After Spotify successfully went public in April via a direct listing, we didn't see any copycats. But that might be changing.
The big picture: Recode's Teddy Schleifer reports that both Airbnb and Slack are seriously weighing the prospect of direct listings, having gone so far as to have reached out to top Spotify executives for insights. We also hear that Pinterest is among several other "unicorns" to have at least kicked the direct listing tires.
Murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and a group of other journalists who have faced death or imprisonment for their work have been named as Time's 2018 Person of the Year.
Details: The group has been labeled by the magazine as "The Guardians and the War on Truth." Beyond Khashoggi, it includes the Capital Gazette newspaper staff, which lost five members in a newsroom shooting this year; jailed Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, imprisoned in Myanmar for their coverage of the Rohingya crisis; and Filipino journalist Maria Ressa, who was arrested after criticizing President Rodrigo Duterte's administration.
No one has yet built a “QVC for millennials,” but that’s not stopping entrepreneurs from trying to put a uniquely tailored twist on home shopping.
The bigger picture: A slew of companies are working to marry millennials’ affinities for online video and shopping — and capitalize on their arrival as the most populous generation.
As tensions with China grow deeper, media giants could look to further ties in India, where the mobile economy is booming.
Why it matters: India is one of the fastest-growing internet markets in the world. But few consumers have the disposable income to pay for multiple services, which will make it hard for some companies to conquer the country.
As rural America gets left behind by the rise of coastal superstar cities and the chasm between the richest and the rest widens, one entity is heavily profiting from the blight: the dollar store.
Why it matters: Economic signs point to a coming recession, and U.S. discount stores, which have boomed even in the strong recent economy, will only grow more — becoming the sole retail option for an increasing share of Americans.
In a direct address to the people of France, Emmanuel Macron responded to the "yellow vest" protests against his presidency by promising a series of financial concessions, including a 100 euro-per-month raise for minimum wage workers, a canceled tax hike for low-income pensioners and a crackdown on tax evasion, the BBC reports.
The big picture: Macron firmly denounced the violent riots that have dominated headlines for the past four weekends, with hundreds injured and more than 1,000 arrested this Saturday alone. But he acknowledged that the yellow vests have legitimate grievances and declared an "economic and social state of emergency" in order to tackle the many issues that plague France. He refused to budge, however, on reinstating a wealth tax, having made its elimination a hallmark of his pro-business reform agenda.
Last week came news that Uber and Lyft have filed confidential IPO documents with U.S. securities regulators, while Slack has hired its IPO underwriter.
The temptationis to write that the companies are reacting to the public equities pullback, particularly in tech stocks, by rushing to price before the IPO window slams shut. The reality is that these plans have been in the works for months, including during the public equities surge in early Q3 and the post-Halloween sugar rush.
Why it matters: Soybeans had become an unlikely political ground zero in Trump's trade war, with sales to China down nearly 90% as a result of retaliatory tariffs. Soybean farmers have pushed the limits of crop storage in the hope that waiting out trade tensions will pay dividends, as Trump has promised.
The markets are tanking — the S&P 500 is down 8% in last two months alone — as investors brace for bumpy, if not bad, times ahead.
The big thing: The simple fact that this record period of growth will undoubtedly come to an end, in America and globally. A closely watched bond-market bellwether is this close to flashing a recession signal, Axios' Felix Salmon writes.
Last Saturday night, after his dinner with China's President Xi Jinping in Buenos Aires, President Trump rode to the airport in his armored limousine. The first lady, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Press Secretary Sarah Sanders joined the president in "The Beast."
What happened: Inside the car, Trump dictated a statement to Sanders listing the concessions he said China made during the dinner, according to two sources familiar with their private conversation. The statement, which was circulated to principals, was all Trump. Since then, we've seen a mess of competing and confusing statements from the Chinese and American sides, throwing U.S. stock markets into a spiral.
