Anthony Levandowski—who once headed the self-driving project at Google —has been ordered to pay $179 million… |
BEYOND BITCOIN
This week’s top headlines:
⚡Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey keeps role despite
investor unrest
⚡Gold soars and stocks slide after coronavirus interest cut
⚡Ex-Google engineer fined $179M after losing legal battle
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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey keeps role despite investor unrest
It’s been a bumpy ride for Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Since his return to the role in 2015, company shares have dropped by 6.2%—a stark contrast to competitor platforms like Facebook, which gained 121%. Some of this failure has been pinned to Dorsey’s double CEO-roles (Twitter and Square) and disgruntled investors pushed for change:
It began with a no-holds-barred open letter from Twitter investor Scott Galloway, in
which he wrote: "To be clear, my primary objective is the replacement of CEO Jack Dorsey."
Then, rumors swirled that activist investor Elliott Management, which owns a gigantic $1B stake in Twitter, was seeking to oust
Dorsey as CEO.
In response, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted
his support of Dorsey, while Dorsey himself canceled plans to work remotely from Africa.
It has now been confirmed that Dorsey will keep his role as part of a deal between Twitter and
Elliott Management, which involves the former buying back $2 billion worth of stock.
Gold soars, stocks slide after coronavirus interest rate cut
As the US central bank stated, "Coronavirus poses
evolving risks to economic activity." With over 100,000 cases of the virus confirmed and a death toll of almost 4,000, the US Federal Reserve took action last week in a bid to boost the economy:
Interest rates were slashed by half a percentage point, causing a significant drop in major stock indices (the new benchmark interest rate sits between 1 - 1.25%).
This marks the first unscheduled cut to interest rates since the financial crisis in 2008. It’s also the
biggest one-time rate cut since then.
Following the cut, the price of gold soared by $49—rocketing to $1,638 per ounce.
Ex-Google engineer fined $179M after losing legal battle
Google wants its trade secrets kept that way. Anthony Levandowski—who once headed Google’s top-secret self-driving project—has been ordered to pay $179 million after breaching his contract with the tech
giant:
Levandowski left to set up rival self-driving company Otto, which was later acquired by Uber. He went on to poach staff from Google, causing the company to see red.
Following the recent court order to pay $179 million to Google, Levandowski—who no longer works for Uber—has filed for bankruptcy.
Now, it’s unclear who will have to pay up. "Whether Uber is ultimately responsible for such indemnification is subject to a dispute," commented Uber.