BUSINESS NEWS 28TH, 2016
U.S. stocks turned sharply lower Thursday after investors were disappointed by both the Bank of Japan's decision not to take further steps to jump-start its ailing economy and a weaker-than-expected reading on first-quarter economic growth in the U.S.The selling intensified in the afternoon following news investor Carl Icahn had sold his entire stake in Apple.The Dow Jones industrial average was off 211 points, or 1.2%, to 17,831 for its biggest drop since Feb. 11. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 stock index was off 0.9%, while the Nasdaq composite fell 1.2%.
COMCAST TO BUY DREAMWORKS ANIMATION
Comcast is about to get more animated. The company's NBC Universal division is acquiring the DreamWorks Animation studio for about $3.8 billion.On Thursday, Comcast said shareholders in DreamWorks will receive $41 in cash per share of stock -- a roughly 50% premium from where the stock was trading before the merger talks were reported earlier this week.Comcast said it expects the deal to pass regulatory muster and take effect by the end of the year.Wall Street applauded the deal, sending the stock up as much as 24% on Thursday morning.The deal is reminiscent -- albeit on a much smaller scale -- to Disney's 2006 acquisition of Pixar for $7.4 billion.
WHY FACEBOOK IS KILLING IT, EVEN WHEN NOBODY ELSE IS
As its biggest rivals stumble, Facebook wildly beat Wall Street’s expectations when it released its earnings yesterday. The company said that it now reaches more than a billion people every day and 1.65 billion people every month. Profits for the first three months of the year tripled compared to the same time last year to $1.5 billion on $5.3 billion in revenue. In response, Facebook’s stock hit an all-time high this morning.The tech sector is facing a lot of uncertainty right now, especially with some of its biggest companies, says Scott Kessler, the deputy global director for equity research at S&P Global Market Intelligence. “Facebook, which has relatively quickly emerged as one of the biggest technology companies on the planet, delivered more significantly and consistently than all those others and than people expected,” he says.
GDP GROWTH IS NOT CREATING ENOUGH JOBS
India’s employment growth is beginning to show signs of a slowdown even as official data showed a pick up in GDP growth, according to a study by Care Ratings.Jobs growth slowed to near-zero during 2014-15 in a sample of 1,072 companies. These companies created only 12,760 jobs in 2014-15. In the previous year, they had added 188,371 jobs.Employment growth in the sample slowed to 0.3%, the slowest in four years, an analysis of the annual reports of the companies surveyed in the sample by the ratings agency showed.The number of jobs in manufacturing sector companies in the sample, despite the government’s ‘Make In India’ push, declined. Employment growth in the manufacturing companies plunged to (-) 5.2% in 2014-15 from 3.2% in 2013-14.