TODAY'S CURATED LINKS
Must Read of the Day: "Paul A. Volcker, who helped shape American economic policy for more than six decades, most notably by leading the Federal Reserve’s brute-force campaign to subdue inflation in the late 1970s and early ’80s, died on Sunday in New York. He was 92." Source: NYT
"Investment firm Tiger Global Management slashed its valuation of e-cigarette startup Juul Labs to $19 billion, the latest sign of a broader reassessment investors are making of several one-time Silicon Valley darlings... Tiger Global had valued Juul at $38 billion last December. At the time, Marlboro-maker Altria Group had purchased a 35% stake in Juul, valuing the company at $38 billion. Altria wrote down its investment in Juul to about $24 billion in October." Source: WSJ
"Two of the world’s biggest drugmakers struck multibillion-dollar deals on Monday aimed at bolstering their lineups in the fiercely competitive cancer-drugs market. Merck said it would acquire ArQule for about $2.7 billion, paying a 107% premium in a bid to diversify its cancer treatments beyond top-selling drug Keytruda. Meanwhile, Sanofi said it would spend $2.5 billion, a 172% premium, to acquire Synthorx in the French drugmaker’s own effort to catch up with rivals in the field of oncology... The $123 billion world-wide cancer-drugs market is expected to almost double by 2024." Source: WSJ
"Beijing has ordered all government offices and public institutions to remove foreign computer equipment and software within three years, in a potential blow to the likes of HP, Dell and Microsoft. The directive is the first publicly known instruction with specific targets given to Chinese buyers to switch to domestic technology vendors, and echoes efforts by the Trump administration to curb the use of Chinese technology in the US and its allies." Source: Financial Times
"SoftBank tapped Goldman Sachs for new financing to help revive one of its biggest bets -- an investment in office-sharing company WeWork. Goldman is arranging a $1.75 billion line of credit, the first step in SoftBank’s pledge to put together $5 billion in debt financing for WeWork as part of its bailout package... In a twist aimed at making the financing more palatable to other lenders, SoftBank will be listed as the borrower and WeWork will be a co-borrower." Source: Bloomberg
"SoftBank’s Vision Fund has agreed to sell its nearly 50% stake in Wag Labs back to the struggling dog-walking startup... marking another disappointment for the Japanese investing giant. Wag, which earlier this year laid off several dozen employees, is letting go a significant amount of the remainder of its workforce today." Source: WSJ
"Global shipments of wearable devices totaled 84.5 million units in the third quarter of 2019 (3Q19), a year-over-year increase of 94.6% and a new record for shipments in a single quarter, according to new data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker. Most of the growth in demand for wearables was driven by new products in the hearables market. Hearables alone accounted for almost half the market in 3Q19, followed by wrist bands and smartwatches." Source: IDC
"Technology jobs and the economic prosperity they bring are being concentrated in fewer US cities, according to a new report from The Brookings Institution. Since 2005, five metro areas — Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area, San Jose, Seattle, and San Diego — accounted for 90% of all US growth in “innovation sector” jobs, which Brookings defines as employment in the top science, technology, engineering, and math industries that include extensive research and development spending. Meanwhile, 343 metro areas lost a share of these jobs in that same period." Source: Recode
"Morgan Stanley is cutting roughly 2% of its workforce due to an uncertain global economic outlook... The job cuts at the investment bank, the world’s biggest equities trading firm and a leading mergers advisor, will hit technology and operations roles hardest." Source: CNBC