TikTok Targets Spain, Wiz Rejects Alphabet, Kakao Billionaire Arrested and more!
TikTok Targets Spain for E-Commerce Push, Wiz Rejects $23 Billion, Kakao Billionaire Arrested and more!
TikTok Targets Spain, Ireland to Revive Europe E-Commerce Push - Bloomberg
TikTok is launching its in-app shopping platform, TikTok Shop, in Spain and Ireland in October. The rollout will be smaller than previously planned, but preparations are underway to expand to other parts of Europe next year. The company is seeking to widen its reach without attracting further scrutiny from the region’s authorities. TikTok has recruited a team of about 40 workers in Spain, making it one of the company’s largest e-commerce outposts in Europe. The firm is also hiring Spanish speakers in places like Madrid and London for roles ranging from logistics to compliance and strategies for Shop. The app Shop is the app’s fastest-growing feature, combining addictive video content with impulse-buying in visual fashion.
Wiz Rejects Alphabet’s $23 Billion Offer, Seeks IPO Instead - Bloomberg
Cybersecurity startup Wiz Inc. has rejected a takeover bid of up to $23 billion from Alphabet Inc. and will continue with its plan for an IPO. CEO Assaf Rappaport said the company is confident in its exceptional team and plans to reach $1 billion in annual recurring revenue. The company connects to cloud storage providers and scans data for security risks. Before the takeover talks, Wiz was rapidly expanding with acquisitions and was starting to eye an initial public offering.
Kakao Billionaire Arrested in K-Pop Market Manipulation Case - Bloomberg
Kakao Corp. founder Brian Kim has been arrested in South Korea over allegations of violating capital market laws and stock-rigging during the takeover of SM Entertainment Co.
Kim, a 58-year-old internet entrepreneur, is the most prominent business figure to wind up in jail in years
He is accused of buying 240 billion won ($173 million in shares of SM to disrupt Hybe Co.'s offer during a bidding battle with BTS
The arrest is a remarkable turn of events for a self-made billionaire who rose from poverty to build Korea’s leading internet firm
Korean authorities have convicted and imprisoned corporate leaders in the past, but Kim is the first to run afoul of the law.
China Focuses on Kamala Harris’ Weaknesses After Biden Exits - Bloomberg
US Vice President Kamala Harris is a trending topic on Chinese social media, with users betting on her bid for the Democratic presidential ticket. The American election dominated the top four slots of China’s X-like Weibo platform early Monday.
An online poll of 12,000 Weibo users found that nearly 80% believe Trump would beat Harris in the November race, according to a Shanghai-based Morning Post survey.
Harris would be the first American president with Asian descent if she wins, but her policy on China is unlikely to develop a targeted strategy in the short term.
Aramco’s Venture Arm Backs South Korea’s AI Chipmaker Rebellions - Bloomberg
Saudi Aramco’s venture arm has invested $15 million in South Korean chipmaker Rebellions Inc.
The funding will be used to establish a new subsidiary in Saudi Arabia and launch business operations there.
California Forever Future City in Solano County Put on Hold - New York Times
The East Solano Plan, a proposal for a new city near San Francisco, has been delayed by at least two years.
The delay is due to the need to study the project’s impact on the environment.
Delta Flight Cancellations Continue As It Struggles To Recover From Tech Outage - New York Times
Delta Air Lines was the only carrier still canceling hundreds of flights three days after a technology outage hit airlines.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg singled out Delta for its slow recovery and unacceptable customer service on Sunday
Delta canceled about 1,300 flights on Sunday and delayed another 1,600 on Monday, accounting for about a third of its scheduled flights
The tech outage on Friday hit airlines especially hard, with Delta, Allegiant Air, American Airlines, Spirit Airlines, and United Airlines being the slowest to restore operations
Southwest Airlines faced the most acute problems, lacking the equipment to cope with the weather and struggling to schedule and track pilots and flight attendants
Winter storms severely hampered several U.S. carriers, but the problems were most acute at Southwest Airlines
Airlines like Delta will have to find open seats on already heavily booked flights to reaccommodate hundreds of thousands of distressed customers whose peak-season flights were canceled
‘Barbie’ Was Supposed to Change Hollywood for Women. Why Didn’t It? - New York Times
“Barbie, the film, was released in 2023 and became the highest-grossing film ever, earning $1.4 billion worldwide.
The success of the film was seen as a sign of a new era of embracing stories by, about, and for women in Hollywood
However, in the 12 months since its release, little has changed in the industry due to labor strikes and a retrenchment by entertainment companies
Box office box office is down 17% from last year, and studios are questioning the reliability of the theatrical marketplace
Hollywood has not seen a significant increase in the number of girls or women in leading roles in films, according to a report from the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative
Director Greta Gerwig and star Margot Robbie were credited with the film’s success, but the industry has not taken action to create a new path forward
Warner Bros. went all in on promoting the film and exceeded expectations with an expansive campaign that made it inescapable
China Shows Few Signs of Tilting Economy Toward Consumers in New Plan - New York Times
The Chinese Communist Party has released a plan for economic strategy, rebuffing calls for investment-led growth and consumer spending.
The document emphasizes government investments in high-tech manufacturing and scientific innovation, but does not address China’s plunging real estate prices or the millions of unfinished apartments left behind by failed developers.
Economists had called for a comprehensive effort to rebalance the Chinese economy away from investment and toward consumer spending, but the document only offers a brief and cautious call to “refine long-term mechanisms for expanding consumption.”
China promised to promote the development of strategic industries in eight sectors, including renewable energy and aerospace, as part of a national push for self-reliance. The document also called for the central government to become responsible for more of the country’s spending and expanding local tax revenues, but had only a bare mention of a real estate tax.
Wall Street Republicans Worry About Vance as Trump’s Running Mate - New York Times
The financial world fears being marginalized in Washington after former President Trump chose a running mate openly hostile to Wall Street as his running mate.
Senator JD Vance of Ohio, a harsh critic of corporate interests and a former venture capitalist, solidified a feeling in the world of high finance that the balance of power in the party had shifted westward.
Trump brushed off personal entreaties from some of the Republican Party’s biggest donors, who were reliable supporters of traditional rightward causes like corporate tax cuts, freewheeling trade policies, and internationalism. (
The choice of Mr. Vance was a repudiation of conservative donors on Wall Street, including the hedge-fund titan Kenneth Griffin, who opposed the senator’s nomination right up until the hours before Mr. Trump’s announcement. The finance set must now either slink back to a candidate they have savaged publicly and privately or risk being shut out no matter who wins the White House in November.
Billionaire founder of Kakao arrested in K-pop stock manipulation case - Financial Times
Billionaire founder of Kakao, Brian Kim, has been arrested in South Korea for alleged stock manipulation during a bidding battle for a K-pop agency.
Kakao took over SM Entertainment last year after winning a bidding contest with Hybe, but financial regulators accused Kakao executives of buying Won240bn ($173mn) of SM shares to undermine Hybe’s tender offer.
Kim has denied involvement in any illegal activities connected to the SM acquisition and Kakao’s chief investment officer Bae Jae-hyun is standing trial for his involvement in the case. - Kim is the largest Kakao shareholder and may lose control of online lender KakaoBank if found guilty, with those convicted of financial crimes barred from owning a stake of more than 10% in a bank. Kakao has become a main target of scrutiny as South Korean authorities strengthen regulations against internet giants.
Google parent and Wiz end talks on $23bn deal - Financial Times
Alphabet was in talks to acquire cybersecurity start-up Wiz for $23bn.
The deal had fallen through, with Wiz choosing to continue building its own company.
Australian shares rise despite lacklustre resources results - Financial Times
US President Joe Biden drops out of the race for the White House race in favour of Kamala Harris
US stocks have their best day in over six weeks as traders brace for potential face-off between Harris and Trump in 2024 election
Tech groups rally in tech groups, S&P 500 adds 1.1% and Nasdaq Composite rises 1.6%
Meta violates US labour law by using severance agreements with non-disparagement clauses that ban former employees from criticising the tech giant
AMC Entertainment reaches $1.6bn debt refinancing deal with lenders to refinance debt and move some of its theatres and intellectual property to a different entity
Warner Brothers Discovery exercises option to match offer for NBA rights, extending a contentious negotiation with the league and media giant over live sports asset
Treasuries sell off across the curve, with yields on 10-year bond rising for the third consecutive day
Google abandons plan to remove cookies from Chrome browser - Financial Times
Google has reversed its decision to remove cookies from its Chrome web browser after four years of pushback from advertisers and regulators.
The search giant will now retain cookies within Chrome and prompt users to turn them on or off, reversing a 2020 pledge to eliminate all cross-website cookies within two years.
Google had faced criticism from digital advertising, ad tech, and publishing industries for potentially destroying their business models and enshining Google’s advantage in consumer data collection over advertisers. The UK Information Commissioner’s Office had issues with the proposed replacement technologies, calling them “deeply flawed”.
Despite the reversal, Google will continue to encourage the digital advertising industry to move to more private alternatives to third-party cookies and may consider regulatory action if systemic non-compliance is identified.
AI start-up Cohere raises $500mn as it seeks to take on OpenAI - Financial Times
-AI developer Cohere has raised $500mn in a new funding round, valuing the company at $5.5bn, making it one of the world’s most valuable start-ups in the field. The funding came from a mixture of new and existing investors, including PSP Investments, Nvidia, Oracle, Salesforce Ventures, and Fujitsu. The capital will be used to develop new models, computing power, and headcount. Cohere plans to double its staff to about 500 this year and has not developed an AI chatbot for consumers. The company has a narrower focus on courting enterprise customers for its AI models, making its top-performing large language model cheaper to build, train, and run than its rivals. The return to investors after little more than a year underscores the aggressive pace of development in the competitive AI sector.
Google Talks to Acquire Cybersecurity Startup Wiz Fall Apart - Wall Street Journal
Google’s talks with Wiz have fallen apart.
Wiz is now aiming for an initial public offering.
Alexa Is in Millions of Households—and Amazon Is Losing Billions - Wall Street Journal
Amazon has lost tens of billions of dollars on its devices business, which includes Echos and other products such as Kindles, Fire TV Sticks and video doorbells.
The company launched Echo smart home devices with its Alexa voice assistant in 2014, but customers mostly used it mostly for free apps such as setting alarms and checking the weather.
Amazon is launching a paid tier of Alexa as part of a plan to reverse losses, but even some engineers are worried it won’t work
CEO Andy Jassy is rethinking the Bezos-era metric inside Amazon called downstream impact, which assigns a financial value to a product or service based on how customers spend within Amazon’s ecosystem after purchase
Downstream impact has been used across Amazon business lines, from its Prime membership program to its video offerings and music
Some Amazon devices can count on direct revenue, such as selling users subscriptions attached to the product
In other cases, the downstream impact idea broke down, according to people familiar with the devices business
Former CEO Jeff Bezos introduced a Kindle Fire tablet in 2011.
Google Is Keeping Cookies in Chrome After All - Wall Street Journal
Google is ending its plan to eliminate cookies in its Chrome browser after four years of efforts, delays, and disagreements with the advertising industry.
Advertisers objected to the plan to replace cookies, saying it would force them to shift spending to Google’s digital-ad products
Google will present users with a prompt to decide whether to turn cookies on or off instead of eliminating them
The transition requires significant work by many participants and will have an impact on publishers, advertisers, and everyone involved in online advertising
U.K. regulators opened an investigation into whether the plan would hurt competition in digital advertising, and Google delayed cookies’ demise beyond the last announced target date of end of this year.
A Case for Backing Up Your Precious Photos and Files at Home - Wall Street Journal
Back up your precious photos and files through the cloud to safeguard against loss
Some cloud services have unexpectedly shut down or scaled back the space they give users
Storage analysts recommend three moves: backing up files in the cloud, on solid-state drives, and keeping another copy in a remote location
HDDs store files on discs that spin, while SSDs don’t have moving parts and are more fragile
SSD prices have fallen 90% over the past decade and are cheaper long-term than cloud storage
Don’t trust important files to companies you’ve never heard of, such as Samsung or SanDisk
Transfer your files to an SSD to make the backup process completely pain-free
The Tesla of Stoves Comes With a Battery to Power Your Whole House - Wall Street Journal
Battery-powered cooktops may replace gas-powered ranges in the future
Electricity is the best way to power everything from cooking to driving
America’s infrastructure is inadequate to distribute electricity
Copper and Impulse are startups using batteries to upgrade appliances and make the power grid more robust
Impulse plans to integrate its system directly into a home’s wiring to push electricity back into the grid
The stored power could potentially be worth hundreds of dollars a year to a homeowner
In the future, Impulse may sell an array of battery-powered appliances, including hot-water heaters.