6 Most Important Things in Business Today

March 12, 2018 by Douglas A. McIntyre

The executive chairman of DowDuPoint Inc. (NYSE: DWDP) will leave. According to Reuters:

U.S. chemicals producer DowDuPont Inc’s executive chairman Andrew Liveris will step down on April 1 and its co-lead director Jeff Fettig will assume Liveris’s role at the company, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Liveris will remain a director of the combined board until July 1, the WSJ said.

“Black Panther” kept the top spot in box office rankings last weekend. According to Box Office Mojo, “Black Panther” did $41.1 million, and:

Disney’s A Wrinkle in Time landed in second with an estimated $33.3 million over its opening weekend. The result is just below the $35 million the studio was expecting and well below Mojo’s aggressive forecast. Reasoning for the film’s lackluster debut will most likely focus on Black Panther’s continued dominance within the marketplace as well as the mixed reviews the film received heading into the weekend.

The Saudi Aramco initial public offering may be delayed again. It would be among the largest IPOs in history if company management’s hopes of its valuation hold. According to the Financial Times:

Saudi Aramco IPO delayed until 2019, UK told, Advisers struggle to achieve $2tn valuation sought by Saudi crown prince

OPEC may be affected by U.S. oil exports. According to Bloomberg:

Oil risks sliding back under $60 a barrel as a surge in U.S. shipments to Asia threatens to undermine a deal between OPEC and its allies, according to ING Groep NV.

While the producer group complied with a pledge to curb output and ease a glut in 2017, U.S. flows that are gaining a bigger slice of the prized Asian market may prompt some nations to boost supplies, said Warren Patterson, a commodities strategist at the Dutch bank. The resulting fallout could drag down crude prices after a rally of more than 40 percent since June, he said.

The Whole Foods division of Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) faces trouble with vendors. According to CNBC:

Tensions between Whole Foods Market and some of the most important brands it sells in its stores will come to a head on March 19, when they will congregate for a recently announced summit, sources familiar with the situation tell CNBC.

The grocer notified certain vendors about the meeting by email last Saturday. It is set to reassure the brands of relations after Whole Foods’ sale to Amazon. It comes after a rocky few months for the grocer, which has been trying to shift from a local orientation to a national one, without sacrificing the selection and relations that set it apart from larger peers like Kroger and Albertsons.

Self-driving trucks have become a reality. According to CNNMoney:

A startup has upped the ante in the race to develop self-driving vehicles. Two days after Uber announced self-driving truck operations in Arizona, which feature a backup driver as a precaution, Starsky Robotics said it has completed a seven-mile drive without a human in the vehicle.

In mid-February, Starsky conducted the test on a closed portion of Route 833 in Hendry County, Florida, with no traffic.

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