• Comcast has officially made a £26 billion (about $34 billion) bid for the European broadcasting company Sky.
• 21st Century Fox, which owns 40% of Sky, has been trying to buy the remaining stake since the end of 2016 but faced numerous regulatory hurdles.
• The deal pits some of the sharpest minds in global mergers and acquisitions against one another, with the three sides represented by some of the biggest names on Wall Street and in London...

• Baillie Gifford, Tesla's fourth-largest shareholder, says it wants Elon Musk to put away the distractions and focus.
• James Anderson, a partner and portfolio manager at the asset management firm, pointed to the turmoil surrounding the Tesla CEO, including his public rants in recent weeks. Musk has targeted reporters and news outlets over troubling news about Tesla Model 3 production and internal struggles at the company. Those rants have prompted some fallout...

• Papa John's founder and former CEO John Schnatter resigned from his position as chairman of the board on Wednesday.
• Schnatter's resignation comes one day after he admitted to using the N-word during a May conference call with a marketing agency.
• The company said it would appoint a new chairman in the coming weeks...

• Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox has bid £14 per share for British pay-TV broadcaster Sky.
• Fox originally bid £10.75 in December 2016 but its bid was trumped by Comcast in February, which bid £12.50.
• Sky's shares closed at £15.01 on Tuesday, suggesting shareholders think the bidding war will continue...

• The share price of Helios & Matheson, the parent company of MoviePass, has plunged in recent months amid ongoing losses at the subscription movie service.
• But something else is weighing down the stock price — the more than 3,000% increase just since August in the number of the company's shares.
• That dilution is set to only get worse, as the company is seeking authorization to issue even more shares...

Barnes & Noble Inc on Tuesday said it terminated Chief Executive Officer Demos Parneros, citing violations of the retail bookseller's policies.

The company said the action was taken by its board, but did not provide further details...

• IPG plans to buy Acxiom's Marketing Solutions division for $2.3 billion.
• The deal should help it create custom audiences for clients and target ads.
• But the deal represents a risk for IPG, in part because its competitors may no longer want to work with Marketing Solutions after it becomes part of IPG.
• What's left of Acxiom will rename itself after its LiveRamp division and move its headquarters...

• Michael Dell will once again be running a public company, thanks to a new financing deal with VMware.
• As part of that deal, the billionaire CEO has given up something interesting: His ability to veto his own removal as CEO.
• He's still basically impossible to remove as CEO, though, with 66% voting power over Dell...

Dell said on Monday it will buy out the holders of shares that track the performance of VMWare Inc using a mix of cash and equity in Dell.

The move marks the end of a strategic review that Dell has been conducting for several months as it has sought to consolidate its complicated ownership structure without overburdening its balance sheet, which bears around $50 billion in debt...

• Bank stocks are rallying Friday morning after the Fed approved their plans to return capital to shareholders.
• Only Deutsche Bank's US operations failed.
• Wells Fargo is a big gainer so far.
• Banks are on track to getting to pre-crisis dividend ratios...

• Conagra has agreed to buy Pinnacle Foods in a $10.9 billion deal.
• The deal will pay Pinnacle shareholders $43.11 per share in cash and 0.6494 shares of Conagra stock for each Pinnacle share.
• Pinnacle shareholders will own 16% of the combined company.

(AP) — Conagra is buying Pinnacle Foods Inc. in a cash-and-stock deal valued at about $10.9 billion that will help the food company expand in the frozen food and snacks categories...

• The long-term viability of MoviePass and its parent company, Helios and Matheson Analytics (HMNY), has been thrown into question as its monthly losses have risen to $45 million. HMNY's leadership has also made "confusing" statements about its financial situation...

• Facebook shareholders with nearly $3 billion invested in the company are trying to topple Mark Zuckerberg as chairman and tear up the company's governance structure.
• Business Insider has spoken to six prominent shareholders who said there is an unprecedented level of unrest among Facebook's backers following a series of scandals...

• Paul Singer's Elliott Management has hired Jean-Yves Magnan as deputy chief financial officer, according to people familiar with the matter.
• Magnan, who was previously chief financial officer of Citi's cards division, started at the $35 billion hedge fund at the end of May.
• Magnan's hiring shows how Elliott is trying to deepen its bench of C-suite executives as the fund gets larger and more complex...

• MoviePass owner Helios & Matheson plunged to a new low after proposing a reverse-stock split.
• The move could help the company maintain Nasdaq's minimum $1 share price and avoid delisting.
• "The failure of stockholders to approve this Proposal 3 could have serious adverse effects on the Company and its stockholders," the company said in a regulatory filing...

Disney has raised its offer for 21st Century Fox assets to $38 a share, or a total of $71.3 billion in cash and stock.

The increased offer comes after Comcast crashed Disney's attempt to buy the assets with a $65 billion bid of its own just one week ago, after the US Justice Department approved the AT&T-Time Warner merger...

• Civil rights groups and a shareholders are putting pressure on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to stop selling the Amazon Rekognition facial recognition software to law enforcement agencies.
• The groups raise privacy concerns, along with worries about how the software can be used to unfairly target vulnerable communities.
• Amazon has defended its practice of selling to law enforcement, saying that the software has already helped find victims of abduction...

• Facebook has beefed up the power of its audit committee, which is chaired by former White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles.
• The committee will monitor Facebook's social impact, privacy safeguards, and cybersecurity risk.
• It is being seen as a major concession to shareholders, who have campaigned for a risk committee.
• They welcomed the news, but said Facebook will be judged by its actions, not its promises...

• Elon Musk bought about $25 million worth of Tesla stock this week.
• His purchases come after Musk announced to Tesla employees that the company was cutting 9% of its workforce.
• It could be a signal to employees and Wall Street that he's still optimistic about the future of Tesla.

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk has personally purchased about $25 million worth of stock in his own company, according to a filing with the SEC on Wednesday.

(Reuters) - Verizon Communications Inc named Chief Technology Officer and former Ericsson boss Hans Vestberg as its new Chief Executive on Friday, saying he will replace current CEO Lowell McAdam on Aug. 1...

• A handful of large Allergan shareholders are privately discussing bringing back former Allergan CEO David Pyott in a chairman role, according to people familiar with the matter.
• It's unclear if investors have formally reached out to Pyott yet to discuss a return to the company...

• Norway's $1 trillion wealth fund said on Wednesday it had backed an initiative to wrest the role of chairman away from Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk.
• The proposal, which was defeated in a vote at Tesla's annual meeting of stockholders on Tuesday, represented the strongest challenge yet to Musk's grip on the Silicon Valley car company...

Stephen Brashear/Getty

• Howard Schultz is stepping down as Starbucks' chairman.
• The former CEO has long been dogged by rumors regarding presidential aspirations.

Starbucks executive chairman who long served as the CEO of the chain is stepping down...

• Mars Inc — the company behind Snickers, M&Ms, Milky Way, Pedigree, Uncle Ben's Rice, and other food brands — has historically been a very secretive company.
• But the 106-year-old company, which is entirely owned by the Mars family, has been opening up about its business and what's next for the company.
• Business Insider spoke to Mars chairman Stephen Badger about why the $35 billion firm is ditching its secretive past and why it is "100% committed to staying private."...