6 Most Important Things In Business Today

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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6 Most Important Things In Business Today

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The U.S. will soon hit China with another wave of tariffs. According to Reuters:

The United States has nearly completed a second list of tariffs on $100 billion in Chinese goods, as President Donald Trump prepares to enact an initial round of duties that is expected to trigger an in-kind response from Beijing, several sources said.

The second wave of products has been cued up as Washington prepares to announce on Friday a list of about $50 billion of goods to be targeted. They are part of Trump’s decision to go forward with “pretty significant” tariffs, an administration official said on Thursday.

AT&T (NYSE: T) finally finished the Time Warner buyout deal after months of pressure from the Justice Department:

AT&T Inc, the No. 2 wireless carrier, on Thursday closed its $85 billion deal to acquire media company Time Warner Inc after U.S. antitrust regulators indicated they would not seek a delay.

The deal, first announced in October 2016, was opposed by President Donald Trump. AT&T was sued by the Justice Department, but won approval from a judge to move forward with the deal on Tuesday following a six-week trial.

Google’s staff is still dominated by men. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Alphabet Inc.’s Google barely raised the number of women and underrepresented minorities among its ranks, while it got less white and more Asian over the past year, according to the search giant’s fifth annual diversity report.

The report released Thursday comes a week after shareholders voted down proposals to study linking executive pay to diversity goals and as the tech giant grapples with lawsuits over gender discrimination.

The former head of MGM got a huge payday after leaving. According to Bloomberg:

Gary Barber, the MGM studio head who was unexpectedly ousted earlier this year, has walked away with $260 million for agreeing to sever ties with the studio behind the James Bond movies.

Barber had steered Hollywood studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to recovery since its 2010 bankruptcy, but in March the board — led by hedge fund Anchorage Capital Group’s chief executive officer, Kevin Ulrich — fired him over a difference in strategy. MGM’s payout was in exchange for Barber’s equity stake in common stock and options, as well as an agreement by Barber to a three-year standstill on MGM-related matters, the studio said in a statement on its website Thursday.

The use for Facebook (NYSE: FB) for access to new has fallen. According to CNBC:

Facebook is being used less and less to find and share news while people are increasingly turning to alternative platforms like Whatsapp instead, according to a study.

The use of Facebook for news dropped by 9 percent from 2017 to 2018 in the U.S., research by Oxford University’s Reuters Institute found, with news consumption among younger groups falling 20 percent.

Average news consumption on Facebook globally has declined 6 percent since 2016 until now, while Whatsapp saw a 4 percent increase in that time period. Instagram and Snapchat news usage rose 3 percent and 2 percent respectively in two years.

China’s government has approved a huge deal to combine a Chinese company with a U.S. firm.  According to The South China Morning Post:

Chinese regulators have approved US semiconductor company Qualcomm’s proposed US$44 billion acquisition of Dutch chip maker NXP Semiconductors, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

The decision by China’s Ministry of Commerce, or Mofcom, clears a months-long antitrust roadblock caused by trade tensions between the US and Beijing and will allow the takeover to proceed.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
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.

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