6 Most Important Things in Business Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 10:05AM EST · Published Jul 17, 4:52AM EDT

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Corporate raider Nelson Peltz’s Trian will launch a battle to get a seat on the board of Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG), which has failed to grow in recent years. Its shares are up only 1% in the last year.

Dow Jones may have exposed some of its customer data online, including information about Wall Street Journal subscribers, according to The Wall Street Journal.

China’s GDP grew faster than expected in the second quarter. It expanded 6.9% year over year based on industrial production and property values.

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The U.S. labor market continues to tighten. According to the National Association for Business Economics:

“The results of the most recent NABE Business Conditions Survey show more widespread increases in sales, profit margins, hiring, and capital spending in the second quarter of 2017 than in the first quarter of the year. Materials cost pressures appear to be easing, but more firms are facing higher labor costs and difficulty in hiring, especially skilled labor. Expectations for economic growth have moderated since the previous survey, but 60% of respondents still expect real GDP growth above 2% in the coming four quarters.”

IBM (NYSE: IBM) released a new series of computer products. According to CNBC:

IBM has launched a new mainframe system capable of running more than 12 billion encrypted transactions per day, in a bid to wade further into the financial cybersecurity market.

The mainframe, called IBM Z, seeks to address cyberattacks which have compromised financial data. It also aims to help firms automate financial regulatory compliance, in line with confidentiality and data protection laws.

“War for the Planet of the Apes” took box office honors this last weekend. According to Box Office Mojo:

Fox’s War for the Planet of the Apes delivered a #1 finish this weekend, opening a bit higher than the studio’s conservative expectations, though well below Mojo’s aggressive, pre-weekend forecast as did Broad Green’s PG-13 horror, Wish Upon, which fell short of $6 million over its first three days in release.

Playing more like Rise of the Planet of the Apes than Dawn, Fox’s War for the Planet of the Apes delivered an estimated $56.5 million this weekend from 4,022 theaters. That’s a little over a million more than Rise opened with back in 2011 and well below the $72.6 million Dawn delivered in its 2014 opening. Fortunately, War is carrying a budget $20 million lighter than Dawn, but the $150 million production still cost over $50 million more than Rise’s $93 million price tag.

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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.