With supply chains still in disarray and the war in Ukraine wreaking havoc on EV battery component commodity prices, many forward-thinking automakers are scrambling to secure not only stocks of the valuable metals like cobalt, lithium and nickel that g…
UK’s antitrust watchdog investigating Microsoft and Activision megadeal
Microsoft will have to satisfy more than just the Federal Trade Commission to complete its $68.7 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard. On Wednesday, the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority announced it would investigate the proposed m…
Pandemic-related manufacturing shutdowns catch up with Tesla
Tesla produced 258,580 vehicles in the second quarter of 2022, the automaker announced on Saturday. While that’s a 25 percent year-on-year increase from the number of cars it made during Q2 2021, it’s also fewer vehicles than the company produced at th…
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick gets to keep his board seat
Bobby Kotick will get to keep his seat on Activision Blizzard’s board of directors despite catching flak over the alleged role he played in creating the company’s toxic workplace culture. At the video game developers’ annual meeting of stockholders, investors voted on several proposals, as well as who gets to be on the company’s board of directors over the next year. A total of 533,703,580 shareholders have voted to keep Kotick on the board, while on 62,597,199 have voted against it. As GameInformer notes, that means he gets to keep his seat until the next meeting in 2023.
Activision Blizzard employees walked out of their jobs last year and called for Kotick’s resignation after The Wall Street Journal reported that the CEO knew about the worst instances of abuse in the company and even protected the employees accused of harassment. If you’ll recall, California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing sued the publisher in July 2021 for allegedly fostering a “frat boy” culture. The California agency investigated the company over the course of two years and found that women working for Activision Blizzard were paid less than their male counterparts and were subjected to constant sexual harassment.
More recently, the New York City Employees’ Retirement System sued Kotick, calling him unfit to negotiate the company’s pending sale to Microsoft due to his “personal responsibility and liability for Activision’s broken workplace.” NYC’s retirement system represents the city’s police, teachers and firefighters and owns Activision Blizzard stock. The company named a new chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer in April to help the company have a more inclusive workplace. In response, a group of employees aiming to protect workers from discrimination formed a committee to outline a list of demands for Kotick and the new chief diversity officer.
While majority of the shareholders have chosen to keep Kotick on the board, they also approved a plan to release an annual public report detailing how Activision handles any sexual harassment and gender discrimination dispute. The report must also detail how the company is preventing these incidents from happening and what it’s doing to reduce the length of time it takes to resolve them.
Binance sued over the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin
A Utah resident has filed a lawsuit against Binance US and its CEO, accusing them of falsely advertising TerraUSD as a safe asset backed by fiat currency. The plaintiff named Jeffrey Lockhart alleged that because Binance isn’t registered as a securities exchange with the US government, it has limited obligation to disclose information about assets traded on its platform. “Crypto exchanges made massive profits by flouting securities laws and causing real harm to real people,” the law firm representing Lockhart said, according to Reuters.
A Binance spokesperson told the news organization, however, that the exchange is registered with the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and complies with all applicable regulations. “These assertions are without merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously,” they said.
If you’ll recall, TerraUSD’s value collapsed in May, causing massive losses for investors who trusted its classification as a stablecoin that’s supposed to maintain its value of $1 per coin. Unlike other stablecoins backed by real-world assets, though, TerraUSD is an “algorithmic” stablecoin that’s not backed by fiat currency. Instead, it’s backed by a cryptocurrency called Luna and has a mechanism in place to restore its value to $1 if it ever falls. Investors were enticed to invest their money into TerraUSD due to the opportunity to make money with the Anchor lending program, which promised annual yields of 20 percent for deposits of the coin. Terra’s mechanism failed to protect its value, however, and it’s currently being traded at less than one cent.
Lockhart is hoping for his lawsuit to be registered as a class action on behalf of all investors who purchased Terra from Binance. The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange also paused bitcoin withdrawals for a few hours yesterday due to a “stuck on-chain transaction.” That came days after reports emerged, claiming that Binance had become a hub for fraudsters and drug traffickers and had helped launder $2.35 billion in illicit funds.