6 Most Important Things in Business Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 11, 11:47PM EST · Published May 11, 4:44AM EDT

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Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) has stopped marketing on Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) YouTube. According to Reuters:

Network gear maker Cisco Systems Inc is pulling all online ads from YouTube due to fears of the ads appearing on sensitive content on the platform, Cisco’s chief marketing officer, Karen Walker, said in a blog on Wednesday.

The blog, which seemed to have been removed from Cisco’s website on Thursday, said the company would not like its ads to “accidentally end up in the wrong place, such as on a streaming video with sensitive content,” adding that the network gear maker will continue to use YouTube as a platform to share Cisco’s video content.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) are getting into the credit card business. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Apple Inc. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are preparing to launch a new joint credit card, a move that would deepen the technology giant’s push into its customers’ wallets and mark the Wall Street firm’s first foray into plastic.

The planned card would carry the Apple Pay brand and could launch early next year, people familiar with the matter said. Apple will replace its longstanding rewards-card partnership with Barclays PLC, the people said.

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U.S. sanctions of Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) may last longer than expected. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Wells Fargo & Co. will remain constrained by a regulator-imposed limit on growth for longer than expected, its chief executive said Thursday, as the bank continues to address the ramifications of risk-management failures.

Citing “widespread consumer abuses,” the Federal Reserve in February imposed an asset cap on Wells Fargo, an unprecedented enforcement action that threatened to crimp the San Francisco-based lender’s revenue and profit growth.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) has killed some of the ads it runs on Google. According to Bloomberg:

Amazon.com Inc. has stopped buying a popular type of Google ad, according to people familiar with the decision. The move deepens the rift between the technology titans and signals Amazon’s growing ambition in the digital advertising market.

The pullback affects highly coveted real estate at the top of Google search results, where retailers and e-commerce bid and pay handsomely to place colorful, image-rich ads that show up when consumers look online for running shoes, headphones and other products to buy.

The head of a large pension fund decried the influence Mark Zuckerberg has over Facebook Inc.’s (NASDAQ: FB) decisions. According to CNBC:

The capital markets are a democracy, but that’s not how Facebook is being run, said Christopher Ailman, the chief investment officer of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, known as CalSTRS.

“There is something wrong,” he said Thursday on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.”

“When Facebook changed its structure to take public money in, they should have changed their structure to a more open board structure, and we think that there’s a problem with having one person in charge of the company,” he added.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg owns a majority of the voting rights to the company.

One expert believes oil prices could move above $100 a barrel. According to CNNMoney:

Is $100 oil on its way back? Bank of America thinks so.

The bank’s analysts wrote Thursday that collapsing oil production in Venezuela and potential export disruptions in Iran could push the price of Brent crude as high as $100 per barrel in 2019.

The analysts said their target price for Brent, the global benchmark, was $90 for the second quarter of next year. But they warned there was a risk that deteriorating conditions in Iran would push prices to $100, a level not seen since 2014.

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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.