6 Most Important Things in Business Today

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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6 Most Important Things in Business Today

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Bitcoin hit a new record. According to Reuters:

Bitcoin, the world’s biggest and best-known cryptocurrency, was quoted at $17,310 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange BTC=BTSP, up 5.1 percent on the day. Earlier on Tuesday bitcoin hit a record high of $17,428.42, registering a roughly 20-fold increase in its price for the year as it drew in millions of new investors.

General Electric Co.’s (NYSE: GE) board looked into the simultaneous use of two jets by former boss Jeff Immelt. The Wall Street Journal reports:

General Electric Co. recently conducted an internal review into the flying of a spare business jet to accompany former Chief Executive Jeff Immelt, as it seeks to understand an unusual practice that went on for years and surprised investors when they learned of it in October.

The investigation was discussed at a GE board meeting last week, people familiar with the matter said. William “Mo” Cowan, GE’s vice president of litigation and legal policy, led an effort in recent weeks to find out who knew about the extra plane and when they knew it, one person said.

It is unclear whether any findings would be made public.

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Sears Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ: SHLD) will borrow more money to stay afloat. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Sears Holdings Corp. extended the terms of a $400 million loan while announcing a new planned borrowing to cover pension contributions.

The Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based retailer entered into an agreement with “new and existing lenders” to delay the maturity of its term loan to January 2019 from June 2018, with an option to further extend the maturity date by another six months, according to a Tuesday securities filing.

Sears had paid down the loan by $325 million in the fourth quarter. Despite frequent predictions from short sellers of the company’s demise, the loan extension suggests that investors haven’t lost hope that Sears can stanch a persistent cash burn and weather a downturn in brick-and-mortar shopping nationwide.

Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) is close to buying most of the studio and TV assets of Rupert Murdoch’s Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. (NYSE: FOX) at a price set around $60 billion.

An expert in China’s economy says that its growth could sharply decelerate. According to CNBC:

China’s economy will expand a bit faster than expected this year on resilient consumption but growth will stutter in 2018, the Asian Development Bank said Wednesday.

Growth on the mainland is now expected at 6.8 percent in 2017, up from the previous forecast of 6.7 percent, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said in its latest forecasts released on Wednesday.

Growth prospects in China for 2017 have been revised upward as spending by households has held up reasonably well. Still, persisting headwinds will weigh on economic impulses next year.

The world’s second-largest economy is likely to grow by 6.4 percent in 2018 due to “controlled moderation” in the economy, Joseph Zveglich, ADB’s macroeconomic research director told CNBC. That would mark the slowest pace of expansion since 1990, according to World Bank data.

As trade tensions grow between the United States and Canada, the latter dropped the purchase of some Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) jets. According to CNNMoney:

 The country has ditched plans to buy 18 new F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets from Boeing amid a trade dispute with the U.S.

Instead, Canada will buy used, older model F/A-18s from Australia, Canadian officials announced Tuesday. The loss of the $5.23 billion deal is a major blow to Boeing.

“We received a formal offer from the government of Australia and we intend to pursue it,” Canadian Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan said at a news conference.

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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
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.

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