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

© courtesy of Verizon Communications Inc.

Uber’s status as the top car-sharing service could hurt the initial public offering of the number two company, Lyft. According to Reuters:

Uber Technologies Inc and smaller rival Lyft are driving side-by-side on the road to a stock market debut, and that may not bode well for Lyft as investors decide where to place their bets in the ride-hailing sector.

Uber and Lyft both submitted confidential IPO filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last Thursday, suggesting that their public offerings could take place in close proximity, unless one decides to take a pause.

The International Monetary Fund warned about the global economy. According to Reuters:

One of the International Monetary Fund’s top officials warned on Tuesday that storm clouds were gathering over the global economy and that governments and central banks might not be well equipped to cope.

IMF First Deputy Managing Director, David Lipton, said the fund had been urging governments to “fix the roof” during a sunny last two years for the world economy.

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China and the United States may start new trade talks. According to The Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. and China started the latest round of trade talks with a phone call involving Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He.

The three senior officials discussed Chinese purchases of agricultural products and changes to fundamental Chinese economic policies during the phone call, said people familiar with the conversation. They didn’t provide further details.

Former car executive Carlos Ghosn will stay in prison longer. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Nissan Motor Co.’s Carlos Ghosn will remain in jail until at least Dec. 20 without the possibility of bail under a Tokyo District Court decision Tuesday.

Prosecutors indicted Mr. Ghosn on Monday on charges of understating his compensation on five years of Nissan’s financial reports, and they also laid out new suspicions that he did the same on an additional three years of Nissan financial reports through the year ended March 2018.

Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ) said 10,000 workers took buyout deals. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Verizon Communications Inc. will shed about 10,400 workers who have accepted a severance package as the largest U.S. wireless carrier by subscribers works to cut $10 billion in costs and upgrade to a faster 5G network.

Chief Executive Hans Vestberg said in a memo to employees Monday that the number of employees who were granted the packages represented more than 90% of the staff who volunteered.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) has started to make its own server chips. According to The New York Times:

Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer and largest cloud-computing company, is pushing into a new line of work: computer chips.

Late last month, the company, based in Seattle, revealed that it had spent the last few years building a new chip for use inside the millions of servers in its data centers around the world.

Amazon does not plan to sell this chip directly to customers, but the decision by one of the world’s biggest buyers of computer processors to go the do-it-yourself route is likely to have a major impact on Intel, the iconic Silicon Valley chip maker.

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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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