BUSINESS NEWS MARCH 24TH, 2016
HEDGE FUND SEEKING TO REMOVE THE ENTIRE BOARD OF YAHOO INC
Activist hedge fund Starboard Value LP moved on Thursday to overthrow the entire board of Yahoo Inc, including Chief Executive Marissa Mayer, who has struggled to turn around the company in her nearly four years at the helm.Starboard, which has been pushing for changes at Yahoo since 2014 and owns about 1.7 percent of the company, said it would nominate nine candidates for the board.The proxy fight comes as Yahoo is pressing ahead with an auction of its core Internet business, which includes search, mail and news sites. The faded Internet pioneer has been struggling to keep up with Alphabet Inc's Google and Facebook Inc in the battle for online advertisers.Yahoo said in a statement it will review Starboard's nominees and respond in due course.
HONDA AND TAKATA'S STEALTH AIRBAG FIX
In August of 2009, after ruptured airbag inflators in Honda vehicles were linked to least four injuries and a death, the automaker quietly requested a design change and did not notify U.S. regulators, Honda confirmed in response to inquiries from Reuters.Honda Motor Co asked supplier Takata Corp to produce a “fail-safe” airbag inflator, according to Takata presentations and internal memos reviewed by Reuters.The previously undisclosed redesign could make Honda and Takata more vulnerable in more than 100 pending federal lawsuits and dozens more state suits, according to several legal experts and an attorney suing the companies.
PLAYBOY ENTERPRISES EXPLORES SALE
Playboy Enterprises , the owner of Playboy magazine, is exploring a sale, in a move that comes after the storied magazine stopped publishing nude photos of women and put up the iconic Playboy Mansion up for sale.The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news, said the company could be valued at more than $500 million. (on.wsj.com/1LKhZ8R)Hugh Hefner, who founded Playboy in 1953, took the company private in 2011, along with private equity firm Rizvi Traverse Management, in a deal that valued the company at $207 million.
GOOGLE FINED BY FRENCH FOR NOT REMOVING LINKS
The French data protection authority said it has fined Google 100,000 euros ($111,720) for not scrubbing web search results widely enough in response to a European privacy ruling.The only way for Google to uphold the Europeans' right to privacy was by delisting inaccurate results popping up under name searches across all its websites, the Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertes (CNIL) said in a statement on Thursday.In May 2014 the European Court of Justice ruled that people could ask search engines, such as Google and Microsoft's Bing , to remove inadequate or irrelevant information from web results appearing under searches for people's names - dubbed the "right to be forgotten".