6 Most Important Things in Business World Now

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 10:59AM EST · Published Jun 17, 5:46AM EDT

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The Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) takeover of Whole Foods Market Inc. (NASDAQ: WFM) has rocked the grocery business and will have repercussions well beyond that. Shares of grocery giant Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR) where demolished. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT), which relies on groceries for a large portion of its sales, were also hit. The move sparked a round of speculation about which retailers might be the next targets for Amazon and Wal-Mart as they racket up their competition for dominance in the U.S. retail sector.

The shares of Lyft, Uber’s primary competitor, have gained on the secondary market. Because neither company is public, they trade very small numbers of shares on private exchanges. Lyft was considered a troubled company just a few months ago. According to CNBC:

Uber’s unrelenting problems have provided a boost to rival Lyft with investors as well as customers.

Lyft shares are among those most in demand right now among wealthy investors looking to buy into tech startups via private markets, according to three people whose firms buy such shares for themselves or others.

President Trump’s income between the start of 2016 and April 15 was approximately $600 million, according to a report made public by the Office of Government Ethics. Apparently, much of this came from his golf course and resorts businesses.

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General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM) said it will move 600 jobs from Mexico to Texas. While the decision does not appear to be a direct reaction to pressure from the president for American companies to build job bases in the United States and bring them back from off shore, GM’s move does fit a pattern of U.S. firms who have made minor adjustments to their employee bases because of White House pressure.

A former CenturyLink Inc. (NYSE: CTL) worker says that the telecom company charges customers for accounts they have not opened. The accusation says that high pressure from the firm to add sales is the reason for the activity. The claim was part of a suit brought by an employee who alleges she was fired because she told the company’s CEO about the fraud.

The annual State of the Nation’s Housing Report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies says that almost 40 million Americans pay more for housing than they can afford. These people pay more than a threshold of a third of household budgets spent on rent or mortgages.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.