Media

6 Most Important Things in Business Today

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: June 4, 2018 4:59 am

Last Updated: January 11, 2020 10:50 pm

Monsanto’s name will be eliminated when Bayer finishes its buyout. According to Reuters:

Germany’s Bayer will wrap up the $63 billion takeover of Monsanto on Thursday and also retire the U.S. seeds maker’s 117 year-old name

The German drugmaker had received all required approvals from regulatory authorities, it said in a statement on Monday.

The SpaceX mission to the moon has been delayed. According to The Wall Street Journal:

SpaceX has indicated it won’t launch a pair of space tourists to loop around the moon this year as previously announced, the latest sign that technical and production challenges are disrupting founder Elon Musk’s plans for human exploration of the solar system.

A new timetable for the flight—now postponed until at least mid-2019 and likely longer—hasn’t been released by Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the formal name of the closely held company.

The new Star Wars movie continued to unperformed expectations. According to Box Office Mojo:

With an estimated $29.29 million, Disney and Lucasfilms’s Solo: A Star Wars Story dipped 65% this weekend, a result that was to be expected following the film’s steady decline during the week after its disappointing debut last weekend. The film’s domestic cume ended the weekend just shy of $150 million. Internationally, Solo brought in an estimated $30.3 million for an overseas total that now stands at $115.3 million and a global cume totaling $264.2 million.

Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) may have provided information to a number of hardware makers. According to CNBC coverage:

Facebook struck dozens of data-sharing deals with smartphone and tablet makers over the last decade, according to a report by The New York Times.

The newspaper revealed Sunday that Facebook had formed at least 60 data-sharing partnerships with device makers including Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Samsung over the last 10 years. Without explicit consent, these deals granted device makers access to a Facebook user’s relationship status, political leaning, education history, religion and upcoming events, the Times reported.

Trade wars could curtail global economic growth. According to CNBC:

Global gross domestic product (GDP) growth could take a hit to the order of around one percent if tariff threats escalate into a trade war, S&P Global’s chief economist forecast Monday.

It may not be a global recession, but “one could imagine a scenario where rather than global growth in the threes we have global growth in the twos, where you get the U.S. and Europe and China all pulling back at the same time,” said Paul Gruenwald, chief economist at analytics firm S&P Global, speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”

Global growth in 2017 was 3.7 percent and is projected at 3.8 percent this year and 3.9 percent in 2019, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Hurricane activity should be about average this year, according to an International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) division. According to CNBC:

Hurricane season is back. Could this year’s tropical storm total approach last year’s record-setting and destructive season?

At least for now, there are reasons to be optimistic: IBM’s Weather Company currently predicts a total of 12 named storms, five hurricanes, and two major hurricanes. In 2017, there were 17 named storms, 10 hurricanes and 6 major hurricanes in the Atlantic basin.