Microsoft tops Apple as most valuable
Microsoft's big bet on cloud computing is paying off as the company has surpassed Apple as the world's most valuable publicly traded company.
The software-maker's prospects looked bleak just a few years ago, as licenses for the company's Windows system fell with a sharp drop in sales of personal computers.
But under CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft has found stability by focusing on software and services over the Internet, or the cloud, with long-term business contracts.
Apple had been the world's most prosperous firm since claiming the top spot from Exxon Mobil earlier this decade. Microsoft surpassed Apple briefly a few times this week, but didn't close on top until Friday, with a market value of $851 billion to Apple's $847 billion. Microsoft hadn't been at the top since the height of the dot-com boom in 2000.
Microsoft lost its luster as people were shunning PCs in favor of smartphones. It didn't help that Microsoft's effort to make PCs more like phones, Windows 8, was widely panned.
Windows is now a dwindling fraction of Microsoft's business. While the company still runs consumer-focused businesses such as Bing search and Xbox gaming, it has prioritized business-oriented services such as its Office line of email and other workplace software, as well as newer additions such as LinkedIn and Skype. But its biggest growth has happened in the cloud, particularly the cloud platform it calls Azure. Cloud computing now accounts for more than a quarter of Microsoft's revenue, and Microsoft rivals Amazon as a leading provider of such services.
-- The Associated Press
U.S. to increase biofuel quotas in '19
President Donald Trump's administration has ordered oil companies to blend more renewable fuel into gasoline and diesel next year.
However, it could be the last increase for years to come, as the government starts to make sweeping changes to the U.S. biofuel mandate, analysts said.
With the final 2019 quotas released Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency is kicking off a head-to-toe overhaul of the Renewable Fuel Standard and setting off a fresh battle between the oil industry and agricultural interests over U.S. gasoline market share that will play out against an increasingly political backdrop.
Refiners and some environmentalists will be pressuring the EPA to dial back the 13-year-old biofuel mandate next year, even as Trump courts voters in the top corn- and ethanol-producing state of Iowa.
The EPA on Friday said it's requiring refiners to blend 19.92 billion gallons of biofuel next year, a 3.3 percent increase over the current requirements and largely in line with quotas the agency proposed in June. Some 15 billion gallons of the total can come from conventional sources such as corn-based ethanol. At least 4.92 billion gallons must be be fulfilled by advanced biofuel, including 418 million gallons of cellulosic renewable fuel, such as ethanol made from switchgrass.
-- Bloomberg News
Police criticize city's Amazon incentives
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Nashville's police union is blasting the city's plans to award up to $15 million in incentives for Amazon's new facility, calling it "corporate welfare."
A Nashville Fraternal Order of Police news release this week called for support of a resolution to block Amazon's incentives until city employees receive cost-of-living adjustments.
Nashville has proposed up to a $15 million cash grant based on each job Amazon creates within the next seven years.
Amazon has said its total incentive package in Nashville includes up to $102 million in performance-based incentives based on creating 5,000 jobs over the seven-year time frame, with an average wage exceeding $150,000.
Mayor David Briley and Gov. Bill Haslam contend that Nashville and the state are getting great deals that will quickly pay themselves off.
-- The Associated Press
Honeywell moving hub to North Carolina
RALEIGH, N.C. -- Industrial conglomerate Honeywell International Inc. will move its headquarters from New Jersey and establish 750 jobs in Charlotte, the company said Friday.
Honeywell plans to relocate its base in Morris Plains, N.J., with about 150 to 200 senior managers as well as its Safety and Productivity Solutions business group headquarters moving to Charlotte.
"I've got to come back as soon as we wrap up here and convince a lot, about 150 of my colleagues in New Jersey, what a great city this is," Honeywell CEO Darius Adamczyk said at a news conference in Charlotte.
The company then expects to add positions in Charlotte, building to about 750 jobs within six years.
About 1,000 employees will remain at six Honeywell locations in in New Jersey, including about 800 at the company's Morris Plains offices, the company said in a prepared statement.
On Thursday, North Carolina legislators expanded tax breaks for high-paying jobs, hurrying through legislation that more than doubles the per-job annual cap on tax breaks to $16,000 in a step aimed at corporations that move big-salaried jobs to the state.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper's office noted Honeywell's move was contingent on the governor signing the legislation as well as approval of a state package of tax breaks, both expected Monday.
-- The Associated Press
Art gallery owner arrested; ivory seized
SAN DIEGO -- A San Diego gallery owner and his employee were arrested in the trafficking of ivory after a sting operation in which authorities say they seized more than 300 pieces worth $1.3 million.
City Attorney Mara Elliott said the Carlton Gallery in San Diego's tony La Jolla neighborhood was targeted after state Department of Fish and Wildlife officers saw statues that appeared to be made of ivory in one of the gallery's display windows.
After seeing similar items in the gallery over the next few months, Elliott said the officers entered the store in May and bought an ivory statue. When a salesman offered to sell them more, they returned with a search warrant.
Investigators said they found 146 items in the gallery before its owner, Victor Hyman Cohen, led them to a warehouse where they seized another 192. Most of the ivory came from elephants, Elliott said, and some from hippopotamus teeth.
A law adopted in 2016 bans the sale of almost all ivory in California.
-- The Associated Press
Business on 12/01/2018
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