The Associated Press reports that Alabama has been selected as the location for a $1.6 billion manufacturing plant for Japanese automakers Mazda and Toyota.
Flashback: Trump praised the decision back in August to bring the plant to the U.S., and said in November during a trip in Japan: "Try building your cars in the United States instead of shipping them over. Is that possible to ask? That's not rude. Is that rude? I don't think so."
Change Healthcare, a billing and data analytics company, will file for an initial public offering soon, McKesson CEO John Hammergren said at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. McKesson, a drug and device distributor, owns 70% of Change Healthcare. The IPO could happen as soon as this year, or in 2019.
Flashback: Change Healthcare used to be publicly traded when it was known as Emdeon. Blackstone then took Emdeon private in 2011 in a $3 billion deal. A return to the public markets builds on the growing appetite from hospitals and health insurers that want to comb through patient data.
Goods once transported by land and sea are now being loaded onto airplanes, as e-commerce companies and manufacturers are increasingly expected to meet shorter delivery windows, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Why it matters: The global demand for shipping larger goods via air cargo (like manufacturing and automotive parts) is creating competition for companies and motivating them to ship everyday items as quickly as possible.
Amazon quietly became the biggest player in cosmetics retailing last year, with a 21% share of the market — and big-name makeup manufacturers are taking notice, Bloomberg Businessweek reports.
Why it matters: Manufacturers like Estee Lauder are preventing their high-end brands from appearing on Amazon, but not because they think it would hurt profits in the short term. While mass-market products earn higher margins on Amazon sales, these firms worry that selling their luxury brands there will tarnish their brands and decrease their price-setting power.
Europe's Altice NV said Tuesday that it will spin-off its U.S. unit, which owns both Cablevision and Suddenlink.
Why it matters: Because Altice USA went public last summer, largely to give it a public currency to make acquisitions. But those ambitions have been slowed by its parent company's balance sheet brambles, and today's move could finally clear its path.
John Dickerson is slated to fill Charlie Rose’s empty role with "CBS This Morning,” HuffPost reports, citing “three sources familiar with the decision.” Dickerson will be co-anchoring with Norah O’Donnell and Gayle King.
The Washington Post will celebrate its second consecutive year as a profitable company by adding to its business and technology teams in 2018, according to a memo to staff from Post Publisher Fred Ryan obtained by Axios.
The team of nearly 800 journalists will be acquiring additional space in its headquarters building in downtown Washington in 2018. "This expansion will meet our needs in the coming year and accommodate anticipated growth in the future," Ryan says.
Mediaocean, the 50-year-old TV-buying platform that is used to purchase an estimated 75% of all TV ads in the U.S, is partnering with Adobe's Advertising Cloud to integrate digital ad buying with TV.
Why it matters: Just a fraction of TV ads today are bought digitally, even though the technology is there to serve digital TV ads to more than half of Americans. This is largely because until now, media buyers haven’t had access to the buying infrastructure that would allow them to buy TV ads in a way that could integrate all of the data sets they need to buy the ads digitally.
Chinese internet giants like Tencent, Baidu and Alibaba are ramping up investments in U.S. tech and media companies. They're also building data servers and acquiring ad tech businesses in the U.S. that can help them monetize media engagement from citizens living in America, like students or tourists.
Why it matters: There's a misconception that the Chinese push into the Western media tech market is to target new American users or to compete directly with U.S. tech companies. In reality, they're looking to expand their Chinese user base abroad and make money from Chinese expats who would rather use their own social, messaging, and commerce apps in the U.S.
