Accenture Interactive, the digital marketing arm of international consulting firm Accenture, announced on Wednesday that it is acquiring acclaimed advertising creative agency Droga5. Deal terms weren't disclosed, but Accenture Interactive says Droga5 is its biggest acquisition in 10 years.
Why it matters: The acquisition will help Accenture Interactive expand its advertising creative business, specifically around "experiential marketing," which includes things like custom events, executions and partnerships that help people experience a brand in a more intimate way, as opposed to just seeing an ad on TV.
iHeartMedia, the country's largest commercial radio broadcaster, has filed for an initial public offering.
Why it matters: This is the latest chapter in a complex corporate saga that began when iHeart (then known as Clear Channel) was acquired in 2006 for $18.7 billion. That deal was so contentious that the private equity sponsors Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners had to sue their lenders to get the deal closed, but then the whole thing ended up collapsing under a wall of debt.
U.S. job growth fell to an 18-month low in March, according to a Wednesday report from ADP and Moody’s Analytics. Private payrolls increased by 129,000 in March, missing the 173,000 economists expected.
"The job market is weakening, with employment gains slowing significantly across most industries and company sizes," said Moody's Mark Zandi in a statement.
The bottom line: The ADP jobs report is seen as an important precursor to Friday's official government jobs report. The numbers don't bode well for those fearing that the booming jobs market is slowing down — especially after February's dismal report that showed only 20,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy.
Leading business executives' optimism about the current state of the global economy has tanked, and prospects that next year will be better are falling fast too, according to Deloitte's quarterly survey of more than 100 chief financial officers.
Why it matters: One of the biggest risks to the stock market and the economy itself is the fear of a recession, much more so than a recession itself, as we've written before. Executives that think economic prospects are only going to get worse can delay big projects which will further hurt growth.
Stock market investors and huge pension plans in pursuit of boom-era returns are chasing just about anything with a growth story, regardless of whether the underlying company actually makes any money.
Why it matters: The market demand pushing up sky-high valuations for companies like Lyft, Uber, Airbnb and others is akin to the housing bubble in the early aughts, says Karl Dasher, CEO and co-head of fixed income at investment firm Schroders.
Whitehouse whistleblower Tricia Newbold told NBC News Tuesday a supervisor left her feeling "humiliated' after she reported the Trump administration had reversed 25 security clearance denials.
What she's saying: The White House whistleblower told NBC’s Peter Alexander the supervisor moved files to a shelf beyond her reach. "It was definitely humiliating," said Newbold, who has been a White House security adviser for 18 years and has a rare form of dwarfism. "But it didn’t stop me from doing what was right."
The stock price of Walgreens Boots Alliance plummeted more than 12% Tuesday after the pharmacy chain slashed profit estimates for the rest of the year and posted what it called "the most difficult quarter" since Walgreens and Boots Alliance merged in late 2014.
The big picture: Drug pricing middlemen are paying Walgreens' pharmacies less to dispense prescriptions. That "reimbursement pressure," combined with the overhang of drug price reform and Amazon's looming drug mailing presence, is rattling the entire retail pharmacy industry.
Demand for the final season of "Game of Thrones" is at a record high, according to Parrot Analytics, a data science company that measures and predicts global demand for content.
Data: Parrot Analytics and Axios research; Chart: Harry Stevens/Axios
A new study from the Conference Board predicts corporate profits will decline this year. The group's economists say companies most at risk of profit declines are those that employ many blue-collar workers, "an increasingly scarce yet high-in-demand group."
The intrigue: The study specifically highlights companies in the manufacturing, food service and transportation industries, which are expected to see labor costs eat into profits as blue-collar workers' labor costs are rising much faster than for their highly educated white-collar counterparts.
Surveys showed global manufacturing, the lifeblood of many of the world's economies, was flat in March — the first time it has not fallen since April 2018.
"The steady result was achieved in no small part thanks to a better performance from China. China led a regional divide, with northeast Asia generally improving. While in contrast, Central Europe was notably weak, and North American manufacturing, at least based off the PMIs, was also losing some growth momentum, most especially in Canada and Mexico."
— Alan Ruskin, chief international strategist at Deutsche Bank, wrote in a note to clients.
Comscore and Nielsen, two of the biggest providers of media measurement and analytics, have seen their stocks sink over the past week after separate reports of corporate drama.
The big picture: The media measurement market has gotten more complicated as the analog world reckons with digital, putting more pressure on companies to invest in innovation, which can be costly and controversial.
News outlets have for years struggled to gain leverage over tech companies for distributing their content, but in the past week, they've racked up some major wins.
Why it matters: The wins provide hope that news companies will one day be able to leverage their original content and trusted relationships with users online to sustain themselves — even in an environment where they have to rely on technology partners for much of their distribution.
New research published in Scientific American shows that when local newspapers shutter, citizens increasingly turn to national news sources for political information — which the report says "emphasize competition and conflict between the parties."
Why it matters: The findings underscore the roughly $1 billion being donated by philanthropists, corporate backers and tech companies to save local news, and puts more pressure on society to address the issue ahead of the 2020 election.
