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eBay Q1 reports sales of $2.374B, active buyers up to 174M in wake of COVID-19

After a quarter in which eBay, tussling with an activist investor, completed the sell-off of its ticketing business StubHub for $4 billion and saw appointed a new CEO after its previous one departed, while also weathering waves of surging demand and dodgy supply resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, today the e-commerce company reported its Q1 […]




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Dribbble, a bootstrapped ‘LinkedIn’ for designers, acquires Creative Market, grows to 12M users

Traditionally dominated by big players like Adobe and Autodesk, the world of design has been flush with a newer wave of startups that are creating collaboration spaces and new cloud-based tools designed to address the needs of creatives. Today, two of those players are combining. Dribbble, an online community for designers that lets them post […]




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Amazon Q1 beats on net sales of $75.5B but posts net income of $2.5B, down $1B on a year ago

Amazon has been one of the biggest names synonymous with how the consumer masses are experiencing life under lockdown: its site lets you buy anything from soup to nuts, from books to baking pans for all your sourdough; and via its streaming services, it gives you many ways to stay entertained. But it can also […]




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Intel to buy smart urban transit startup Moovit for $1B to boost its autonomous car division

Some big M&A is afoot in Israel in the world of smart transportation. According to multiple reports and sources that have contacted TechCrunch, chip giant Intel is in the final stages of a deal to acquire Moovit, a startup that applies AI and big data analytics to track traffic and provide transit recommendations to some […]




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Confirmed: Intel is buying urban mobility platform Moovit in a $900M deal

On the heels of a spate of reports over the weekend, today Intel confirmed its latest move to grow its automotive division. The chip giant is acquiring Moovit, an Israeli startup previously backed by Intel that analyses urban traffic patterns and provides transportation recommendations with a specific focus on public transit. The deal values Moovit at […]




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Sinch acquires SAP’s Digital Interconnect messaging business for $250M

M&A activity has generally slowed down in the weeks since the novel coronavirus took a grip on the world, but there have been some pockets of activity in the tech industry when the price is right or when the divestment/acquisition just makes sense. The world of messaging brings us the latest development in that theme: SAP, […]




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Liberty’s Virgin Media and Telefonica’s O2 to merge in the UK in $39B deal

The regulators said “NO” when Telefonica tried to combine its O2 operations in the UK with rival carrier, Hutchison-owned Three, back in 2015. But Telefonica didn’t let go of the idea of divestment, and five years later, in the middle of a health pandemic with related threats of a global economic depression looming over us, […]




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Carmakers hit by lack of state support in emerging markets 

Suppliers that exploited cheaper labour hit by big wage bills for shuttered plants




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General Motors: buckle up

Carmaker puts brakes on dividends and buybacks in order to preserve liquidity




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Musk steps in to provide insurance for Tesla board

Chief executive criticised over move to offer liability cover following premium increase




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Bosch warns of ‘significantly’ steep recession for auto industry

Volkswagen and Daimler report billions of dollars in lost profits due to impact of coronavirus




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Tesla: taking a step back

On the impossibility of future earnings.




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Musk tweet knocks $14bn off Tesla market value

‘Stock price is too high’, writes outspoken chief executive




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In spite of pandemic (or maybe because of it), cloud infrastructure revenue soars

It’s fair to say that even before the impact of COVID-19, companies had begun a steady march to the cloud. Maybe it wasn’t fast enough for AWS, as Andy Jassy made clear in his 2019 Re:invent keynote, but it was happening all the same and the steady revenue increases across the cloud infrastructure market bore […]




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Knowde could make billions building the digital marketplace for the $5 trillion chemicals industry

Ali Amin-Javaheri grew up in the chemicals business. His father had worked for Iran’s state-owned chemical company and when the family fled the country in the nineteen eighties during the Iran-Iraq war, they first settled in Houston where employers welcomed the senior Amin-Jahaveri’s experience. Houston in the 80s was dominated by the petrochemicals industry and […]




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NEAR Protocol raises $21.6M from A16Z and launches its MainNet, beating Ethereum 2.0

It was only the other week that Andreesen Horowitz announced their second blockchain-focused fund of $515 million. In the announcement, they said: “We are still early in this Web 3 build-out. High-performance programmable blockchains will make decentralized network development much more accessible. After years of R&D, we are excited that a number of next-gen programmable […]




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Microsoft’s Surface Go 2 and Surface Book 3 are official

The days of the big product event are on hold for the foreseeable future. Until then, a big blog post will have to do. A day after announcing that Microsoft would be shifting focus away from dual-screen devices, Chief Product Officer Panos Panay took to the company’s Devices blog to show off a slew of […]




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EA games on PS4 and Xbox One could be ‘upgraded free’ to next-gen console versions

2020 and 2021 will be one of the periodic transitional eras in gaming as Sony and Microsoft debut their shiny new consoles, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. To ease the process (and spur adoption of the next generation), EA may make its upcoming titles free to “upgrade” to your chosen console. On an […]




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Dtex, a specialist in insider threat cybersecurity, raises $17.5M

A lot of enterprise cybersecurity efforts focus on malicious hackers that work on behalf of larger organizations, be they criminal groups or state actors — and for good reason, since the majority of incidents these days come from phishing and other malicious techniques that originate outside the enterprise itself. But there has also been a […]




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Microsoft showcases 13 new titles for the Xbox Series X

With conferences canceled indefinitely, companies are increasingly reliant on online events to hype product launches. As they prepare to release a next-gen console before the end of the year, expect plenty of live streams and blogs from both Microsoft and Sony in an attempt to flesh out all that their respective systems have to offer. […]




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Microsoft and AWS exchange poisoned pen blog posts in latest Pentagon JEDI contract spat

Microsoft and Amazon are at it again as the fight for the Defense Department JEDI contract continues. In a recent series of increasingly acerbic pronouncements, the two companies continue their ongoing spat over the $10 billion, decade-long JEDI contract spoils. As you may recall (or not), last fall in a surprise move, the DoD selected […]




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Wall Street ‘flying blind’ after companies scrap guidance

Profit forecasts ditched as coronavirus disrupts operations




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S&P 500 resilience: weakened by coronavirus

A series of big bankruptcies is unlikely but debt workouts will slow economic recovery




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China’s Kingsoft Cloud tests US market with biggest IPO in months

First New York listing by a Chinese company since Luckin Coffee debacle




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Wall Street closes higher after oil rally takes Brent over $30

Investors anticipate boost in energy demand as economies start to reopen




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Bonds and equities remain on different paths

Mike Mackenzie’s daily analysis of what’s moving global markets




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BT Group: road to nowhere

After suspending dividend, investors will rightly wonder what is the point of owning the telecoms group




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The next round of Covid-19 fundraisings will not be as smooth

Contrary to some fears, equity calls on the London market have been relatively orderly




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Wall Street closes higher despite dire US jobs data

Gulf between darkening Main Street and rebounding markets continues to widen




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Risk sentiment whistles past an appalling jobs report

Mike Mackenzie’s daily analysis of what’s moving global markets




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Facebook now allows users in the US & Canada to export photos and videos to Google Photos

Facebook is today rolling out a tool that will allow users in the U.S. and Canada to export their Facebook photos and videos to Google Photos. This data portability tool was first introduced in Ireland in December, and has since been made available to other international markets. To use the feature, Facebook users will need […]




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COVID-19 quarantine boosts smart speaker usage among U.S. adults, particularly younger users

The coronavirus outbreak has driven more consumers to turn to their smart speakers for news, information, music and entertainment, according to new data released today by NPR and Edison Research. Around three-quarters of U.S. adults 18 and up said their routines have been impacted due to COVID-19 and their media habits have changed as a […]





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Facebook to add gift cards, jobs and donation tools to its COVID-19 Community Help hub

Facebook is expanding its Community Help hub to better serve local communities amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The hub has already seen significant usage by those requesting food, supplies and information about local resources, as well as use by volunteers and groups willing to lend a hand. Now, Facebook is adding more features to the hub […]




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Tumblr now removes reblogs in violation of its hate-speech policy, not just the original posts

Tumblr is making a change to how it deals with hate speech on its blogging platform. The company announced today it will also remove the reblogs (repostings) from any blogs that were suspended for violating its policies around hate speech. Already, the company says it’s identified nearly 1,000 blogs that were banned for blatant violations […]




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Pluto TV expands with addition of CBS Sports HQ, new deals with TiVo and Verizon

Free streaming service Pluto TV is expanding. The company has today gained access to streaming sports network CBS Sports HQ as a result of the ViacomCBS merger. It has also forged new distribution deals with Verizon and TiVo, both of which were detailed this week. The free streamer had been acquired by Viacom for $340 […]




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44 million US adults now use ‘borrowed’ accounts to access streaming services

Cutting the cord with cable or satellite TV used to mean a cost savings. But with the growing number of streaming services on the market, many consumers are finding that becoming a cord cutter is just as expensive, if not more so, as being a pay TV customer. As a result, many consumers continue to […]




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Pinterest rolls out new board features including notes, dates and section suggestions

Pinterest is introducing new features that make it easier for those planning recipes, virtual events and other quarantine activities. These include the ability to add a date or notes to a board as well as automated ways to better organize your pins on a given board, with the aid of machine learning technology. The company […]




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YouTube TV to gain 14 more ViacomCBS channels in expanded distribution deal

YouTube TV is expanding its lineup of channels thanks to a new, multi-year distribution agreement with ViacomCBS, announced this morning. The Google-owned streaming TV service is gaining 14 new ViacomCBS channels as a result of the deal, including news, sports, and entertainment offerings. It will also continue to carry CBS broadcast stations, CBS Sports Network, […]




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A rebranded and updated version of CBS All Access will launch this summer

A rebranded and expanded version of the CBS All Access streaming service will arrive this summer, ViacomCBS announced this morning. The service, now run by ViacomCBS following the merger, today offers a mix of live TV, on-demand video, original programming, streaming news, local broadcast stations and sports. Now the company is accelerating its plan to […]




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Promethean shapes up, but for how long?

Shares in the educational IT provider rose 4.2 per cent




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Sharewatch: BG Group

Shares in BG Group, the oil and gas explorer, hit a 30-month high earlier this week




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German Bund looking more appealing

Investors seek better-quality government bonds




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Silver can offer more bang for your buck

Metal offers protection from sledgehammer approach to quantitative easing




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FTSE 100 companies prove their durability

If the UK stock market is in for more of a hiding, the FTSE 100 is likely to outperform the FTSE 250




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Fund managers back equities for 2012

What the experts are forecasting for next year




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I earn above £50,000 — should I stop claiming child benefit?

HMRC has sent an email saying that my tax code has changed




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How can I protect my children’s savings from tax liabilities?

I am concerned about inheritance tax if my husband and I were to die prematurely




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Can I force my stepson to repay money I lent him to buy his flat?

I am in the process of getting divorced from his mother




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How can I prepare for business tax changes?

I employ 10 people and also own a couple of buy-to-let properties