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Happy Super Bowl Sunday. Here are the top business stories to know for the week ahead. – Charlotte cowles
What’s up? (January 31-February 6)
Bezos tilts
Twenty-seven years after founding Amazon, Jeff Bezos cedes his position as managing director to one of his protégés, Andy Jassy, who heads the company’s lucrative cloud computing division. Mr Bezos will become Amazon’s executive chairman and take part in high-level decisions, but it’s still the end of an era for the nation’s largest e-commerce retailer. It starts off on a fairly positive note: Amazon’s latest quarterly sales topped $ 100 billion for the first time, and the company’s value ($ 1.7 trillion) made Mr Bezos the one of the richest people in the world. But there are challenges ahead as the company faces increasingly scrutiny from lawmakers and antitrust regulators as to whether it is exerting influence illegally.
The beginning of the end
Well, here’s something unsurprisingly: Shares of GameStop – the company that attracted an online stock buying frenzy that plunged markets into turmoil – fell back to earth, deflating to a small fraction. of the value they held a few days earlier. The same army of retail investors that spurred GameStop’s boom and bust cycle had also reclaimed shares from underdogs like AMC Entertainment and BlackBerry, whose prices also slumped last week. The rapid devaluation of so-called meme stocks, named for their flash-in-the-pan popularity on social media, has left investors wondering who to blame for their losses. However, as the market stabilized, it experienced its biggest rally in months.
Protect investors
Will the GameStop saga change the regulation of stocks? Perhaps. Newly Confirmed Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen held a meeting with leading regulators on Thursday to discuss the growing prevalence of retail investing – that is, facilitated (and free) stock trading on apps. like Robinhood and E-Trade. The advantage of these platforms is that they make investing more accessible to ordinary people (read: not on Wall Street). But if the past few weeks have taught us anything, the whims of these individual traders can also lead to volatility that hurts investors of all stripes.
And after? (February 7-13)
Stimulus and route
The Biden administration and Congressional Democrats are moving forward with their $ 1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill, and will work out the final details this week. To avoid potential blockages, Senate Democrats have adopted a budget framework that will allow the aid package to pass with a simple majority and without Republican support. President Biden said he still hopes to find compromises with Republicans, who have hesitated over the scope and price of the bill. But he’s not willing to waste his time wooing their votes or forgoing basic provisions like school aid or direct payments of $ 1,400 to eligible Americans. And given January’s dismal jobs report, he says there’s not a moment to waste.
Election affairs
Voting technology company Smartmatic has filed a $ 2.7 billion libel action against Fox News, three of its ancestors, and attorneys Rudolph Giuliani and Sidney Powell. The company accuses the defendants of damaging its business and reputation by peddling false theories about its services as part of their discredited allegations of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. In its complaint, Smartmatic argues that Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell, who represented former President Donald J. Trump, “created a story on Smartmatic” and that “Fox joined the plot to defame and denigrate Smartmatic and its election technology and software.” Fox said he would fight the court case.
A strange year for announcements
The cost of Super Bowl commercials has remained similar to last year – around $ 5.6 million for a 30-second spot. This is the first time the rate has not increased significantly in over a decade, and it took CBS much longer than usual to sell all of the slots. After all, this is a strange time for marketing, and advertisers are faced with a dilemma: to hint at the pandemic and remind viewers of a nightmare they hoped to escape for a few precious hours? Or ignore it and risk sounding deaf? The ads will be dominated by popular pandemic companies like the DoorDash delivery service app, Mexican takeout chain Chipotle and the recently besieged investment platform Robinhood.
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