GE—still in streamlining mode—agreed yesterday to sell its biopharma business to Danaher (current CEO Larry’s Culp’s former company, btw) for a reported $21.4 billion in the form of $21 billion in cash and $400 million in assumed pension liabilities – NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch
Oh, to be Elon and just feel the NEED to be heard. The SEC is urging a SDNY judge to hold the Tesla founder “in contempt for inaccurately tweeting the electric car maker would make about 500,000 vehicles this year, which the agency says violates the settlement over last year’s tweets claiming he might take the company private” – Law360 and Bloomberg and NYTimes and WSJ and Marketplace
Some Tuesday morning quarterbacking of the White House’s apparent decision to ease off of planned tariff increases on Chinese goods that were set to take effect on Friday. In short—that “substantial progress” better be real – NYTimes
Speaking of second guessing, Mr. Buffett is now officially on the record saying that he overpaid for his investment in the Kraft Heinz venture he helped engineer with 3G Capital (an investment that cost him $2.7 billion in 2018), but he also noted that he’s not doing anything with his 27% stake because pulling the plug isn’t his style – WSJ
Though there’s been new referendum scuttlebutt for some time now, the move by Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn to officially back the call for a second Brexit vote is a major new development in the slow-motion disaster that is Britain’s march toward an EU departure in just over a month’s time – NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg
After a brutal Christmas Eve dive, Wall Street has quietly put together an impressive 2-month rally, with “the stock market off to its best start since 1987.” All good, right? Well, turns out there’s a vital missing ingredient here: actual investors – NYTimes
Barclays, Deutsche Bank, and RBS, among others, are pushing back against a request from plaintiff hedge fund FrontPoint to “reconsider their dismissal from an antitrust suit over alleged Libor rigging” – Law360
More fodder for the inverted-yield-curve-as-predictor-of-economic-doom worriers among us – Bloomberg
We’ll call this sit-down with Kai a mild version of Yellen Unleashed – Marketplace
Bank of America has announced plans to drop the Merrill Lynch name from some of its businesses as part of a rebranding of its trading and investment-banking operations – WSJ
The last time the hockey world gut this excited about one of its own being mic’d up, it came with a sense of awe at the sheer number of grammatical uses that Coach Boudreau found for the F-word. This is something quite different but equally helpful, especially with those of us with mini-mites at home – SBNation
