6 Most Important Things in Business Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 13, 3:59PM EDT · Published Jul 13, 5:16AM EDT

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A French court dismissed a 1.3 billion tax bill levied on Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL).

Global PC shipments dropped 4.3% in the second quarter, according to research firm Gartner:

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 61.1 million units in the second quarter of 2017, a 4.3 percent decline from the second quarter of 2016, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc. The PC industry is in the midst of a 5 year slump, and this is the 11th straight quarter of declining shipments. Shipments in the second quarter of this year were the lowest quarter volume since 2007.

HP Inc. (NYSE: HPQ) had a 20.8% share of the market for shipments, just ahead of Lenovo at 19.9%. Dell had a 15.6% market share, followed by Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) at 6.9%.

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Qatar Airlines has changed a filing with U.S. regulators that will allow it to continue to seek a 10% stake in American Airlines Group Inc. (NASDAQ: AAL).

Short sellers have begun to aggressively attack troubled social network Snap Inc. (NYSE: SNAP), according to the Financial Times. Their interest includes the company’s doubtful business model and the fact that the lock-up of a number of shares will begin soon.

OPEC compliance with its production cuts has started to fail and the resulting rise in exports may push oil prices down. According to CNBC:

Global oil supply rose in June as compliance with an OPEC-led deal to freeze production showed signs that it was stalling, the International Energy Agency (IEA) noted in its latest market report on Thursday.

The supply of oil rose by 720,000 barrels a day in June across the world and by 340,000 barrels a day in OPEC countries. This was driven by higher production even in those countries subject to an OPEC-led deal to cut production. Saudi Arabia has increased its flows, the IEA said, as well as Libya and Nigeria who are not part of the production freeze.

Mercedes has come up against emissions accusations similar to those which hit Volkswagen. According to German paper Sueddeutsche Zeitung (via Google Translate):

From 2008 to 2016, Daimler will have sold over one million vehicles in Europe and the USA with excessively high pollutant emissions.
The technical subtleties are similar to those of VW and Audi, the prosecutor’s office Stuttgart and the US Department of Justice are determined with great force. The question is whether the Daimler case will be something like Volkswagen 2.0.

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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.