6 Most Important Things in Business Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 8:27AM EST · Published Sep 7, 5:01AM EDT

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6 Most Important Things in Business Today — © National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Hurricane Irma barreled toward the Florida coast. A direct hit on the state would cause tens of billions of dollars in damages and affect businesses from cruise ships to orange farming to freight.

Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) found several hundred fake ads posted by Russian interests and possibly linked to the 2016 election.

T-Mobile US Inc. (NASDAQ: TMUS) will offer free Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) to some subscribers to its wireless service. It is an example of how cutthroat the efforts of wireless companies are to steal competition in a U.S. market that is saturated. The efforts also have become expensive to carriers, pressuring margins.

Toys “R” Us may declare Chapter 11, according to The New York Times. The retailer is one of the largest in the United States and has been a dominant force in the toy segment of the industry since the late 1950s.

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The vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, Stanley Fischer, will retire, giving Trump a chance to shape the central bank’s make up.

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) has pledged $240 million to fund an artificial intelligence center at MIT. According to CNBC:

IBM on Wednesday said it will spend $240 million to open a Watson-branded artificial intelligence research lab in collaboration with a long-time partner, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

IBM has made larger financial commitments in the past. Still, the amount of money is notable in the world of AI research.

MIT is no stranger to that field: The university was home to one of the first AI labs and continues to be well regarded as a place to do work in the sector.

And MIT is also accustomed to working with IBM. In the 1950s Big Blue worked on a computer for an air defense system together with MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, and in the 1980s IBM Research and MIT were both part of a consortium on superconductivity.

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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.