Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 54

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has taken a step outside of the $200 billion net worth range, according to recent reports.

Bloomberg's Billionaire's Index indicates that Musk saw his net worth plummet by approximately 5.4% on Tuesday, following an almost 7% in Tesla's share trading price. Notably, after Tuesday, Musk's net worth is expected to be the lowest its been since August 26 at approximately $192.7 billion. Coming in second place on Bloomberg's Billionaire's Index is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who is estimated to have about $127.8 billion.

Furthermore, the last time that Musk's net worth dropped below the $200 billion mark was in March this year, but that drop quickly recovered, with Musk seeing his net worth skyrocket to a staggering $288 billion on April 4, which also happened to be the same day the Tesla CEO revealed he owned a 9% stake in Twitter and only days before he began initiating his strategy to purchase the platform.

A new exclusive report has detailed the money trail left behind by many of the organizations that have threatened to boycott Twitter over Elon Musk's coming decisions to change the platform's policies.

Breitbart News has learned through research and analysis conducted by the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO) that traced the funding of many of the organizations that signed the open letter, which threatened to pull advertising from Twitter if Musk rolled back established Twitter policies and implemented his version of "free speech" on the platform.

The FFO found that out of the 26 organizations that signed the open letter opposing Musk's new vision for the platform, 11 of them were funded by a Gates-backed entity that received large contributions from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. For instance, in 2020, the New Venture Fund received the largest one-year donation the Gates Foundation has given out in the last ten years. Notably, New Venture funds four of the signatories on the open letter.

Swedish "buy now, pay later" company Klarna is laying off 10% of its workforce, but did it in a rather robotic way: with a prerecorded video message.

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski informed its near-7000 employees that 10% of them would be out of a job, leaving around 700 people unemployed. Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said in the prerecorded video message: "When we set our business plans for 2022 in the autumn of last year, it was a very different world than the one we are in today".

Siemiatkowski continued: "Since then, we have seen a tragic and unnecessary war in Ukraine unfold, a shift in consumer sentiment, a steep increase in inflation, a highly volatile stock market and a likely recession. All of which have marked the beginning of a very tumultuous year". He did note that workers based in Europe would get an "associated compensation", while severance packages for US staffers would "look different" depending on the location.

Snap shares have fallen through the ground, dropping by a hefty 40% and dragging other tech stocks like Apple, Twitter, and Meta (the parent company of Facebook) at the same time.

The huge 40% sea of red for Snap shares means we're looking at $13.42 at the time of writing, down from ~$30 or so back on April 25. Snap's market cap has dropped, down to $21.9 billion. A recent SEC filing seems to have dragged down the share price of Snap, but there are other moving parts.

The SEC filing reads: "Since we issued guidance on April 21, 2022, the macroeconomic environment has deteriorated further and faster than anticipated. As a result, we believe it is likely that we will report revenue and adjusted EBITDA below the low-end of our Q2 2022 guidance range".

Meta has taken to its website to announce that it will be bringing more transparency to social issue, electoral and political ads.

In a new update posted to its website, Meta states that it will soon be sharing data on the aforementioned advertisement categories and how those ads are targeted to individuals. Meta writes that researchers who are involved in the company's Facebook Open Research and Transparency (FORT) program will be given access to data that will include "interest categories chosen by advertisers" for each individual ad.

Notably, this isn't the first time Meta has let select members of the public look under the hood of its advertising, as the company made political ad data available to FORT researchers for a three-month period just before the 2020 election. As pointed out by Engadget, some researchers may not be happy with the data provided to them by Meta ahead of the 2022 midterms, where it's likely that there will be some attention brought to how pollical advertisements impact elections, especially through platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

Airbnb is planning on shutting down business throughout mainland China after facing scrutiny from regulators and overwhelming competition.

Two sources familiar with the coming disconnect from China by Airbnb have spoken to CNBC, which reported that as early as Tuesday morning Beijing time Airbnb will be informing all employees throughout the country that business will be coming to an end. The sources close to the matter told the publication that Airbnb in China accounted for approximately 1% of the company's total revenue over the last few years, and had expensive running costs.

The sources said that the shutdown can be attributed to growing domestic competition in the space, as well as regulatory factors. Furthermore, the sources mentioned that the COVID-19 pandemic made the situation in China a whole lot worse due to the Chinese government's extreme lockdown with outbreaks and an overall large reduction in general tourism. Notably, Airbnb's share price has slunk a grim 30% in 2022 and is currently trading at an approximate price of $113, which is far higher than its 2020 IPO price of $68.

Authorities have arrested a woman who pretended to be the daughter of an elderly cancer patient who she then stole more than $400,000 from.

The Florida woman named Ana Nunez impersonated the 70-year-old cancer patient while they were in the hospital. Authorities have accused Nunez of manipulating the elderly individual into giving Nunez her "power of attorney" by signing several documents that also included her possessions and bank accounts that contained approximately $437,000, per Local 10 News.

Furthermore, the scammer is now facing a slew of serious charges after being arrested on May 20, with additional charges being placed on Nunez' son, Pablo Figueroa, who was arrested in early May under suspicion of being an accomplice.

President Biden has said that the US would step in militarily if China invaded Taiwan, emphasizing that protecting Taiwan was a bigger "burden" than Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Biden said the remarks at a joint news conference in Tokyo, with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. CBS News correspondent Nancy Codes asked Biden: "You didn't want to get involved in the Ukraine conflict militarily for obvious reasons. Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?".

Biden replied with "Yes. That's the commitment we made". Biden added: "We agree with a 'One China' policy. We signed onto it and all the attendant agreements made from there. But the idea that it (Taiwan) could be taken by force, just taken by force, it's just not - it's just not appropriate. It'll dislocate the entire region and be another action similar to what happened in Ukraine. And so it's a burden that is even stronger".

May 19th saw Tesla's stock price drop to its lowest level so far in 2022, erasing $12.3 billion from Elon Musk's wealth.

Musk took to Twitter that same day to voice political concerns in a multitude of tweets, saying that now he will vote Republican, after voting Democrat in the past, and claimed that "political attacks on me will escalate dramatically in coming months." Musk also tweeted at S&P Global Ratings, saying they "lost their integrity" after Tesla was not included in its S&P 500 ESG (environment, social & governance) Index.

Margaret Dorn, an executive at S&P Global Ratings, told Reuters that the exclusion was a result of reports of racial discrimination at Tesla facilities, and crashes involving its autonomous vehicles. With Twitter stocks also dropping in value recently, Musk has lost a combined $49 billion in wealth since moving to purchase the social media platform.

A Tesla involved in a crash on the Pacific Coast Highway in Newport Beach in California on May 12th is suspected of having been using a partially automated driving mode.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has sent a special crash investigation team to probe the incident as part of a larger inquiry by the agency into crashes where some level of a self-driving system is in use, such as Tesla's Autopilot. The NHTSA has sent teams to inspect 34 crash sites since 2016 in which such systems were either suspected of being in use or confirmed to be.

A new document released by the NHTSA reveals that 28 of the 34 crashes investigated involved vehicles from Tesla. In all the crashes being investigated, 15 people have died, 14 of which were in crashes involving Tesla vehicles, and at least 15 more have been injured.