Categories
Selected Articles

Cowboys Hit with Alarming Prediction for Clash with Micah Parsons, Packers

The Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers will play each other for the first time after the blockbuster Micah Parsons trade.
Categories
Selected Articles

Tennessee governor says state is preparing for more federal agents to combat crime in Memphis

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said Friday that the troops will be part of a surge of resources to fight crime in the city that includes 13 federal agencies and state troopers.
Categories
Selected Articles

Bethenny Frankel is ‘obsessed’ with this under-$10 liquid blush: ‘Run like you’re being paid’

The high-low beauty queen has chosen a new drugstore beauty favorite.
Categories
Selected Articles

Former QB Calls Out NFL Over Controversial Ending of Seahawks-Cardinals

A 14-year NFL veteran called the league out over their new kicking rules following the Cardinals’ loss to the Seahawks.
Categories
Selected Articles

The key questions TikTok employees have about the $14 billion Trump-approved deal

TikTok logo.
The Trump administration has blessed a TikTok US sale, and employees say that’s about all they know.

  • There’s a deal for TikTok — kind of.
  • President Trump has blessed a sale of TikTok’s US business, but China hasn’t announced its approval.
  • TikTok staffers have questions about exactly how the spin-off will work.

TikTok is getting closer to spinning off its US business, and employees have questions about what that actually means for their jobs.

On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order blessing the sale of TikTok US to an investor group. Two TikTok employees said they’d seen a link to the executive order posted internally, but as of Friday afternoon, no company-wide memos had followed.

The situation has left some employees wondering who their ultimate boss would be if the deal goes forward and what would happen to their stock options in ByteDance, TikTok’s current parent company. Some ask: Could there be layoffs, as often happens after an M&A deal closes?

“No questions have been answered,” one TikTok employee said. “It makes most people even more nervous.”

TikTok did not respond to requests for comment.

The deal, valued at $14 billion according to Vice President JD Vance, would include a handful of “blue-chip investors.” Trump said on Thursday that Oracle, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, and Rupert Murdoch would be involved. The prospective arrangement would satisfy the requirements of a divest-or-ban law, the White House said. The Chinese government has yet to formally green-light a sale, saying on Friday that a “basic framework consensus” had been reached.

Two staffers said they were surprised by the $14 billion valuation, which they felt undervalued TikTok’s US business. Analysts tend to agree. Morningstar estimated in June that TikTok US would sell for over $50 billion.

A third employee questioned whether TikTok’s US audience would split off into a separate app.

Three employees said they were eager to know what ByteDance’s relationship would be to TikTok US after a sale goes through.

ByteDance leaders from China and Singapore have been tightening their grip on various aspects of the company in recent months, as Business Insider previously reported.

“The law asks for no influence, but if ByteDance retains a stake and licenses the algorithm, that sounds like quite some ByteDance involvement,” one of the staffers said.

The executive order says TikTok’s current owner, ByteDance, and its affiliates would own less than 20% of the new company.

TikTok workers have been left in limbo for months as their company has sought a path forward to continue operating in the US. The app briefly went dark in January before returning after Trump, then president-elect, said he would not enforce the law while he worked with the company on a political resolution.

The second staffer said they hoped a sale would bring clarity and “hopefully stability” around satisfying the divestiture requirement. But with little information on the new structure of TikTok US, they were still left wondering what comes next.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Categories
Selected Articles

Head of Iowa’s largest school district detained by ICE

Federal immigration agents have detained the head administrator of Iowa’s capital city public schools, the school board said Friday.
Categories
Selected Articles

Taylor Swift’s 35-carat pink sapphire ring is seriously showgirl-worthy — and costs over $27K

She polishes up real nice.
Categories
Selected Articles

Trump jokingly asked Rolex executives if tariffs would’ve affected US Open invite, CEO says

Rolex CEO stressed US president’s remarks were made ‘in jest’ in letter to Elizabeth Warren, who had raised concerns

Donald Trump asked Rolex executives if he would have been invited to watch this month’s US Open final from the luxury watchmaker’s VIP box had he imposed steep tariffs on Swiss exports weeks earlier.

The US president’s remarks were made “in jest”, stressed Jean-Frederic Dufour, the Rolex CEO, in a letter to Elizabeth Warren, the US senator who had raised questions about the decision to invite Trump – including whether the conglomerate was seeking to “curry favor” with the administration.

Continue reading…

Categories
Selected Articles

Only one out of 23,000 disqualified drivers penalised for failing to surrender licence since 2022

That individual was convicted of failing to submit a licence following disqualification under the Road Traffic Act 2010. They were subsequently fined and disqualified from driving again.
Categories
Selected Articles

Kneecap rapper tells Starmer ‘better luck next time’ after terror case dropped

The rapper was accused of displaying a flag in support of proscribed terror organisation Hezbollah at a gig last year.