6 Most Important Things in Business Today

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 13, 3:21PM EDT · Published Dec 21, 5:07AM EST

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6 Most Important Things in Business Today — © Joshua Lott / Getty Images

Auto executive Carlos Ghosn was arrested in Japan for a second time. According to Reuters:

Japanese prosecutors arrested Nissan Motor Co Ltd’s ousted chairman Carlos Ghosn again on Friday on new allegations of making Nissan shoulder $16.6 million in personal investment losses, dashing chances he would be released on bail before Christmas.

Prosecutors also raided Ghosn’s residence in Tokyo on Friday in search of evidence, broadcaster TV Asahi reported.

Chinese hackers broke into the computer systems of major U.S. tech companies and then accessed the computers of their clients. According to Reuters:

Hackers working on behalf of China’s Ministry of State Security breached the networks of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co and IBM, then used the access to hack into their clients’ computers, according to five sources familiar with the attacks.

The attacks were part of a Chinese campaign known as Cloudhopper, which the United States and Britain on Thursday said infected technology service providers in order to steal secrets from their clients.

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Several banks have stopped doing business with China’s Huawei Technologies, a major telecom equipment maker that has been accused of spying. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Huawei Technologies Co., whose products have been targeted as a national security risk by the U.S. and other governments, faces a new hurdle: reduced access to the global financial system.

Two banks that helped power the Chinese company’s rise as a global technology supplier, HSBC Holdings and Standard Chartered won’t provide it with any new banking services or funding after deciding that Huawei is too high risk, people familiar with those decisions said.

Uber is back in the self-driving car business. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Eight months after pulling its self-driving cars off the road following a fatal accident, Uber Technologies Inc. is putting the vehicles back into service.

Uber had previously been pushing to get a fully autonomous vehicle on the roads by year-end, part of its mad dash to keep abreast of rival Alphabet Inc. But those plans were derailed when an Uber car struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Ariz., in a March incident that some safety experts have said was avoidable.

Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT) is moving into the delivery business in China. According to CNBC:

Walmart may not be the first name that comes to mind when most consumers think about e-commerce, but the rapid rise of delivery services in China is pushing the U.S. retailer to new innovations in Asia’s largest economy.

E-commerce accounts for more than 20 percent of retail sales in China, the highest and fastest growing penetration rate in the world, according to Mary Meeker’s widely-followed 2018 internet trends report.

With that challenge in mind, the Arkansas-based company is trying an experiment: A smaller store, focus on Chinese lower-tier cities and a new sales model with Chinese logistics company Dada-JD Daojia.

Sears is running out of time. According to CNNBusiness:

Sears has reached a critical moment in its fight for survival.

The bankrupt retailer is trying to find someone to buy the company’s assets, including about 500 of its stores, to keep Sears and Kmart open for business.

But in a bankruptcy court hearing this week, the company’s attorneys said it also is considering bidders for those assets who would shut down the company.

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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.