Broadcom is in the throes of negotiations that would see it pay nearly $60 billion for VMWare Inc. in “what would be one of the biggest takeover deals of the year.” News of the potential deal by Broadcom, “a semiconductor powerhouse built largely through acquisitions,” comes about 6 months after Dell “spun off its 81% equity stake in VMware,” a software company with a “strong position in the market for ‘hybrid’ cloud” offerings - WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch
Stocks opened the week up, for a change. Here to stay? Probably not. Will we take it? You betcha - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg
JPMorgan analysis that American consumers are weathering the inflation storm pretty well so far likely helped the cause - WSJ and Bloomberg
Airbnb, one of the few U.S.-based internet companies still operating in China, is shutting operations there “in a further sign of the internet decoupling between China and much of the rest of the world.” Though, to be fair, competition with Chinese “superapps” and the country’s zero-tolerance approach to the pandemic certainly didn’t help Airbnb’s cause - NYTimes and WSJ
Meanwhile, Starbucks is the latest Western company to take its leave of Russia over the country’s brutal Ukrainian campaign, which has dragged into its third month. For Sbux, that means the shuttering of 130 licensee-run locations - NYTimes and WSJ
The behind-the-scenes scoop on the internal White House debate over whether to roll back tariffs on some $360 billion of Chinese products enacted by the prior administration, which some (like Treasury Secretary Yellen) have argued “served little strategic purpose and could be at least partly lifted to ease the financial burden on companies and consumers” - NYTimes
Workers at Activision’s Wisconsin-based Raven Software studio have become the first group “for a major North American video game company” to form a union—in this case, the brand-new Game Workers Alliance, “the culmination of months of labor organizing at Activision, which has faced increasing pressure from employees to improve working conditions” - NYTimes and WSJ and TechCrunch
After decades of a relatively free flow of data across the internet and around the world (that “helped fuel the rise of transnational megacompanies like Google and Amazon and reshaped global communications, commerce, entertainment and media”), the backlash is here, and it’s taking shape in the form of a movement for “digital sovereignty.” That is, governments “are increasingly setting rules and standards about how data can and cannot move around the globe” - NYTimes
Speaking of the flow of data, D.C. AG Karl Racine has sued Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, accusing Zuck of participating “in decision-making that led to the Cambridge Analytica data breach.” The lawsuit “echoes charges” Racine sought to bring last year to interplead Zuck into a 2018 lawsuit against Facebook and focuses on the founder’s alleged personal contributions to “Facebook’s lax oversight of user data” - WSJ and Law360 and MarketWatch
The SEC’s new ESG task force has claimed its first victim, fining a BNY Mellon unit “$1.5 million over alleged environmental, social and governance disclosure failures,” arguing that the firm “misled clients into thinking that certain fund investments had undergone so-called ESG quality reviews when in fact they had not” – Law360
In case Jack Donaghy’s devotion to Neutron Jack wasn’t on-the-nose enough for you, do yourself a favor and consider former GE CEO Jack Welch’s legacy in the full cotext. And then, especially if you’re in the C-suite already, run the other way - NYTimes
Some great cities and great rides. Go out and make it happen - NYTimes
Stay safe,
MDR
The Robins Kaplan Financial Daily Dose features top stories and latest news headlines in financial markets, banking, securities and technology topics.
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