Cohn: Trying to change health care, taxes, infrastructure Thursday, 20 Apr 2017 | 2:34 PM ET | 04:27Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House chief economic advisor Gary Cohn outlined President Donald Trump’s tax plan Wednesday afternoon. At a White House briefing, the pair talked about the proposal that Mnuchin contended would be the “biggest tax cut” in U.S. history. Some of the highlights included:Reducing the top tax bracket to 35 percentDoubling the standard deductionLowering the bu

The magic of working at Google is that the reputation and the aura of the place stay with you after you leave. That’s what Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan and Stephanie Tilenius, both founders of flourishing start-ups, have discovered. Both had stints at Google. And they both say that working for the tech giant contributed to their success. Here are the five lessons these entrepreneurs took with them from Mountain View, Calif., to their own businesses.

Chinese ridesharing giant, Didi Chuxing, is raising between $5 and $6 billion in a funding round that would value the company at around $50 billion, sources tell CNBC. The latest mega-round would make Didi one of the largest VC-backed start-ups alongside Uber, which has been valued at as much as $66 billion but is now reportedly valued around $50 billion, and Alibaba payments affiliate Ant Financial, reportedly valued around $60 billion. Earlier this month, Uber’s US rival, Lyft, raised a new $5

Instagram has thus triggered an echo — it feels like Facebook. There are bigger networks: Facebook has nearly two billion users a month, and two instant-messaging apps owned by Facebook, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, have grown past the one-billion-user mark. What he meant was that Instagram systematically analyzed all the bottlenecks to its service and tried to eliminate them. Facebook bucked that trend; as it grew, it constantly adapted its features to become more things to more people. So

He began working as a media analyst for advertising agencies, including MediaCom, KBS and DigitasLBi. It didn’t really boost his personal social media stats until he realized that if he created a separate account and went even more over the top, it would grow his following. If the NYDoorman persona could take off, he could be paid for brand-sponsored social media posts. “For whatever reason, the nightlife content wasn’t resonating with people because they saw me, this outsider,” he said. In 2014

Deckers Outdoor put out the for-sale sign and Wall Street is chattering over who may buy the company. The maker of Ugg boots announced Tuesday it will explore strategic alternatives, including the possibility of an outright sale. “We believe the strategic review will generate ample interest given UGG’s brand strength,” Jefferies analyst Randal Konik wrote in a note to clients Wednesday. We “believe operating expertise and resources of a larger strategic could be beneficial.”

Twitter has undeservedly attracted a bunch of new followers. The struggling social-media company touted surprise user growth as evidence it can get back on track under moonlighting Chief Executive Jack Dorsey. Revenue, however, fell eight percent in the first quarter, a first since Twitter went public in 2013, as advertisers grew skeptical. Although it remains a long way from its early 2014 peak, Twitter’s market value shot up 12 percent on the morning after delivering its results on Wednesday.

Summer may be the perfect time for the average investor to “sell in May and go away,” but professional traders could miss out on some big gains by hitting the beach. In a Wednesday note, Raymond James analyst Andrew Adams noted out the S&P 500’s average price return between May 1 and Sept. 30 between 1990 and 2016 is just 0.01 percent. So generally the ‘Sell in May’ strategy has worked. But, trading in the summer months could still be profitable for nimble traders if they hang around because the

CEO Steve Luczo was optimistic about Seagate Technology’s most recent quarter, but the market wasn’t. The Cupertino, California-based company did beat on earnings, reporting profit per share of $1.10 versus estimates for $1.07 per share, according to FactSet. Seagate deals primarily in hardware and has faced increased pressure on its business as consumers move increasingly to the cloud. The shares extended their decline after the company said on a conference call that revenue this quarter would

PayPal shares jumped more than 6 percent after the company reported an earnings beat following the market close Wednesday. A consensus of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of 41 cents per share on revenue of $2.94 billion. The company said it projects adjusted full-year earnings of between $1.74 and $1.79 per share, above the analyst projection for $1.72. “This is one of these quarters where we just hit on all cylinders,” CEO Dan Schulman said in an earnings call on Wednesday.

Pai also said concerns from some American consumers who fear higher prices or limited access with the loss of the 2015 net neutrality rules were unwarranted. Republican FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said the rules “took internet policy down into a dark and horrible abyss” and said the FCC will “expunge net neutrality regulations from the Internet.” Internet providers such as AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc. and Comcast Corp. have argued that the net neutrality rules have made investment i

Despite hopes that Cuba would begin opening up its internet access following the re-establishment of diplomatic between the US and Cuba in 2015, Cuba still has the lowest level of internet connectivity in the western hemisphere. For most Cubans, the internet can only be accessed through 240 public access wi-fi spots dotted around the country. An hour of internet access costs roughly $1.50, which for Cubans earning the country’s average wage of $25 a month, can be prohibitively expensive. Google

Global media players look to Asia for next wave of growth Wednesday, 26 Apr 2017 | 12:21 AM ET | 00:52BALI, Indonesia — It’s an industry valued at $120 billion this year, and it’s growing rapidly. That juggernaut is the television & video industry in the Asia Pacific, which is being analyzed and dismantled at the APOS summit here in Bali. Wandering around among soothing waterfalls, and what feels like 100 percent humidity, are some of the industry’s biggest players and disruptors. NBCUniversal I

Grail, a start-up that’s raising over $1 billion to work on early cancer detection, has just brought on veteran venture capitalist Brook Byers to its board of directors, according to an SEC filing. Byers, a co-founder of Silicon Valley venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, previously invested in companies including GHDX , Foundation Medicine, Pacific Biosciences and Electronic Arts. The company, led by former Google executive Jeff Huber, was originally an offshoot of Illumina, which dev

Wall Street has had a love-hate relationship with Twitter over the last 12 months, as its shares have alternately surged and plunged around the time of the company’s earnings reports. But there’s one especially illuminating fact in today’s earnings report, and the light it shines isn’t flattering: The company becoming irrelevant in online advertising, compared to its two largest rivals — Google and Facebook. Sales fell 8 percent for the quarter, a period in which both Alphabet and Facebook are e

Thursday’s blast of high-profile earnings, including big tech bellwethers, could help set the stage for new stock market highs in the very near future. But some of the tech names that have led the market’s gains report after the closing bell and could be big catalysts into Friday’s trading. He said what the market is really focusing on are the nearby highs, like 2,400 on the S&P 500. “We’ve had some soft economic data, but people are ignoring that. Those are the kind of things that could bring t

If Twitter wants to avoid the fate of Yahoo it will have to stop trying to be a social media company, Former Interim CEO of Yahoo Ross Levinsohn told CNBC on Wednesday. “They’ve got to embrace this company as a media company,” he said. Twitter did disappoint when it comes to user growth, which compared to its competitors like Instagram and Snapchat is low. If Twitter can’t pull this off, Levinsohn said there are plenty of companies that would want to buy it. The Twitter scenario is familiar to L

Nintendo is will release its fiscal 2016 earnings on Thursday — which will almost certainly include the first global hard sales numbers for its newly released Switch game console – and analysts have high expectations. The NPD Group, which tracks video game and video game system sales, says Nintendo sold more than 906,000 units in March in the United States. “The Wii sold 100 million units — and sold 14 million the first year. “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wind” is an undisputed hit, garner

[The stream is slated to start at 11:20 am, ET. Please refresh the page if you do not see a player above at that time.] President Donald Trump is scheduled to give remarks and sign the Antiquities Executive Order Department of the Interior. The 1906 Antiquities Act enables the president to designate federal areas of land and water as national monuments to protect them from drilling, mining, and development. –Reuters contributed to this report.

A South Korean court on Wednesday ruled that the ride-hailing group Uber Technologies Inc illegally used private vehicles for commercial purposes, in the latest legal setback for the U.S. firm in Asia’s fourth biggest economy. Uber’s operations in South Korea were not expected to be impacted by the ruling, since it suspended its UberX service after prosecutors filed charges against the local unit in 2014 for violating the transport law, a company spokeswoman said. Uber’s local unit has “admitted