Tag: stock market

Uber Technologies Inc. has agreed to pay $10 million, and possibly $15 million more, to settle charges levied by the district attorneys of San Francisco and Los Angeles concerning driver background checks. San Francisco DA George Gascon said in a statement that Uber will pay $10 million up front and have an additional payment of $15 million waived if it complies with terms of a permanent injunction that is also part of the settlement. “The result we achieved today goes well beyond its impact on Uber,” Gascon said in the statement. “It sends a clear message to all businesses, and to startups in particular, that in the quest to quickly obtain market share, laws designed to protect consumers cannot be ignored.” The charges of unlawful business practices centered on allegedly misleading claims about the strength of Uber’s background checks for drivers, as well as fees charged for rides to the airport. Similar allegations in class-action lawsuits led to Uber’s agreement to pay a $28.5 million settlement earlier this year. Uber rival Lyft settled with the district attorneys for $500,000 before charges were actually filed.

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Depomed Inc. shares gained in late trading Thursday after activist investor Starboard Value LP disclosed a fresh stake in the pain-pill firm and attacked the company’s board in a filing. Starboard has amassed a stake of about 6.8% of the Newark, Calif., company, and intends to nominate its own directors due to “concerns regarding serious corporate governance deficiencies, questionable capital allocation decisions, and egregious actions” by Depomed’s current board of directors, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Depomed fought off a hostile takeover offer by Horizon Pharma PLC last year, a move that Starboard characterized as “shareholder-unfriendly” in Thursday’s filing. Depomed stock, which has fallen 33% in the past year and has lost more than half its 52-week peak, gained 6.8% in after-hours trading Thursday.

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Intercept Pharmaceuticals Inc. shares rallied in the extended session Thursday after a Food and Drug Administration advisory committee receommended an accelerated approval of the biotech’s liver treatment Ocaliva. Intercept shares surged 9% to $178.40 after hours. Intercept said the FDA’s Gastrointestinal Drugs Advisory Committee voted 17-0 to approve Ocaliva to treat primary biliary cholangitis, a liver disease that destroys bile ducts and causes cirrhosis. The FDA is not required to follow advisory committee recommendations but does for the most part.

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Ruby Tuesday Inc. shares fell 16% late Thursday after the company reported a wider quarterly loss and lower-than-expected sales in the fiscal third quarter. The restaurant chain reported a loss of $3.1 million, or 5 cents a share, in the quarter, compared with a loss of $800,000 in the year-ago period. Adjusted for one-time items, Ruby Tuesday earned $1.6 million, or 3 cents a share, in the third quarter, compared with $1.9 million a year ago. Revenue fell 5.1% to $271.5 million in the quarter, Ruby Tuesday said. Analysts polled by FactSet had expected Ruby Tuesday to earn 5 cents a share on sales of $283 million. Same-restaurant sales fell 3% in the quarter, compared with a 0.3% decline in the third quarter of 2014. The company also lowered its earnings per share guidance for 2016 to between 5 cents and 8 cents a share from between 12 cents and 17 cents a share. In a separate statement, Ruby Tuesday said CFO Jill Golder will resign effective April 11, and the company has started to look for a replacement. Golder joined in 2013.

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Abiomed Inc. shares rose in the extended session Thursday after the medical device maker received Food and Drug Administration approval for its heart pumps. Abiomed shares advanced 3.7% to $99.20, following a brief after-hours halt. The company said the FDA approved four models of its Impella line of heart pumps to treat ongoing cardiogenic shock, or when the heart cannot pump enough blood to meet the needs of the body.

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Barnes & Noble Inc. said it’s closing its Santa Clara, CA and Taiwan offices and outsourcing some of its Nook technology services to Bahwan CyberTech, a software products and services company. The offices will be closed and the services, which includes cloud management and development support for the e-reader, will be turned over by July 2016. The move is expected to result in about $8 million in expense reduction savings and about $5 million in capital expenditure reductions. The company expects to report severance charges of about $6 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2017. Barnes & Noble stock closed down 3.1% on Thursday. Shares are up 34.1% for the year so far, but down 21.4% for the past year.

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Shares of Yahoo! Inc. rose as much as 1.6% in afternoon trade Thursday, reversing an earlier loss of 2.6%, following a report that Verizon Communications Inc. plans to make a bid for the company’s web business next week. The report, from Bloomberg, noted this would be a first-round bid and that Alphabet Inc.’s main division, Google, would also consider a bid. Analysts have expected that Verizon, or possibly another big media company, would make a bid for Yahoo’s Internet business. Verizon shares were down 3%.

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Luxe, a valet parking startup, said Thursday that it raised a $50 million funding round led by Hertz Global Holdings . Redpoint Ventures and Venrock were also investors. With the investment, Luxe plans to expand beyond the six cities the service is currently offered in. For Hertz, the investment comes after the company cut 2016 projections and cited weakness in the car rental sector. Shares of Hertz were down 5% Thursday.

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Gold futures ended solidly higher Thursday, boosted by the dollar’s slump versus the Japanese yen a day after the Federal Reserve further signaled it’s taking a cautious approach to further rate increases. Gold for June delivery on Comex rose $13.70, or 1.1%, to end at $1,236.20 an ounce. A weaker dollar is typically seen as supportive for commodities priced in the currency, as it makes them less expensive to users of other currencies. Yen strength is also seen as a sign investors are shunning risky assets, boosting demand for assets, such as gold, that are perceived as havens.

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WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew on Thursday said he “strongly disagreed” with a federal judge ruling rescinding the government’s determination that MetLife Inc. is a systemically important financial institution. “This decision leaves one of the largest and most highly interconnected financial companies in the world subject to even less oversight than before the financial crisis,” Lew said in a statement. He said Treasury would continue to defend the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s ability to designate nonbank financial companies as systemically important “is a critical tool” to address potential threats to financial stability. “We intend to continue defending vigorously the process and integrity of FSOC’s work, and I am confident that we will prevail,” he said.

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