Pershing Square Tontine Holdings CEO Bill Ackman announced this morning that his firm will not proceed with the Universal Music Group transaction – Pershing Square’s hedge fund will now step into the place of the SPAC to take the stake. [Pershing Square Tontine Holdings]
Facebook says 85% of Facebook users in the US have been or want to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and they are not the reason President Biden missed his goal to vaccinate 7 in 10 Americans by July 4 – Since the pandemic began, more than 2 billion people have viewed authoritative information about COVID-19 and vaccines on Facebook. This includes more than 3.3 million Americans using Facebook’s vaccine finder tool to find out where to get a COVID-19 vaccine and make an appointment to do so.
Since the beginning of the pandemic Facebook has removed over 18 million instances of COVID-19 misinformation.
Facebook says, as a company, they have “devoted unprecedented resources to the fight against the pandemic, pointing people to reliable information and helping them find and schedule vaccinations.” [Facebook]
Zoom to Acquire Five9 – The acquisition is expected to help enhance Zoom’s presence with enterprise customers and allow it to accelerate its long-term growth opportunity by adding the $24 billion contact center market. Five9 is a pioneer of cloud-based contact center software. Its highly-scalable and secure cloud contact center delivers a comprehensive suite of easy-to-use applications that allows management and optimization of customer interactions across many different channels. [Zoom]
Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket is ‘go’ to launch Jeff Bezos (and crew) on 1st astronaut flight – The weather looks good for the July 20 launch. – The billionaire’s spaceflight company, Blue Origin, has completed the flight readiness review for its first-ever crewed launch, which will send Bezos and three others to suborbital space on a vehicle called New Shepard.
The landmark mission is set to fly at 9:00 a.m. EDT (1300 GMT) on Tuesday (July 20) — the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing — and the recent review revealed nothing that would alter that schedule. [Space.com]
Banana Republic on 2021 Holiday Planning – eMarketer predicts holiday sales to top a trillion dollars and for e-commerce to grow 11%. Banana Republic’s Jen Mullen (VP and Head of Stores) is seeing that customers want to “ditch the sweats”. There is excitement to get back to parties and work and the holidays are a good time to do that, according to Mullen. This year, BR says the “resurgence of stores” will be big. They will use online to get customers back into the brick & mortar stores.
Around November 4-5, Banana Republic will launch holiday marketing this year. [eMarketer]
Fortnite launches pop-up “El Rey’s Taco Tuesday” restaurants this week in Los Angeles – All part of Fortnite’s current collab with LeBron James.
Vox Media’s The Verge is partnering with Consumer Reports on a project about how much Americans are paying for Internet access –
