What we’re reading (4/3)
“Wall Street Dealmaking Activity Dives In Q1” (Axios). “The further Wall Street gets from 2021, the more of an aberration it looks like…[t]he value of U.S. merger and acquisition activity fell 20% from the previous quarter — and is nearly halved from Q1 of last year.”
“McDonald’s Temporarily Shuts U.S. Offices As Chain Prepares For Layoff Notices And Begins Layoff Notices To Employees” (Wall Street Journal). “McDonald’s Corp. has temporarily closed its U.S. offices this week and has started informing corporate employees about layoffs being made by the burger giant as part of a broader company restructuring.”
“Oil Prices Soar As OPEC+ Shocks The Market” (OilPrice.Com). “OPEC+ on Sunday surprised oil markets with an announcement that it will reduce its output further, by some 1.66 million barrels daily…[t]he Financial Times reported that oil prices had gained 8% immediately after the announcement, noting Saudi Arabia’s share of the cuts would be almost half of the total, at 500,000 bpd.”
“How Mobile Phones Have Changed Our Brains” (BBC). “The mere proximity of a phone, it seems, contributes to ‘brain drain’. Our brains may be subconsciously hard at work in inhibiting the desire to check our phones, or constantly monitoring the environment to see if we should check our phone (eg, waiting for a notification). Either way, this diverted attention can make doing anything else more difficult. The only ‘fix’, the researchers found, was putting the device in a different room entirely.”
“A Hollywood Superagent Buys A Pro Wrestling Heavyweight” (New York Times). “Ari Emanuel’s media colossus Endeavor, whose properties include the Ultimate Fighting Championship, has agreed to buy World Wrestling Entertainment, creating a live event behemoth and cementing its status as a leader in combat sport competitions. The combination will create a new, publicly traded company that is 51 percent owned by Endeavor, with W.W.E. holding the remaining 49 percent. The new company will be worth more than $21 billion[.]”
