Business category, Page 284
Commodities giant Glencore to cap coal output over climate
BERLIN — Commodities giant Glencore said Wednesday it will cap how much coal it mines amid shareholder pressure for it to help reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases. The move is a sharp reversal for a company that has long championed the extraction and burning of fossil fuels, and which...
U.S. stocks cap day of listless trading with modest gains
Wall Street capped another day of listless trading Wednesday with a slight gain, extending the market’s winning streak to a third day. Financial, materials and industrial companies accounted for much of the gain, outweighing losses in health care and real estate stocks as investors reviewed the latest batch of company...
Samsung’s foldable phone will cost nearly $2,000
SAN FRANCISCO — Samsung has unveiled a highly anticipated smartphone with a foldable screen that breaks new ground in a market that has been stuck in an innovative funk. The phone announced Wednesday in San Francisco will be called the Galaxy Fold and will sell for $1,980 when it is...
13 Pittsburgh-area Payless stores among those closing nationwide
About a dozen Payless ShoeSource stores in the Pittsburgh region are among the 2,300 closing nationwide. Payless officials announced the closures last week and locations — including Westmoreland, Ross Park, Robinson and Monroeville malls — have started liquidation sales, according to a notice on the company’s website. Merchandise is between...
Walmart flexes in the fourth quarter, beats all expectations
NEW YORK — Walmart defied a gloomy government retail sales report for December, delivering fiscal fourth-quarter profits and sales that beat Wall Street expectations. The world’s largest retailer also enjoyed another quarter of surging e-commerce sales during the critical holiday period as it expanded its online assortment and services. Shares...
U.S. stocks bounce back from wobbly start to extend gains
Stocks shook off an early wobble on Wall Street on Tuesday, finishing modestly higher and extending the market’s gains into a fourth week. Solid earnings from Walmart encouraged investors to bid up other retailers and consumer goods companies. Communication services stocks and banks also contributed to the broad gains. Homebuilders...
Tariff uncertainty could hurt auto industry more than plant closures in 2019
An auto industry that many experts think already is overdue for a slowdown just got a major dose of uncertainty that could reduce investment in new technologies and vehicles. The Trump administration dealt automakers a wild card by reportedly deciding not to reveal the Commerce Department’s recommendations on whether to...
Amazon aims to cut its carbon footprint
NEW YORK — Amazon, which ships millions of packages a year to shopper’s doorsteps, says it wants to be greener. The online retail giant announced plans Monday to make half of all its shipments carbon neutral by 2030. To reach that goal, the online retail giant says it will use...
‘Digital gangsters’: U.K. wants tougher rules for Facebook
LONDON — British lawmakers issued a scathing report Monday that calls for tougher rules to keep Facebook and other tech firms from acting like “digital gangsters” and intentionally violating data privacy and competition laws. The report on fake news and disinformation on social media sites followed an 18-month investigation by...
John Dorfman: The near insanity of investing at 100 times revenue
The height of folly. That’s what I call it when people pay 100 times a company’s pre-share revenue to buy a stock. You see this behavior mostly with young biotechnology stocks and fledgling technology stocks. Investors mentally build what economics professor Burton Malkiel called “castles in the sky” when they...
Pittsburgh water authority issues ‘flush and boil’ advisory for 3 neighborhoods
About 2,000 households in portions of Hazelwood, Swisshelm Park and Greenfield are under a flush and boil water advisory from Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority following a water main break Friday night. The precautionary advisory, which was posted to the PWSA website and social media late Saturday morning, was issued...
Gone in a New York minute: How the Amazon deal fell apart
NEW YORK — In early November, word began to leak that Amazon was serious about choosing New York to build a giant new campus. The city was eager to lure the company and its thousands of high-paying tech jobs, offering billions in tax incentives and lighting the Empire State Building...
Payless ShoeSource to shutter all of its remaining U.S. stores
NEW YORK — Payless ShoeSource is shuttering all of its 2,100 remaining stores in the United States and Puerto Rico, joining a list of iconic names like Toys R Us and Bon-Ton that have closed down in the last year. The Topeka, Kan.-based chain said Friday it will hold liquidation...
Amazon dumped New York, but cities still wooing the company
Amazon’s breakup with New York was still fresh when other cities started sending their own valentines to the online giant. Officials in Newark, New Jersey, one of the 18 finalists that Amazon rejected in November when it announced plans to put its new headquarters in New York and northern Virginia,...
Google will expand finance team to Chicago, adding ‘hundreds’ of jobs
CHICAGO — Google plans to create “hundreds” of new jobs in Chicago this year, expanding the office it already calls its Midwest headquarters. The tech giant employs more than 1,000 people at its Chicago office, which opened as a sales outpost in 2000 and has grown to include engineers and...
FedEx jolts Wall Street with surprise exit of CEO’s deputy
FedEx Corp. threw Wall Street for a loop, announcing the resignation of Fred Smith’s top deputy just weeks after he joined the company’s board. Raj Subramaniam will take over as president and chief operating officer March 1, replacing David Bronczek, the shipping giant said in a statement Thursday. Bronczek, 64,...
Amazon’s stormy week will blow over, but debris will stay
SAN FRANCISCO — It’s been a complicated few weeks for Amazon, what with its abrupt pullout from a massive New York City development, extortion claims related to intimate photos taken by its founder Jeff Bezos and increasing antitrust scrutiny in Europe . For now, these events seem unlikely to pose...
Economic trends turn downward for farmers
Things are not looking good for the farm economy. On Thursday, the farm belt’s malaise deepened after the Department of Agriculture predicted soybean exports would stay below their pre-trade war levels until the 2026-2027 season. That followed a report that sales of the oilseed in early January had the worst...
Amazon lets amateurs publish custom Alexa apps to reach broad audiences
Amazon is enlisting customers to create voice-controlled games, broadcast lectures and sermons, and turn blogs into audio presentations available to anyone, through its growing universe of Alexa-enabled speaker-and-microphone devices. The move, rolled out this week, represents a potentially significant advancement for voice-first computing and content creation — akin to the...
U.S., Facebook negotiating record multibillion-dollar fine as a result of privacy lapses
The Federal Trade Commission and Facebook are negotiating over a multibillion-dollar fine that would settle the agency’s investigation into the social media giant’s privacy practices, according to two people familiar with the probe. The fine would be the largest the agency has ever imposed on a technology company, but the...
Arch Coal plans to open W.Va. mine, add nearly 600 jobs
CHARLESTON, W.Va.— Arch Coal Inc. says it plans to open a longwall mine in northcentral West Virginia and employ nearly 600 employees when it’s fully operational. The St. Louis-based coal producer announced the plans in a news release Thursday. The Leer South mine in Barbour County is expected to produce...
Warren Buffett’s firm tweaks stock portfolio, adds Suncor, Red Hat
OMAHA, Neb. — Billionaire Warren Buffett’s company has taken a new stake in Canadian firm Suncor Energy and trimmed its huge Apple stake. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. filed a quarterly update on its holdings with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. The Omaha, Nebraska-based company said it owned 10.76 million...
Growth outlook weakens as a result of disappointing retail data
The surprising plunge in U.S. retail sales undermined the outlook for economic growth and is likely to leave the already-cautious Federal Reserve in an extended holding pattern. A government report out Thursday — delayed four weeks because of the partial federal shutdown — showed retail sales fell in December from...
Mortgage rates dip to their lowest levels in more than a year
After soaring to seven-year highs in November, mortgage rates have been on a steady decline the past 2½ months and this week sank to levels not seen in more than a year. According to the latest data released Thursday by Freddie Mac, the 30-year fixed-rate average dropped to 4.37 percent...
Amazon ditches New York headquarters, won’t seek new location
NEW YORK — Amazon will not be building a new headquarters in New York, a stunning reversal after a yearlong search. The online retailer faced opposition from some New York politicians, who were unhappy with the nearly $3 billion in tax incentives Amazon was promised. The Seattle-based Amazon had planned...
