Month: November 2018

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said there is a “70 percent” likelihood that he will personally go to Mars, speaking in an interview with Axios published Sunday. Musk’s rocket company has “recently made a number of breakthroughs that I am just really fired up about,” he said. He did not elaborate on those new

Campbell Soup announced on Monday the terms of a truce it has reached with Third Point, which will add two of the activist fund’s nominees to its board, former Blue Buffalo CEO Kurt Schmidt and Comscore President Sarah Hofstetter. Campbell shareholders are set to meet on Thursday. The settlement marks a muted victory for Dan

Cyber Monday sales are on pace to hit $7.8 billion by the end of the day, Adobe Insights revealed Monday morning, making it the largest online shopping day in U.S. history. That projection, made by the firm at 10:30 a.m. ET, would represent an increase of 18.3 percent compared with the same time last year,

Facebook is shutting down the “War Room” it built ahead of midterm elections, and won’t reopen it for future elections, according to a report from Bloomberg. The War Room was part of Facebook’s ongoing efforts to contain the spread of misinformation and abusive content on the platform. Foreign accounts were first found to have interfered

Oil producers across North America may be looking at dialing back their investment plans amid plummeting oil prices in recent weeks, but BP’s Middle East chief is unfazed. The British oil giant has planned its investments with a wide price range in mind, accounting for drops like November’s, BP Middle East President Michael Townshend told

Mitsubishi said on Monday its board removed Carlos Ghosn from his role as chairman, following his arrest and ouster from alliance partner Nissan last week for alleged financial misconduct. Ghosn’s ouster marks the end of his chairmanship of Japanese automakers, just two years after he was praised for bringing a steadying hand to Mitsubishi Motors

CVS Health and Aetna have received the final state approval they need to complete their roughly $69 billion merger and now expect the deal to close “on or about” Nov. 28, the companies said Monday in regulatory filings. The companies had been expecting to finalize the merger by Thanksgiving. However, a handful of the 28

General Motors plans to dramatically cut production at a number of plants in Ohio, Michigan, Maryland, and Ontario, Canada in 2019 and reduce its salaried workforce by 15 percent in a massive restructuring that will cost up to $3.8 billion, the company said Monday. This story is developing. Please check back for updates.

For decades now, the health-care industry, government and society have grown accustomed to a model for how diseases are treated. Scientists achieve a medical breakthrough, the biopharmaceutical industry develops a medicine, a doctor diagnoses a patient and the patient goes on a course of treatment that can last for years or a lifetime. This model

The Food and Drug Administration is overhauling the most common way medical device manufacturers bring their products to market in an attempt to advance new technologies. Since 1976, manufacturers have been able to pursue an expedited approval process if they could prove new products were substantially equivalent to those that were grandfathered in when Congress

How General Electric (GE) resolves its debt problem will be “critical” to the wider Investment Grade (IG) market, an analyst said Monday. The General Electric Company has witnessed an exodus of investment from both its equity stock and corporate debt as its future has been called into question. The U.S. behemoth has piled on the

After a search that’s lasted nearly 10 months, Airbnb finally has a CFO. The home-sharing start-up announced Monday that Dave Stephenson will join Airbnb as chief financial officer. He spent 17 years at Amazon, most recently as VP and CFO of Amazon’s Worldwide Consumer Organization, responsible for all global website sales. His time at Amazon

Traffic might appear lighter at some malls this holiday season, but that’s because people are shopping on their smartphones. Mobile spending during the holidays is expected to continue to climb this year, as retailers have been investing to improve their apps, and shoppers are growing more comfortable with ringing purchases up in just a few

Bill Gates said it would be unfortunate to see the U.S. miss out on the economic opportunity related to cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Gates, a cofounder of Microsoft, is among the world’s most prominent climate advocates, in addition to his work around preventing infectious diseases and other causes. On Sunday he shared some of his

Tesla almost died earlier this year, CEO Elon Musk said Sunday night in an interview with Axios that aired on HBO. Musk said the company was “bleeding money like crazy” as it worked through the Model 3 production ramp in the spring and summer. He said the company “came within single-digit” weeks of death before

Campbell Soup is working towards a deal with Third Point that would add two of the activist fund’s nominees to its board, former Blue Buffalo CEO Kurt Schmidt and Comscore President Sarah Hofstetter, a person familiar with the situation told CNBC on Sunday. As part of the deal, Campbell would expand the size of its

Black Friday pulled in a record $6.22 billion in online sales, up 23.6 percent from a year ago, according to a new report. The Friday after Thanksgiving this year was also the first day in history to see more than $2 billion in sales stemming from smartphones, said Adobe Analytics, which tracks transactions for 80

Foot traffic at malls and stores across the U.S. this past holiday weekend wasn’t as strong as last year, a retail tracking firm said Saturday, while a separate report suggested more consumers opted to shop online. Preliminary data tracking shoppers’ visits to physical stores Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday showed a year-over-year decline of 1

There’s something about that smell, that new car smell, said Jeff Diesing a sales consultant at Chelsea Chevrolet Buick outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan. To people shopping for a new car, it’s almost like they’re sniffing the turkey as it cooks in the oven on Thanksgiving Day, he said. “It’s very distinctive and, in general,

Corporate scandals can be costly to investors in the immediate term, but employees who blow the whistle on wrongdoing help their companies become more profitable in the long run, according to a new study. In a detailed analysis written by Kyle Welch of George Washington University and Stephen Stubben of the University of Utah, companies