What we’re reading (9/14)
“Oracle Wins Bid For TikTok in U.S., Beating Microsoft” (Wall Street Journal). “Oracle is set to be announced as TikTok’s “trusted tech partner” in the U.S., and the deal is likely not to be structured as an outright sale, the people said. The next step is for the White House and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. to approve the deal, said one of the people, adding that the participants believe it satisfies the concerns around data security that have been previously raised by the U.S. government.” Oracle shares rose after reports of the deal, suggesting the market expects they got a bargain.
“Amazon And Walmart’s Emerging Delivery Drone Battle Escalates With Zipline Deal” (CNBC). “Walmart announced Monday that it’s partnering with Zipline — a company best known for its medical drone operations in African countries like Ghana and Rwanda — to launch a delivery service of select health and wellness products in the U.S. The company says its intention is to later expand the partnership into offering drone delivery of general merchandise.”
“There’s A Hidden Weakness In The Stock Market” (CNN Business). CNN reports that while the market value-weighted S&P 500 is up 3 percent this year, “[a]n Invesco S&P 500 ETF (RSP) that equally weights all of the index members is down more than 6% this year.” (Emphasis added.)
“UBS Chairman Explors Merger With Credit Suisse, Report Says” (Bloomberg). “The chairmen of UBS Group AG and Credit Suisse Group AG are exploring a potential merger to create one of Europe’s largest banks, Inside Paradeplatz reported, citing unidentified people inside the two lenders. The project, nicknamed Signal, is being driven by UBS Chairman Axel Weber, who is working on it with his counterpart at Credit Suisse, Urs Rohner, the Swiss finance blog said. Weber has discussed the idea with Swiss Finance Minister Ueli Maurer and an agreement could happen by early next year, according to the report.”
“Section 230 Is A Government License To Build Rage Machines” (Wired). “Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects ‘interactive computer services’ like Facebook and Google from legal liability for the posts of their users. This is often portrayed as an incentive for good moderation. What is underappreciated is that it also provides special protection for actively bad moderation and the unsavory business practices that make the big tech platforms most of their money.”
