Business - Page 13

Amazon, Microsoft and Starbucks are backing an initiative to increase Black representation on corporate boards

By Chauncey Alcorn The number of African Americans serving on boards of directors for the nation’s largest corporations has remained dismally low this year despite the ongoing movement to increase C-suite diversity throughout the business world. Some of America’s most prominent companies are addressing the problem by backing the Black Boardroom Initiative, a new program unveiled Wednesday with a goal of increasing the ratio of Black executives sitting on S&P 500 corporate boards to one in eight by 2028. Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks and Zillow are among the major brands sponsoring the initiative, which has been spearheaded by the law firm

Amazon buys MGM in a mega media deal

By Frank Pallotta James Bond, meet Jeff Bezos. Amazon is investing even more heavily in growing its position in the entertainment world. The company announced Wednesday that it made a deal to acquire MGM, the home of James Bond and one of the most iconic movie studios in Hollywood. The deal, which is valued at $8.45 billion, gives Amazon an extensive library of film and TV shows that it can use to fill out its Prime Video content coffers. MGM has a catalog with more than 4,000 films and 17,000 TV shows, according to Mike Hopkins, who heads Prime Video

Banks say USDA’s debt forgiveness for minority farmers will cost them money and could affect future loans. Black farmers call that a threat.

By Vanessa Yurkevich and Kate Trafecante Three of the biggest US banking groups want the US Department of Agriculture to reconsider the terms of billions of dollars in planned debt relief for minority farmers, claiming it will cut into banks’ profits — and warn they may have to cut those same farmers off from future loans. President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion Covid relief package passed in March includes $4 billion to help pay off farm loans for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers — a group that includes Black and other minority farmers, who have long faced discrimination from lenders and

When a Black homeowner concealed her race, her home’s appraisal value doubled

By Anna Bahney When Carlette Duffy had her Indianapolis home appraised as part of a refinance application last year, it kept getting valued much lower than she expected. Suspicious that her race may have played a role she ordered another appraisal, but this time concealed that she is Black by removing family photos and other items indicating her race from her home and asking a White friend to pose as her brother when meeting with the appraiser. The appraised value more than doubled during the third appraisal, leading Duffy to file a Fair Housing complaint against the lenders and appraisers

Amazon reportedly in talks to buy MGM as streaming wars intensify

By Jill Disis Amazon is reportedly in talks to buy MGM, the vaunted film studio that was a staple of Hollywood’s Golden Age. A tie-up would give the tech firm a big brand to wield as competition in streaming grows fiercer by the day. MGM’s iconic logo of a roaring lion has played before tons of classic films, including the “James Bond” series, and the studio could be valued at between $7 billion and $10 billion, according to The Information, which cited a person familiar with the situation. The New York Times and the Financial Times have also reported the

AT&T to spin off and combine WarnerMedia with Discovery in deal that would create streaming giant

By Brian Stelter The streaming TV race is about to get even more competitive. On Monday morning AT&T and Discovery, Inc. announced a deal under which AT&T’s WarnerMedia will be spun off and combined with Discovery in a new standalone media company. The deal, subject to regulatory approval, will combine two treasure troves of content, including the HBO Max and discovery+ streaming services. CNN will be included in the transaction. Discovery CEO David Zaslav will run the combined business, according to Monday’s announcement. “I think we fit together like a glove,” Zaslav said at a virtual press conference. On one

How John Deere is helping Black farmers and their descendents take back unjustly seized land

By Chauncey Alcorn It’s been nine years since Michael Robinson of Columbus, Ohio, nearly lost a major part of his family’s legacy. He’s still fighting to regain full control of it. In 2012, the 57-year-old married father of four, who is Black, found out someone he’d never met named James E. Deshler II was suing his family members to force them to sell their portion of the 127 acres of Barlow Bend, Alabama, farmland that they’d inherited from Robinson’s late grandfather, Joe Ely. The local county auditor’s website determined last year that the land is worth more than $212,000. The

Business travel has disappeared. Will it ever come back?

By Will Godley and Charles Riley Book tickets. Schedule meetings. Obsess over your presentation. Pack a carry-on. Rush to the airport. Check out the lounge. Priority boarding. Take off. Land. Get to the hotel. Meet clients. Seal the deal. Fly home. Repeat. For countless executives and salespeople, business trips have been a bedrock of corporate life — loathed by some, loved by others but accepted by all as a necessity (sweetened by millions of frequent flyer miles). Employees needed to fly to meet clients, drum up new business and grab some face time with the boss at headquarters. Then came

How businesses can heed Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call to support Black banks

Opinion by Bernice A. King and Ashley Bell Hours before an assassin’s bullet ended his life in the spring of 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — a father to one of us, a role model to the other — delivered his final public address to a Memphis crowd that had gathered to fight what he called the inseparable twins of economic and racial injustice. Weaving between protest and prophecy, he famously spoke that night of reaching a mountaintop from which he could glimpse a promised land where Black people were finally free from racism and poverty. Beneath all the

Apple and Epic wrap up first week of their blockbuster trial. Here’s what happened and what’s next

By Rishi Iyengar, Is Fortnite a game? An app? An expansive virtual universe? All of the above? Is an iPhone just another gaming device, or a tightly controlled ecosystem? And is it really as secure as it is reputed to be? These are just some of the many questions that have come up so far and been debated in what could be one of the most consequential trials for the modern-day tech industry. Apple, the maker of the iPhone, and Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, wrapped up the first week of testimony on Friday, with the iPhone inventor trying

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