6 Most Important Things in Business Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 13, 3:57PM EDT · Published Aug 8, 4:57AM EDT

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6 Most Important Things in Business Today — © courtesy of Alphabet Inc.

Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Google fired the employee who wrote an anti-diversity memo. The document was widely circulated in by the press.

Uber’s chairman wrote a note to the company’s staff saying the former CEO would not return. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Uber Technologies Inc. won’t be bringing co-founder Travis Kalanick back as chief executive, the company’s chairman told employees in an attempt to quell reports the co-founder was attempting a comeback.

“Travis is not returning as CEO,” Garrett Camp, himself a co-founder, wrote Monday in a staff email reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “We are committed to hiring a new world-class CEO to lead Uber.”

In his note, Mr. Camp said the subject of Mr. Kalanick returning as CEO came up during a product leadership meeting last week and he wanted to tamp down the speculation.

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In an attempt to increase the share price of Automatic Data Processing Inc. (NASDAQ: ADP), Pershing Square founder Bill Ackman nominated three members to its board, including himself. Pershing has taken a major position in ADP stock.

Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) will raise $1.5 billion in debt as it expands its production in anticipation of huge demand for its new, inexpensive, Model 3.

U.S. credit card debt has moved above the level set before the financial crisis. According to Bloomberg:

Outstanding card loans reached $1.02 trillion in June, data from the Federal Reserve show, as lenders including Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. compete to sign up cardholders who may carry balances — a relatively lucrative business in a prolonged period of low interest rates.

The bet is that this time it won’t end so badly. In 2008, a drop in home prices spiraled into a global financial meltdown, and after the jobless rate surged toward 10 percent, banks wrote off more than $100 billion in credit-card loans over the next two years.

Moody’s expressed concern about banks in Qatar as the dispute between the country and its neighbors worsened. Moody’s analysts wrote:

Moody’s Investors Service has changed the outlook on Qatar’s banking system to negative from stable due to the weakening operating conditions and continued funding pressures facing Qatari banks. The outlook also captures the potential weakening capacity of the Qatar government to support the country’s banks. The outlook expresses Moody’s expectation of how bank creditworthiness will evolve in Qatar over the next 12-18 months.

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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.