Tech firms push back on Apple's app store plans
Apollo offers $11 billion for Paramount studio
Apollo Global Management offered to buy Paramount Global's Hollywood studio for $11 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the situation.
A sale of just the studio would amount to a breakup of Paramount Global, a media giant that also owns a stable of TV networks including CBS, MTV and Nickelodeon.
Apollo, a private equity firm, is one of several potential suitors circling Paramount Global as its controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, weighs a possible sale of the company. Redstone's family company, National Amusements Inc., holds a near 80% voting stake in Paramount.
The details of the offer couldn't be learned, the Journal reported. The $11 billion price exceeds the current stock market value of Paramount Global, which has two classes of shares collectively valued at more than $8 billion.
Paramount is also being courted by David Ellison's Skydance Media, a partner with the company in films like “Top Gun: Maverick.”
Paramount executives said at a March 6 investor conference that their objective is to “create value for all of our shareholders.” Intel gets $20 billion in grants, loans from U.S.
The U.S. will award Intel Corp. $8.5 billion in grants and as much as $11 billion in loans to help fund an expansion of its semiconductor factories, marking the largest award from a program designed to reinvigorate the domestic chip industry.
The package will support more than $100 billion in U.S. investments from Intel, including efforts to produce cuttingedge semiconductors at large-scale plants in Arizona and Ohio, the Commerce Department announced Wednesday. The money also will help pay for equipment research and development and advanced packaging projects at smaller facilities in Oregon and New Mexico.
In addition, Intel has indicated that it plans to tap investment tax credits from the Treasury Department that could cover as much as 25% of capital expenditures, according to the Commerce Department.
President Joe Biden took a tour at an Intel campus in Phoenix on Wednesday and announced a preliminary agreement with Intel for a major award from the 2022 Chips and Science Act. Intel is the first company to land a Chips Act funding deal for advanced chipmaking facilities.
Meta, Microsoft, X Corp. and Match Group asked a federal judge to reject Apple Inc.'s plan for opening its App Store to outside payment options.
In a rare joint filing, the companies said Apple's plan “comports with neither the letter nor the spirit” of a 2021 ruling which found iPhone maker in violation of California unfair competition laws and required it to allow app developers to direct users to their own payment systems.
Echoing arguments by Epic Games Inc. in its longrunning antitrust fight with Apple over the App Store, the companies said Apple's plan “imposes new restrictions on app developers that ensure the price competition that the injunction was designed to promote will never materialize.”
The filing marks the latest volley in the back-andforth over Apple's tight control over its app marketplace, which is one of the world's two dominant stores alongside Alphabet Inc.'s Google Play.
An appeals court last year upheld the 2021 decision by an Oakland trial judge who found Apple's business model violated California law by limiting developers from communicating about their alternative payment systems, which could wind up costing users less. Apple takes a cut from every purchase made on its app store.
Compiled from The Associated Press and Bloomberg reports.