That’s how much Atlantic Broadband is paying to acquire regional telecom Metrocast Communications of Connecticut. Beyond the Time Warners and the T-Mobiles and the DirectTVs, plenty of smaller cable and satellite providers are going merge-crazy, often in a bid to become bigger and more efficient, though sometimes just because everyone else is doing it.
That’s how much Jack Ma, CEO of Chinese e-commerce site Alibaba, made per hour when he was an English teacher. With a $25 billion IPO, the company is certainly providing Ma with a significant bump in pay. But at a speech at the Economics Club of New York on Tuesday, Ma stated that he was much happier as a teacher, given the stress he currently faces as head of such a large company. As the South China Morning Post reports, Ma said, “If I had another life, I would keep my company private.”
The number of state attorneys — in New York and Connecticut — investigating Apple for antitrust violations, the Verge reports. A letter from Universal Music Group responding to a subpoena has made the rumored probe public for the first time. Last month, several news organizations reported Apple was pushing record labels to in turn press Spotify to drop its free, ad-supported streaming service.
That’s how long Sherry Truitt sold her handmade cufflinks on Etsy before removing her business from the site. The reason? Truitt saw her products being crowded out of search results by factory-made products also sold on Etsy. As the company faces the reality of its stock dropping by nearly half in the last decade or so, Etsy sellers are questioning what happens next as the company opens the doors to larger manufacturers and as Amazon prepares to enter the handmade market.
That’s how many nutrition and snack bars are on the market now, the Wall Street Journal reports. Ten years ago there were 226, and they cost half as much, on average. The snack bar business is high-margin and growing quickly, combining convenience with nutrition — or at least the appearance of nutrition.
That’s the year by which some of Tesla’s shareholders have proposed getting rid of “animal-sourced material” in the design of its cars. Think leather interiors. Two shareholders in particular — Mark and Elizabeth Peters — proposed the change. Elizabeth Peters referred to leather seats as made of the “skins of sentient beings that suffer unspeakable horror.” As Bloomberg reports, the proposal was rejected, as Tesla’s board feared that such an initiative would distract from the mission of getting the cars to market.
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