Three Months Wait Time For Twitter Blue Mark Verification, Zuckerberg's WhatsApp And Metaverse Plans, China's COVID-19 Measures Hurt Alibaba's Biggest Event: Top Stories Friday, Nov. 18

Reuters

There are mounting concerns over the stability of Twitter's platform after hundreds of employees chose to exit the company instead of agreeing to work "long hours at high intensity."
The latest wave of departures includes engineers responsible for bug fixing and preventing service outages, which has spurred questions about Twitter's stability.

Volkswagen AG VWAGY is reportedly discussing with investors to join its battery unit business, PowerCo.
The move comes ahead of a possible partial initial public offering (IPO) of the subsidiary.
The motive behind the discussion is to bring in investors pre-IPO to measure the kind of valuation PowerCo could garner in a flotation.

Meta Platforms Inc META CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees that WhatsApp and Messenger would drive the company's next wave of sales growth to assuage concerns about Meta's finances after its first mass layoffs.
Zuckerberg addressed pointed questions at a company-wide meeting a week after Meta said it would lay off 11,000 workers.
He described the pair of messaging apps as being "very early in monetizing" compared to its advertising juggernauts, Facebook and Instagram.

Wall Street Journal

Visa Inc V named Ryan McInerney as CEO, effective February 1, 2023. McInerney currently serves as President of Visa, a role he has held since 2013.
Alfred F. Kelly, Jr., who has served as the company's CEO since 2016 and Chairman since 2019, will assume the role of Executive Chair of the Board.
Kelly's tenure overlapped with a continuing shift to digital payments as more consumers pay with cards, a process that further accelerated during the pandemic.
During Kelly's tenure, Visa's market value more than doubled, and the company is now worth more than $400 billion.

Bloomberg

Alphabet Inc's GOOG GOOGL Google paid Activision Blizzard Inc ATVI and Riot Games millions of dollars to not launch competing app stores or to prevent developers from making Android apps outside of the Play Store, according to a court filing from Epic Games Inc.
Epic says Google agreed in January 2020 to pay Activision $360 million over three years after the game publisher discussed launching its app store.
Fortnite maker Epic Games is in a wild antitrust battle with Google and Apple Inc AAPL over the tech giant's app store practices.

CNBC

China's Covid controls disrupted Alibaba Group Holding Limited's BABA ability to deliver packages dragging down the e-commerce giant's sales in a competitive market.
"The resurgence of Covid has affected one area after another, resulting in abnormal or suspended logistic service in different places," Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang said during a quarterly earnings call. "This hurt merchant operations and consumer logistics experience."
Disruptions affected nearly 15% of delivery areas in China starting in October and through the 11.11 shopping festival campaign period.

Benzinga

Binance is under hot waters after it moved 127,351 Bitcoins (BTC/USD) from its Proof of Reserve wallet (BTCB/USD) to cold storage, on-chain data reveals.
After the above-mentioned transfer, over 68,200 BTC worth $1.1 billion were transferred to Binance from an anonymous wallet. In total, 59,151 BTC, over $98 million, unpegged from Binance's BTC reserves.

The FDA approved Provention Bio Inc's PRVB Tzield (teplizumab-mzwv) injection to delay the onset of stage 3 type 1 diabetes in adults and pediatric patients eight years and older who currently have stage 2 type 1 diabetes.
The therapy narrowly passed the vote at an FDA advisory committee meeting in May last year amid questions about the small study size and more.

Adobe Inc ADBE received a second request for information from the U.S. Department of Justice on its proposed $20 billion acquisition.
The deal, one of the largest takeovers of a private software maker, has a targeted completion in 2023.
Adobe, the top creative software maker for design professionals, is looking to expand its web-based offerings to make inroads with nonprofessional customers and small businesses.

New Twitter Inc accounts won't be able to subscribe to Twitter Blue subscription for 90 days.
Tesla Inc TSLA CEO and Twitter chief Elon Musk on Wednesday announced that Twitter Blue is gearing up to launch on November 29.
"Newly created Twitter accounts will not be able to subscribe to Twitter Blue for 90 days. We may also impose waiting periods for new accounts in the future in our discretion without notice," the update read.

Amazon.com Inc AMZN CEO Andy Jassy said there will be more "role reductions" at the e-commerce behemoth in early 2023 as the company leadership continues to "make adjustments."What Happened: Jassy said in a letter to employees that Amazon's "annual planning process," which the company is in the midst of currently, extends into the new year.
"Those decisions will be shared with impacted employees and organizations early in 2023," wrote Jassy.

BHP Group Ltd BHP has raised its offer for OZ Minerals Limited OZMLF to value the Australian miner at A$9.6 billion ($6.34 billion).
Earlier, BHP offered to pay A$25/share. OZ Minerals said it intends to recommend that shareholders vote to favor BHP's revised offer.
A completed deal would represent BHP's largest acquisition since 2011, when it bought Petrohawk Energy Corp for more than $12 billion.

Boeing Co BA has announced consolidating its struggling Defense, Space & Security Business (BDS) Unit.
These changes build upon the consolidation of Manufacturing & Safety, Total Quality, Supply Chain and Program Management, and the appointment of Steve Parker as BDS's chief operating officer.
Effective immediately, Boeing is slashing its defense unit from eight to four divisions, which include Vertical Lift, Mobility, Surveillance & Bombers, Air Dominance and Space, Intelligence & Weapon Systems.

Ljupco Smokovski by Shutterstock and Wikimedia Commons