6 Most Important Things in Business Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 9:19AM EST · Published Aug 9, 5:17AM EDT

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6 Most Important Things in Business Today — © Toyota Motor Corp.

Several states are at work to land a new Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) and Mazda joint plant. According to the Wall Street Journal, these include Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas. The plant will involve an investment of $1.6 billion by the two companies.

Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) will start its own version of Netflix and will pull its content from the movie rental giant. Disney will offer two streaming services, one for its sports content and another for its movies. The decision is a direct assault on Netflix, the streaming industry leader.

Credit card and payment processing firm Vantiv will buy e-commerce payment company Worldpay for $10.8 billion.

Fidelity will start to allow its clients to see the value of bitcoins they own displayed on the investment giant’s website. According to Reuters:

Fidelity Investments Inc has started allowing clients to use its website to view their holdings of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies held through digital wallet provider Coinbase, the company said on Wednesday.

The initiative, previously tested with the Boston-based money manager’s employees, is a rare example of an established financial services company warming up to cryptocurrencies.

Starting Wednesday, most Fidelity clients will be able to authorize Coinbase, one of the largest crypto-currency exchanges in the United States, to provide the fund manager with data on their holdings.

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The number of job openings in the United States reached an all-time record. According to CNNMoney:

American employers are trying to hire, but they can’t find the right workers for the right price.
The U.S. boasted 6.2 million job openings in June, a record level, according to a Labor Department report published on Tuesday.

The high number of job openings illustrates a strength and a weakness of the U.S. job market. On the good side, American employers are ready to hire. During the Great Recession, job openings plunged to as low as 2.2 million in 2009. The Labor Department began tracking open positions in 2000.

Netflix will launch a talk show series hosted by David Letterman. It will involve six shows and will start in 2018.

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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.