S. equity valuations recently trading at their highest levels since 2002, investors are in little mood to speculate on the ultimate outcome of any pandemic.
U.S. equity futures, in fact, suggest another session of deep declines on Wall Street Friday, with contracts tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average priced for a 470 point slide, taking the five-day total to around 1,600 points, and those linked to the S&P 500 poised for a 51 point retreat.
The S&P 500, in fact, suffered its fastest "correction" -- where stocks fall from 10% from a recent peak -- on record as of yesterday when the benchmark closed under the 3,000 point mark after hitting an all-time high on February 19. Nasdaq futures suggest a 144 point opening bell decline.
Benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yields, meanwhile, fell to a fresh all-time low of 1.15% mark in early European trading, extending a decline that has clipped more than 70 basis points from one of the world's most liquid financial instruments since the beginning of the year. Two-year notes, meanwhile, traded below the 1% mark for the first time on record, a move that was shortly followed by a similar level for 5-year notes.
With bond yields tumbling, pressure continues to mount on the Federal Reserve -- and indeed other central banks around the world -- to respond with either rate cuts or targeted monetary support.
Chicago Fed President Charles Evans, however, told a financial conference in Mexico Thursday that it would be "premature" to talk about central bank action in the wake of COVID 19's spread, and repeated the Fed's stance of "closely monitoring" developments in the global economy.
CME Group futures, however, now suggest at least a 77% chance of a March rate cut, compared to just 9% only a week ago, and are fully pricing in further cuts between now and the end of the year.
European stocks opened notably weaker in Frankfurt, London and Milan, with the Stoxx 600 benchmark tumbling 3% by mid-day of trading, while the FTSE 100 slumped 3% to the lowest levels since 2016 in London.
Germany's DAX index, which has fallen 15% from its recent highs, was marked 3.8% lower by mid-morning trade in Frankfurt.
In Italy, where the number of coronavirus cases has risen to 655 -- from just 3 a week ago -- with at least 17 deaths, the benchmark FTSE MIB index fell 3.4% in early dealing in Milan.
Global oil prices, too, extended declines amid their worst five-day stretch in four years, taking Brent crude some 15% lower on the week as investors adjusted demand forecasts from both China and other major economies around the world.
Brent crude futures contracts for April delivery, the global benchmark, were last see seen $2.1 lower from their Thursday close in New York and trading at $50.08 per barrel, while WTI contracts for the same month were seen $2.07 lower at $45.02 per barrel.
Overnight in Asia, Japan's Nikkei closed out a 9.6% slide for the week with a 3.67% slump that pegged the benchmark at 21,142.96 points, while China's Shanghai Composite fell 3.7% and Hong Kong's Heng Seng index tumbled 2.71%.
