Wal-Mart Will Soon Operate Its Own Gas Station in order to gain more profits. The company will leave Murphy USA Inc., which has become its gas stations operators for 20 years. However, Murphy will still continue its existing gas stations.
Sectors
Gulf investor eyes the $1.7 bln stake in Kuwait’s Americana
The Gulf establishment, Adeptio LLC has approached Kuwait's fast-food chain, Americana, for buying out the 66.8% controlling stake held by the Al Kharafi family valued at $1.7 billion. Currently, the investor is conducting the due diligence but the final outcome will be based on the approval of the Americana franchisers.
Job growth slowdown a sign of tightening economy
The US economy encouragingly created more jobs for the past two years and now is set for a slowdown, as economists predict. The prevailing credit conditions the US market indicate tightening of economy. The US private sector added 205,000 jobs in January as against 267,000 in December.
Markets: Asian Markets Shows Remarkable Rise as Crude Oil Prices Increased Overnight
The rise of oil prices had brought positive growth to most of the Asian markets, except for Japan. On the other hand, European market had seen a drop. The oil prices increased overnight due to speculations that U.S Federal Reserve would possibly decide not to increase interest rates throughout 2016.
Shell Q4 earnings fall 44%; confirms job cuts
Royal Dutch Shell said that its profit for the fourth quarter dropped 44% as the price of the crude oil tumble. The UK-based oil firm also confirmed that it is trimming 10,000 jobs, a move to reduce its costs.
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Cisco announced its intention to purchase Jasper Technologies, a provider of cloud service for internet-powered devices, for $1.4 billion. The merger will enable Cisco to provide a full IoT solution which is inter-operable through devices and coordinates with application developers and IoT service providers.
Google, for the first time, has disclosed financials on earnings, expenditure, asset value and future business planning. From the financials, analysts have found lot of scopes for Google and its parent company, Alphabet to expand. Google’s ad earnings have been witnessed to rise significantly during the year 2015. Meanwhile, it has spent only $3.6 billion in its ambitious technology projects during the same period. The net earning of Alphabet has been reached to $4.9 billion. Adding this earning to the net asset value, Alphabet has been recognized as the worlds most worthy enterprise.
The France-based pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur has committed to develop Zika virus vaccination in three to five years. The vaccine will be administered mainly in adolescent girls that is yet to involve sexual relationship.
Amazon is said to expand its e-commerce business into physical bookstores. It plans to open 400 bookstores after its first opening in Seattle last year. However, Amazon still refuses to comment on this issue.
President Barrack Obama seeks an additional $1.1 billion in the face of increasing death rates due to overdoses of heroin and opioids. The Obama administration has already split the amount and categorized them to focus on different aspects like increasing medical-assisted facilities, prescriptions of antidotes, plans for overdose prevention, etc. These facilities are to be rolled out to the rural areas as well.
Takata Corp, a manufacturer of airbags used in vehicles for consumer safety, will announce its restructuring plan to automakers in May. The restructuring plan is expected to include the sharing of recall costs. The defective airbags are forcing automobile majors to recall millions of cars.
According to PwC and NVCA report, Charlottesville has been the fastest growing startup since 2010. Between 2010-2015, venture-backed startups increased 55% annually in the place where Thomas Jefferson's house is located.
Today, India's largest biotech company announced to have been able to make two vaccines for zika virus. A day before, France's Sanofi Pasteur planned to research on vaccine for the mosquito-borne disease.
The Shanghai Disneyland's ticket prices would be 20 percent cheaper than Hong Kong Disneyland at 539 yuan, even though the Shanghai's area would be much larger. After being constructed for more than six years, the park would be ready to open for public this summer with possible further expansion.
