Billionaire investor Warren Buffett told CNBC on Monday that United Airlines made a mistake in the initial response to the worldwide backlash over its treatment of a passenger. Buffett said he wondered if United CEO Oscar Munoz had seen the video of David Dao being dragged from his seat before making his response. “If so, it was a bigger mistake by far then if he hadn’t seen it. And I don’t know the answer to that,” Buffett said on “Squawk Box.” — Buffett joins CNBC for three hours Monday mornin

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett defended private equity partner 3G Capital for its practice of “trying to do business with fewer people.” “They’ve been very good about severance pay and all of that, but they have followed the standard capitalist formula, market system formula, of trying to do business with fewer people,” Buffett said. In 2015, Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway worked with Brazilian private equity firm 3G to merge Heinz with Kraft Foods. The combined Kraft Heinz firm then announce

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett on Monday said IBM’s artificial intelligence unit Watson should one day take the place of humans. “I would think the biggest value will come in when it actually replaces human labor, and machines don’t come round annually and ask for higher wages, and they don’t need health care, and maybe a little maintenance,” Buffett said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “It should replace people in a big way, unless some other products do the same thing,” he said, noting Watson’s p

Buffett: I don’t put too much weight in any given election 1 Hour Ago | 01:53Billionaire investor Warren Buffett told CNBC on Monday he never wants to be out of the stock market. In an exclusive interview on “Squawk Box,” Buffett said he doesn’t make knee-jerk reactions about stocks after events like the French presidential election. Buffett’s comment came as U.S. stock futures pointed to a slightly lower open on Monday after the French presidential election ended with centrist Emmanuel Macron d

In an effort to resonate more with younger consumers, handbag maker Coach is buying its smaller rival, Kate Spade & Co., for a $2.4 billion price tag, the companies announced on Monday. “Kate Spade has a truly unique and differentiated brand positioning with a broad lifestyle assortment and strong awareness among consumers, especially millennials,” Coach CEO Victor Luis said in a statement. The $18.50 per share cash offer represents a premium of 9 percent to Kate Spade’s closing price on Friday.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett told CNBC on Monday it’s “amazing” how Apple has resonated with consumers, and that’s why Berkshire Hathaway bought the stock. Buffett said he used Berkshire’s insights into the furniture business to figure out Apple’s worth. I can learn very easily how consumers react to different things there,” he said, referring to Berkshire’s ownership of Nebraska Furniture Mart. Asked why Berkshire Hathaway bought Apple stock, Buffett said, “The shares when we bought them

On Sunday, centrist candidate Macron claimed victory in the French presidential election after securing around 66 percent of the vote, beating his far-right and anti-EU opponent Marine Le Pen. With investors having already priced in a Macron victory, bourses in Europe were under slight pressure in morning trade. Meanwhile, Asia-Pacific markets finished trade mostly higher. ET, U.S. crude was slightly lower, off 0.11 percent at $46.17 while Brent dipped 0.14 percent to $49.02 per barrel. No major

The pan-European Stoxx 600 was 0.26 percent lower with sectors and major bourses mixed. Basic resources slumped more than 1.4 percent after weak iron ore imports data from China. The world’s top steelmaking nation reduced its record-setting buying spree to its slowest pace in six months in April. France-based lenders appeared to extend the sector’s losses as investors had already priced in a Macron victory on the back of opinion polls. The Amsterdam-based company reported that its addressed mail

On Sunday, centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron claimed victory in the French presidential election after securing around 66 percent of the vote, beating his far-right and anti-EU opponent Marine Le Pen. The pro-European Union candidate’s win was met with delight from global leaders, letting markets breathe a sigh of relief when it comes to the stability and future of the European Union. With investors having already priced in a Macron victory, bourses in Europe were under slight pressure in morni

What began as a call center in Jakarta for bike hailing in 2010 is now reportedly valued at $3 billion, operating in 25 Indonesian cities. Go-Jek has evolved beyond ride-sharing into logistics, lifestyle services and more recently mobile payments becoming the world’s largest on-demand platform with end to end control over its 15 vertical businesses. The $3 billion valuation was reported by TechCrunch and aided by significant investment from Tencent. Jakubowski attributes Go-Jek’s success with ta

Some of the Chinese players’ growth in Asia’s emerging markets might not be entirely organic, he noted. “Of course there are some home-grown internet companies, shopping bazaars and so forth on the internet that you see in these countries and they of course, will grow on their own,” Mobius said. “But they may also merge with the Chinese companies and we’ve already seen some of that happening.” Mobius also said he was interested in the Chinese market as well, noting that internet plays such as Te

Seedrs, an equity crowdfunding platform in the U.K. which has provided £210 million ($273 million) to over 500 start-ups since its launch in 2012 including financial technology (fintech) firms such as WeSwap, is set to launch a secondary market pilot scheme for investors “in June”, according to its chief investment officer, Thomas Davies. Funds are only released when a business is sold or goes to the stock market for the first time with an initial public offering (IPO). Investors have not had an

When Amazon reports quarterly results, investors watch closely and shares move accordingly, but for Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, the earnings are the result of plans set in motion three years prior. In a talk at the Internet Association’s annual gala last week, Bezos was talking about what makes his e-commerce and cloud company tick. “I ask everybody to not think in two-to-three-year time frames, but to think in five-to-seven-year time frames,” Bezos told an audience in Washington, D.C.”When some

Amazon.com is dominating the nascent market for voice-controlled speakers, research firm eMarketer said on Monday. The e-commerce giant’s Amazon Echo and Echo Dot devices will claim a 70.6 percent share of the U.S. market this year, the study found. The speakers feature Alexa, Amazon’s voice-controlled aide, which users can tell to play music, order an Uber or turn on the house lights. The number of active U.S. users will more than double for the devices this year, to 35.6 million, eMarketer sai

Artificial intelligence (AI) development has seen an “amazing renaissance” and is beginning to solve problems that were once seen as science fiction, according to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Machine learning, machine vision, and natural language processing are all strands of AI that are being developed by technology giants such as Amazon, Alphabet’s Google and Facebook for various uses. At Amazon, Bezos said that “cool” developments like Alexa and its Prime Air delivery drones use “tremendous amounts

Russia has blocked access to Chinese social media app WeChat, developed by Tencent Holdings, for failing to give its contact details to the Russian communications watchdog. Access to China’s most popular social media platform has been restricted since May 4, according to information posted on the Russian regulator’s website. Tencent told Reuters it was checking the status of WeChat in Russia and was in talks with the relevant authorities. WeChat, launched in 2011, is not hugely popular in Russia

The key to becoming a good investor is to “run a lousy business,” Warren Buffett told shareholders at the annual Berkshire Hathaway meeting.

Top retirement myths Friday, 5 May 2017 | 4:00 AM ET | 02:05Savings and planning for retirement can be filled with misconceptions that will harm your enjoyment later in life. Katie Coleman, a certified financial planner and advisor with Ameriprise Financial, separated retirement fact from retirement fiction in a recent interview with CNBC’s “On the Money.” Here are the six most common retirement myths Coleman encounters:

Rising far-right nationalism in Europe is still looking for another major victory, for now. Centrist Emmanuel Macron will win the French presidential election over far-right candidate Marine Le Pen with roughly 65 percent of the vote, according to projections from polling firms. If that margin holds, Macron will have outperformed the average of recent polls, which forecast him getting about 61 percent of the vote compared with 39 percent for Le Pen, according to an aggregation from Huffington Po

Analysts weigh in on what went wrong for Marine Le Pen Friday, 5 May 2017 | 9:38 AM ET | 01:29Marine Le Pen has pledged to form a “number one opposition force” to counter globalization just moments after conceding defeat to her centrist opponent in the French presidential elections. In a speech at the National Front’s campaign headquarters, Le Pen called on “all patriots to join” in a new movement as she characterized the landscape as one split between “patriots and globalists”. The National Fro