ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂÂBloomberg Amazon.com Inc. is almost certain to enter the business of selling prescription drugs by 2019, said two analysts at Leerink Partners, posing a direct threat to the US’s biggest brick-and-mortar drugstore chains. “It’s a matter of when, not if,†Leerink Partners analyst David Larsen said in a report to clients. “We expect an announcement within the next 1-2 years.†...
Read More »House Russia probe calls Facebook,  Twitter for hearing
Bloomberg The House Intelligence Committee is asking officials from Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google to testify publicly as part of its Russia probe on November 1, the same day as a planned Senate Intelligence hearing, according to two people familiar with the decision. That would set up a marathon day for the social media companies, which are ...
Read More »GE’s post-Immelt exodus accelerates ‘succession’
Bloomberg General Electric Co.’s management overhaul marked the latest departures of high-profile executives from a company that has traditionally served as an incubator of corporate bosses. Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey Bornstein is leaving at the end of the year. Two other company veterans and GE vice chairs, Beth Comstock and John Rice, are retiring from the company. They’re following Steve ...
Read More »HelloFresh aims for IPO in 2nd week of Oct
Bloomberg HelloFresh, the meal-kit startup owned by Rocket Internet SE, aims to announce an initial public offering in the second half of October as the German company tries to distance itself from the post-IPO flop of Blue Apron Holdings Inc., people familiar with the matter said. HelloFresh has been waiting for preliminary third-quarter earnings to be ready to show investors ...
Read More »US labour market strong despite hurricanes
Bloomberg Two major hurricanes knocked down payrolls in September, yet the US labour market is holding up just fine. That’s the broad message from employment figures released by the Labor Department. Payrolls fell for the first time since 2010, reflecting Hurricane Harvey’s impact on Texas and Irma’s fallout in Florida. At the same time, the unemployment rate dropped to a ...
Read More »Trump ‘to restore’ fairness doctrine on TV
Bloomberg President Donald Trump, who has pushed for broad rollbacks of regulations on the environment, markets, banking and other areas, mused on Twitter about restoring a media rule killed under a president he cites as one of his heroes, Ronald Reagan. “Late Night hosts are dealing with the Democrats for their very ‘unfunny’ & repetitive material, always anti-Trump! Should we ...
Read More »How subordinates can check an impulsive boss
Consider what is, for the moment, an entirely hypothetical question: What might Secretary of Defense James Mattis do if he received an order from President Trump to launch a nuclear attack on North Korea in retaliation, say, for a hydrogen-bomb test that had gone awry? Certainly, Mattis could try to talk the president out of the attack, if he thought ...
Read More »Is Australia’s luck running out ?
Australia’s record of 26 years without a recession flatters to deceive. The gaudy numbers mask serious flaws in the country’s economic model. First and most obviously, the Australian economy is still far too dependent on “houses and holes.†During part of the typical business cycle, national income and prosperity are driven by exports of commodities—primarily iron ore, liquefied natural gas ...
Read More »Facebook’s season of atonement is here
Saturday was Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg marked the occasion with a remarkably contrite post to his followers: “For those I hurt this year, I ask forgiveness and I will try to be better. For the ways my work was used to divide people rather than bring us together, I ask forgiveness and I ...
Read More »Senator endorses Intel on Russian meddling
Leaving aside the bloviating protests of President Donald Trump, there are two ways to understand Russia’s influence campaign against the 2016 election. The first is obvious. The Russians tried to elect Trump. You don’t need access to top-secret US government documents to reach this conclusion. It happened in real time. Russians hacked the emails of leading Democrats and distributed them ...
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