Meta has reached a deal with federal authorities in which the Facebook parent will “adopt new online advertising practices” aimed at resolving allegations that its online ads “discriminated against users by race, gender and...more
Jobs Report Friday. Here’s what we’re watching for in the numbers, including speculation about some easing in the historically tight labor marke...more
Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg is stepping down after 14 years of steering the ship at Zuck’s side. Sandberg will stay on the Board of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Javier Olivan will take over...more
Broadcom is in the throes of negotiations that would see it pay nearly $60 billion for VMWare Inc. in “what would be one of the biggest takeover deals of the year.” News of the potential deal by Broadcom, “a semiconductor...more
White House officials are mulling over a plan that would “release one million barrels of oil a day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for as long as 180 days,” a move intended to ease sticker shock at the pump for Americans...more
3/31/2022
/ Activision ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Facebook ,
Financial Institutions ,
Financial Markets ,
Oil & Gas ,
Oil Prices ,
Russia ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) ,
TikTok ,
Ukraine
The geopolitical morass in Ukraine drove stocks down on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 hitting correction territory—down more than 10% from its January peak. Much of that action today was driven by newly unveiled sanctions against...more
The SEC has opened a probe into the relationship between “the U.S. arm of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, and two trading firms with ties to Binance’s founder.” Those firms “act as market makers that...more
Texas AG Ken Paxton has sued Facebook parent Meta accusing it of violating “a state consumer protection law by repeatedly capturing and commercializing biometric data in photos and videos for more than a decade without the...more
Jobs Report Friday again, and general consensus is that with the Omicron surge hitting smack dab in the middle of January hiring, these numbers are going to be weird. Very weird...more
We know Zuck’s all in on the metaverse. And a decrease in Q4 profits and full-year accounting help us understand the monetary size of that commitment: some $10 billion in 2021, as Meta poured cash into its Reality Labs...more
Sony announced on Monday that it will acquire video-game maker Bungie, the latest in a recent series of big moves in the gaming industry in which the “game market further consolidates around some of its biggest companies.”...more
Tuesday saw another Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde day on Wall Street, with markets diving to start the day before a late rally that petered out and left the Nasdaq down more than 2% and the S&P 500 down about half that...more
Markets pulled themselves back from the brink of a truly devastating Monday of trading to end the day, but their one-day fall of 3-4% yesterday suggests that the volatility that’s marked the first three weeks of 2022 may be...more
Jobs Report Friday! Here’s what we’re looking for in the numbers, including a possible rebound from November’s lower-than-expected figures. Note that the report also likely doesn’t account for the recent Omicron surge, which...more
1/7/2022
/ Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Privacy ,
Facebook ,
Financial Markets ,
Google ,
International Trade Commission (ITC) ,
Public Policy ,
Starbucks ,
Subscription Services ,
Supply Chain
A French appeals court cut a 2019 fine by more than half on Monday but still left Swiss bank UBS with a $2 billion penalty “for helping rich clients evade taxes” through what prosecutors called a “long-running scheme” that...more
A bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general from 10 states has “opened an investigation into Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, for promoting its social media app Instagram while knowing of mental and...more
11/19/2021
/ Artificial Intelligence ,
Automotive Industry ,
CVS ,
Cyber Attacks ,
Cybersecurity ,
Facebook ,
Financial Markets ,
Ford Motor ,
Instagram ,
OCC ,
Semiconductors ,
Startups ,
Tesla
The tortuously negotiated and much-anticipated infrastructure bill that will commit $1 trillion to rebuilding the “nation’s roads, ports and power lines” officially became law on Monday. Here’s another look at what the final...more
In a blow to Google and the rest of Big Tech, an EU appeals court has refused to “overturn a landmark antitrust ruling by European regulators” from 2017 over Google’s alleged “preferential treatment to its own...more
11/10/2021
/ Antitrust Violations ,
Big Tech ,
Competition ,
DoorDash ,
EU ,
Facebook ,
Financial Markets ,
Google ,
NYDFS ,
OK Supreme Court ,
Opioid ,
Prescription Drugs ,
Public Nuisance ,
Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) ,
Technology Sector ,
Tesla ,
Zillow
Jobs Report Friday again! And this one should be a doozy, as we look for what a wave of recent strikes, increased competition for workers, and millions of workers reconsidering career paths will mean for the numbers...more
11/5/2021
/ AT&T ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Facebook ,
Financial Markets ,
Initial Public Offering (IPO) ,
Instagram ,
Jeff Bezos ,
NASA ,
Oil Prices ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Theranos ,
Uber ,
Verizon
All the details from the Fed’s long-awaited tapering announcement on Wednesday, in the central bank laid out a plan for slowing its Covid-era asset-buying program. During comments after the Fed’s release, Chair Powell...more
Prompted by concerns over privacy, “government investigation, a class-action lawsuit and regulatory woes,” Facebook is planning to “shut down its decade-old facial recognition system this month, deleting the face scan data of...more
11/4/2021
/ Apple ,
China ,
Data Collection ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Dow Jones ,
Facebook ,
Facial Recognition Technology ,
Financial Markets ,
John Deere ,
NLRB ,
S&P ,
Tesla ,
Yahoo! ,
Zillow
Barclay’s CEO Jes Staley is stepping down immediately after a two-year investigation by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Conduct Authority into Staley’s “relationship with the disgraced financier...more
11/1/2021
/ Apple ,
Barclays ,
Facebook ,
Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) ,
Financial Markets ,
G20 ,
GameStop ,
John Deere ,
Microsoft ,
Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) ,
Remote Working ,
Tariffs ,
Unions
Q3 GDP data showed the full impact of the Delta variant and supply chain issues on America’s economic recovery, with GDP rising just 2% in the quarter ending September 30 as compared to the 6.7% it grew on an annualized basis...more
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...more
A Mozambique-based tuna-fishing deal gone wrong has left Credit Suisse holding the bag to the tune of $475 million—the total in fines it will pay US and UK authorities to a foreign bribery investigation linked to the tuna...more
10/20/2021
/ Bitcoin ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Facebook ,
Financial Markets ,
Immigration and Nationality Act ,
IRS ,
Netflix ,
NYSE ,
UK Brexit ,
Unemployment ,
Wire Fraud