Reuters News
(Reuters) – The $687 million fee Japan’s Olympus Corp. paid its financial advisers for the $2.2 billion purchase of a British medical equipment maker is one for the record books, literally. The payment is the largest M&A fee ever made, Thomson Reuters data on fee estimates shows, surpassing the previous record of $217 million involved […]
(Reuters) – Little-known online games company Trion Worlds, after raising more than $100 million in venture capital since 2006, is looking at becoming the newest debutante at the digital media IPO ball. Not unlike larger and better-known games company Zynga, which filed for an IPO of up to $1 billion in July, Trion is considering […]
WASHINGTON, Oct 6 (Reuters) – The Obama administration said on Thursday its top energy loans official was stepping down, following a widening probe into the embarrassing collapse of a solar panel company that got $535 million in federal support. Jonathan Silver, a venture capitalist who had also worked for the Clinton administration, was leaving because […]
(Reuters) Apple Inc. co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs, counted among the greatest American CEOs of his generation, died on Wednesday at the age of 56, after a years-long and highly public battle with cancer and other health issues.
Jobs' death was announced by Apple in a statement late on Wednesday.
The Silicon Valley icon who gave the world the iPod and the iPhone resigned as CEO of the world's largest technology corporation in August, handing the reins to current chief executive Tim Cook.
Jobs, who fought a rare form of pancreatic cancer, was deemed the heart and soul of a company that rivals Exxon Mobil as the most valuable in America.
(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc. introduced its eagerly awaited tablet computer on Wednesday with a price tag that could make it the first strong competitor in a tablet market that has been dominated by Apple Inc.'s iPad.
The new device, priced at $199, may have the biggest impact on other makers of tablets and e-readers, such as Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Barnes & Noble Inc., maker of the Nook.
(SLIDESHOW and VIDEO of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos introducing the Kindle Fire.)
"It's a Nook killer," said Scot Wingo, chief executive of ChannelAdvisor, which helps merchants sell more on websites including Amazon.com. "And it's a very compelling offering if you're not in the Apple ecosystem already."
The Kindle Fire tablet has a 7-inch screen, free data storage over the Internet and a new browser called Amazon Silk. Amazon expects shipments to start on Nov. 15.
Amazon also introduced the ...
(Reuters) – Groupon’s chief operating officer is leaving to join Google Inc five months after joining the company and ahead of a highly-anticipated initial public offering. The daily deals company also filed an amended registration statement on Friday that excludes from its revenue figures the money that Groupon pays its business partners. As a result, […]
(Reuters) - Two of Twitter's earliest investors have left the company's board of directors, the latest change to the fast-growing social media company's leadership.
Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures and Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital are no longer on Twitter's board, the company said on Friday.
The departures were first reported on the technology blog AllThingsD.com.
It was not immediately clear what prompted the change.
Twitter does not plan to appoint new directors to replace Wilson and Sabet, a source familiar with the matter said.
(Reuters) - The top U.S. securities regulator has formed an advisory panel of fast-growing companies and venture capital funds as it reviews whether it needs to update rules on how private companies can access public investors.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has said it is examining its share issuance rules for private companies to see if they are still relevant in light of market developments.
The issue jumped into the spotlight recently as Wall Street banks and electronic markets offer investors a chance to buy and actively trade stakes in hot Internet companies such as Facebook and Twitter before they go public.
Lawmakers have also raised concerns about whether the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's restrictions on capital raising by private companies hurt innovation and ...
(Reuters) - Tom Perkins, co-founder of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and the backer of companies ranging from Genentech to Google, believes much of the venture capital industry has set itself up for failure.
"Mathematically, there's no way that all venture capital in America will make 10 to 1," or $10 for every dollar invested -- a fairly typical return in past years -- Perkins told Reuters.
There is too much money chasing too few companies, he said, and the increasingly large sums invested mean failures will hurt more. Firms hit by outsized failures will find it hard to ...
(Reuters) – President Barack Obama is proposing cutting $467 billion in tax breaks for wealthier Americans and some companies to offset the cost of his job-creation plan, White House Budget Director Jack Lew said on Monday. Included is a plan to treat carried interest as ordinary income. “In order to invest in jobs and growth, […]