Author: starbpo

REA Group, which is owned by News Corp and runs Australia’s biggest real estate website, said on Monday that it is thinking about making an offer to buy Rightmove, which is the biggest online real estate agent in Britain. This news caused the share price of the London-listed company to go through the roof. In order to make a “global and diversified digital property company,” the Melbourne company that runs the real estate website Realestate.com.au said it is thinking about making an offer of cash and shares to buy its FTSE-100 competitor. Before the news that REA Group might be…

The Amounts: The University of Michigan said Friday that the final reading of its U.S. consumer-sentiment index for August was 67.9, a little higher than the preliminary reading of 67.8 that came out earlier in the month. The Wall Street Journal polled economists and found that they thought the mood would slightly improve to a final number of 68. In July, the number was 66.4. Important Facts: A measure of how people feel about the economy as it stands now went up from a baseline 60.9 to 61.3 at the end of August. The number of people who are optimistic…

Tuesday, news came out that Edgar Bronfman Jr., a media executive, had made an offer of $4.3 billion for National Amusements in an effort to break the deal that National Amusements would be merged with David Ellison’s Skydance Media. This caused Paramount Global’s shares to drop 2.5%. Shari Redstone and her family run Paramount PARA -1.49% through National Amusements. Paramount owns CBS, the streaming service Parmount+, the movie company Paramount, and the cable networks Comedy Central and Nickelodeon. The Wall Street Journal reported that people familiar with the situation said Bronfman is offering to buy National Amusements and get a…

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) said on Tuesday that it has agreed to pay $600 million up front and up to $1.1 billion in additional payments to buy V-Wave Ltd., a privately held company that is working on treatments for people with heart failure. V-Wave will join Johnson & Johnson MedTech. The deal will help J&J “accelerate its shift into high-growth and high-opportunity markets and will deepen its relationships with structural interventional cardiologists and heart failure specialists,” the company said. Heart failure with reduced ejection fraction, or HFrEF, is what V-Wave’s cardiovascular implant device is meant to treat. When someone has…

Kroger Co. said Monday that it had asked the court to stop a Federal Trade Commission administrative proceeding that was questioning the grocery store chain’s deal to join with Albertsons Cos. Inc. The company said that the FTC’s use of in-house courts in the case was an excessive use of government power. Kroger KR -0.68% said that the FTC’s action to stop the merger was against the Constitution because the judge in charge of the case was “not removable by the President of the United States.” It also said that the federal court system, not the agency’s own court system,…

Shares of Hawaiian Holdings went up on Tuesday after an important legal hurdle was cleared in the way of Alaska Air Group’s planned takeover. Hawaii Governor Josh Green said that the time limit for the U.S. Department of Justice to look over the deal has passed. The governor said, “Alaska has reaffirmed its commitment to our state and will keep the Hawaiian Airlines brand, protect and grow union jobs in our Hawai‘i, and continue to provide important passenger and cargo service to, from, and within the islands.” The U.S. Department of Transportation still has to agree to the deal. The…

Economists say that the Federal Reserve will use its Jackson Hole retreat to lay out a plan for slow easing that will start at its meeting in mid-September. This comes before the two days of talks that begin on Friday. The Fed’s plan is very different from the rate cuts that the market thought would happen after the weak July jobs report came out at the beginning of the month. Derek Holt, vice president of Scotiabank Economics in Toronto, said, “The word of the day is likely to be gradual.” Economists say that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will give the…

IN ATLANTA — An election board in one of Georgia’s biggest counties has decided that people who question a voter’s eligibility will have to pay for the cost of letting the voters in question know about the problem. The Cobb County Board of Elections and Registrations agreed to the rule on Tuesday by a vote of 4-1. Debbie Fisher, a Republican on the board, was the only person who voted against the rule. As part of a nationwide effort led by Donald Trump’s supporters to remove names from the voter rolls, Republican activists are challenging thousands of voters in Georgia.…

On Friday, oil futures closed down, bringing U.S. benchmark prices down for the week. This was because worries about demand stayed high and pushed back fears of an Iranian attack on Israel in response.The price changes Market forces U.S. oil futures hit a new low for the week as Chinese data showed falling imports and refinery input demand. Tyler Richey, co-editor at Sevens Report Research, told MarketWatch that this suggests that the Chinese economy will continue to slow down, which will hurt demand around the world. Reports say that in July, refinery runs dropped 6.1% year over year in China.…

Last weekend, a candidate for president said he wanted to get rid of taxes on tip income in a key battleground state. This made critics nervous because they thought it would be a bad idea to give people a tax break. This time, the idea was first brought up by Vice President Kamala Harris at a rally in Las Vegas on Saturday. The idea was first brought up by former President Donald Trump in the same city, which has a lot of workers who get tips, two months earlier. Some people, including Trump, who called the Democratic nominee a “copycat”…