The combined firm would have $5 trillion in assets, and the Financial Times says the deal could value Ameritrade at $25 billion. Ryan said the combined Schwab and Ameritrade would have strong synergies. The combined firm would also have about a third of the assets in the growing custodial business for registered investment advisors. ‘Wounded ducks’Bilson said it was unusual that just after Ameritrade CEO Tim Hockey said in July that he would be leaving, E-Trade replaced its CEO. Schwab CEO Walte

President Barack Obama said on Thursday that technology has brought about greater inequality and made the public more divided, despite its potential. “Part of what happens is that people don’t know what’s true and what’s not, and what to believe and what not to believe,” Obama said. People who watch Fox News live in a different reality than those who read The New York Times, Obama said. Today’s culture, accelerated by technology and social media, leads to the pursuit of the wrong things, Obama s

Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp., pauses while speaking during a Microsoft product event in New York, U.S., on Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2019. Microsoft said on Thursday it had been granted a license from the U.S. government to export software to Huawei”On November 20, the U.S. Department of Commerce granted Microsoft’s request for a license to export mass-market software to Huawei. We appreciate the Department’s action in response to our request,” a Microsoft spokesman told Re

The speech comes as Big Tech companies are under increasing scrutiny from governments on antitrust and privacy matters and abuse of their platforms. Several U.S. presidential candidates, led by Elizabeth Warren, have called for Facebook and other tech companies to be broken up. Facebook, YouTube and Google, Twitter and others — they reach billions of people. Baron Cohen was particularly critical of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who recently promoted freedom of speech to students at Georgetown Un

NEW YORK — Pronounced wealth inequality that has built up for decades poses a major threat to a U.S. economy that is in otherwise “excellent” shape, former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said Thursday. While she doesn’t see a recession on the horizon, she also noted that the risks are piling up. Despite the central bank’s efforts to guide the economy, Yellen cited “a very worrisome long-term [trend] in which you have a very substantial share of the U.S. workforce feeling like they’re not get

The Labour Party will introduce a windfall tax on oil businesses if it wins the U.K.’s upcoming general election, it said Thursday. “We will introduce a windfall tax on oil companies, so that the companies that knowingly damaged our climate will help cover the costs,” it stated. Labour said it wanted to build 2,000 new onshore wind turbines; 7,000 new offshore wind turbines; and “enough solar panels to cover 22,000 football pitches.” The party added that new nuclear power “needed for energy secu

Bottles of the 2016 vintage Beaujolais Nouveau wine are displayed at a countdown event in Tokyo on November 17, 2016. WASHINGTON — Every year on the third Thursday of November, at exactly 12:01 a.m., the French release their celebrated first wine of the harvest — the crisp and fruity Beaujolais Nouveau. Last month, the Trump administration slapped retaliatory tariffs on French wine, Italian cheese, single-malt Scotch whisky and hundreds of other European products. Here is where thin-skinned mage

Honoree Michael Bloomberg speaks onstage during the Hudson River Park Annual Gala at Cipriani South Street on October 17, 2019 in New York City. Billionaire and former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg filed official paperwork to run for president in the 2020 Democratic primary. It’s Bloomberg’s latest maneuver toward a likely run for president. Bloomberg’s team has previously said that he plans to spend over $100 million if he runs for president. Apart from his ambitions to run for president, Bloom

Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei believes the company is well positioned to capitalize on the growing popularity of podcasts and other audio content. Maffei, who joined CNBC’s David Faber from Liberty’s investor day in New York on Thursday, said that while there is competition for audio content, exclusive agreements should prove lucrative over time. “We have an exclusive with Marvel, we have an exclusive now with Lebron James called ‘Uninterrupted,'” he continued. I think there’s an opportunity to

Chinese deities statue ready for export to China are waiting in Sagyin (“marble”) village located near the white marble Sagyin quarries. White marble is extracted from Sagyin quarries for centuries. The best-performing stock in the world just lost nearly all its value in the blink of an eye. ArtGo Holdings, a Chinese marble miner, saw its stock crash 98% in Hong Kong trading overnight after MSCI decided not to add it to its foray of indexes. The WSJ noted that there was no upitck in demand for m

Financial advisors who hold their clients’ assets at TD Ameritrade are about to face a shake-up. Charles Schwab is in talks to purchase TD Ameritrade for $25 billion, and a deal could be announced as early as Thursday, a source told CNBC. The merger would combine approximately $3.8 trillion in assets from Schwab and $1.3 trillion from TD Ameritrade and create a massive custodian in an industry that already provides less choice for registered investment advisors or RIAs. In the RIA world, there a

Many workers don’t need experts to tell them they aren’t putting enough away for their golden years — they apparently already know it. More than half of U.S. adults (52%) say they are behind where they should be when it comes to saving for retirement, according to a new survey from Bankrate.com. Among pre-retirees, the lag is more pronounced: 57% of younger baby boomers (age 55 to 64) and 63% of Generation X (age 39 to 54) say they’re behind. “If you look at the economy, you might say it’s great

That’s far below rival UPS and the S&P 500, which have gained more than 21% and 24%, respectively. The S&P 500 gained 4.4% over the same period. A month after the controversy, FedEx gained 6.1%, again underperforming the S&P 500, which rose 7.7%. The result: A week after the lawsuit, FedEx shares fell 0.7%, slight below the lower market that fell 0.29%. A month later, FedEx stock was 6.45% higher far outperforming the S &P 500 that gained 2.34%.

Macy’s said its stores at weaker U.S. shopping malls were hurt by slower foot traffic during the latest quarter, leading to a steeper-than-expected sales decline. The trouble, however, is at the so-called C- and D-rated shopping malls, which bring in less sales per square foot than an A-rated mall. But the weaker mall owners, such as CBL, have more encumbered balance sheets, and some of their centers are seen as deteriorating. Most of Macy’s stores are located in so-called A malls, like Macerich

Volkswagen Group said Thursday that, together with its Chinese partners, it will invest around 4 billion euros ($4.43 billion) in China next year, with almost half of the cash to be spent on developing e-mobility. VW claims that the German firm now accounts for almost every fifth car sold in China. The CEO of Volkswagen Group China, Stephan Wollenstein, said in a statement Thursday that success in e-mobility “will be a key driver for reaching our sustainability target, becoming net carbon neutra

Seventeen Chicago McDonald’s workers are suing the company, alleging that the fast-food chain has failed to address violence in the workplace. In May, McDonald’s workers filed a complaint with the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, asking the agency to investigate a pattern of violence in the restaurants. In the company’s home city of Chicago, on an average day, 911 receives more than 20 calls from McDonald’s restaurants, according to the lawsuit. The suit argues that McDonald’s

Victoria’s Secret has yet to stem its sales declines, but the company is hopeful that new products will win back customers. At Victoria’s Secret same-store sales were down 7% during the quarter, and same-store sales growth has declined for the past six quarters. He said there never was a material financial impact after the show, though it nonetheless helped build the Victoria’s Secret brand. The brand, however, has seen slowing same-store sales growth, and some analysts, including Konik have bee

Macy’s online business is struggling. The company didn’t break out the exact growth rate for its online sales during the fiscal third quarter, when for the past few quarters it has highlighted double-digit growth. So it remains to be seen whether this can be a boon to online sales. Looking to the fourth and holiday quarter, Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette said Macy’s is planning to be competitive with its deals, when it “didn’t chase some of [its] competitor’s promotions” during the third quarter. “We

Another 118 people have fallen ill and five more have died from a lethal vaping lung disease, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. Known as EVALI — short for e-cigarette, or vaping, product use associated lung injury — the deadly disease hospitalizes nearly all patients. Most patients report vaping THC, according to the CDC. A minority of patients say they used just nicotine, though some doctors say people can be reluctant to admit what exactly they are actually using. T

Liberty Media Chairman John Malone took issue with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son’s investment approach in light of the botched WeWork IPO. He’s got a balance sheet no one can understand,” Malone told CNBC’s David Faber in an exclusive interview Thursday. WeWork pulled its IPO filing in September after investors balked at its mounting losses and unusual corporate governance structure. “I look at each one of these deep-loss businesses … you’ve got to have to have an argument that the scale will imp