The transaction would help GE raise around $4 billion (estimated at current stock price of Baker Hughes). The announcement comes a day after GE CEO Larry Culp told CNBC he felt  a “sense of urgency” to fix the mounting debt problems of the conglomerate, and one of the ways he suggested to do that was to sell off GE’s stake in Baker Hughes.After the sale, GE's stake in the oil firm would come to a little above 50% (versus the existing 62.7%).

Black Friday is not too far off, and some analysts & economist are predicting solid consumer demand – something that should add to retailers' 'celebrations'. The National Retail Federation is expecting holiday sales to increase in the range of  +4.3% to +4.8% compared to 2017, which are higher growth rates than the past five years.Amazon ‘s special Christmas shopping offer includes free shipping on all orders, waiving the minimum purchase limit of $25 that otherwise applies to non-Prime users.

Kellogg might be selling off some of its cookie and fruit snack businesses. On Monday, the company revealed that it is exploring a sale of brands like Famous Amos, Keebler cookies, Mother's and Murray cookies, and Stretch Island fruit snacks.“Yet, we wholeheartedly believe these iconic and beloved brands can thrive in the portfolio of another organization that can focus on driving growth in these particular categories.” The Special K cereal maker wants to instead focus on  its core areas such as its frozen foods, morning foods and snacks that generate the majority of its revenues.

On Tuesday, the the e-commerce giant announced that it will split its HQ2 between New York's Long Island City and Northern Virginia’s Arlington County. Last year, Amazon had expressed plans to look for its HQ2, preferably where it can attract skilled people for its jobs and one that has access to mass transit. Hundreds of proposals started to pour in from across 54 states, provinces and districts of North America. Finally on Tuesday, Amazon revealed its choice to divide the second headquarter between two places.

In a volatile turnabout, the U.S. crude benchmark fell into a bear market Thursday just five weeks after hitting a nearly four-year high. West Texas Intermediate crude for December delivery CLZ8, -1.59% on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell $1, or 1.7%, to settle at $60.67 a barrel, marking its ninth straight losing session and the lowest close since March.The finish left U.S. oil down 20.6% from its Oct. 3 peak, meeting a widely applied definition of a bear market as a pullback of 20% from a recent high. READ MORE...

A great way to understand the future priorities for a company is to see where they invest resources.When you look at where Toyota, the Japanese industry giant, has recently invested, it’s clear the company is preparing to remain relevant and competitive in the 4th industrial revolution as a result of its investments and innovation in artificial intelligence, big data and robots. READ MORE...

Luxury car company Porsche, founded in 1948, made more than 4.22 billion euros in profit before taxes in 2017, according to its annual report.Based on the Nov. 8 exchange rate, that's more than $4.82 billion. READ MORE...

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) settlement with the founder of EtherDelta is likely the first of many enforcement actions to come against crypto token exchanges. READ MORE...

The all-cash deal valued the company at $135 per share, or a 12.2 percent premium over Friday's stock price. After the deal is complete, it is expected that athenahealth, Inc. will merge with Virence Health, which is the former GE Healthcare unit that was purchased by Veritas earlier in 2018.Over the past year, it has cut staff and changed management in a restructuring effort, perhaps in an effort to attract buyers. 

Goldman is embroiled in a corruption probe that started with Malaysia's finance minister, Lim Guan Eng, saying he would seek a refund over bond deals for its sovereign wealth fund.He added that Goldman has "admitted culpability" after a former banker admitted guilt for his role in the scandal. Bloomberg reports that three senior Goldman bankers were implicated in a Department of Justice criminal enterprise that involved bribing Malaysian officials as well as laundering money.

Venture capital money has been flowing into fintech and artificial intelligence in 2018, but cryptocurrencies have been a different story.Investors are keen to back projects dealing with their underlying technologies, like blockchain, but less enthused to hitch their wagon to the inherent volatility of crypto in a still murky regulatory climate. Now a new kind of cryptocurrency project has emerged – one that ties its price to reserve currencies to mitigate wild price fluctuations.

General Electric’s shares tumbled by ~10% on Monday and got as low as $7.72, after the CEO of the company in an interview with CNBC said GE may fall short of its 2018 sales target. As part of the interview given to CNBC, Larry Culp said the first priority for the company is to bring its leverage down through assets sales.GE’s debt-to-equity ratio for the third quarter stood at 3.7%, which is more than four times the industry average of 0.77%. The ailing condition of a number of GE's business segment, like power, aren't helping much in the process.

Oil finally broke its losing streak as U.S. crude futures rose 36 cents to $60.55 on Monday, after Saudi Arabia and its OPEC partners hinted that an output cut could be on the horizon. After a weekend discussion with all OPEC nations, Saudi Arabia on Monday announced that OPEC and its partners are contemplating an output cut of 1 million barrels per day in the next year. Further, Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, added that it would cut its shipments by half a million barrels per day in December due to seasonal lower demand. Oil prices fell by nearly 20% in the last month, amidst concerns over increased supply and the threat of a slowdown in demand, especially from countries whose purchasing power has been eroding owing to their currencies weakening sharply against US dollar.Perhaps the tide is turning.   

Culp also said he feels the "urgency" to shrink the company's leverage and plans to do so through asset sales. Under Culp’s leadership, GE's dividend  has been reduced to a penny, and  the conglomerate took a $22 billion accounting writedown. Culp mentioned Monday that he is planning to reduce debt further by raising cash through a possible IPO of its healthcare business, sale of its transportation unit and by exiting its Baker-Hughes oil field services business (as suggested by a CNBC article). What possibly exacerbated the company's stock price decline  was the alarming prediction made by JP Morgan Chase analyst C. Stephen Tusa, Jr. (published on Friday) that GE's stock will plummet another -33% to touch $6 by the end of 2019 owing to its mounting debt.

As of this year so far, Qualtrics seems to have an edge over SurveyMonkey in terms of revenue growth: In the first half of 2018, revenue of Qualtrics grew +41.7% to reach $184.2 million; in comparison, SurveyMonkey’s revenue grew +14%  to $121.2 million over the same period. SAP buying Qualtrics is the latest on the list of major mergers & acquisitions this year witnessed in the tech/software space.A few weeks back, IBM announced plans to acquire open-source software maker Red Hat for $34 billion.

Following Revlon Inc.’s announcement of cost-cutting plans and its higher-than-expected Q3 revenues, the company's stock jumped the most in a month. The cosmetics and personal care company said it would lower costs by as much as $150 million by the end of 2019.On Friday, Chief Executive Officer Debra Perelman revealed the company’s plan to concentrate resources on “higher-priority growth areas”, and that might lead to job cuts.

Proctor and Gamble (P&G) tries to pack a punch for its online market, by introducing "Tide Eco-Box"  - a box specially designed for shipping Tide laundry detergent to online shoppers of the product. The packaging comes with a twist-to-open system for pouring for the detergent, a pull-out stand, and a measuring cup.The package design also allows for use of much less plastic, thereby potentially being more environmental-friendly. January onwards, Tide Eco-Box will also be included in P&G’s online retail partners like Amazon.com and Walmart.com. In addition to Tide, there are several other liquid products of P&G that the company has focused on to improve their delivery logistics – and therefore bolster its online business.

Alibaba’s Singles Day bonanza clocked in a record $30.8 billion in sales over a 24 hour-period. November 11 (11/11) is celebrated in China as Singles Day for people who are single in terms of their relationship status.The growth rate was even faster in 2017 (at 40%). Interestingly, the country which ranked the second highest in terms of goods sold on Alibaba on Singles Day was the U.S. – notwithstanding the ongoing trade tensions and tariff-slapping rounds between China and the U.S.

As new weather forecasts by Jacob Meisel, chief weather analyst at Bespoke Weather Services, hinted that the cold snap would linger a little longer than expected, natural gas prices rallied to their highest finish since December 2016 - with front-month Nymex futures closing +5.1% to $3.71/MBtu. Another tailwind to prices was a report that natural gas storage in U.S. is at its lowest level to start the winter heating season in nearly 15 years, and also 16% below the five-year average.  With the potential for natural gas shortage at the end of the season, most companies like EQM Midstream Partners (EQM, $47.22), Range Resources (RRC, $17.70), Chesapeake Energy (CHK, 3.63) and Cabot Oil & Gas (COG, $25.61) were some of the top gainers in Friday's trading session, with gains ranging between 2% to 5%. 

The German-based European multinational software corporation, SAP SE, in an official statement on Sunday declared that it is set to acquire the survey software company, Qualtrics, for $8 billion. This deal, the second highest acquisition in the history of SAP (after the $8.3 billion acquisition of travel and expense software company Concur in 2014), would be an all all-cash deal and has been approved by the boards of both companies and also by Qualtrics shareholders. Qualtrics, which competes with SurveyMonkey, is a bigger and more profitable organization compared to Survey Monkey and has been growing at a faster rate. Founded in 2002, it reported a revenue growth of 41.7% to $184.2 million in the first-half of 2018.