Facebook has issued a broad legal hold to employees instructing them to “preserve internal documents and communications since 2016” about its business following “intense media, legal and regulatory scrutiny over the social network’s harms” kicked off by the emergence of the Facebook Papers from whistleblower Frances Haugen - NYTimes and Bloomberg
The FTC appears to be an early leader in those regulators taking interest in Zuck & Co. - WSJ
While investors have kicked off a proposed class action of their own over an alleged “host of misrepresentations regarding enforcement of [Facebook’s] speech policies, its user growth and other metrics” – Law360
Pharma giant Merck has reached a deal to grant a “royalty-free license for its promising covid-19 pill to a United Nations-backed nonprofit” allowing it to be “manufactured and sold cheaply in the poorest nations, where vaccines for the coronavirus are in devastatingly short supply” - NYTimes
Daniel Loeb’s activist hedge fund Third Point has taken a sizeable stake of Royal Dutch Shell and is using its newfound weight to push the “oil giant to separate into two companies to retain and attract investors as many flee stocks seen as environmentally unfriendly” - WSJ and NYTimes
Speaking of the fossil fuel set, the latest black eye for consulting behemoth McKinsey focuses on its role in helping “the planet’s biggest polluters,” including advising 43 of the world’s 100 “biggest corporate polluters over the past half-century,” including Exxon Mobil, BP, Gazprom, and Saudi Aramco - NYTimes
T. Rowe Price will pay upwards of $4.2 billion to buy private-debt investing business Oak Hill Advisors, an “active player in distressed-debt deals for decades” that was especially busy last year providing “rescue financing to companies whose businesses were ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic” - WSJ
Fashion rental company Rent the Runway made a strong public debut on Wednesday, beginning trading nearly 10% higher than its IPO price of $21/share - NYTimes
Hertz has reached an agreement with Uber to “make 50,000 Teslas available in Uber’s ride-sharing network by 2023,” a move that comes just days after the car rental company announced a 100k order of Teslas for its own fleet - WSJ and Bloomberg
DOJ officials are probing Visa’s relationships with major fintech companies like Square, Stripe, and PayPal to evaluate whether “those deals kept the payments firms from using other card networks or money-movement technologies.” The investigation comes as part of the Justice Department’s broader antitrust scrutiny of Visa - WSJ
Some behind-the-scenes deets on Secretary Yellen & team’s “three-month push to hash out the most sweeping changes to the international tax system in a century, which culminated in an agreement that President Biden and other leaders of the Group of 20 nations are expected to complete this week in Rome” - NYTimes
Meet Footways, the pedestrian-friendly path-charting group that’s hoping a colorful map of London (first released amidst Covid lockdowns) can help spur others to “re-popularize the most ancient form of urban transportation” and make the city safer for walkers in the process - Bloomberg
Stay safe, and get vaxxed,
MDR
