Business & Politics News and Discussions

[weatheriscool]

Murdoch's Sun, U.K.'s Biggest Paper for Decades, Now Worth Zero
Source: Bloomberg

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. wrote down the value of its once high-flying Sun title to zero, underscoring the dramatic decline in Britain’s newspaper industry.

The tabloid’s blend of gossip and right-wing political coverage has made it Britain’s most widely-read paper for more than four decades, until the rival Daily Mail claimed the title last year.

Its editors have struggled to carve out a place for the paper in a new world of online news -- trying a paywall model before abandoning it -- and attempting to move on from a phone hacking scandal that blew up a decade ago, damaging the Sun’s credibility as a campaigner for social causes.

News Corp. said its cash flow forecasts for the Sun led it to book an impairment of 84 million pounds ($119 million) in 2020, according to its accounts published Friday. The carrying value of its publishing rights and titles as of June 28 last year fell to zero from 112 million pounds in 2019.

Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... worth-zero

[Time_Traveller]

Selfridges goes on sale for over £4bn

June 11, 2021

Selfridges may be sold for £4 billion or more after considering buyer interest following an unsolicited approach.

The luxury department store is owned by the Weston family, who also control Primark, and have brought in advisers from Credit Suisse.

The bid interest is likely to draw out other would-be buyers.

An approach to buy Selfridges has been made, but a deal was not a foregone conclusion.

Meanwhile, the Westons are likely to consider the extent to which any interested parties value sustainability as Selfridges has put sustainability at the heart of its strategy.

https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/20 ... -over-4bn/

[weatheriscool]

Morgan Stanley CEO to NYC workers: Be back in the office by September or else
Source: CNN

New York (CNN Business)The CEO of one of Wall Street's top investment banks has a message for employees in its New York offices. You need to come back to work this fall.

Morgan Stanley (MS) chief James Gorman said at an investing conference earlier this week that it's time for the bank's New York workers to head back to the office now that more people are getting vaccinated for Covid-19 and life is slowly returning to normal.

"If you can go to a restaurant in New York City, you can come into the office. And we want you in the office," Gorman said.

Gorman made the comments Monday at an annual conference about financial payments and commercial real estate. He joked that he was doing so from the company's New York office — and while wearing a suit and tie to boot.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/16/investin ... index.html

[caltrek]

Tiger Global in Talks to Back BharatPe at $2.5 Billion Valuation

https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/18/tiger ... valuation/

Introduction:

(TechCrunch) Indian fintech startup BharatPe is in advanced stages of talks to raise about $250 million in a new financing round led by Tiger Global, two sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.

The new round, a Series E, is giving the three-year-old New Delhi-headquartered firm a pre-money valuation of $2.5 billion, sources said, requesting anonymity as the matter is private. The round hasn’t closed, so terms may change, sources cautioned.

BharatPe, which prior to the new round had raised about $233 million in equity and $35 million in debt, was valued at about $900 million in its Series D round in February this year, and $425 million last year.

Indian news outlet the CapTable first reported about the talks between Tiger Global and BharatPe and said the round would value the startup at over $2 billion. BharatPe, which counts Coatue, Ribbit Capital, and Sequoia Capital India among its existing investors, declined to comment.

BharatPe operates an eponymous service to help offline merchants accept digital payments and secure working capital. Even as India has already emerged as the second-largest internet market, with more than 600 million users, much of the country remains offline.

Edit: Removal of extra "[".

[caltrek]

The Morgan Stanley One Percent Move Report

https://www.morganstanley.com/content/m ... ve-2021621

Introduction:

(Morgan Stanley) What Happened in the Markets?

US stocks traded higher on Monday as the S&P 500 rose 1.4% to close at 4,225. With the rally, the index is now up 12.5% year to date.

After nearly a month without a 1% move on the S&P 500, equities have now had back-to-back sessions of sharp moves in both directions. On Friday, stocks sold off as markets continued to digest a relatively hawkish Federal Reserve following their Wednesday FOMC meeting. On Monday, markets rebounded, paring all of Friday's losses and more, with cyclical sectors leading the market higher. Markets could continue to react to commentary from members of the Fed this week, with a host of board members slated to speak throughout the week.

All 11 S&P 500 sectors were higher on the session, with Energy (+4.3%) and Financials (+2.4%) outperforming the broader market, while Communication Services (+0.9%) and Consumer Discretionary (+0.5%) lagged.

Rates were higher across the curve, with the 10-year Treasury yield at 1.49% as of the 4 p.m. equity market close. Gold was 1.1% higher on the day while WTI oil also closed higher to just under $74 per barrel. The US dollar was modestly weaker on the trading session, as measured by the US Dollar Index.

caltrek: With the economy recovering quickly and prices up for goods experiencing bottle neck supply problems, it is not too surprising to me that the Federal Reserve is feeling a bit "hawkish". This points to a difference between 19th century and 21st century capitalism. In this century, institutions have powers and authority to take actions to smooth out the business cycle and handle short term inflationary tendencies. Doesn't work to absolute perfection, but compared to the 19th century...

[wjfox]

Spot the robot dog's owner, Boston Dynamics, officially sold to Hyundai

June 21, 2021 7:45 a.m. PT

Spot the friendly robot dog has a new owner. Well, the company that makes this computer-controlled pooch does. On Monday, SoftBank announced Hyundai Motor Group officially took a controlling stake in Boston Dynamics, which tinkers with robots like Spot. Hyundai and SoftBank first revealed the deal last year, but as of today, Hyundai now owns a controlling stake -- at least 80% of the firm.

The companies didn't provide any additional details surrounding the deal, but we know Hyundai plopped down $1.1 billion to make this sale happen. As for what Boston Dynamics' new owner wants from the company, that's also totally unclear. The best we can assume is that Hyundai's pretty interested in robots. The automaker previously announced a new division dedicated to creating "walking cars" and other robots, so it could be the company's keen to have Boston Dynamics on its team as it pursues that. I can see it now: "Every new Hyundai walking car comes with your very own robot dog!"

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/spot ... d-hyundai/

[weatheriscool]

Senate committee holds hearing on D.C. statehood bill on Tuesday
Source: Washington Post

D.C. statehood is set to get a hearing before a Senate committee on Tuesday, with proponents trying to push the cause further than it has gone before in Congress even as prospects are low in the evenly divided chamber.

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and a host of civil rights and constitutional experts will testify before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs starting at 10 a.m.

Former senator Joe Lieberman (Conn.), a political independent and former Democrat who pushed D.C. voting rights while in office, and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) will offer opening remarks.

It’s statehood’s first Senate committee hearing since 2014. The committee did not bring the bill up for a vote that year, but advocates are optimistic that it may get one this year.

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... li=BBnb7Kz

This will be shot down as unconstitutional as it is.

[Revolutionary Moderate]

Senate committee holds hearing on D.C. statehood bill on Tuesday
Source: Washington Post

D.C. statehood is set to get a hearing before a Senate committee on Tuesday, with proponents trying to push the cause further than it has gone before in Congress even as prospects are low in the evenly divided chamber.

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and a host of civil rights and constitutional experts will testify before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs starting at 10 a.m.

Former senator Joe Lieberman (Conn.), a political independent and former Democrat who pushed D.C. voting rights while in office, and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) will offer opening remarks.

It’s statehood’s first Senate committee hearing since 2014. The committee did not bring the bill up for a vote that year, but advocates are optimistic that it may get one this year.

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... li=BBnb7Kz

This will be shot down as unconstitutional as it is.

It seems you never of the phrase "no taxation without representation" because this is what is happening to the residents of Washingtion D.C.

[Yuli Ban]

Microsoft Hits $2 Trillion Market Cap

Microsoft shares rose today intraday to $265.79, temporarily putting its market cap at slightly over $2 trillion.

But the software giant's stock closed lower, at $265.51, narrowly missing the threshold of $265.55 needed to cement its $2 trillion market cap.

Apple Inc. is the only company to close with $2 trillion market cap, a milestone first surpassed last August.

Microsoft's peak market cap during the dot com bubble was $614.7 billion on Dec. 27, 1999.

I somehow knew it would be brief.

I'm also tempted to open a Megacorporations Watch Thread.

Edit: I'm gonna do it.

[weatheriscool]

Senate Democrats' election reform bill blocked on party-line vote
Source: Reuters


June 22, 20215:35 PM CDT Last Updated 6 minutes ago

WASHINGTON, June 22 (Reuters) - Republicans in the narrowly divided U.S. Senate on Tuesday blocked an election reform bill that Democrats said is critical to democracy, arguing that it infringed on states' rights.

A 50-50 party-line vote fell short of the 60-vote threshold needed to advance most legislation under Senate rules.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer set the bill as one of his party's top priorities, saying it could have offset a wave of measures passed by Republican-controlled state legislatures imposing new limits on voting.

Republican state legislators justify their new laws by citing former President Donald Trump's continued false claims that his November election defeat was the result of widespread fraud. Those claims were rejected by multiple courts, state election authorities and Trump's own administration....................................

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/democr ... 021-06-22/

[weatheriscool]

Supreme Court sides with high school cheerleader in free-speech dispute over profane Snapchat rant
Source: New York Times

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a Pennsylvania school district had violated the First Amendment by punishing a student for a vulgar social-media message sent away from school grounds. The vote was 8 to 1, with Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting. The case concerned Brandi Levy, a Pennsylvania high school student who had expressed her dismay over not making the varsity cheerleading squad by sending a colorful Snapchat message to about 250 people.

She sent the message on a Saturday from the Cocoa Hut, a convenience store popular with teenagers. It included an image of Ms. Levy and a friend with their middle fingers raised, along with a string of words expressing the same sentiment. Using a swear word four times, Ms. Levy objected to "school," "softball," "cheer" and "everything."

Though Snapchat messages are meant to vanish not long after they are sent, another student took a screenshot and showed it to her mother, a coach. The school suspended Ms. Levy from cheerleading for a year, saying the punishment was needed to "avoid chaos" and maintain a "teamlike environment."

Ms. Levy sued the school district, winning a sweeping victory from a divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia. The court said the First Amendment did not allow public schools to punish students for speech outside school grounds, relying on a precedent from a different era.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/23/us/s ... &smtyp=cur

Nice to see that freedom of speech matters to this court. Freedom of speech forever!!! One of the few things that should be defended at all cost.

[weatheriscool]

Supreme Court rules California farms can keep union organizers off private land
Source: LA Times

The Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down part of a historic California law inspired by Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers union, ruling that agricultural landowners and food processors have a right to keep union organizers off their property.

The justices by a 6-3 vote said the state’s “right of access” rule violates property rights protected by the Constitution. It says private property shall not be “taken for public use without just compensation.”

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts said “the access regulation is not germane to any benefit provided to agricultural employers or any risk posed to the public.”

The three liberal justices dissented.

Read more: https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/ ... organizers

[weatheriscool]

Supreme Court finds FHFA structure unconstitutional
Source: Housing Wire

A Supreme Court decision in Collins v. Yellen has found the structure of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) unconstitutional, allowing for the removal of its director.

The case questioned whether the Biden administration would have the power to fire the agency’s director, Mark Calabria, a Trump-appointee and vocal critic of the government-sponsored enterprises. The court found that restricting his removal was unconstitutional.

“The President must be able to remove not just officers who disobey his commands but also those he finds ‘negligent and inefficient,’… those who exercise their discretion in a way that is not ‘intelligen[t] or wis[e],’ … those who have ‘different views of policy,’” and “those who come ‘from a competing political party who is dead set against [the President’s] agenda,” the opinion reads.

“The President’s removal power serves important purposes regardless of whether the agency in question affects ordinary Americans by directly regulating them or by taking actions that have a profound but indirect effect on their lives,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote. “And there can be no question that the FHFA’s control over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can deeply impact the lives of millions of Americans by affecting their ability to buy and keep their homes.”

Read more: https://www.housingwire.com/articles/su ... itutional/

[caltrek]

^^^Ironic that Trump appointees are now supporting Biden's authority to overturn Trump initiatives. In this case in regards to personnel decisions.

[caltrek]

Supreme Court rules California farms can keep union organizers off private land

I still don't understand where in the U. S. Constitution it says that property rights should take precedent over workers' rights to organize. I suppose originalists presume this to be the case since slavery was also allowed under the document as originally adopted, ignoring that slavery was eventually abolished.

At any rate, there is also an article on this in Courthouse News for those who don't want to use up their quota of free LA Times articles:

https://www.courthousenews.com/californ ... izing-law/

Needless to say, I find the minority position of the court, as described in the article I cited, to be the more compelling of the arguments presented by the justices.

[caltrek]

Online Learning Business Developments in India
by Manish Singh
June 25, 2021

https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/25/india ... e-rheo-tv/

Introduction:

(TechCrunch)Indian online learning platform Unacademy is in advanced talks to acquire Rheo TV, a less than two-year-old startup founded by two former Unacademy employees, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

The current deal values Rheo TV, a startup that has built a platform to help professional game streamers live stream their gameplays and monetize those feeds, at around $10 million, one of the sources said. TechCrunch couldn’t independently verify the terms. The deal proposes Rheo TV’s team of fewer than a dozen people to join Unacademy.

The younger startup counts Lightspeed India Partners, Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, as well as the founding team of Unacademy — Gaurav Munjal, Hemesh Singh, and Roman Saini — among its existing investors.

Conclusion:

India’s online education market is estimated to grow to $19.7 billion by 2030, up from $1 billion last year, analysts at Bernstein wrote in a recent report.

[caltrek]

Speaking of India:

India Health Care Startup PharmEasy to Acquire Majority Stake in Thryocare
by Manish Singh
June 25, 2021

https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/25/india ... 0-million/

Introduction:

(TechCrunch) API Holdings, which operates the giant healthcare startup PharmEasy, said on Friday it has reached an agreement to acquire 66.1% stake in Thyrocare, which runs a diagnostic lab chain, for about $613 million in what is the first ever acquisition of a listed firm by an unicorn startup in the world’s second most populated nation.

The transaction is subject to regulatory and other applicable customary approvals. Docon Technologies Pvt Ltd, a 100% subsidiary of API, will be the acquirer and shall make an open offer for an additional 26% stake for over $241 million, the startup said in a statement.

PharmEasy is India’s largest online pharmacy and diagnostics brand. It operates a business-to-business pharma marketplace with over 6,000 consultation clinics with 90,000 partner retailers across the South Asian nation. The five-year-old startup, which has raised about $572 million to date and was last valued at $1.5 billion, counts Prosus, Temasek, Eight Roads Ventures, TPG, B Capital Group, and Bessemer Venture Partners among its investors.

[caltrek]

Meanwhile, over in Latin America:

Kaszek Ventures Leads a $15 Million Round in Chilean in Asset Management Startup Fintual
by Marcella McCarthy
June 25, 2021

Introduction:

(TechCrunch) Like other financial sectors in Latin America, the retail investing space is getting a facelift by local tech startups that are cashing in on the untapped potential for democratizing asset management in the region. One of those startups is Chilean-based Fintual, which today announced a $15 million round led by Kaszek Ventures, the largest fund in Latin America.

Fintual is an automated passive investment platform that allows the average person in Chile or Mexico to invest in mutual funds containing ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds), investment vehicles that aren’t as well known, or as readily accessible in Latin America.

“The idea that got to me was that we were allowing people to invest in the long term, we enable them to invest in instruments they didn’t have access to before,” said Pedro Pineda, co-founder and CEO of Fintual.

caltrek's comment: I had never really thought about this difference in investment culture between North America and South America before. Usually, I thought in terms of foreign aid or seed money startups. To me, this is a really exciting idea. Of course, as always, the devil may be in the details. So, it will be interesting to see if this concept takes hold. It could very well be important in helping Latin America to establish a middle class. Of course, some radicals may object that this is only a way to co-opt a segment into the capitalist system. Not an entirely unreasonable argument. Still, the polarization within Latin American politics has not served that region well.

[caltrek]

Over the past few months starting before the introduction of the new forum format, a lot of complaints were being registered about the lack of conservative news sources appearing in the thread posts. So, why not an article from the Wall Street Journal

Toshiba Shareholders Oust Chairman in Landmark for Foreign Activists
June 25, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/toshiba-sh ... 1624593172

(Wall Street Journal) TOKYO—A revolt by foreign shareholders at Toshiba Corp. TOSYY -0.63% has ousted the board’s chairman and audit committee, placed foreigners in three key board posts and set an example that will reverberate across Japan’s business world.

The upheaval at Friday’s shareholder meeting capped six years of turmoil that began with an accounting scandal and led to foreign shareholders owning a majority of the industrial conglomerate. After years of battling against Toshiba management and Japanese directors with roots in the country’s business culture, those foreign shareholders now have the upper hand.

“Because of today’s result, activists’ voices will likely get more attention from domestic investors in other cases,” said Masahiro Ichikawa, chief market strategist at Sumitomo Mitsui DS Asset Management.

The shake-up Friday removed Toshiba’s board chairman, Osamu Nagayama, and put a former KPMG Hong Kong partner, Paul Brough, in charge of a powerful new strategic review committee on the board. Singapore-based financier G. Raymond Zage III will head the nomination committee while Jerry Black, an American retail veteran, will head the compensation committee.

Of course, before Americans get too smug about this development, consider:

The company has suffered from a long string of accounting scandals, management infighting and bad business decisions. One of those decisions ended with the 2017 bankruptcy of Toshiba’s U.S. nuclear unit, Westinghouse Electric Co.

[weatheriscool]

Wisconsin Supreme Court rejects move to ban absentee ballot drop boxes
Source: WSAW

(AP) - In a 4 to 3 decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, it’s rejecting a move to ban absentee ballot drop boxes.

Conservative businessman Jere Fabick petitioned the Supreme Court in March to ban drop boxes.

He also petitioned to prohibit elections officials from filling in missing addresses of witnesses on absentee ballot envelopes.

Fabick sought to limit who can return absentee ballots while the supreme court says the lawsuit put forward important questions, the majority declined to take the case.

Read more: https://www.wsaw.com/2021/06/27/wiscons ... ntent=wsaw