6 Most Important Things in Business Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 13, 3:37PM EDT · Published May 4, 5:02AM EDT

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6 Most Important Things in Business Today — © Wikimedia Commons

AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) argued against selling assets to close its deal to buy Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) According to Reuters:

AT&T told a federal judge late Thursday it should reject any request by the U.S. Justice Department to force it to divest its DirecTV unit or Turner networks as art of approving its proposed $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner Inc

The publication of the closing briefs from both sides brings to end the trial over a deal which took on broader political significance immediately after it was announced in October 2016.

The United States wants a large cut in its trade imbalance with China. According to The Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. handed China a lengthy list of demands on trade, ranging from immediately cutting a trade imbalance by $100 billion a year to halting all Chinese government support for advanced technologies, according to a document sent to Beijing before talks this week.

The U.S.-China trade relationship is “significantly imbalanced,” said the document, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. It noted that U.S. investment and sales of services into China remain “severely constrained” and added that China’s industrial policies “pose significant economic and security concerns” to the U.S.

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Twitter Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) told people to change their passwords. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Twitter Inc on Thursday said it found a bug in how it stored user passwords that could have left them visible to people in its internal computer system.

Twitter urged its users to change their passwords, but said an investigation showed no indication of a breach.

The former head of Volkswagen was charged in the United States over the diesel cheating scandal. According to Bloomberg:

Volkswagen AG’s former Chief Executive Officer Martin Winterkorn was charged in the U.S. in a deepening probe into the German automaker’s cheating on diesel emissions testing.

Winterkorn, who stepped down from his role as CEO days after the scandal became public, is accused of conspiring to defraud the U.S. and violate the Clean Air Act. The March 14 indictment was unsealed by a Michigan federal court on Thursday.

Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-B) has bought more shares in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) According to Bloomberg:

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. bought an additional 75 million shares of Apple Inc., bolstering its stake and backing the iPhone maker’s ability to generate profits, CNBC reported, citing Chairman Warren Buffett.

The stock purchase adds to the almost 170 million shares that Berkshire Hathaway already owns and would see it overtake State Street Corp. to become Apple’s third-largest investor, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The Cupertino, California-based company was already Buffett’s biggest shareholding.

Xerox Corp. (NYSE: XRX) reversed course and said its CEO would stay after a battle that cost him his job. According to CNBC:

Xerox Corp said on Thursday its current board and management team, which included Chief Executive Jeff Jacobson, will stay, after a settlement agreement it had reached with dissenting shareholders to oust them expired.

Xerox had said on Tuesday its CEO and most of its board will step down to settle a lawsuit by activist shareholders Carl Icahn and Darwin Deason, handing over to new management which will reconsider a controversial deal with Japan’s Fujifilm Holdings.

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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.