According to Reuters, Texas power company Oncor has been bought by Sempra Energy (NYSE: SRE) Warren Buffett had also bid for the operation. The news service reports:
Texas utility Energy Future Holdings will abandon a deal to sell power transmission company Oncor to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N) for $9 billion and will accept a $9.45 billion bid for Oncor by Sempra Energy (SRE.N) instead, people familiar with the matter said.
The development represents a rare blow for Buffett, who avoids bidding wars for companies and had swooped in two months ago to buy Oncor after two previous attempts by Energy Future to sell it were blocked by Texas regulators.
The Wall Street Journal confirmed the story.
Recode reports that departing GE (NYSE: GE) CEO Jeff Immelt is the leading candidate to run global ride-sharing company Uber. Uber has been deeply troubled by scandals and the departure of its own CEO.
“Hitman’s Bodyguard” took the box office prize for the weekend. Box Office Mojo reports:
Lionsgate and Summit’s action-comedy The Hitman’s Bodyguard finished ahead of pre-weekend expectations and took the #1 spot at the weekend box office while WB and New Line’s Annabelle: Creation scored a second place finish over its sophomore frame. The weekend wasn’t too kind, however, to Bleecker’s Logan Lucky, which did manage to finish third, but was unable to crack double digits from over 3,000 locations. As for the weekend overall, the top twelve narrowly escaped becoming the worst weekend of 2017 by less than $1 million by combining for $81.5 million. As of right now, this means the month of August is currently pacing 34% behind August last year while the summer season is pacing 12.8% behind last year.
Energy company Total made a huge acquisition. According to Bloomberg:
Total SA agreed to buy the oil and gas unit of A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S, the French company’s biggest acquisition since 1999 and another sign of the accelerating pace of energy deals after a long downturn.
Total will pay Maersk with $4.95 billion of its own shares and assume $2.5 billion of the Copenhagen-based company’s debt, according to a statement on Monday. The full transaction value of $7.45 billion is above what some analysts were expecting and Maersk shares jumped as much as 5.7 percent following the announcement.
Elon Musk joined a group who want a ban on robots used as weapons. He and the group released a statement:
“Lethal autonomous weapons threaten to become the third revolution in warfare. Once developed, they will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend.”
VW will release an electric microbus. According to 24/7 Wall St.’s report:
At the annual Concours d’Elegance at Pebble Beach, one of the iconic vehicles of the last six decades got a new life. Volkswagen AG’s North America division announced that the company has green-lighted an all-electric version of the VW Microbus that is currently scheduled to be in dealer showrooms in 2022.
The company has dubbed the vehicle the I.D. Buzz, following on its previously announced all-electric I.D. compact four-door sedan.
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