Free Republic

Shares of Intel jumped 3% Friday as The Wall Street Journal’s Lauren Thomas, Laura Cooper, and Asa Fitch reported that Qualcomm has approached Intel about acquiring it for perhaps as much as $90 billion, citing multiple unnamed sources. The “massive” deal, as the authors put it, is financially daunting, as Qualcomm has just $13 billion in cash and equivalents on its balance sheet against $13 billion of long-term debt. Even a mostly stock exchange would require some large debt raise. Intel, moreover, already has $19 billion of net long-term debt. The deal is much larger than Qualcomm’s attempted acquisition of...

A recent wave of store closure announcements will hit shopping malls across the U.S., leaving hundreds of storefronts empty. Just this week, Victoria's Secret said it will shut around 50 locations in 2019 — when it normally closes closer to a dozen each year; Gap said it's closing 230 of its namesake brand's stores over a two-year span; and J.C. Penney announced it plans to shut 18 department stores and nine of its furniture and home locations in 2019. That builds on recent store closure announcements by Gymboree, Payless ShoeSource, Charlotte Russe and Ann Taylor parent company Ascena Retail, to...