Business

Discount Chain Big Lots Files For Bankruptcy Protection

Bloomberg Business reports: Discount retailer Big Lots Inc. has filed for bankruptcy protection and plans to sell the firm’s assets and ongoing business in a court-supervised process. The Columbus, Ohio-based company said it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware, according to a company statement. It listed assets and liabilities of $1 billion to $10 billion in its court petition. …

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88 Corporate Leaders Sign Letter Endorsing Harris

CNBC reports: Eighty-eight current and former top executives from across corporate America have endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president in a new letter shared exclusively with CNBC. Among the signers are several high-profile CEOs of public companies, including Aaron Levie of Box, Jeremy Stoppelman of Yelp and Michael Lynton, chairman of Snap. Other signers appear to be issuing their …

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Coors Beer Maker Is Latest To Cave To Anti-LGBTQ Push

Bloomberg News reports: Molson Coors Beverage Co. is cutting back some of its corporate diversity efforts, joining a corporate retreat hastened by an anti-DEI social media campaign. Molson Coors sent a memo to employees Tuesday saying it will stop linking executive compensation to employee representation, scrap supplier diversity goals, and no longer engage with the Human Rights Campaign’s corporate rankings. …

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HP Won’t Drop $4B Claim Against Late Tech Mogul

ABC News reports: Hewlett Packard Enterprise said Monday it won’t drop its U.K. claim for damages against the estate of British tech mogul Mike Lynch, who was killed when his superyacht sank last month. Britain’s High Court in 2022 ruled mostly in favor of the U.S. technology company, which accused Lynch and his former finance director of fraud over its …

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WaPo: Musk’s Partners In Buying X Have Lost Billions

The Washington Post reports: His and his partners’ overall stake has shed $24 billion in value — a vaporization of wealth that has little parallel outside the realm of economic or industry-specific crashes, or devastating corporate scandals. Among those shouldering the burden: Saudi and Qatari business leaders and royalty; Silicon Valley venture capital and tech investors; and Twitter co-founder and …

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Ford Becomes Latest To Cave To Anti-LGBTQ Campaign

Fortune reports: Ford is the latest company to scale back on “woke” diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives after boycott pressure from anti-DEI crusader Robby Starbuck.  The former Hollywood music video director turned conservative activist has pressured several high-profile companies, including Harley-Davidson, to abandon inclusive employment policies. Yesterday, he posted a memo on his X account from Ford CEO Jim Farley …

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SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Booster Breaks Apart During Landing

CBS News reports: After standing down from the piloted Polaris Dawn launch late Tuesday, SpaceX shifted gears and pressed ahead with plans for back-to-back launches of Starlink internet satellites early Wednesday, one from Florida and the other from California. But the second flight was called off after the first stage used in the Florida launch toppled into the Atlantic Ocean …

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Tucker Carlson’s Cybertruck Gets Stuck In The Mud

Tesla owners site Teslarati reports: Elon Musk sent a Tesla Cybertruck to former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, as detailed in a review of the electric vehicle (EV) from Carlson’s social media channels this week. Carlson released the video with the Cybertruck on his YouTube and X channels on Monday, saying that he had reached out to Musk to see …

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San Francisco Officials Say “Good Riddance” To Musk

The New York Times reports: San Francisco’s long relationship with X is nearly over — and city officials are far from heartbroken. Elon Musk is shuttering his social media company’s headquarters. New headquarters will be set up in Texas. But city officials are not lamenting the exit. X bears little resemblance to the company that San Francisco wooed with a …

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Jack Daniel’s Maker Caves To Anti-Diversity Campaign

Just Drinks reports: Brown-Forman has scrapped its diversity and inclusion policies and ended its participation in an LGBTQ corporate equality index. An email sent out by Brown-Forman’s executive leadership team was posted on X by US conservative activist Robby Starbuck, in which the group said it was making changes to its policies to “account for the ever-changing landscape”. The web …

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Musk’s Lawyers Subpoena Extremism Watchdog Groups

Mother Jones reports: Lawyers representing Elon Musk and X, previously known as Twitter, have quietly begun sending subpoenas to a host of public interest groups, Mother Jones has learned. Most of the targeted organizations have signed open letters to X’s advertisers expressing concerns about the platform’s direction under Musk’s leadership. The groups include the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the …

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Divers Find Body Of Missing British Tech Billionaire

NBC News reports: The body of British tech magnate Mike Lynch was recovered from the wreck of a superyacht that sank off the coast of Sicily, a source familiar with the matter told CNBC Thursday. Rescuers were still searching for Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah, the source said, the last person missing from the luxury boat that went down in what …

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WSJ: Elon Musk’s Twitter Buyout Is Disaster For Banks

The Wall Street Journal reports: The $13 billion that Elon Musk borrowed to buy Twitter has turned into the worst merger-finance deal for banks since the 2008-09 financial crisis. The seven banks involved in the deal, including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, lent the money to the billionaire’s holding company to take the social-media platform, now named X, private …

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Harley-Davidson Caves To The Cult On Diversity Policies

Bloomberg News reports: Harley-Davidson Inc. dropped several diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives after weeks of sustained pressure from an anti-DEI crusader. The Milwaukee-based company on Monday said that it no longer has minority-owned supplier spending goals, will drop socially-motivated training for employees and make other changes to back away from diversity programs. Harley joins Tractor Supply Co., John Deere & …

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Tech Billionaire Missing After Yacht Sinks Off Sicily

The Guardian reports: The tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch is among those missing after a superyacht with 22 people onboard sank off the coast of Sicily during a violent storm, the Guardian understands. Lynch, 59, known for being the founder of Autonomy Corporation, is understood to be one of four Britons reported missing while his wife, Angela Bacares, has been rescued, …

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Musk: X Will Close Its Brazil Office Over “Censorship”

Reuters reports: Media platform X said on Saturday it would close its operations in Brazil “effective immediately” due to what it called “censorship orders” by Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes. X, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, claims Moraes secretly threatened one of the company’s legal representatives in the South American country with arrest if it did not comply with legal …

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Meta Shuts Down Misinformation Tracking Tool

ABC News reports: Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms has shut down CrowdTangle, a tool widely used by researchers, watchdog organizations and journalists to monitor social media posts, notably to track how misinformation spreads on the company’s platforms. Wednesday’s shutdown, which Meta announced earlier this year, has been protested by researchers and nonprofits. In May, dozens of groups, including the …

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Texas Sues GM Over Driving Habits Data Collection

Reuters reports: General Motors has been sued by the state of Texas, which accused the automaker of installing technology on more than 14 million vehicles to collect data about drivers, which it then sold to insurers and other companies without drivers’ consent. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said GM’s data were used to compile “Driving Scores” assessing whether more than …

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WH Launches “Time Is Money” Corporate Crackdown

Via press release from the White House: Today, President Biden and Vice President Harris are launching “Time Is Money,” a new governmentwide effort to crack down on all the ways that corporations—through excessive paperwork, hold times, and general aggravation—add unnecessary headaches and hassles to people’s days and degrade their quality of life. Americans are tired of being played for suckers, …

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Tesla Continues To Lobby For Deals Backed By Dems

Reuters reports: When Elon Musk endorsed Donald Trump for president last month, the Tesla founder and chief executive backed a candidate who vows to “drill, baby, drill,” “end the electric vehicle mandate” and reduce subsidies of the sort that helped Tesla become the U.S.’s dominant EV manufacturer. So instrumental have government loans, tax breaks and other EV policies been to …

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