6 Most Important Things in Business Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 13, 3:31PM EDT · Published Jul 31, 4:51AM EDT

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CBS Corp.’s (NYSE: CBS) CEO Les Moonves kept his job after a board meeting. He has been accused of sexual harassment. According to Reuters:

CBS Corp’s board left Chief Executive Leslie Moonves in his post on Monday as it discussed sexual harassment claims against him and took steps to select an outside counsel to lead an independent investigation into the matter, the company said in a statement

It was not immediately clear if Moonves would stay on for the duration of the investigation.

General Electric Co (NYSE: GE) will be getting smaller. According to The Wall Street Journal:

General Electric Co. is seeking a buyer for key parts of its digital unit as the conglomerate unwinds a signature initiative of former Chief Executive Jeff Immelt that loses money despite billions in investment.

The Boston-based company has hired an investment bank to run an auction for the operations, which produced $500 million or more in revenue last year and lost money, according to people familiar with the matter.

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Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA) may put a factory in Europe. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Tesla Inc.’s international expansion is gaining momentum, with authorities in Germany and the Netherlands initiating talks with the company to build its first major European factory.

The Silicon Valley car maker, which this month announced plans to build its first overseas plant in China, has had preliminary discussions with two German states vying to host a so-called Gigafactory in Europe to build electric cars and their batteries under one roof, officials involved in the talks said.

Several states want to stop the availability of the plans to make 3-D printed guns. According to The New York Times:

Gun control proponents and state officials are racing the clock to try to block blueprints to make guns from 3-D printers from going online Wednesday.

The varied efforts, in courthouses and legislatures, are aimed at Defense Distributed, a Texas-based nonprofit organization that won permission last month from the State Department to post schematics for homemade firearms. The largely plastic guns would be invisible to background checks and untraceable by law enforcement.

The market cap of large tech companies has collapsed. According to CNBC:

After leading the stock market’s rally to new heights this year, shares of technology companies plunged on Monday, with the 10 most valuabe U.S. tech companies losing $82.7 billion of value.

Amazon fell by $18.6 billion and Microsoft by $17.7 billion. Among the 10 highest valued companies in the sector, only Intel rose on Monday, closing up by just 1 cent.

Facebook continued a steep slide that started after its earnings report last week, dropping 2.2 percent on Monday, and slashing $11.1 billion from its market capitalization. Netflix had the biggest percentage drop among the top 10, falling 5.7 percent and losing $8.8 billion in value

China’s July PMI was below expectations. According to CNBC:

China reported on Tuesday that factory activity was slightly lower than expected in July, with the official manufacturing Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI) coming in at 51.2.

The Chinese manufacturing PMI had been forecast to fall to 51.3 in July from 51.5 in June, according to a poll of economists by Reuters.

A reading above 50 indicates expansion, while a reading below that signals contraction.

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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.