FTC investigating Amazon’s $3.9B purchase of One Medical
The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Amazon’s $3.9 billion acquisition of the primary health organization One Medical, a move that could delay the completion of the deal. According to a regulatory filing, both One Medical and Amazon received a request for additional information on Friday in connection with an FTC review of the merger. Amazon announced plans in late July to purchase One Medical, a concierge-type medical service with roughly 190 medical offices in 25 markets. Last week, the e-commerce giant said it would shutter its own hybrid virtual, in-home care service, which competed with One Medical, because it wasn’t meeting customers’ needs.
Russia’s Gazprom keeps gas pipeline to Germany switched off
Russian energy giant Gazprom says it can’t resume the supply of natural gas through a key pipeline to Germany for now because of what it said was a need for urgent maintenance work. Friday’s announcement came just hours before Gazprom was due to resume deliveries. The Russian state-run energy company had shut down the Nord Stream 1 pipeline on Wednesday for what it said would be three days of work. It said in a social media post Friday evening that it had identified “malfunctions” of a turbine and said the pipeline would not work unless those were eliminated.
$1 billion in federal economic grants headed coast to coast
President Joe Biden and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo are announcing $1 billion in federal grants for manufacturing, clean energy, farming, biotech and more. The grants announced Friday go to 21 regional partnerships across the nation. The government chose the winners from 529 applicants that vied for grants that were part of the already-approved $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. The grants include $65 million in California to improve farm production and $25 million for a robotics cluster in Nebraska. Georgia gets $65 million for artificial intelligence. There’s $64 million for lithium-based battery development in New York. West Virginia coal counties receive $63 million to help with the shift to solar power and find new uses for abandoned mines.
Starbucks names former PepsiCo executive as new CEO
Starbucks has named a longtime PepsiCo executive as its new CEO. The coffee giant said Thursday that Laxman Narasimhan will join Starbucks on Oct. 1 after relocating from London to Seattle, where Starbucks is based. He will work closely with Starbucks’ interim CEO, Howard Schultz, through April 1, when he will assume the CEO role and join the company’s board. Narasimhan was most recently CEO of Reckitt, a U.K.-based consumer health and nutrition company that makes Lysol cleaner and Enfamil infant formula, among other products. Reckitt had announced Narasimhan’s surprise departure earlier Thursday.
US seeks more info on Chinese company’s North Dakota project
Federal authorities reviewing a Chinese company’s purchase of land in North Dakota for a wet corn milling plant say more information is needed before they can decide whether project is detrimental to national security. Fufeng Group’s planned $700 million project in Grand Forks is near a U.S. Air Force base, prompting opponents to raise the concerns about potential for espionage. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States told Fufeng this week that the information it’s provided is “insufficient.” The company says it will comply with the government’s request for more information. The Grand Forks city administrator said Friday that infrastructure work being done for the project will be halted until the review is done.
Inflation tightens its grip on Europe
The steady upward march of prices can be felt throughout Europe, according to estimates released Wednesday by the European Commission’s statistical office. In the 19 countries that use the euro as currency, consumer prices rose 9.1%, up from the previous record, 8.9%, set in July. A year earlier, the rate was just 3% — a level that at the time set off alarms for reaching a decadelong high but that would now be greeted with relief.
US restricts sales of sophisticated chips to China and Russia
The Biden administration has imposed new restrictions on sales of some sophisticated computer chips to China and Russia, the U.S. government’s latest attempt to use semiconductors as a tool to hobble rivals’ advances in fields such as high-performance computing and artificial intelligence. The new limits affect high-end models of chips known as graphics processing units, or GPUs, which are sold by the Silicon Valley companies Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices.
Toyota adds $2.5B to investment in North Carolina battery plant
Toyota Motor said Wednesday that it was more than doubling its investment in a battery plant in North Carolina as part of a broader effort to catch up to rivals in fielding electric vehicles. The automaker said it would invest an additional $2.5 billion in the plant, which is to be built near Greensboro, North Carolina, an expansion that would create an additional 350 jobs. It now expects to spend a total of $3.8 billion on the factory and to employ 2,100 people.
By wire sources