6 Most Important Things in Business Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 7:05AM EST · Published Oct 18, 5:27AM EDT

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6 Most Important Things in Business Today — © Thinkstock

Roy Price, the head of Amazon Studios, a division of Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), who was accused of sexual harassment, has quit. He had been put on leave, and his ability to work at the company suspended.

International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) posted another quarterly drop in revenue, its 22nd in a row.

Racial comments by a well-know money manager have pushed him off three boards. According to Bloomberg:

Veteran investor Marc Faber left the boards of money manager Sprott Inc. and mining companies Novagold Resources Inc. and Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. after he claimed in his newsletter this month that “the U.S. would look like Zimbabwe” if it had been settled by black people instead of whites.

“The recent comments by Dr. Faber are deeply disappointing and are completely contradictory with the views of Sprott and its employees,” Sprott Chief Executive Officer Peter Grosskopf said in announcing Faber’s departure from the board. “We pride ourselves on being a diverse organization and comments of this sort will not be tolerated.”

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The Los Angeles Police Department will start to use drones. According to CNBC:

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) signed off on a year-long test of drones on Tuesday, becoming the largest police department in the U.S. to deploy the technology.

Despite vociferous protest, the Los Angeles Police Commission — the civilian board which oversees the department — voted 3-1 in favor of the LAPD using the pilot program.

The drones are set to be deployed by the LAPD’s Metropolitan Division SWAT Team in order to resolve “dangerous, high-risk tactical situations and improve situational awareness capabilities during natural disasters and catastrophic incidents,” the draft proposal said.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has topped 23,000 for the first time ever.

Time Inc. (NYSE: TIME), the troubled mass media company, will lay off more people next month. According to the New York Post:

Time Inc. is readying another round of layoffs, sources said, with about 200 people expected to get the ax — half of which will come from the editorial ranks.

The layoffs are expected to hit by mid-November.

The move comes as Time’s business and its stock continue to languish despite Chief Executive Rich Battista’s pledge to Wall Street to shave $400 million in costs as part of the big restructuring plan.

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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.