Editor’s notes: Jeff Bezos should look closer to home for ideas on where to spend his fortune, new peer Bethell is a Lord to applaud, and the Economist shows how to stand up to social media bullies September 7, 2018 Amazon has joined Apple in the ranks of $1 trillion companies based on market capitalisation. Shortly before his company hit this massive (but meaningless) valuation, founder Jeff Bezos was pondering how to spend his vast wealth. Bezos is estimated to be sitting on a $130bn (£100bn) fortune – and earlier this summer he was asked [...]
Magic Leap taps Andy Serkis’ CGI studio to power content for its new VR headset September 6, 2018 Virtual reality startup Magic Leap has teamed up with The Imaginarium Studios, a London firm founded by actor Andy Serkis to power additional CGI content for its latest headset, which it raised $2.4bn to develop. Imaginarium, which has worked on films such as Star Wars: The Force Awakens, uses performance capture technology with actors to build [...]
Shazam! EU gives Apple go-ahead for music app takeover September 6, 2018 Apple was given the green light for its planned takeover of popular song-recognition app Shazam by the European Union today. The tech giant got the go-ahead to acquire Shazam, which identifies songs played within range of a smartphone, from an EU antitrust investigation that said the takeover would not harm competition in the bloc. A full-scale [...]
Amazon hits a trillion-dollar valuation September 4, 2018 Amazon has become the second ever US publicly-listed company to hit a $1 trillion market valuation. Amazon shares briefly passed over the $2,050.27 mark needed to break the milestone earlier this afternoon, before dropping back down to $2,035.56. It crossed the $2,000 per share threshold last Thursday, amid doubts from Wall Street that placed it [...]
Mobile payments platform Boku sees users and profits soar after strengthening links with digital giants September 4, 2018 Mobile payments platform Boku has seen a surge in users and profit after strengthening links with the world's largest digital companies. The company said its total payment volume (TPV) was up 153 per cent to $1.5bn (£1.17bn) and that its monthly active users grew to 10.3 million – a 117 per cent increase on the [...]
Halfords sales speed up as servicing business benefits from drop in car sales September 4, 2018 Halfords Group reported sales growth this morning against a tough backdrop, but profits are still expected to remain flat on last year. The update came ahead of new chief executive Graham Stapleton's strategy update at the end of this month, though analysts do not expect any radical changes at the business. The figures Total revenue in [...]
August’s top and bottom performing funds September 4, 2018 The Turkish lira succumbed to a savage slump in August following a doubling of US tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminium in retaliation for the imprisonment of a pastor on terrorism charges. Concerns about the Turkish economy had been mounting for some time given President Erdogan’s increasingly autocratic rule and the appointment of his son-in-law [...]
The media’s greatest enemy isn’t Trump, it’s the tech titans September 3, 2018 What is the biggest threat to the future of the media: President Donald Trump, or Silicon Valley? In the presidential corner, Trump’s regular attacks on the “fake news media” have provoked a robust response. This summer, newspapers coordinated a string of editorials defending the essential role of the press as a lens on power and [...]
Job cuts loom as Ford gears up for major business redesign September 2, 2018 Analysts at Morgan Stanley have predicted that car-maker Ford is preparing to axe around 24,000 jobs as part of major redesign of its European business. The Sunday Times reported that the car giant could axe up to 12 per cent of its global workforce across European outposts in the UK, Spain and Germany. The newspaper [...]
Amazon poised for trillion-dollar valuation despite stock shorts September 2, 2018 Amazon is set to become the second US publicly-listed company to reach a $1 trillion (£771.2bn) market capitalisation this week, despite it overtaking Tesla as the most shorted stock on Wall Street. The e-commerce giant broke past the $2,000 per share milestone on Thursday evening, holding investors in suspense. Fellow tech giant Apple became the first [...]