How much Staples will pay in cash and stocks to acquire Office Depot. As reported by the New York Times, the buyout will likely face antitrust scrutiny. The same deal was not approved in 1997.
The number items McDonald’s and Chipotle both served — fountain soda — over the eight years the former was an investor in the latter. Since the Golden Arches sold its stake in 2006, the companies have been on opposite paths, with Chipotle sales exploding on the strength of its dead-simple menu, sustainability-minded supply chains and the burgeoning fast-casual movement while McDonald’s languishes. The pair’s strange marriage and the rest of Chip’s history are detailed in a new Bloomberg oral history.
The new price of Girl Scout cookies in Orange County, California, this year, up from $4. The scouts point to inflation, but the folks at Quartz aren’t so sure, and they have the complex charts to make their case.
One conservative estimate of American sex toy sales by 2017, up from $610 million in 2013. The film adaptation of “Fifty Shades of Grey” — out Valentine’s Day weekend — will likely contribute to that bump, the New York Times reported. Sex shops and Target alike are preparing for the release with tie-in toys. They’ll be better prepared than they were when the book came out in 2011 — some retailers couldn’t keep certain toys used by the characters in stock.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Actually, not really. Alibaba CEO Jack Ma still has a net worth of $24.5 billion, but that’s not enough to keep him at the top of the list of China’s wealthiest. As reported by Reuters, that honor has been taken by Li Hejun, a solar energy entrepreneur, whose net worth is an astounding $26 billion.
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