Peter Thiel may be the most successful venture capitalist of his era, with a resume that spans from Facebook to SpaceX to Airbnb. But no venture capitalist bats 1000, and Thiel's biggest whiff was of much greater consequence than pushing a mediocre app into the market.
Flashback: Just days before Donald Trump's 2016 election, Thiel criticized the media for taking Trump literally rather than seriously, contrasted to Trump voters who took him seriously but not literally.
Platinum Equity is seeking a buyer for United Site Services (USS), a Westborough, Massachusetts-based portable toilet and hand-wash station provider, per Reuters. The company could fetch around $4 billion, including debt.
Why it matters: USS is the country's largest porta-potty purveyor, with a product line that ranges from luxurious to stomach-churning. It's also another successful pandemic pivot story, as the growth of its hand-wash business appears to have more than offset losses related to the dearth of in-person events.
Equity analysts raised their earnings estimates for companies in the S&P 500 by 2.3% during the fourth quarter, to $36.93 from $36.10, as optimism continues to rise.
What it means: Q4 was the second straight quarter in which Wall Street analysts have raised their earnings expectations, a reversal of the typical trend.
Despite the pandemic ravaging investor confidence early in 2020, U.S. and European investors flocked to Chinese debt, pushing the level of foreign investment in China's bonds to a record high and more than double its 2019 level, data from the Institute of International Finance show.
What happened: Chinese government and policy bank bonds were added to the Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate Index beginning in April 2019 and in September JPMorgan announced that they would add China's government bonds to its highly followed EM global bond index.
The pandemic may have upended the sports world, but business is booming for its top agencies.
By the numbers: The 40 most valuable sports agencies in the world negotiated deals worth over $56 billion in 2020 and brought in commissions worth $2.9 billion — a 10% rise from 2019 and a 55% gain since 2015, per Forbes.
Big names in the world of finance are beginning to call out the Fed and other central banks for their role in ramping up economic inequality and manipulating financial markets — a departure from the praise they received for most of last year.
Why it matters: Wall Street was the only pillar of solid support. Most Americans say they don't trust the Fed and politicians look to be taking aim at the central bank for overreaching with its unprecedented actions in March.
Divers on Monday stepped up retrieval efforts for the black boxes of the Sriwijaya Air passenger plane that crashed into the sea off Jakarta, Indonesia.
Details: The Boeing 737-500 was carrying 62 passengers and crew en route to Pontianak on the island of Borneo when air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane soon after takeoff on Saturday.
Major businesses are pausing donations to politicians in light of Wednesday's deadly siege of the U.S. Capitol.
Driving the news: Marriott will pause donations from its PAC to "who voted against certification of the election,” a company spokesperson confirmed on Sunday. Citigroup meanwhile will pause all donations from its PAC for the rest of the quarter, according to a company memo obtained by Axios.
Coinbase’s upcoming public listing will be a watershed moment for a cryptocurrency industry longing for legitimacy.
Why it matters: As the first major crypto exchange to go public — and one of the industry's few blue chip companies — industry insiders believe the float will double as validation for a technology that's still seen by many as lawless and experimental.
The labor market recovery came to a screeching halt in December, and the few data points that look promising for some of the most vulnerable working Americans are actually deeply troubling upon further inspection.
Driving the news: The recovery was interrupted as the coronavirus raged and the government was slow to move on fiscal support.
