Welcome to the October edition of the UK Tax Round Up. October has been an extraordinary month in the UK, with political turbulence triggering reversals of many of the tax policies announced by the government at the end of...more
Despite mixed messages over the past few weeks, it sounds as if the Bank of England is considering taking UK base rate interest below 0% in order to give itself and the Chancellor more headroom for measures intended to...more
Podcasting megastar (and, for me, “News Radio” jack-of-all-trades) Joe Rogan has signed a multiyear deal to bring his “Joe Rogan Experience” show to Spotify, an agreement that “could be worth more than $100 million based on...more
Facebook has agreed to pay $550 million to resolve a class-action lawsuit claiming that Zuck & Co.’s use of facial recognition technology violated Illinois’ biometric privacy law. Though the settlement is little more than “a...more
Hackers who targeted airport currency exchange mainstay Travelex in a ransomware attack on New Year’s Eve have alerted British media that they possess 5 GB of sensitive customer data from the company “since gaining access to...more
Oil jumped for a second straight day, with futures near $70/barrel as fallout from the U.S.’s drone-strike assassination of Iran’s Qassem Soleimani continues to raise “the prospect of disruptions in the world’s most important...more
Fiat Chrysler and rival Peugeot have agreed to binding merger terms that, if approved by US and European regulators, would create a “$50 billion auto giant that would rank among the world’s largest car companies by sales”....more
As expected, the Fed kept interest rates unchanged on Wednesday while also signaling that “they would wait to see how the economy fared before making another move”....more
Fiat Chrysler and France’s Peugeot are in the midst of merger talks that, if finalized, could “create a nearly $50 billion trans-Atlantic auto giant.” One option being bandied about in the “fluid” talks is an “all-share...more
Google will pay a “record $170 million fine and make changes to protect children’s privacy on YouTube” as part of a deal it reached this week with the FTC and NY AG’s office, both of whom had accused YouTube of “violating the...more
A ruling this morning from South Korea’s top court means that Samsung’s de facto leader, its vice chair and chaebol heir Lee Jae-yong, could be heading back behind bars. The high court found that a lower appeals court “had...more
Man-of-the-people PM Boris Johnson is set to as the Queen to suspend parliament for 5 weeks in an attempt to squeeze the time for opposition to the October 31st Brexit deadline, a move that’s prompting concerns about a...more
Though expected after its earlier move to cut its revenue forecast, Apple’s official quarterly profits reporting yesterday still disappointed, as the company posted its “first holiday-quarter drop in both revenue and profit...more
Some reaction to the HQ2 x2 news, including what a pair of new tech hubs actually means for the cities that have thrown out the red carpet to Amazon and other technology giants....more
The Journal’s weekend report on Facebook’s role in the unauthorized use of data from 50 million users wreaked havoc on the ‘Book’s stock yesterday, with losses spreading across the tech sector (and fellow its FANGers in...more
Wells Fargo is again in federal regulators’ crosshairs. The OCC has dubbed the bank a repeat offender and is weighing a “formal enforcement action” over “improprieties in its auto-insurance and mortgage operations”....more
The White House has made it official and nominated Fed governor Jerome Powell as the next Chair of the Federal Reserve. Powell is expected to continue the basic fiscal (though not necessarily regulatory) policies of the...more
Uber made it official today, announcing that controversial CEO Travis Kalanick will be taking an indefinite leave of absence, though even the announcement and board commentary that followed seemed to highlight the “bad-boy...more
Activist investor Carl Icahn has taken a sizeable stake in Bristol-Myers Squibb, a move that reportedly caught execs at the drugmaker unawares and sets the stage for a potential sale....more
The Carlyle Group is staring down the barrel of a $1 billion civil lawsuit by the failed Carlyle Capital Corp.’s liquidators over the 2008 collapse of the mortgage-bond fund. The trial’s taking place in Guernsey, a British...more