6 Most Important Things in Business Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 13, 3:22PM EDT · Published Dec 6, 4:53AM EST

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An important Chinese executive was arrested in Canada based on a request by the United States. According to Reuters:

The daughter of Chinese tech giant Huawei’s founder has been arrested in Canada and is facing extradition to the United States, dealing a blow to hopes of an easing of Sino-U.S. trade tensions and rocking global stock markets.

The shock arrest of Meng Wanzhou, who is also Huawei Technologies Co Ltd’s chief financial officer, raises fresh doubts over a 90-day truce on trade struck between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping on Saturday – the day she was detained.

The arrest is related to violations of U.S. sanctions, a person familiar with the matter said. Reuters was unable to determine the precise nature of the violations.

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Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg is involved in another scandal. According to The Wall Street Journal:

The U.K. Parliament released on Wednesday a trove of internal Facebook Inc. emails that show Mark Zuckerberg and other executives pursuing hard-nosed tactics to stifle competitors, as well as considering a range of possibilities for monetizing the massive amounts of data the company collected on its users.

The documents show that Facebook gave some third-party developers special access to user data and several years ago contemplated charging developers for data access, a step that would have marked a dramatic shift away from the social-media giant’s policy of not selling that information. The emails also reveal that Mr. Zuckerberg, an engineer and software developer by background, was deeply involved in business decisions at Facebook as it grew into a global platform with more than 2 billion users.

MoviePass is going through one more reinvention. According to The New York Times:

The fast-growing subscription service for movie tickets spent months insisting that it was not running out of money despite evidence to the contrary. That emergency loan to keep operating? All part of the plan. That auditor’s report about escalating losses? Ignore it. Abrupt changes in service — some movies are restricted, now they’re not — arrived without warning or explanation.

Now, MoviePass is asking for forgiveness and hoping to move forward by unveiling a three-tiered pricing structure that takes effect on Jan. 1. As part of the course correction, Mitch Lowe, the company’s chief executive, will turn over day-to-day operations of the company to Khalid Itum, an executive vice president at MoviePass. Mr. Lowe, a former Netflix and Redbox executive, will keep his title and instead focus on long-term strategy.

OPEC and Russia probably will make large oil production cuts. According to CNBC:

OPEC and its allies are expected to agree on the terms of price-boosting output cuts on Thursday, despite pressure from President Donald Trump to reduce the cost of crude.

The influential oil cartel meets at its headquarters in Vienna, Austria, with the aim of reaching an accord over production levels for the next six months. The 15-member organization will then hold talks with allied non-OPEC partners on Friday, with markets widely-expecting the energy alliance to announce steep output reductions from January.

Google will eliminate one of its apps. According to CNBC:

Google plans to kill chat app Allo by the middle of next year, the company said in a blog post, confirming a report earlier on Wednesday about the product’s imminent demise.

Despite owning the world’s dominant smartphone operating system in Android, Google has never been able to create a chat experience to rival Apple’s iMessage or Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp.

General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) CEO Mary Barra will visit members of Congress to explain the shuttering of plants and a large number of layoffs. According to CNN Business:

General Motors chief executive Mary Barra headed to hostile territory Wednesday: Capitol Hill.

The automaker’s plans to close four US plants has turned GM into “the most thoroughly disliked company in Washington, DC, right now,” Debbie Dingell, a Democratic member of the House from Michigan, told CNN last week.

Barra aimed to change that in her meetings with members of Congress, which started Wednesday. Additional meetings are scheduled for Thursday.

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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.