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Growing up in San Bernardino, California in the 1980s was an experience that shaped me in many ways. One of the highlights of those years was playing high school football, and one of our fiercest rivals was Fontana High School. Fontana was known for having one of the toughest football teams in San Bernardino County, and our games against them were always intense and hard-fought. But Fontana was more than just a football rival. It was a town with a long and proud history of steel production. The Kaiser steel production facility, a major employer in the area, closed its...

In October 2022, I shared a big announcement in the retail world: Two massive, U.S. grocery store chains, Kroger and Albertsons, had agreed to merge, in a deal worth nearly $25 billion:CNBC:Rival grocers Kroger and Albertsons on Friday announced plans to team up.The companies said Kroger agreed to buy Albertsons for $34.10 a share in a deal valued at $24.6 billion. Albertsons shares had closed Thursday at $28.63 after surging on reports that a deal was imminent.Kroger is the second-largest grocer by market share in the United States, behind Walmart, and Albertsons is fourth, after Costco. Together, Kroger and Albertsons...

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved a merger of former President Donald Trump's social media platform, Truth Social, with Digital World Acquisition Corporation (DWAC), which is a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC). There were two years of delay leading up to the deal because of an investigation into the company by regulators. Now the SEC has approved the merger of approximately $10 billion after the long wait on Wall Street, according to reporting from OANN. The Trump Media & Technology Group, which owned both companies, intends to take Truth Social public in an initial public offering...

Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a lawsuit to block the proposed merger between Kroger and Albertsons because of the negative ramifications he says it would have for residents, such as fewer options and higher prices. In the suit, filed on Monday, Ferguson argued that the proposed $24.6 billion merger, announced in October 2022, "will likely substantially lessen supermarket competition or tend to create a monopoly in many Washington communities," where both companies currently compete. This would likely increase prices of food and other grocery products in supermarkets offered to Washington consumers while simultaneously decreasing "the quantity and quality...

Opposition to the $24.6 billion Kroger, Albertsons merger does not appear to be dying down as the Teamsters union announced they oppose the deal. The Teamsters, a labor union representing members in the U.S. and Canada, said that some 22,000 of their members work for Kroger and Albertsons, across the companies’ stores, distribution centers, and manufacturing plants. The Teamsters said they had been engaging in talks with both Kroger and Albertsons over the last few months, but little progress was made regarding some of the concerns the union had around the merger deal, including job security. “In our discussions with...

Twitter’s Board of Directors told the platform's shareholders to accept the world’s richest man’s $44 billion takeover deal, according to a new government filing. The filing specifically told shareholders that it “unanimously recommends that you vote” for “the adoption of the merger agreement” with Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Musk reportedly “listed the approval of the deal by shareholders as one of several ‘unresolved matters’ related to the Twitter deal” during an interview at the Qatar Economic Forum. The document also stated that the board "unanimously" agreed that "the merger agreement is advisable and the merger and the other transactions contemplated...

CNN host Brian Stelter claimed Sunday on “Reliable Sources” that the failed attempt to make CNN+ a viable streaming service was because of the merger of the new owner’s Warner Bros. Discovery. Stelter said, “What a turbulent week for major media companies with CNN, Netflix, Disney and Twitter all left spinning with no stopping in sight. Here at CNN, new ownership decided to shut down the CNN+ streaming service less than a month after it was launched by the previous management team. The u-turn was front-page news, stunning news and painful news for everyone involved. Years of development possibly down...

Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. agreed to acquire Kansas City Southern in a merger valued at about $25 billion that would create the first freight-rail network linking Mexico, the U.S. and Canada. The companies said Sunday their boards agreed to a deal that values Kansas City at $275 a share in a combination of cash and stock. Kansas City investors will receive 0.489 of a Canadian Pacific share and $90 in cash for each Kansas City common share held. If approved by regulators, the deal would unite two of the major North American freight carriers, linking factories and ports in Mexico,...

The first to call the presidential election for Joe Biden was AT&T. AT&T, through its subsidiary CNN, one of the largest conglomerates in the world with a market cap of over $200 billion, billions of which come from lucrative federal contracts, was the first to claim that Biden was the winner. Beyond government contracts, AT&T has a major stake in the 5G wars and has spent a lot of money investing in the Biden campaign. AT&T employees were the tenth largest source of contributions to the Biden campaign. Biden had attended fundraisers at the homes of two AT&T lobbyists, but...

For all its vast emptiness, the universe is humming with activity in the form of gravitational waves. Produced by extreme astrophysical phenomena, these reverberations ripple forth and shake the fabric of space-time, like the clang of a cosmic bell. Now researchers have detected a signal from what may be the most massive black hole merger yet observed in gravitational waves. The product of the merger is the first clear detection of an “intermediate-mass” black hole, with a mass between 100 and 1,000 times that of the sun. They detected the signal, which they have labeled GW190521, on May 21, 2019,...

As of this writing, Xerox is attempting a hostile takeover of HP Inc., after HP Inc.’s board reiterated its rejection of Xerox’s offer on Jan. 9, 2020, and has obtained a commitment for the necessary $24 billion loan to complete the deal should HP Inc. accept a Xerox offer. HP Inc. continues to contend Xerox’s valuation of approximately $33 billion is too low, implying it would consider an offer with a higher valuation. HP Inc.’s stock market valuation is almost four times that of Xerox. ACQUISITION REMAINS A POSSIBILITY HP Inc.’s board has signaled its willingness to consider higher offers,...

The United States Justice Department has approved the $26 billion merger deal between T-Mobile and Sprint. After over a year in regulatory limbo, the merger received the green light from the last federal agency to hold out, with the Federal Communications Commission already signaling that it will approve the deal. The Justice Department finally approved the deal after Dish reached an agreement with the carriers to acquire Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile, Sprint’s prepaid business, and “certain” spectrum assets. This will position Dish as the replacement fourth major US carrier that will be lost once T-Mobile and Sprint merge. The two...

An emerging consensus suggests the crash can explain distant gamma-ray bursts GREAT ESCAPE A bright jet of fast-moving particles fled the scene after two neutron stars collided, spewing material and potentially forming a black hole (shown in this artist’s illustration). When a pair of ultradense cores of dead stars smashed into one another, the collision shot a bright jet of charged subatomic particles through space. Astronomers thought no such jet had made it out of the wreckage of the neutron star crash, first detected in August 2017. But new observations of the crash site using a network of radio telescopes...

<p>“America is the land of firsts. America is the land of pioneers. The old media environment is toxic, destructive and undermining this republic. It is ideologically driven and dressed up as freedom of the press. I’ve talked about it now for a long time, and you see it on your own. You don’t need any help from me. The Jim Acostas, the Jake Tappers, the phony news in The New York Times, where you can’t tell the editorial page from the news page – same with The Washington Post – they’re all alike. They all read alike. The all have the same objective: to advance the progressive agenda.</p>

Canada's Barrick Gold Corp. is reportedly near an agreement to buy London-listed Randgold Resources Ltd. in a deal that could be worth as much as $18 billion, according to media reports. The agreement could be announced as soon as Monday, according to a report from Reuters citing a person familiar with the talks.

AT&T announced that it was buying Time Warner for $85.4 billion in October 2016. The Justice Department sued last year to block the merger, citing concerns that AT&T, owner of satellite television provider DirecTV, could charge rival distributors more for Time Warner content, resulting in higher prices for consumers. The outcome of the trial could have implications for future deals in the telecom and media industries, as well as vertical mergers, where companies combine with their suppliers. A federal judge said Tuesday that AT&T's $85.4 billion purchase of Time Warner is legal, clearing the path for a deal that gives...

Comcast made a stunning $65 billion bid Wednesday for 21st Century Fox in what is expected to be the first of many attempts to buy up pieces of the entertainment world in the wake of AT&T’s decisive legal victory over the government to buy Time Warner. Comcast’s offer sets up a battle of wills between two of the most dominant and deep-pocketed entertainment companies in the world — Walt Disney and Comcast, the nation’s leading cable company which already owns Universal Studios and NBC. Comcast’s offer is about 19 percent higher than what Disney offered late last year. But the...

A Delaware court is asked to stop Shari Redstone from interfering with a meeting later this week that could dilute her company's voting interest in CBS. _______________________________________________________________________________________ In a move that escalates an internal battle for control, CBS has filed a lawsuit in Delaware Chancery Court against Shari Redstone, Sumner Redstone and National Amusements, Inc., currently the controlling stakeholder for CBS. The Redstones have made it clear they would like to see CBS merge with Viacom. The Redstones hold Class A common stock in CBS, which means they currently have the voting power over other public shareholders who maintain Class...

New York City is halting a $9.6 million incentive package offered to Aetna to move its headquarters to the city. The insurance giant announced in June that it would move its headquarters to New York City beginning in late 2018 after nearly two centuries in Hartford, Connecticut. But those plans were put on hold after CVS Health Corp. said in December that it was buying Aetna for $69 billion in a deal that would help the drugstore chain reach deeper into customer health care and protect a key client. At that time, Aetna said all of its locations would be...

Amazon’s $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods Market will be finalized Monday, and shoppers will see an immediate markdown in prices on a number of items, including salmon, avocados, baby kale and almond butter.