Morning Brief: Top Stories Dominating Financial Media on Tuesday, April 5

CNBC

Former DeepMind Officials Get Together To Develop AI For Stock and Crypto Picking

• Martin Schmid, Rudolf Kadlec, and Matej Moravcik left Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL owned DeepMind in January to set up EquiLibre Technologies.
• The trio seek to develop artificial intelligence for stock and crypto picking.
• They look to use reinforcement learning to train an AI system to buy and sell shares and make a profit.

Reuters

Investors Write To 17 European Companies In Campaign For Climate Goal-Aligned Accounts

• Thirty-four investors managing more than $7 trillion in assets have warned 17 of Europe’s most prominent companies that they could challenge board directors over their accounting of climate risks.
• The move is the latest push by investors to pressure companies and their auditors, charging them with not moving fast enough to adapt to the transition to a low-carbon economy or being clear enough about the potential impacts.

KKR’s Telecom Italia Takeover Hit Roadblock Over Takeover Process: Reuters

• The likelihood of U.S. fund KKR & Co Inc KKR pushing ahead with a firm bid for Telecom Italia SpA TIIAY turned bleaker as they deadlocked over access to the company’s books.
• KKR refused to confirm a bid unless Telecom Italia provided access to its books under a due diligence process.
• KKR needed more information as the war in Ukraine had changed market conditions.

US, Europe Plan New Sanctions On Russia Over Reports Of War Crimes In Bucha

• The United States and Europe are working on new sanctions against Russia over reports of committing mass killings of civilians in Ukraine, according to Reuters.
• What Happened: This comes after haunting images of carnage emerged from Ukraine’s Bucha, a town near Kyiv. The Russian forces withdrew from the capital Kyiv last week as it turned to assault to south and east of Ukraine.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that more deaths were likely to be uncovered in areas seized from Russian invaders.

WSJ

Biden To Propose Change To Obamacare To Extend Subsidies For Families

• The Biden administration is expected to propose a change in Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies to allow some people to afford health insurance for their families.
• The proposed change, expected to be announced Tuesday, would recalculate what is considered affordable for a family with employer-based health insurance.
• Currently, workers can’t get ACA subsidies to lower their premiums if they get affordable health insurance coverage from an employer.

Bloomberg

Manhattan’s Home Bidding Wars Gain Steam With Economic Recovery

• The purchases of Manhattan co-ops and condos totaled 3,585, the most for a first quarter in more than three decades of record-keeping.
• The deals jumped 46% year on year as the office goers looked to rejoin as the economy gradually recovered from the pandemic.
• The competition was intense in the luxury market, which saw its second-highest rate of bidding wars in the five years of tracking.

Porsche Q1 US Deliveries Slump 24.9% Hit By Supply, Transit Issues

• Volkswagen AG VWAGY owned luxury carmaker Porsche Cars North America Inc (PCNA) reported a 24.9% decline in Q1 FY22 U.S. retail deliveries.
• A mix of factors, including supply-chain shortages, war, and the sinking of a cargo ship carrying millions of dollars worth of product across the Atlantic, has caused the slump.
• The company delivered 13,042 units in Q1 versus 17,368 units last year.

Hottest NFT Marketplace Is Mostly Users Selling to Themselves

• The LooksRare platform that has briefly turned out to be the primary NFT market through buying and selling quantity displays that many of the tasks are, in fact, customers promoting tokens to themselves to assist earn rewards within the type of extra cash.
• About $18 billion of the buying and selling quantity at the LooksRare platform, or about 95% of the whole task, may also be attributed to what’s frequently known as wash gross sales, according to knowledge compiled by means of NFT tracker CryptoSlam.
• The gross sales are carried out to win new tokens moderately than to pump up nonfungible token costs to entice unsuspecting patrons.

Financial Times

mRNA Vaccine Maker CEOs Pocketed $100M In Pandemic Pay

• The CEOs of Pfizer Inc PFE, BioNTech SE BNTX, and Moderna Inc MRNA have shared more than $100 million in pay during the pandemic reflecting the success of the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines developed by their companies.
• Pfizers’ Albert Bourla, Ugur Sahin of BioNTech, and Stéphane Bancel of Moderna have also seen an increase in their paper wealth thanks to the rise in share price driven by investor enthusiasm.
• Total remuneration at the three mRNA developers increased to $107.2 million in 2020-2021, compared with $103.7 million in the previous two years.

Benzinga

Bitcoin, Dogecoin And Shiba Inu Now Accepted At 500,000 Vending Machines Across The US

• PayRange Inc, a leading mobile payment app maker for automated retail, has added capabilities to accept cryptocurrencies.
• In an announcement on Monday, the company said users could pay with cryptocurrencies by signing into their Coinbase Global Inc COIN account within the PayRange app.
• Included in this list are Bitcoin BTC/USD, Ethereum ETH/USD, Dogecoin DOGE/USD, and Shiba Inu SHIB.

Shopify Is Facing A Class-Action Lawsuit From Crypto Holders: What You Need To Know

• E-commerce platform Shopify Inc SHOP has been named in a class-action lawsuit for allegedly failing to safeguard consumer information in a 2020 data breach impacting Ledger cryptocurrency wallets.
• According to a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court of Delaware on April 1, plaintiffs are seeking damages against Shopify and its third-party consultant TaskUs for its negligence in the data breach.
• The lawsuit alleges that Shopify and TaskUs’s “failure to exercise reasonable care” resulted in the unauthorized public release of approximately 272,000 pieces of customer information, including names, postal addresses, and phone number.

Intel Launches Energy-Efficient Bitcoin Mining Chip: Here’s What You Need To Know

• The first shipments of Intel Corporation’s INTC new energy-efficient Bitcoin BTC/USD mining microchip are set to begin in the third quarter.
• In an announcement on Monday, Intel unveiled details about its newly launched mining chip, Blocksale ASIC.
• The mining chip will reportedly have a hashrate of 580 Giga Hashes per second (GH/s) with an energy efficiency of 26 joules per Tera Hash (J/TH).

Privatization Will Help Channel 4 Compete With Netflix, Amazon, Says UK Culture Secretary

• The United Kingdom Culture Secretary of State, Nadine Dorries, announced that the government is continuing ahead with its decision to privatize the British free-to-air public-service television network Channel 4, after 40 years of public ownership.
• Dorries said the privatization would help the public-service broadcaster compete against the giants and likes of Netflix Inc. NFLX and Amazon.com Inc. AMZN.

Elon Musk On Why Twitter Polls Matter For Decision-Making

• Twitter Inc TWTR investor and Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk shared his reasoning on why polls on the platform matter.
• Musk said on Tuesday that “if the people vote overwhelmingly for something, it is at least *a* data point!”
• Musk’s comments came in response to a Twitter user who said that the entrepreneur is “just gonna influence twitter by polling millions of people on important issues.”

Amazon Looks To Block’ Union,’ ‘Living Wage,’ Or ‘Freedom’ Keywords On Internal Messaging App: Report

• Amazon.com, Inc AMZN is reportedly planning on flagging and blocking certain keywords linked to unions on its internal messaging app.
• The words on Amazon’s watchlist include “Union,” “Living Wage,” “Petition,” “Freedom,” “Robots,” and “Representation” among others, according to a report from The Intercept.
• “Our teams are always thinking about new ways to help employees engage with each other,” said an Amazon spokesperson, according to the report.
• “This particular program has not been approved yet and may change significantly or even never launch at all.”

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