According to a press release, Microsoft and JP Morgan Chase have “signed a memorandum of understanding to form a strategic partnership to accelerate the adoption of enterprise blockchain.” The deal will see Microsoft support JP Morgan’s Quorum distributed ledger platform through their cloud-based Azure Blockchain Service. While the conversation around blockchain in some industries can seem like an exercise in marketing speak, finance has worked to activate its potential to privately and securely transmit sensitive information and continues to develop exciting uses for the technology.Quorum is an especially successful example, offering an “enterprise-focused version of Ethereum” that facilitates high speed, secure transactions “within a permissioned group of known participants” for the financial industry.

Burger King’s veggie plunge seems to be paying off in healthy traffic. The Restaurant Brands International-owned fast food chain started testing a vegetarian version of its Whopper, made with the plant-based Impossible Burger, in several cities starting April. According to a report from inMarket inSights, Burger King locations in its test market, St. Louis, outperformed the chain’s national foot traffic average by 18.5% in April.Outside St. Louis, stores had a decrease in foot traffic by 1.75% from March’s average, according to the study (as reported by CNBC). During its first quarter, the chain reported same-store sales growth of 2.2%, down from 3.8% a year earlier.

Raising tariffs on all Chinese goods that enter American borders will likely hurt U.S. economic growth, which has already shown signs of slowing in recent months, according to Japanese financial firm Nomura.

The stock market and economic outlook in the United States is “deteriorating,” according to an analysis from one of Wall Street’s top investment banks. Renewed trade tensions and a slump in economic data — ranging from falling durable goods and capital spending to a downshift in the services sector — has put U.S. profits and economic growth at risk, Morgan Stanley warned Tuesday.

The sniping began shortly after Apple unveiled its new credit card with Goldman Sachs. In an elaborate presentation in March, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed the biggest yet mash-up between the worlds of big tech and big finance, a card that supposedly reimagines consumers’ relationship with plastic.Rivals of the investment bank wasted no time taking shots at the deal.

The investment bank also included the stock it to its Conviction Buy list. Praising new content among Activision’s games including "Storm Rising" and Workshop mode for "Overwatch," "Rise of Shadows" and "The Dalaran Heist for Hearthstone", Goldman said that it sees an "inflection" in the game-maker's earnings path.The analysts also pointed at the upcoming releases of Activision’s  "Diablo Immortal" and "Call of Duty Mobile" games as potential tailwinds for the stock.

The news led to the company’s shares climbing nearly +6.4% in premarket trading on Tuesday. SeaWorld will buy back about 5.6 million shares from the Pacific Alliance Group affiliate.Additionally, Hill Path Capital LP will acquire 13.2 million shares of SeaWorld from a separate affiliate of Pacific Alliance Group, thereby bulking up its ownership in the company. Up to three Hill Path director nominees would be appointed to the board of SeaWorld, as indicated by the latter.

Authentic Brands Group is buying Sports Illustrated brand for $110 million. Sports Illustrated's current owner Meredith Corporation will continue to publish the magazine’s physical and digital copies, after completion of the deal.Authentic Brands Group, on the other hand, will take charge of the business development, licensing and marketing of the magazine’s intellectual property. Authentic Brands will acquire, as part of the deal, all Sports Illustrated brands including Sports Illustrated, Sports Illustrated Kids, Sportsperson of the Year, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit, SI and SI TV. The company will also get the rights to Sports Illustrated's archive of 2 million photos. Last year, Sports Illustrated was offered up for sale, along with Meredith’s other publications including Time, Fortune and Money magazines, which the company had come to own via its purchase of Time Inc.   Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne Benioff became buyers of Time in Septe

Alphabet’s Google will invest 600 million euros ($670 million) to build a data center in Finland , as the company looks to speed up data access. The new investment would count towards a total investment of 1.4 billion euros by Google in Finland so far, as indicated by the company.  The tech giant’s total investment in five data centers in Europe is more than 4.3 billion euros since 2007. The announcement of Google’s latest expansion in Finland comes amidst the company’s plans to up the ante on its video gaming products.In the first quarter this year, Google had accrued capital expenditures of around $4.5 billion, as it spent heavily on data centers, servers and office facilities.

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved Novartis’ $2.1 million gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy — making it the world’s most expensive drug.

Fiat Chrysler (NYSE: FCAU) has delivered a non-binding letter to the Renault (OTCPK: RNLSY) board proposing a combination of their respective businesses as a 50/50 merger.

In a cunning move, TJX survived even though many of its brick-and-mortar peers crumbled by selling products cheaper than Amazon, quickly rotating products to retain customers, and channeling clearance products from other retailers through its own shelves. As per its latest Q1 filing, TJX’s comparable store sales rose 5% ahead of its 3% growth last year.Even though its net income fell by 2% to $700 million, its buybacks enhanced its EPS by a penny to $0.57 beating estimates by three cents. If its full-year comps rose by 2% - 3%, it would mark the company’s 24th consecutive year of positive comps growth.

In line with its strategy to buy several small acquisitions of start-ups, Apple’s latest haul is Tueo Health, a small start-up committed to developing a system of helping parents monitor asthma symptoms in sleeping children.In 2017, the start-up raised a modest $1.1 million in funding. Tueo Health’s mobile app works with commercial breathing sensors to help manage asthma symptoms in children while they are sleeping.

So perhaps a partnership is on the horizon. However, it is still unclear whether the probable partnership would also mean Fiat eventually joining Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi alliance, the French-Japanese strategic partnership since 1999 joined together through a cross-sharing agreement. Apparently, The Financial Times was the first to get hands on the story.Back in March, it reported that Renault is likely to initiate merger discussions with Nissan within a year which may further lead to the acquisition of Fiat Chrysler. Fiat’s CEO seems to be extremely eager to join the partnership as he believes it may make the company even stronger. If Fiat Chrysler eventually becomes part of the Nissan-Renault-Mitsubishi alliance, the latter would become the largest global automaker specializing in a plug-in electric vehicle with annual combined sales of 15.6 million cars.

Italian banking stocks fell and government bond yields rose in thin holiday trade on Monday after a report Brussels is considering disciplinary action over Rome’s failure to rein in public debt.

With both the U.S. and China avoiding any severe economic downturn so far, there’s little incentive for the two countries to strike a trade deal quickly, according to UBS Global Wealth Management.

Payment technology company Global Payments could acquire Total System Services. Citing people familiar with the matter (and who refused to be named), a CNBC report claims that the two companies are nearing a $20 billion all-stock deal, expected to be announced Tuesday.In 2018, the company expressed plans to acquire restaurant payment technology company SICOM Systems for $415 million. Total System, on the other hand, acquired small business solution payment company iMobile3 last year, and merchant payment company TransFirst in 2016. Bloomberg reported that Global Payments and Total System Services were engaged in preliminary talks about the deal on Thursday.

Hibbett Sports crushed top and bottom line estimates for the first quarter, on the back of solid growth in same-store and digital sales. The sporting goods retailer  reported adjusted earnings of $1.61 per share, surging past analysts’ expectations of $1.32 per share. Net sales for the quarter climbed +25% year-over-year to $343.3 million, topping analysts' consensus estimate of $327 million.  Hibbett’s total sales for the quarter included nearly $60 million from its City Gear acquisition.Also, same-store sales grew +5.1%, which is far above the -0.7% decline analysts had forecasted. Hibbett’s President and CEO Jeff Rosenthal emphasized that strong performance in both physical stores and e-commerce channels contributed to the first quarter results.

Fiat Chrysler has proposed a $35 billion merger with Renault to create the world’s third-biggest carmaker as manufacturers scramble for scale to tackle an expensive shift to electrification and autonomous driving. The transaction would be structured as 50-50 ownership through a Dutch holding company, Fiat said.In a statement, Renault’s board said it would study what it called a “friendly” proposal.

Teva Pharmaceutical has agreed to pay an $85 million settlement with the state of Oklahoma.The announcement comes just before the company was going to face trial over allegations that it and other drugmakers helped fuel the U.S. opioid epidemic.  Teva, the world’s largest generic drugmaker, said the settlement “does not establish any wrongdoing on the part of the company” and denied contributing to opioid abuse in Oklahoma. Claims against Teva focused on the branded opioid products Actiq and Fentora as well as generic painkillers it produced.