• Allergan's stock closed down 4% on Thursday, after the pharma giant said it was "in the early stages of considering a possible offer" for UK-listed Shire, only to say four hours later that it wouldn't make an offer.
• The drama extends what's been a tough year for the Botox-maker, with the stock vastly underperforming the broader biotech index...

• In her first interview since leaving Yahoo, Marissa Mayer said selling the company's stake in Alibaba was a mistake.
• Mayer blamed shortsighted activist investors for pressuring the company to do the deal.
• Yahoo sold half of its 40% stake in Alibaba for $7.6 billion in 2012. Yahoo obtained the entire stake for $1 billion in 2005.

Before Yahoo was swallowed up by Verizon, it was a struggling internet company led by CEO Marissa Mayer, trying to bring back its glory days...

• VMware shares soared on Monday on word that Michael Dell is ready to abandon his reverse merger plan between VMware and Dell Technologies.
• Shareholders were in open revolt, and Wall Street analysts were openly negative about the prospect of the deal.
• Employees weren't thrilled either, and neither were VMware's hardware partners that compete with Dell, according to reports.
• The deal would have been huge, and would have given Dell a non-traditional path to going public again...

• A second Facebook investor wants Mark Zuckerberg out as chairman.
• Zuckerberg controls Facebook thanks to the way the company's stock is structured, meaning he has final say on the future direction of the company.
• That's frustrating for activist investors who watched the Cambridge Analytica scandal wipe $60 billion off the firm's market cap over the past few weeks.
• Now is a golden opportunity for those investors to gang up and call for Zuckerberg to step down...

• CBS CEO Leslie Moonves could reportedly make up to $280 million if he is fired over an embattled potential merger between CBS and Viacom, Bloomberg reported.
• CNBC reported on Wednesday that Shari Redstone, the controlling shareholder of CBS and Viacom, was "likely" to remove Moonves as the head of CBS if merger negotiations between CBS and Viacom fell through.
• Moonves' contract entitles him to $150 million if he is fired before its expiration in 2021, Bloomberg reported...

• Former House Speaker John Boehner is joining the board of Acreage Holdings, a firm that owns marijuana cultivation facilities and dispensaries in 11 states.
• Boehner said his thinking about cannabis legalization has "evolved."
• It's a watershed moment for the cannabis industry — analysts say it will perk up investor interest in a sector that could see $75 billion in revenue by 2030....

Volkswagen is considering a management shakeup that could mean replacing its current CEO Matthias Mueller.

• Mozido founder Michael Liberty has been charged with allegedly scheming to defraud investors and misappropriating funds, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
• Liberty, along with his wife and several associates, allegedly raised $55 million from investors using fictitious financial information and shell companies...

Reuters/ Shannon Stapleton

• Former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain is being nominated to the supervisory board of Deutsche Bank.
• Deutsche Bank announced two other new nominees, Mayree Clark, founder and managing partner of Eachwin Capital, and Michele Trogni, previously group chief information officer at UBS .

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain is being nominated to the supervisory board of Deutsche Bank , Germany's largest lender said on Wednesday...

Longfin

• Shares of Longfin (LFIN) dropped 17% Monday to $14.31.
• LFIN was removed last week from Russell indexes, including the Russell 2000.
• Several law firms have opened investigations into Longfin for violating federal securities laws.

It’ll take many more sell-offs and the collapse of many more iffy stocks before this hyper-enthusiasm, after nine years of central bank nurturing, is finally wrung out of the market.

• Music streaming company Spotify will go public today via a direct listing — meaning it won't issue new stock but will allow insiders to sell shares on the public market.
• Small shareholder and early investor Lakestar will not be selling its shares.
• Lakestar founder and CEO Klaus Hommels said he thinks Spotify can be a $100 billion company with 700 million subscribers...

• Head of New York City's pension fund investments thinks Mark Zuckerberg should step down as chairman of Facebook.
• It's not going to happen — Zuckerberg owns a controlling stake of Facebook stock.
• But the call shows the level of investor anger at Zuckerberg's handling of the data privacy crisis...

Spiegel: Deutsche Bank's chairman wants Juerg Zeltner as the bank's next CEO.

• Zeltner formerly ran UBS' wealth management business.
• Deutsche Bank has begun searching for a new CEO after investors complained about current boss John Cryan's slow turnaround plan...

Tesla shareholders scored a small victory in their lawsuit against CEO Elon Musk and Tesla's board on Wednesday.

• A judge refused to dismiss a lawsuit stemming from the electric-car maker's 2016 acquisition of the energy company, SolarCity, allowing the case to move forward.
• Shareholders in the class-action claim are accusing Musk and the board of failing to act in their best interest in connection with the $2.6 billion SolarCity deal.

(Reuters) - GlaxoSmithKline is buying Novartis out of their consumer healthcare joint venture for $13 billion, taking full control of products including Sensodyne toothpaste, Panadol headache tablets, muscle gel Voltaren, and Nicotinell patches...

REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach

• Deutsche Bank COO Kim Hammonds told a conference that the bank is the "most dysfunctional" company she has ever worked for.
• Hammonds made the comments at an internal managerial conference.
• Her comments come as it is reported that chairman, Paul Achleitner is preparing to oust CEO John Cryan after a clash over strategy...

AP/Richard Drew

• Lowe's CEO Robert Niblock is retiring.
• He has been at the company for 25 years.

(Reuters) - U.S. home improvement chain Lowe's Companies Inc said on Monday Chief Executive Officer Robert Niblock will retire and the board has started a search for his replacement...

REUTERS

• Companies that consistently buyback their shares outperform those that regularly pay dividends, according to Citi's Tobias Levkovich.
• Buybacks have helped support stocks at times when mutual funds and other large investors backed off.
• Critics of buybacks say that they're often done solely to meet Wall Street's earnings-per-share estimates and help company executives earn bonuses tied to stock performance...

REUTERS

• Companies that consistently buyback their shares outperform those that regularly pay dividends, according to Citi's Tobias Levkovich.
• Buybacks have helped support stocks at times when mutual funds and other large investors backed off.
• Critics of buybacks say that they're often done solely to meet Wall Street's earnings-per-share estimates and help company executives earn bonuses tied to stock performance...

• UBS chairman Axel Weber talks to Business Insider about his career.
• Weber says he misses the "regular interaction" with people at the start of their careers he had as an academic and has to make time to meet younger employees.
• Weber says he moved on from academia after 20 years to learn new things.
• You can read the first part of Business Insider's interview with Weber here.

ZURICH, Switzerland — Axel Weber, chairman of Swiss bank UBS, has seen it all...

• Tesla's shareholders have approved CEO Elon Musk's 10-year compensation package.
• If Musk meets his targets, Tesla's market cap would rise to $650 billion.
• The company is worth around $55 billion now and is struggling to meet production goals for the Model 3 mass-market vehicle.

Tesla shareholders have approved CEO Elon Musk's massive new 10-year compensation package.

A Tesla spokesperson confirmed the result after a shareholder vote on Wednesday...

• A Facebook shareholder is suing the company for allegedly misleading investors. The suit is seeking class action status.
• The investor claims that since Facebook did not inform shareholders about the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, the company omitted facts that have led to a decline in Facebook's value.
• Facebook has lost about $50 billion in market value since the scandal broke on Saturday...

• Spotify CEO Daniel Ek is eligible to sell 15.8 million shares of the company, an amount worth up to $2 billion.
• The news follows Spotify's unusual public listing announcement of allowing its employees and investors to sell company shares without raising capital or underwriting the offering.
• The direct listing doesn't obligate Ek to sell, and he has yet to state his intentions to do so...

REUTERS/Steve Crisp

• US film and TV studio The Weinstein Company has filed for bankruptcy.
• The company, cofounded by Harvey Weinstein who dozens of women have accused of varying degree of sexual misconduct, says it has a stalking horse bid for its assets from the private equity firm Lantern Capital.
• The filing comes on the same day that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered the state attorney general to investigate how the Manhattan district attorney handled allegations against Weinstein...