The bottomline

LOS ANGELES:

Twitter has acquired Yes Inc, a Palo Alto-based startup that has been developing social apps like Frenzy and WYD. Yes CEO Keith Coleman will become Twitter’s new VP of Product. Twitter CTO Adam Messinger announced the acquisition and appointment on Twitter Thursday.

Before founding Yes in 2014, Coleman worked for a decade at Google where he led the development of products like Gmail, Inbox and Google Chat.

Yes is in many ways an interesting addition to Twitter: The startup has been rapidly developing apps around social sharing, and in turn experimented with real-life event planning (Frenzy) and Snapchat-like photo sharing (WYD). Other apps developed by the startup included a messenger dubbed Heyo! and an app that helped parents coordinate play dates for their little ones. (RTRS)

OMAHA, Nebraska:

A group of environmentalists is proposing that Warren Buffett’s company sell off its investments in Phillips 66 and other companies tied to fossil fuels over 12 years.

Nebraskans for Peace said Thursday it had submitted a formal proposal for Berkshire Hathaway Inc shareholders to consider next spring. The same group failed last year with a different proposal related to climate change.

Buffett didn’t immediately respond to questions about the proposal Thursday. His opinion of the idea will be important because he controls nearly one-third of Berkshire’s voting stock. (AP)

MOSCOW:

Russia’s largest private oil firm Lukoil said Tuesday the slide in oil prices had caused its profits to dip more than expected in the third quarter.

The company said its net profit between July and September was 54.8 billion rubles ($840 million), a figure that represents a 70-percent fall year-on-year and is lower than predicted by analysts. Lukoil’s revenues fell 10 percent to 1.309 trillion rubles in comparison to last year.

Lukoil said its results this year had been affected by “lower than average hydrocarbon prices” among many factors, including an increase in taxes for crude oil extraction and transportation tariffs. (AFP)

TOKYO:

Mitsubishi Motors wants to triple its directors’ pay as Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn gets set to take over as chairman at the automaker dented by a mileage-cheating scandal.

In a notice dated Nov 29, Mitsubishi said it would put a “restructuring of our executive compensation system” to a vote at a shareholder meeting on Dec 14.

Investors are also being asked to vote on Ghosn’s appointment as a Mitsubishi board member.

His hiring was part of a deal that saw Nissan throw Mitsubishi a lifeline in May when it announced plans to buy a one-third stake in the crisis-hit automaker for about $2.2 billion, as the smaller rival wrestled with a mileagecheating scandal that hammered sales. (AFP)

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa:

An insurance company says it will lay off about 120 people at its Cedar Rapids office.

Transamerica announced Thursday it would cut the Cedar Rapids jobs as part of moves that also include the closure of offices in Los Angeles, Folsom, California, and West Chester, Ohio, during 2017. A total of 800 jobs will also be eliminated in other locations, including the Cedar Rapids cuts.

Baltimore-based Transamerica sells life insurance and retirement products including mutual funds and annuities. (AP)