1. FACEBOOK: – Ireland’s High Court will decide on Friday whether the country’s data regulator should proceed with a provisional order to halt Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) user data transfers to the United States from the European Union.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, the EU’s lead regulator for Facebook, issued the order last August after Europe’s highest court ruled that a transatlantic data transfer framework known as Privacy Shield was invalid.
2. TESLA: – With his cult following, Tesla boss Elon Musk has amassed considerable power to move markets with his musings, but murky rules make it difficult for regulators to rein him in.
The celebrity CEO, who boasts more than 54 million Twitter followers and has a devoted constituency on Reddit, has whipsawed the cryptocurrency market and sent some stocks soaring this year with a series of tweets and business announcements.
That power was in evidence this week. A Musk tweet on Wednesday that Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) would no longer accept payments in bitcoin sent the cryptocurrency tumbling 17%, roiling bitcoin futures and dragging down the broader cryptocurrency market.
3. GOOGLE: – Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc’s Google said on Friday it was leading about 30 companies and trade groups in opposing a lawsuit that seeks to stop over 90,000 spouses of highly skilled U.S. visa workers from having jobs in the country.
The organizations contend undoing employment authorization for spouses would cause financial havoc for families, because most made life choices such as having children or buying homes based on the expectation of two incomes.
A federal judge in Washington is expected to decide in the coming months on the lawsuit challenging the work permits tied to H-4 visas, which are issued to spouses of H-1B visa holders in high-skills roles in tech and other industries.
4. HONDA: – Honda Motor Co on Friday reported a rebound to profit for the fourth quarter, helped by cost cuts, but warned semiconductor shortages and higher raw material costs would curb growth in the current year.
Its forecast for operating profit of 660 billion yen ($6.04 billion) in the year that began on April 1 was short of a 791.7 billion estimate by analysts, SmartEstimate data showed.
Seiji Kuraishi, Honda’s executive vice president, said 100,000 vehicles were affected last year by the chip shortage, and its impact will continue in the first half of the year.
“We currently expect all those loss effects on production will be traded off in the end of the year,” he said at an online earnings briefing
5. AMAZON: – Amazon is planning to recruit 10,000 more permanent staff in the U.K., the company said Friday.
The announcement comes a day after the Seattle-headquartered tech giant said it intends to hire 75,000 delivery and warehouse workers across the U.S. and Canada.
The new U.K. jobs will include roles at four new Amazon warehouses, as well as roles at Amazon’s corporate offices in London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Cambridge, and positions at Amazon Web Services, which is Amazon’s cloud computing business.
