Energy markets faced renewed pressure this week as crude prices softened amid mixed signals on global demand and steady U.S. production. Benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude drifted lower, weighing on shares of major producers and oilfield services companies. Analysts cited cautious demand forecasts from Asia and Europe, along with stable output from U.S. shale basins, Read More…
The War Department announced today that 25 vendors have been selected to compete in Phase I of the Drone Dominance Program (DDP), a sweeping acquisition reform initiative aimed at rapidly fielding low-cost, unmanned one-way attack drones at scale to strengthen America’s Arsenal of Freedom. The program reflects one of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s core Read More…
Thirteen farmers from Kansas and Colorado, along with Weskan Grain and Colorado Pacific Railroad (CXR), filed an antitrust lawsuit Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas alleging that Kansas & Oklahoma Railroad (K&O) and Union Pacific Railroad Company (UP) conspired to block competition and inflate grain transportation costs across the region. Read More…
(The Center Square) – The second largest natural gas producer in northwest Louisiana and east Texas has sold its assets to Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi. Aethon, a Dallas-based company that operates in the prolific Haynesville shale formation, agreed to a deal worth approximately $7.5 billion, according to an announcement on Friday. Mitsubishi agreed to pay $5.2 Read More…
About 10 years ago, SoftBank released a slideshow presentation on the company’s 300-year plan. “Unknown virus” got one reference, on slide 69 of 133. Perhaps coronavirus will just be a blip in the company’s long-term plan for world domination. Perhaps SoftBank’s vision of investing in artificial intelligence and other dominant technology companies will pay off in the long run, Read More…
Warren Buffett sold more than $800 million worth of Apple stock last quarter, according to SEC filings published on Friday. That might seem like a massive sale, but it’s closer to a rounding error for the billionaire investor and Berkshire Hathaway CEO. Berkshire is Apple’s biggest shareholder with a 5.4% stake worth $72 billion, according to Bloomberg data. Read More…
NBA legend Kobe Bryant, 41, died in a helicopter crash on Sunday morning in Calabasas, Calif., along with his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office confirmed. Seven other people were on board Bryant’s helicopter and were all killed in the tragic accident. Bryant’s impact on basketball is obvious: five-time NBA champion; two-time NBA Finals MVP; league Read More…
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology said Friday that it had placed one of its tenured professors on paid administrative leave after finding that he “purposefully failed to inform MIT” that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was source of two donations in 2012 to support the professor’s research, and that the professor got a $60,000 personal gift from Epstein. Read More…
The pain kept coming for hedge funds in 2019: if they weren’t being killed off, they were bleeding cash or wringing out dismal returns. The industry is now on track to record more closures than launches for a fifth straight year, a blow to a market that once minted millionaires at a heady pace. More Read More…
Dennis Muilenburg, the CEO of Boeing, resigned Monday morning after a string of malfunctions in Boeing’s 737 Max airliner led to the worst year on record for the plane-maker. Boeing has struggled to rectify issues related to its 737 Max, which President Trump grounded in March after two crashes took the lives of more than 300 people. Read More…
Pernod Ricard, France’s largest spirits maker, is busy raiding America’s liquor cabinet. In 2019, the purveyor of Absolut vodka and Jameson Irish whiskey has bought Jefferson’s Bourbon, Firestone & Robertson Distilling, and a majority share of Rabbit Hole Distillery, all bets on America’s whiskey boom. This comes on top of recent new vodka distillery openings Read More…
In a festive opening to the sale of its best known company, Saudi political and economic elite were out on Wednesday to show their full support for the sale of their country’s crown jewel. Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil company had its first IPO on Wednesday and is now being heralded as the world’s most valuable company with Read More…
SALT LAKE CITY — The waste is piling up in landfills, from grocery stores and restaurants and stinky manure from hog and dairy farms. What to do with it? Dominion Energy has the answer through transforming some of that waste into renewable natural gas through a number of ways, including a $500 million corporate partnership Read More…
It may seem that no matter where you go in the U.S. you see chain stores — those ubiquitous big box stores with Starbucks (SBUX) – Get Report inside of them. But fear not: Small business in America is not dead. In fact, it’s the majority of the country’s business, according to the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council. Read More…
T-Mobile CEO John Legere is stepping down in May 2020, the company announced on Monday morning. His replacement is coming from within T-Mobile: Current COO and president Mike Sievert is taking the reins from Legere next May. It’s not clear just yet where Legere is going, but as of November 11 he was reported to be Read More…
It’s a fascinating time for fintech. What was once a disruptive force in the financial world has become standard practice for many industry leaders. Fintech industry funding has already reached new highs globally in 2018, with overall funding hitting $32.6 billion at the end of Q3. Some new regions, including South America and Africa, are Read More…
Wall Street’s final act of 2019 will hinge on whether investors should believe the messages being sent by corporate credit, crowd consensus and the calendar characteristics. The broad market has been a sloppy stalemate between supportive and antagonistic forces for many months: The S&P 500 is hovering around the 3000 level it first reached in Read More…
PG&E Corp. PCG +2.84% ’s chief executive said Friday that it could take as long as 10 years for the company to improve its electric system enough to significantly diminish the need to pull the plug on customers to reduce the risk of sparking fires. Bill Johnson, who joined the company in May, made the disclosure at a California Read More…
Banks are getting back into the business of building mortgage bonds, laying the groundwork for a market that stands to grow as the Trump administration tries to reduce the government’s role in housing finance. Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., and JPMorgan Chase & Co. over the past year have restarted Read More…
Ari Emanuel’s company Endeavor detailed its plans Monday to go public, listing 19.4 million Class A shares, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The global entertainment, sports and content company expects to price its initial public offering at $30 to $32 a share, hoping to raise more than $600 million. Endeavor is planning Read More…
Facebook is considering a test to hide likes on News Feed posts. The company already tested a similar move on Instagram in August as a way to help break users’ fixation with getting likes on their pictures. Data miner Jane Manchun Wong discovered that Facebook is experimenting with the change in its Android app Monday. The company said Monday Read More…
In the days before Uber, Travis Kalanick wasn’t much different than other San Francisco Bay Area entrepreneurs, except that he was fresh off a $20 million exit and had a penchant for Pulp Fiction. In a sparsely furnished apartment in the city’s Castro district, Kalanick sought to become a “fixer,” reports Mike Isaac in “Super Pumped: Read More…
Target CEO Brian Cornell still thinks the U.S. consumer is strong and spending, despite fears that some shoppers may be pulling back with the threat of another economic recession looming. He told members of the media Wednesday morning after reporting quarterly earnings that blew past estimates: Target CFO “Cathy [Smith] and I —we meet with our banking partners, Read More…
J.C. Penney Co. Inc. stock plummeted 12.1% in Friday trading after the department store retailer announced that it received a letter from the New York Stock Exchange on August 6 alerting it that it is no longer in compliance with listing criteria. The criteria requires listed companies to maintain an average closing share price of Read More…
As the worldwide grounding of the Boeing 737 Max enters its sixth month, airlines are turning to older jets to help meet growing demand, prompting a surge in rental rates. “Used 800s are like a gold dust at the moment,” said Phil Seymour, CEO of London-based aerospace consulting firm IBA, referring to Boeing 737-800s, an older model Read More…
A sizable group of community banks are in various stages of consolidation, highlighting how the industry-wide merger and acquisition (M&A) trend is extending down market, as community and regional banks pursue greater scale and cost efficiencies. M&A fever has already gripped the nation’s super-regionals and top banks. BB&T announced in February that it was acquiring SunTrust for Read More…
The country’s two largest newspaper chains agreed to combine their businesses in a roughly $1.4 billion deal, further consolidating an industry reeling from strong economic headwinds. New Media Investment Group Inc., the parent of GateHouse Media, is buying Gannett Co. in a cash-and-stock transaction, the companies said Monday. New Media will pay $6.25 in cash Read More…
Though the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale officially opened to the public on Friday, July 19, the bargain hunting had already been well underway for an exclusive group of people — Nordstrom card holders. For several years, the department store has granted its most loyal shoppers special access to the annual sale, an effort to generate buzz and clout Read More…
Walmart is making further organizational changes as it continues to integrate its store and digital operations and leadership, according to a memo obtained by CNBC that was sent by CEO Doug McMillon to the retailer’s employees. “Our customers want one, seamless Walmart experience,” McMillon wrote to employees. “Earning more of our customers’ business in food and Read More…
WASHINGTON— Amazon.com Inc. AMZN +1.38% Chief Executive Jeff Bezos tries never to schedule a meeting before 10 a.m. “I go to bed early, I get up early, I like to putter in the morning” reading the newspaper, drinking a cup of coffee and eating breakfast with his children, he said. Mr. Bezos schedules “high IQ” meetings before lunch, and tries Read More…
Now that the trade war between the US and China is on, observers on both sides are wondering what more China will do to retaliate against the US. One measure China could take that keeps popping up in conversation is that the country could start dumping its massive hoard of $1.1 trillion worth of US Read More…
Apple stock plunged nearly 6% Monday after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Apple customers can sue the company over prices on its App Store. The 5-to-4 ruling lets consumers move forward with a long-running lawsuit that claims Apple (ticker: AAPL) is using its market dominance to inflate prices via a 30% commission at its Read More…
Everything goes through a lifecycle, and operating systems are no different. They start out as new and fresh and full of possibilities and go through an explosive phase of stratospheric growth. This is the exciting period. But going along with that growth are the inevitable teething troubles or bugs and problems and sleepless nights. And Read More…
Intello, the New York City-based Saas management platform, announced a $2.5 million extended seed round today, along with some product enhancements. The round was led by Resolute Ventures . Harrison Metal and Magnetico Ventures also participated along with various individual angel investors including Zane Lackey from Signal Sciences, Chris Smoak from Atrium and Zach Sherman Read More…
Though not generating the fanfare that its new ConceptD computers have, Acer also introduced a pair of new Chromebooks at its press event this week. Unlike its numerous education models, however, these new laptops are designed to appeal to enterprises that want to add Chromebooks to their mobile fleet. The Chromebook 714 and 715 may Read More…
Shopko will close its remaining stores across the country, including all of its Montana locations. According to a document filed on March 18, the company will close all of its remaining locations by June. The company stated in a press release that it was unable to find a buyer for the business, which declared bankruptcy Read More…
It’s not unusual for companies to be inundated with messages from people looking for answers — what is rare, however, is for a CEO to personally respond to one. Yet one 10-year-old schoolboy appears to have succeeded, grabbing the attention of the boss behind one of Australia’s largest airlines. Alex Jacquot recently penned a letter Read More…
Believe it or not, there’s money in podcasts. Spotify is in advanced talks to acquire Gimlet Media, the Brooklyn-based narrative podcast company, for more than $200 million in cash, according to Recode. Gimlet has raised approximately $28.5 million in venture funding from investors including WPP, Stripes Group, LioneTree Partners, Graham Holdings, Betawarks, Cross Culture Ventures, Read More…
General Electric‘s cash problem will look better in 2019 after an accounting change takes effect, an accounting professor says. For reporting periods beginning after December 15, 2018, all public US companies should apply a new accounting standard that requires them to recognize financing-lease assets and operating-lease assets on their balance sheets. The previous accounting term Read More…
Alphabet shares traded slightly lower Tuesday morning as Wall Street delivered a classic reaction to its earnings which were released the prior evening: the results were good, but not good enough. While Alphabet reported revenue and profits for the fourth-quarter that topped Wall Street’s expectations, analysts said the internet giant’s margins were disappointing. That revelation Read More…
Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana knows an opportunity when he sees one, and one of the largest growing industries is cannabis. The NFL Hall of Famer joined former CEO of Yahoo Carol Bartz and invested in Caliva, a San Jose-based weed dispensary and delivery service, raising $75 million in funding, the company said Thursday. Read More…
In 1992, Ozzy Osbourne hit the road for his farewell “No More Tours” run. In 2019, there’s the sequel, “No More Tours II.” That would seem to contradict the whole “farewell” thing, but such is the way with rock ‘n’ roll. It’s become as predictable as the concert encore. Time and again, artists book “one final Read More…
Facebook has recruited Kate Patchen, a veteran of the U.S. Department of Justice who led its antitrust office in Silicon Valley, to be a director and associate general counsel of litigation. Patchen takes up her post amid ongoing scandals and reputation crises for her new employer, joining Facebook this month, according to her LinkedIn profile. The Read More…
Bitcoin and the broader cryptocurrency market plunged on Wednesday after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission delayed a decision on whether to approve a proposed bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). The federal agency said it will continue deliberations on the bitcoin ETF, which, if approved, would be the first of its kind. The bitcoin ETF, which Read More…