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The World’s Top 10 News Media Companies

by admin on September 19, 2023 in Business Investment News

The world moves on news. From decisions based on coverage of financial markets and political developments to those based on local news or weather reports, the news impacts our lives directly and indirectly. News is available and accessed in multiple formats: digital (online news content), print (newspapers and magazines), and broadcasting (TV and radio).

Investors looking for investments in news-only companies should carefully study the overall business of a company to ensure that its operations fit into their desired investment profile. Here are some of the world’s top news companies, arranged in the decreasing order of the available market cap figures as of September 2023.

Key Takeaways

News media companies have seen revenues erode over the past two decades as ad revenues and subscriptions suffer at the hands of online news outlets.
Print media and local newspapers have been especially hard hit, as broadcast news continues to dominate the airwaves and streaming services.
The top 10 media companies include Comcast, Thomson Reuters, and Nespers.

1. Comcast

Headquarters: Philadelphia
Market Cap: $186.70 billion

Comcast (CMCSA) is a media giant. It is one of the largest broadcasting and cable television companies in the world by revenue. Comcast also ranks among the largest pay-TV companies, cable TV companies, and home internet service providers in the United States. The company also provides customers with home telephone services. Comcast controls the news media outlets NBC News, MSNBC, CNBC, and UK’s Sky News.

2. Thomson Reuters

Headquarters: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Market Cap: $58.53 billion

Thomson Reuters (TRI) is a Canadian-based news and media company. It also provides financial and market data across the globe including the Reuters service. It owns both news the Thomson and Reuters News publications as well as other online financial and wire services. Thomson Reuters also corporate solutions, legal products, as well

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Sinkhole repairs and clean-up of water main break impact SF Cow Hollow businesses

by admin on September 18, 2023 in Business Breaking News

SAN FRANCISCO — Businesses in the area of a massive water main break and sinkhole in San Francisco’s Cow Hollow neighborhood are feeling the effects of what looks to be a lengthy repair to the streets and sidewalks.

Union Street Coffee Roastery is facing tough times. On Wednesday afternoon, most of the tables in the cafe sat empty. Employee Rolando Moreno said business has slowed significantly due to the huge sinkhole that opened up at Fillmore and Green Streets after a 16-inch water main broke late Sunday evening, flooding some businesses.

SF sinkhole repairs — Repairs are ongoing at a sinkhole that opened up at Green and Fillmore in San Francisco early Monday morning.

CBS SF

Moreno pointed out the damaged area near the Union Street Coffee Roastery that is making it challenging for customers to access the business.

“This part over here in this corner is very damaged around here and people cannot come through. It’s very hard to walk, And it’s very hard for us. Customers are very slow right now,” he said.

On Tuesday, two smaller holes appeared at Fillmore and Union streets. One is on the sidewalk next to her shop, and one is in the middle of the street.

Union Street Coffee Roastery is one of several businesses impacted by the water main break. Work to repair the water main and the sinkhole the break closed several surrounding streets in the process.

Moreno shared that they are still dealing with the aftermath of the water main break, which caused significant flooding inside their store.

“We’re okay right now. But a couple of days ago, it was really hard because there was a lot of water that came inside the store. And we spent a lot of time cleaning it up, and there’s a lot of damage,” he explained.

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7 Best Water Stocks and ETFs to Buy in 2023 | Investing

by admin on September 18, 2023 in Business Investment News

Talk about liquid assets. As climate change coincides with population growth around the world, water for drinking, sanitation and agriculture is becoming more scarce.

Where there is scarcity, Wall Street is bound to figure out a way to make a buck, and there are multiple ways to invest in water, including through utilities, metering, infrastructure and desalination companies.

Fortune Business Insights projects that the global water and wastewater treatment market will grow from $323.3 billion this year to $536.4 billion by 2030.

In the U.S., water infrastructure is aging, and public companies that invest in upgrades can then expect to recoup that along with profits. Meanwhile, consolidation in a nation with thousands of separate water systems will result in economies of scale, saving customers money and enabling the buyers to expand their customer bases.

“Despite its apparent abundance, fresh water is a scarce and finite resource,” according to Global X, which offers the Clean Water ETF (ticker: AQWA). “As the global population grows, investment in clean water technologies may be essential to sustaining and improving standards of living.”

Stock or ETF	YTD performance as of Sept. 12
American Water Works Co. Inc. (AWK)	-8.5%
Essential Utilities Inc. (WTRG)	-19.9%
Global Water Resources Inc. (GWRS)	-15.4%
Consolidated Water Co. Ltd. (CWCO)	107%
Xylem Inc. (XYL)	-11.8%
Invesco Water Resources ETF (PHO)	6.4%
First Trust Water ETF (FIW)	8.5%

American Water Works Co. Inc. (AWK)

As the largest listed water and wastewater utility, American Water Works provides those services to more than 14 million people, with regulated operations in 14 states and on 18 military installations.

In addition to providing services to residences, public buildings, and commercial and industrial businesses – regardless of what the economy is doing – the company’s long-term military contracts also provide stability.

With a market

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News bosses grapple with ethical and business conundrum of AI

by admin on September 17, 2023 in Business Breaking News

A News Corp spokesperson insisted each word of the several thousand weekly stories is overseen by a human, adding that ChatGPT or other similar technologies aren’t used in the creation of content.

News Corp’s hyperlocal news, brought to you by AI.

Another media business dabbling in AI is American publishing group Gannett, which has rolled out an AI tool used to write match reports of high school sport matches.

CNN reported that the move attracted significant social media attention, with readers highlighting a slew of errors, a lack of key details, and complaining the stories generally read as if they had been written by a computer. A Crikey analysis of News Corp’s Data Local content had similar findings.

Other publishers have been more cautious with their approach to AI, but are still exploring the technology’s potential.

Nine, the owner of this masthead, said generative AI “cannot replace the integrity and authenticity of the journalism across its newsrooms, or the journalists who are committed to breaking, reporting and analysing the news in an impartial and accurate way”.

But this doesn’t rule out its use in other points of the news production cycle. For example, a recent company-wide hackathon at Nine focused entirely on AI innovation gave the people’s choice award to a proposal for Good Food, in which an AI program could generate recipes based on a photograph of a reader’s pantry.

Nine also uses AI technology to produce highlights and mini packages of sports matches for broadcast across its platforms.

For smaller media businesses, CEO of Private Media, Crikey’s publisher, Will Hayward says AI has a huge opportunity to improve the entire news ecosystem, “hoovering up all the unoriginal reporting and regurgitated non journalism that so many mainstream outlets provide”.

The result, he says, will reward original news and

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US Business Delegation Makes Rare Visit to Taliban-Run Afghanistan

by admin on September 16, 2023 in American Business News

ISLAMABAD —

An American private sector delegation opened meetings in Afghanistan with officials and local counterparts Wednesday in the first interaction since the Taliban seized power from a U.S.-backed government two years ago.

Jeffrey Grieco, president of the Afghan American Chamber of Commerce, or AACC, in the United States, is leading the delegation.

Addressing a televised meeting in Kabul of business representatives that Greico co-hosted with Taliban Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Abdul Ghani Baradar, he said the U.S. government backs the visit.

A spokesperson from the U.S. State Department acknowledged that a delegation from the American Chamber of Commerce in Afghanistan and “individuals with business interests” had traveled to Kabul.

“The United States stands with the people of Afghanistan as they work to rebuild their economy,” the spokesperson told VOA in an emailed statement.

American businessman Grieco credited de facto Afghan authorities for establishing peace in the country, saying they have also “greatly eliminated” corruption. “It’s not all gone, but it’s mostly gone.”

He said his team is seeking to elevate private sector activities and explore ways to ease hardships facing Afghans over the past two years.

“The next year is going to be equally hard as the donors are reducing funding for Afghanistan, both humanitarian food security and other funding, at a key moment when Afghanistan needs funding for humanitarian purposes,” he said.

On Tuesday, the U.N. World Food Program announced that a “massive funding shortfall” had forced it to cut rations for 10 million people in the country this year, warning that time is running out to avert catastrophe in Afghanistan.

“The private sector can be a powerful agent of change and an agent of support when a country like Afghanistan is suffering,” Grieco said at the event, where local women business leaders were also in

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Airtable Cuts Over 25% Of Its Staff As Google Lays Off Recruiters

by admin on September 16, 2023 in Business Breaking News

Software startup Airtable will cut more than one-quarter of its workforce, the San Francisco-based company announced on Thursday, one day after multiple outlets reported Google eliminated “hundreds” of recruiting positions, as employers continue to restructure staffing levels amid lingering recession fears (see Forbes’ layoff tracker from the first quarter here).

September 14Airtable announced plans to slash 237 employees, representing 27% of its staff, with CEO Howie Liu telling Forbes the cuts come as the market “tip[s] toward favoring efficient growth over growth at all costs”—marking the startup’s second head count reduction in less than 12 months, after it laid off more than 250 employees in December.

September 13Google let go of “hundreds” of company recruiters, sources familiar with the matter told CNN and the New York Times, just over half a year after its parent company, Alphabet, laid out plans to slash roughly 12,000 employees in one of the biggest rounds of job cuts in the U.S. this year.

September 13Layoffs at Binance.US will provide the company with “more than seven years of financial runway,” a company spokesperson told Forbes nearly two months after its partner company Binance reportedly cut more than 1,000 employees, with a Binance spokesperson telling Forbes at the time the company “need[s] to focus on talent density across the organization to ensure we remain nimble and dynamic” ahead of the “next major bull cycle.”

September 6Roku is letting go of 10% of its workforce, estimated to represent up to 360 of its roughly 3,600 employees, the company announced in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Wednesday—its third round of cuts over the past year, following its decision to slash 6% of its workforce (roughly 200 employees) in March and another 200 last November.

August 28Farmers Insurance announced plans

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Saudi-India Investment Forum builds on business impact of G20 summit

by admin on September 16, 2023 in Business Investment News

Saudi-India Investment Forum builds on business impact of G20 summit

There may have been criticisms of the G20’s joint declaration at the weekend, including from Ukraine and environmental nongovernmental organizations, but the summit surpassed many expectations and provided some key business takeaways.

This includes the eye-catching new India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor initiative, which Saudi Arabia and India are key to. There was also the historic incorporation of the 55 African Union emerging markets into the G20.

Moreover, the business impact continued post-summit, including with Monday’s Saudi Arabia-India investment forum. The Kingdom has emerged as a key partner of India, including in the energy sector, with Riyadh now the third-largest source of crude oil and petroleum products for India.

In October 2019, moreover, the two countries created a Strategic Partnership Council. This body has two pillars: a committee on economy and investments led by the Indian commerce minister and the Saudi energy minister, plus a political, security, social and cultural committee headed by the nations’ foreign ministers.

India is Saudi Arabia’s second-largest trading partner, whereas the Kingdom is India’s fourth-largest. Bilateral trade reached an all-time high of $52.75 billion in 2022-23.

At Monday’s investment forum, the two nations signed a comprehensive energy partnership deal at a time when India — the world’s third-largest oil importer — is looking to become a net exporter of renewable energy.

India has targeted achieving 5 million tons of green hydrogen capacity annually, along with an additional 125 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030. India is also looking at having 500 GW of renewable energy capacity by the end of the decade.

The India-Saudi Arabia investment forum built on the business impact of the G20 summit at the weekend. Going into

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Google Sheds Hundreds of Recruiters in Another Round of Layoffs

by admin on September 15, 2023 in Business Google News

Google conducted another round of layoffs on Wednesday, telling its recruiters that by the end of the day hundreds of them would be losing their jobs, three people with knowledge of the layoffs said.

Google’s recruiting group, which at one point had more than 3,000 employees, has already been hit hard by layoffs this year.

The cuts are an indication that Google and its parent company, Alphabet, will continue the belt-tightening that began at the Silicon Valley company this year, even as it doubles down on investments in artificial intelligence.

The recruiters and related staff members had previously been “invited to a last minute global all hands meeting with the agenda to share hard news,” according to a post on an internal Google messaging board viewed by The New York Times. Brian Ong, the vice president of recruiting, told employees that he had wanted them to hear the news from him and that they could finish work from home or head home if they were in the office, a person said.

Courtenay Mencini, a Google spokeswoman, said in a statement, “We’ve made the hard decision to reduce the size of our recruiting team,” because the volume of requests for the company’s recruiters has gone down.

“As we’ve said, we continue to invest in top engineering and technical talent while also meaningfully slowing the pace of our overall hiring,” she added. Aspects of the cuts were reported earlier by the news site Semafor.

The cuts are not believed to be part of wide-scale layoffs, but other parts of the company could also decide to reduce positions.

For more than a year, Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, has rallied employees behind an effort to trim expenses and boost productivity. In January, Google followed peers like Amazon and Meta, and announced it

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Foreign Relations chair seeks answers from US oil firms on Russia business after Ukraine invasion

by admin on September 15, 2023 in American Business News

The head of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee has asked the country’s top three oilfield services companies to explain why they continued doing business in Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, and demanded that they commit to “cease all investments” in Russia’s fossil fuel infrastructure.

Sen. Bob Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, cited an Associated Press report that the companies — SLB, Baker Hughes and Halliburton — helped keep Russian oil flowing even as sanctions targeted the Russian war effort.

Russia imported more than $200 million in technology from the three companies in the year following the invasion in February 2022, customs data obtained by B4Ukraine and vetted by The AP showed. Market leader SLB, formerly Schlumberger, even slightly grew its Russian business. Much of Russia’s oil is hard to reach, and analysts say that had U.S. oilfield services companies all pulled out, its production would have taken an immediate hit.

Menendez, in letters to the chief executives of the three companies, said he was “extremely disturbed” by AP’s findings. He noted that President Joe Biden and Congress had imposed “ wide-ranging sanctions related to Russia’s violation of another nation’s sovereignty,” while Russia’s invasion was “particularly heinous,” its soldiers committing “tens of thousands of atrocities.”

As people around the world made sacrifices in solidarity with Ukraine, the July 27 letter concluded, “your company sought to make a profit… there is simply no good explanation for this behavior, other than to make a dollar.”

There’s no evidence any of the firms violated sanctions by continuing to send equipment to Russia. Halliburton wound down its Russia operations less than six months after the invasion, while Baker Hughes sold its oilfield services business in Russia after about nine months. SLB announced it would stop exporting technology to Russia two days after

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CEBA loans: Canada extending repayment deadline

by admin on September 15, 2023 in Business Breaking News

Canada is giving small businesses in Canada more time to pay back emergency loans offered during the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Thursday.

The Liberals have decided, after consistent calls from businesses, to give them another year to pay back their Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA) loans, despite previously taking the position that repayment deadlines were “final and cannot be changed.”

“We know that some need a bit more runway,” Trudeau said.

Groups across Canada representing hundreds of thousands of small businesses have been pleading with the federal government to grant them an extension, ideally a two-year grace period and the ability to maintain access to the forgivable portion of their loans.

But, what was announced Thursday falls short of advocates’ expectations.

The federal government created CEBA early in the pandemic as one of a suite of financial aid measures aimed at keeping businesses afloat in the face of forced closures and health restrictions.

Offering initially up to $40,000 to small businesses and non-profits that have experienced a loss of revenue due to COVID-19, an expansion was then granted, seeing businesses able to apply to receive up to $60,000 interest-free loans.

Open for applications between April 2020 and June 2021, the loans were approved for 898,271 businesses, totalling $49.2 billion in federal assistance.

In January 2022, in the wake of the Omicron variant surge and new restrictions, the Liberals announced they would be extending the repayment deadline by a year to the end of 2023. This meant that eligible businesses “in good standing” would have until Dec. 31, 2023 to repay and be eligible for debt forgiveness of one-third—up to $20,000—of their loan.

According to background provided by Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s department,

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