6 Most Important Things in Business Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 13, 3:45PM EDT · Published Feb 6, 4:58AM EST

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At 5 a.m. Eastern Time, Dow futures were slightly higher after a 1,130 drop yesterday.

As a trial between Uber and Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) self-driving car company Waymo began, Waymo called Uber “a cheater.” According to The Wall Street Journal:

Silicon Valley’s biggest legal battle in years began on Monday as lawyers from Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo and Uber Technologies Inc. traded barbs in a federal case that could have significant implications for the race to bring robot cars to the streets.

During opening remarks in front of a 10-person jury sitting less than a mile from Uber headquarters, Waymo’s lawyers portrayed Uber’s former chief executive, Travis Kalanick, as a cheater who would do anything to catch up to his competitor.

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The head of Lululemon Athletica Inc. (NASDAQ: LULU) left suddenly. According to CNBC:

Lululemon Athletica CEO Laurent Potdevin is resigning from the retailer, effective immediately, the company announced Monday.

Lululemon said Potdevin “fell short of … standards of conduct” to respect employees and show integrity. Meanwhile, the company’s board of directors has started searching for a new global CEO. Potdevin will also be removed from his position on the board

U.S. colleges and universities raised a huge amount of money last year. According to Bloomberg:

U.S. colleges led by Harvard and Stanford reaped a record $43.6 billion in charitable contributions in the last fiscal year, thanks to booming stock markets.

The richest schools continue to get richer, with less than 1 percent of all colleges accounting for almost 30 percent of the total for the year ended June 30, the Council for Aid to Education, which tracks university giving, said in a survey released Tuesday. The previous record was set a year prior at $41 billion.

The value of bitcoin continued to crash. According to CNBC:

Bitcoin dropped to its lowest in more than two months.

The digital currency fell to a low of $5,947.40, its lowest since mid November, according to CoinDesk, whose bitcoin price index tracks prices from four major exchanges.

Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR) will dump its convenience store operation. According to MarketWatch:

Kroger Co. said Monday that it has entered into an agreement with to sell its convenience store business for $2.15 billion to EG Group, a U.K.-based company that counts convenience stores among its portfolio. The transaction is expected to close during Kroger’s fiscal first quarter, which ends in April. Kroger operates convenience stores in 18 states under names including Kwik Shop, Loaf ‘N Jug and Tom Thumb.

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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.