Pele, Maradona, Zidane. Some of the greatest names in soccer cemented their place in history on the biggest stage in the sport, the World Cup. So, who will be the star of this year’s tournament?
Just across the street from Google’s imposing New York headquarters, where the search giant’s unmistakeable logo is emblazoned across the side of an art deco building, are the offices of one of New York’s fastest growing media and technology companies.
The music industry has been a hotbed for corporate activity this year.
Tesla held its annual shareholder meeting in northern California yesterday, and there were a few important messages for anyone interested in the entrepreneur’s vision for the future.
Time magazine is coming full circle. This Friday (June 6) its publisher, Time Inc, is expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange as a standalone company, returning to the status it held for more than a quarter century between 1964 and 1990. It is the latest in a long list of corporate transactions that the owner of one of America’s first weekly magazines has been involved in since it was founded in the 1920s.
Processed meat is of notoriously questionable nutritional value, but that hasn’t stopped a bidding war from breaking out over a major producer of hot dogs, sausages and lunch-meats.
The New York Rangers last week advanced to the Stanley Cup finals for the first time in 20 years, meaning suddenly everyone in New York City is a devoted fan and expert in the sport of ice hockey.
As of right now, Whole Foods is the worst-performing stock in the S&P 500 this year. Its shares are down about 35% in 2014, worse than the 31% fall the similarly besieged electronics retailer Best Buy has suffered, and below a 3.8% gain for the broader index.
The aftershocks from Apple’s $3-billion purchase of Beats are still rattling the music industry. The company, which was founded by rap mogul Dr. Dre and music producer Jimmy Iovine, is perhaps best known for its headphones. But its music streaming business is what Apple wants, notes Quartz’s tech editor Dan Frommer. Linking Beats’ music service to iTunes’ 800 million accounts clearly has the potential to shake up the streaming sector.
Steve Ballmer wants to buy the LA Clippers for $2 billion, a record price for an NBA franchise that has upset some people.
Last week, we looked at the legal war that the recorded music industry is waging against Pandora Media and Sirius XM satellite radio over songs recorded before 1972, which are not covered by Federal copyright laws.
Has Twitter reached a turning point? Shares in the social media company are up noticeably again today (by about 3% currently) after surging 11% yesterday. That was a rise off their lowest levels since last year’s IPO.
There is a battle being waged at the moment in the US fast food industry over breakfast.
“Is there any link between football and economic success?,” asks Goldman Sachs in a fairly comprehensive note released this morning on the World Cup, which begins in just over two weeks in Brazil. ”Almost certainly not. However, we didn’t let this mere fact stop us from trawling the data for some spurious correlations between the two.”
Starbucks has an absolutely astonishing presence in the United States: an analysis by Quartz this week found that on a trip from Boston to Philadelphia, for example, it’s possible to never be more than 10 miles from one of its stores.
BuzzFeed won’t be sharing its traffic with other websites as it has been.
The 400 miles of asphalt that connect the Spanish and Portuguese capitals may well be the most congested motorways on the planet this weekend.
Credit rating agencies have been accused of being asleep at the wheel during the US subprime mortgage crisis, which ended up morphing into a full-blown international financial crisis and triggering a global recession. But there’s a new risk to the world economy and this time credit ratings agencies are on it.
Consolidation fever is sweeping through America’s communications markets. This week, AT&T agreed to buy DirecTV, and regulators are still grappling with the question of what America’s pay TV and broadband markets might look like if the country’s two biggest cable companies, Comcast and Time Warner Cable, are allowed to unite. Today, SNL Kagan put out these nifty maps that give an indication of what Comcast’s market power might look like if the deal ends up getting through.
SABMiller, the world’s second-largest beer brewer, flagged a revolution in American beer drinking habits this morning. Its name is shandy.
Add Best Buy to the cacophony of voices calling for Apple CEO Tim Cook to develop and release some new products. The consumer electronics retailer, which these days is marketing itself as the “ultimate showroom,” reported earnings this morning. They weren’t terrible: Sales growth declined, but at its slowest pace in about two years. Still, Best Buy’s shares have tanked in pre-market trading after the company warned that sales from its existing stores open for at least a year would decline in the “low single digits” for the next two quarters. It’s an industry-wide issue. Here is CFO Sharon McCollam explaining why:
AT&T’s purchase of DirecTV hasn’t won much praise from investors. Many people have dismissed it as just another case of financial engineering: the telecom giant is buying an asset cheaply that will bolster its cashflows and help it cover its dividend. The Wall Street Journal (paywall) came right out and said the deal “leads AT&T in the wrong direction.”
Spotify sent the world a reminder this morning: It is the dominant force worldwide in paid-subscription-based streaming music.
There is an old adage in media that “content is king”, and it certainly seems to be gaining traction in the increasingly crowded streaming television landscape.
