6 Most Important Things in Business Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 13, 3:43PM EDT · Published Feb 23, 5:09AM EST

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6 Most Important Things in Business Today — © tesla.com

Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) has started to take orders for its low-priced Model 3. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Tesla Inc. for the first time is notifying some reservation holders new to the electric-car brand that they can begin configuring and ordering their Model 3 sedan.

The milestone suggests production of the vehicle at Tesla’s assembly plant is picking up steam after a turbulent beginning in July. Previously, the Silicon Valley auto maker had limited opening orders to reservation holders who were employees or had been previous Tesla customers.

A bank will no longer handle NRA credit cards. According to Bloomberg:

The nation’s largest privately-owned bank holding company and a major car rental chain said Thursday they will stop promotions aimed at National Rifle Association members.

The Nebraska-based First National Bank of Omaha will not renew its contract to issue the group’s NRA Visa Card, spokesman Kevin Langin said in a statement.

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Nissan has launched a self-driving taxi service. According to CNBC:

Automaker Nissan and tech firm DeNA will test out a self-driving taxi service in Japan.

Nissan said Friday it would conduct a field test of the service, called Easy Ride, on March 5, in the Minatomirai district of Yokohama, along a set route of about 4.5 kilometers.

CNBC believes one of the targets of the project is Uber.

Cybercrime has exploded, according to a security company. According to CNBC:

Cyber crime is the only criminal enterprise with a ‘help desk’

The global cost of cybercrime has now reached as much as $600 billion — about 0.8 percent of global GDP — according to a new report.

More worrying than that figure may be the massive growth from 2014, when the same analysis showed the cost was only as much as $445 billion.

A celebrity’s comments about Snap Inc. (NYSE: SNAP) sent its stock plunging. According to CNNMoney:

Kylie Jenner is not happy about Snapchat’s new redesign.

Snap stock closed down 6% on Thursday after the reality TV star said she is no longer using the app. The plunge wiped about $1.3 billion off the company’s market value.

Jenner has been one of Snapchat’s most influential users.

Snap’s CEO got a huge pay package last year. According to CNNMoney:

Snapchat may have struggled during its first year as a public company, but you wouldn’t know it from the CEO’s pay.

Evan Spiegel, the CEO of Snapchat’s parent company, received $638 million in total compensation in 2017, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday.

The vast majority of that came from a one-time stock award given to Spiegel for taking his company public in March. Spiegel’s salary for 2017 was $98,078.

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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.