6 Most Important Things in Business Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 13, 3:25PM EDT · Published Oct 10, 5:07AM EDT

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6 Most Important Things in Business Today — © searsholdings.com

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) discontinued a controversial tool used to help it hire people. According to Reuters:

Amazon.com Inc’s machine-learning specialists uncovered a big problem: their new recruiting engine did not like women.

The team had been building computer programs since 2014 to review job applicants’ resumes with the aim of mechanizing the search for top talent, five people familiar with the effort told Reuters.

An activist investor took a position in Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX). According to The Wall Street Journal:

William Ackman’s activist hedge fund has built a roughly 1.1% stake in Starbucks Corp., a so-far friendly bet that the coffee giant will recover from recent stumbles and weather the departure of its longtime leader, Howard Schultz.

Mr. Ackman unveiled Pershing Square Capital Management LP’s investment in the Seattle coffee company during a presentation Tuesday at a conference in New York, his first such appearance in several months. He took the stage with an unsweetened Starbucks ice tea.

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Sears Holding Corp. (NASDAQ: SHLD) finally may file for Chapter 11. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Sears Holdings Corp. has hired M-III Partners LLC to prepare a bankruptcy filing that could come as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the situation, as the cash-strapped company that once dominated American retailing faces a debt payment deadline.

Employees at M-III Partners, a boutique advisory firm, have spent the past few weeks working on the potential filing, the people said. In recent days, M-III staff have been at the retailer’s headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Ill., one person said. Sears continues to discuss other options and could still avert an in-court restructuring, the people added.

Google appealed a huge fine. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Alphabet Inc.’s Google on Tuesday said it filed an appeal of the European Union’s €4.34 billion ($4.97 billion) antitrust fine for allegedly abusing the dominance of its Android operating system for mobile phones.

But Google said it has no plans to ask for so-called interim measures to pause application of the decision. Without further action, Google will have to meet a deadline at the end of October to end the behavior the EU says is anticompetitive or face additional fines of up to 5% of average daily global revenue for each day it doesn’t comply.

Music piracy is still a big problem. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Even as Spotify and Apple Music have returned the music business to growth by getting fans to pay, piracy rates remain stubbornly high, according to the record industry’s global trade organization.

The way people pirate music has evolved along with their legitimate listening habits, and piracy is curbing the potential market for subscribers, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry concluded in a report released Tuesday.

The level of U.S. weapon sales to overseas nations has risen. According to CNBC:

The U.S. sold more than $54 billion in military equipment to foreign governments in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the Pentagon’s top financial officer told a small group of reporters.

“We’ve had a 62 percent increase in foreign military sales, over $54 billion,” David Norquist, the Defense Department’s comptroller, said alongside Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan on Oct. 3.

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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.