BUSINESS

UAW Auto Union Settles Massive US Corruption Case

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The United Auto Workers union reaced a settlement in a widespread corruption and bribery scandal


BILL PUGLIANO

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The main American auto union announced Monday it had reached an agreement with US authorities to bring to an end a far-reaching corruption scandal that has ensnared two union presidents.

United Autoworkers (UAW), which represents workers at the “Big Three” carmakers, has been working for a year to clean up following the theft and bribery scandal that led to convictions for 15 union or Fiat Chrysler executives.

“This civil resolution brings to a close the government’s investigation and is testament to the hard work that has been done to make the necessary structural and cultural changes,” UAW President Rory Gamble said in a statement.

“Under our current leadership, the UAW has proactively weeded out individuals who put their personal benefit over our members’ interests and who abused their

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Dropbox Breaks Out on the Charts Amid M&A Speculation

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Dropbox  (DBX) – Get Report rallied 5.9% on Friday before bursting higher after the close of trading. Those after-hours gains carried over to Monday, with shares up another 4.5%.

At the day’s high, shares were up more than 7.2%. The momentum with this name has been strong lately, surprising some bulls given how sluggish it’s been over the past few months.

Following Salesforce’s  (CRM) – Get Report acquisition of Slack  (WORK) – Get Report, some investors got busy looking at other potential M&A targets.

Among that group was Dropbox, which is why the stock ran so hard on Friday. Some bulls are surprised by the follow-through price action on Monday, giving some credibility to the thesis that it very well may be a buyout candidate after all.

When we look at the technicals, the situation also is improving

Salesforce is a holding in

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Blackstone’s $3.45 Billion Deal For Lab Space Shows Boom in Life Sciences

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Munshi Ahmed/Bloomberg

The pandemic has sent shock waves through the commercial real estate market as malls, restaurants, and retail outlets struggle to survive, but spaces devoted to labs and life sciences are thriving.

Lab personnel continue to operate across the U.S., especially those helping to create vaccines and treatments to fight Covid-19. And investors are there to encourage them.

The

Blackstone Group

(ticker: BX), the commercial real estate and private equity giant, announced on Monday a $3.45 billion deal for a group of life sciences buildings in Cambridge, Mass.–a hotbed of lab activity.

The complex, which Blackstone is buying from

Brookfield Asset Management

(BAM), includes 2.3 million square feet of space near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“This transaction illustrates Blackstone’s continued conviction in the life sciences space both broadly, and within real estate, investing in best-in-class assets located adjacent to top-tier research and education institutions,” Nadeem Meghji,

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What to watch for when the Fed meets Wednesday

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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell must thread the needle in the coming days.

On the one hand, the economy seems to be stumbling as the year draws to a close given the alarming spread of the coronavirus across the entire country.

On the other, economic activity is expected to recover sometime next spring or summer as COVID-19 vaccines become widely available.

Should the Fed take any more action to help the economy bridge the pandemic? Or is the best bet waiting for more economic relief from Congress? Washington lawmakers seem tantalizingly close to a deal by the end of the week, yet it could be another false dawn for a fifth round of COVID-19 fiscal relief.

Despite the twists and turns of the soap opera centered on COVID spending, financial market conditions have remained healthy all summer and fall, helped in large measure by the Fed’s purchases of $80 billion

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Boeing inspecting 787 fuselages for previously disclosed defects

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Workers assemble Boeing 787 Dreamliners, the wide-body twin-engine jets made by Boeing Commercial Airplanes at the Boeing Everett Factory in Everett, Washington.

Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Boeing quality inspections related to previously disclosed production flaws in its 787 Dreamliner found the same issue in other parts of the jet, the company said on Monday.

Boeing said earlier this month that inspections for 787 production flaws were taking longer than expected, hampering the U.S. planemaker’s ability to deliver jets to customers through December.

On Monday, Boeing added that inspections of assembled 787 aircraft found that some areas where fuselage segments are joined were potentially not as smooth as required. The engineering specifications at issue are roughly equivalent to the width of a human hair, the company noted.

Boeing also said the problem does not pose an imminent safety hazard.

The specific reason behind the broader quality-control checks,

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General Motors to Invest $76M To Boost Pickup Truck Manufacturing

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Automaker General Motors  (GM) – Get Report on Monday said it plans to invest $76 million in two of its manufacturing plants in New York and Ohio to increase the manufacturing capacity of its pickup trucks.

The Warren, Mich., company will invest roughly $70 million into its Tonawanda, New York engine plant and more than $6 million into its Parma, Ohio metal stamping plant.

The Tonawanda plant investment will be used to increase manufacturing capacity for engines used in GM’s Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra HD pickups, among others.

“GM continues to invest to strengthen our core business and respond to growing customer demand for our full-size pickups,” said Phil Kienle, vice president of North America Manufacturing and Labor Relations, in a statement.

The Parma plant investment will be used to boost production volume for trucks with the construction of four new metal assembly cells, the Detroit carmaker

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Haynes and Boone lands in Legacy West with new office

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Dallas law firm Haynes and Boone LLP has moved into new digs in Plano’s $3 billion Legacy West project.

The legal firm, which has more than a dozen offices around the country, shifted its suburban operation north from Richardson.

The company is relocating into almost 30,000 square feet of space in a new building on Headquarters Drive at Windrose Avenue.

“We have found an ideal home base for our Dallas-North office,” Dustin Johnson, administrative partner of the office, said in a statement. “This move positions Haynes and Boone to better serve our clients throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, even as we continue to expand our national and international clientele.”

Haynes and Boone has had a northern suburban office since 1997.

The building the firm has chosen is an office, retail and multifamily project of developer Karahan Cos. and Columbus Realty.

Designed by Gensler architects, the project includes almost 87,000 square

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Redo in the works for Dr Pepper’s Plano headquarters campus

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Developers who bought beverage firm Dr Pepper’s old Plano headquarters are making plans for a redo of the property.

Dallas-based Champion Partners acquired the more than 285,000-square-foot office campus in Legacy business park a year ago.

About 1,100 employees who work in the Keurig Dr Pepper regional office will move to a new building in Frisco next year.

Built in 1998, Dr Pepper’s current three-story Plano office complex is on Legacy Drive, just east of the Dallas North Tollway.

The property includes more than 5 acres for additional construction.

“Keurig Dr Pepper is still under lease into next year, so we can’t really start anything until they are totally vacated,” said Champion Partner’s Steve Modory.

Champion Partners has hired Dallas architect HKS to redesign the Dr Pepper headquarters for new tenants, according to filings with the state.

The first phase of the more than $5 million development is set to

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FOREX-Dollar falls, sterling jumps as Brexit deal hopes lift risk appetite

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By Suzanne Barlyn

Dec 14 (Reuters) – The dollar hovered near two-year lows on Monday as riskier currencies got a boost from progress on COVID-19 vaccines and the possibility of a U.S. coronavirus relief plan.

The greenback last traded little changed to 90.7040, down 0.07%, as an intensive care unit nurse became the first person in the United States to receive the vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc PFE.N and German partner BioNTech SE BNTX.O on Monday.

Its arrival provided some relief as the country passed the grim milestone of 300,000 lives lost on Monday.

“It’s one of those days where we are settling down and understanding just how successful we may be in distributing these vaccines,” said Juan Perez, senior foreign exchange trader and strategist at Tempus, Inc. “That has created a very strong risk-on sentiment.”

The vaccine comes as negotiators in the U.S. Congress were nearing agreement

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Disney’s stock gets a downgrade as company begins the ‘hard part’ of meeting subscriber goals

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Walt Disney Co. shares have surged recently amid optimism for the company’s ambitious streaming targets, and that’s reason enough to take a breather on the stock, according to one analyst.

BMO Capital Markets analyst Daniel Salmon cut his rating on Disney’s stock
DIS,
-3.03%
to market perform from outperform on Monday, just a few days after the media conglomerate held an investor day at which it unveiled the expectation that 230 million to 260 million Disney+ subscribers will be signed up by fiscal 2024. The company also plans to release more than 100 titles to the service every year in a big content push.

“We believe improved vaccination rates could help Disney continue to be a solid ‘reopening’ play, but with considerable multiple expansion recently for both initial vaccine news and Thursday’s direct-to-consumer (DTC) investor day, we step to the sidelines,” Salmon wrote in a note titled “Now The Hard

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