Business

GM and Ultium released statements saying they were pleased with the deal. The union said it wants to use the Ultium Cells contract as a model to negotiate local deals at other battery plants that GM and its Detroit rivals are building. GM began production this year at a battery plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and has another under construction in Lansing, Michigan. Ford Motor plans two battery plants in Kentucky, one in Tennessee and one in Michigan. Stellantis, the maker of Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge and Ram vehicles, plans two battery plants in Indiana. Aside from a Ford location, these plants involve joint ventures that were brought under the umbrella of the UAW as part of national contracts the union signed with Ford and Stellantis last fall. The Ultium Cells contract includes moving w...

At the center of the federal criminal trial is an incident in 2021 in which Mr. Watson's deputy deceived Goldman Sachs employees on a fundraising call by posing as a YouTube executive. The revelation of the call precipitated Ozy's downfall. Defense lawyers for Mr. Watson and Ozy accused his deputy, Samir Rao, of the false phone call and of misrepresenting Ozy's financial details to potential investors. Ms. Frison said in her opening statement in May that Mr. Rao was “incompetent for the role he was filling.” Mr. Rao and Suzee Han, Ozy's former chief of staff, pleaded guilty last year to fraud charges. Watson's defense continued to point the finger at Rao during cross-examination this week, pressing prosecution witnesses about Mr Watson's personal involvement in the alleged illegal condu...

In the Shek Tong Tsui area, where Return Home Hunan opened in May, many of the brightly colored restaurants – once mainstays of the neighborhood – had recently closed their doors. A restaurant that served cheap noodles and milk tea was gone, as was a restaurant where retirees gathered to eat dim sum and catch up on the day's news. “The restaurant business is hard work,” said Roy Tse, the owner of a local restaurant that sold lunch rice dishes once popular among office workers in Hong Kong's Taikoo Shing business district. There are fewer visitors at lunchtime these days. Those still coming order the bases. Yeung Hei, the manager of Fu Ging Aromatic Noodles, a historic local Hong Kong restaurant where a chef braises beef brisket in front of the window, said he had customers arriving eve...

Tiana's Bayou Adventure uses the same trails as Splash Mountain, and riders continue to ride in vehicles made to look like hollowed-out logs. But everything else has been redesigned. Instead of a suspenseful story that sees Br'er Rabbit thrown into a field of brambles, the new attraction focuses on a Mardi Gras party: Tiana and her friend Louis, a trumpet-playing alligator, are on a quest to creatures to form a gang with. Midway through the film, the cheerful Mama Odie, a voodoo queen in "The Princess and the Frog" and now a "fairy godmother of the bayou," casts a spell, supposedly shrinking the knights to the size of fireflies. Tiana's Bayou Adventure also has a new slogan: "Everyone is welcome." While walking Tiana's Bayou Adventure with a reporter during an opening test phase, Ted Ro...

William H. Donaldson, who made an early fortune as co-founder of the innovative securities firm Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette and later pushed for tougher financial regulation as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom accounting scandals , died Wednesday at his home in Westchester County, New York, at the age of 93. The cause was leukemia, his son Adam said. Mr. Donaldson also briefly served as undersecretary of state under Henry A. Kissinger, ran the New York Stock Exchange and was chief executive of the insurance company Aetna Inc. In 1975, he was named the founding dean of Yale University's School of Organization and Management, now known as the School of Management, whose mission to train leaders for both business and government was ex...

The oil industry in the United States, the world's largest producer of crude oil, is made up of many small and medium-sized oil companies, ranging from family businesses with a few wells in one state to global giants like Exxon Mobil. Wall Street values ​​ConocoPhillips at about $140 billion, or about 10 times larger than Marathon Oil but about a quarter of Exxon. Oil companies have completed some of the largest acquisitions in the past year despite regulatory scrutiny from the Biden administration and oil market volatility. U.S. giants have capitalized on record profits, giving them the firepower to acquire smaller companies with operations in oil-rich regions such as the Permian Basin in New Mexico and Texas and the Gulf of Mexico. Among the drivers of consolidation is that companies ...

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Sony bought Alamo from Altamont Capital Partners and Fortress Investment Group, as well as the chain's founder, Tim League. Mr League said the cinema chain was “more than thrilled” with the deal. This comes at a time of financial difficulty for the Alamo and the film industry as a whole. Many of Alamo's franchised locations filed for bankruptcy and closed this month, making Sony's move a potential lifeline for the struggling chain. Alamo filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2021 before a private equity firm intervened. The theaters will continue to operate under the Alamo Drafthouse brand, Sony said, although they will be operated by a newly formed division at Sony led by Michael Kustermann, Alamo's chief executive. “Alamo Drafthouse has always held...

The jury was unanimous. But the cable news verdict was a split decision. Viewers across the country rushed to television screens Thursday to learn the outcome of the Manhattan criminal case against former President Donald J. Trump. Fox News got the most viewers for breaking coverage of the 34 allegations, drawing 4.7 million viewers from 5 to 6 p.m., according to Nielsen. That's a huge number of viewers for a weekday afternoon and easily surpassed the audiences of CNN, MSNBC and broadcast networks that interspersed regular programming with special reports. In the evening, after the news of the verdict, MSNBC's audience increased. In an extremely rare prime-time win, the left-leaning channel overtook Fox News, the perennial No. 1 cable news station. 1. 1, both in terms of total viewers...

According to a recording obtained by the New York Times, one of the Washington Post's political stars, Ashley Parker, asked how the paper had arrived at its decision, adding that a skeptical interpretation might be that Mr. Lewis was simply hiring his associates to help him manage the post office. Mr. Lewis is in many ways orchestrating a reunion with the people he worked with in the early chapters of his career. As publisher of the Wall Street Journal, he appointed Murray to the paper's top editorial position in 2018. And he worked with Winnett for years, first at the Sunday Times and then at the Telegraph. “When you were here before, you talked very movingly about how you care about diversity — and people talk about diversity — but then when push comes to shove, they say, 'Well, I look...

Tesla could use shareholder approval to support Musk's case in court. If it wins the vote on Musk's compensation, the company is likely to turn to Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, the Delaware Court of Chancery judge who rejected the compensation plan, and argue that shareholders, armed with information she says not having had it when they approved the package, they ratified the proposal again. This, according to the company, makes the issue controversial. If McCormick were to declare the plan acceptable, it is likely that the plaintiffs who initially sued will appeal to the Delaware Supreme Court. Among their potential arguments: The new vote does not resolve an issue that had already been decided by a judge, and shareholder votes may have been influenced by implicit threats to Tesla's ...