6 Most Important Things in Business Today

May 2, 2018 by Douglas A. McIntyre

The head of Xerox Corp. (NYSE: XRX) left after a bungled merger. According to MarketWatch:

Xerox Corp.’s Chief Executive Jeff Jacobson is resigning in a settlement with two of the company’s biggest investors, Carl Icahn and Darwin Deason, a pact that shakes up the majority of the board and puts its transaction with Fujifilm Holdings Corp. at risk.

The new board is expected to consider alternatives to the deal with Fujifilm, a complex transaction that sells the majority of Xerox to the Japanese company by combining with a joint venture the two operate in Asia.

Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) earnings blew through estimates, and its shares rose — mostly because of a share buyback. According to MarketWatch:

Revenue rose 16%, to $61.1 billion, and came in just ahead of of the FactSet consensus of $60.9 billion. The company announced $100 billion in additional share buybacks and a 16% increase in its quarterly dividend


Weinstein Company is about to be sold. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Dallas-based private-equity firm Lantern Capital Partners topped the bidding for the film and television studio co-founded by Harvey Weinstein and is close to acquiring the business, according to people familiar with the matter.

Weinstein Co. named Lantern the lead bidder with a $310 million offer when the entertainment company filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March. No other potential buyers topped Lantern’s existing offer, one of these people said. The deadline for bids was the close of business Monday.

Snap Inc. (NYSE: SNAP) posted horrible results that hurt its share price. According to The Wall Street Journal:

 Snap Inc. on Tuesday said revenue rose 54% in the first quarter from a year ago, but that missed analyst estimates and fell nearly 20% short of the previous quarter as efforts to wrest a larger share of advertisers’ budgets were impeded by Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.

The Venice, Calif.-based company’s shares were down 16% in after-hours trading.

The International Monetary Fund is worried about the economy in the Middle East. According to CNBC:

Tightening liquidity, trade tensions and ongoing structural issues mean that Middle Eastern nations are facing a multitude of challenges, according to the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) regional director.

“The matrix of risks has local or regional components as well as international components,” Jihad Azour, director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), told CNBC.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) plans to upgrade the benefits of Prime membership. According to CNBC:

Amazon is planning new Whole Foods benefits for its Prime members, sources told CNBC.

The new perks will bring the might of Amazon’s membership program to the grocery industry, folding Whole Foods into a network other grocers will struggle to compete with. It will give Amazon vendors, many of which are niche and small, special access to Amazon’s vast shopper base.

Roughly 75 percent of Whole Foods shoppers are Amazon Prime members, but less than 20 percent of Amazon Prime members are Whole Foods shoppers, a source told CNBC.

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