The CTO of one of the biggest consulting firms says CEOs and directors are beating a path to his door to get up-to-speed on the latest tech trends Troy Wolverton 0m Bill Briggs and his technology team at Deloitte are meeting much more frequently these days with CEOs and corporate directors. Deloitte Deloitte's technology consultants used to meet primarily with clients' chief technology and chief information officers...

• Global CEOs have become increasingly pessimistic about global economic growth in the past year and expect their businesses to suffer in the short to medium term as a result.
• CEOs have traditionally seen the US as the most attractive place to invest, but it is close to losing that crown, with China and India rising rapidly in the rankings...

• MoviePass parent Helios and Matheson on Friday said it would seek — again — to get shareholder authorization to reverse split its stock.
• The company is in imminent danger of having its stock delisted from the Nasdaq; the market is hearing the company's appeal of its delisting decision later this month.
• The proposal is basically the same one that the company withdrew in November in the face of widespread investor opposition...

• PG&E said Monday it intends to file bankruptcy petitions under Chapter 11, in order to protect the best interests of all stakeholders.
• Hedge fund BlueMountain Capital Management, one of its biggest shareholders, challenged its plan to seek bankruptcy protection, saying it's "damaging, avoidable, and unnecessary."
• PG&E has seen its value plunge by 85% after last November's deadly California wildfire...

• Sears chairman Eddie Lampert has reportedly won a bankruptcy auction to keep the 126-year-old retailer from liquidating.
• Lampert's bid will keep about 400 stores open and retain 50,000 jobs.
• "While there is no doubt that a shrunken Sears will be more viable than the larger entity which struggled to turn a profit, we remain extremely pessimistic about the chain's future," said Neil Saunders, CEO of GlobalData Retail...

• Santander said late on Tuesday that it will no longer be appointing UBS executive Andrea Orcel as its new CEO.
• The Spanish banking giant said that the level of compensation that was required to hire Orcel was "unacceptable."
• The sticking point in bringing Orcel to Santander was years of compensation that had previously been deferred by UBS, which, owing to his departure, the Swiss bank was reluctant to pay...

• Tokyo prosecutors indicted former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn on two new charges of financial misconduct on Friday.
• Ghosn was charged with aggravated breach of trust for temporarily transferring personal investment losses to Nissan in 2008, and for understating his compensation for three years, from 2015 to 2017, according to his lawyer, Motonari Otsuru.
• Otsuru said his team was applying for bail to release Ghosn, who has been detained since his Nov. 19 arrest...

• Sears Chairman Eddie Lampert on Wednesday boosted his takeover bid to $5 billion, up from $4.4 billion.
• Lampert's new proposal will be assessed against competing parties' bids at an auction scheduled for Monday.
• Lampert's offer is the only one that would avoid a liquidation.

Sears Chairman Eddie Lampert has sweetened his bid for the company's assets in a final attempt to avoid a liquidation...

• Amazon could soon have a large new individual shareholder in the form of MacKenzie Bezos as a result of her impending divorce from the company's CEO.
• Jeff Bezos owns 16% of the e-commerce giant, and MacKenzie could be entitled to up to half of those shares, which would giver her, with Jeff, one of the two largest stakes in the company.
• Although the Bezoses are worth $137 billion on paper, nearly all of their assets are in the form of Amazon stock...

• Pier 1's market value has been almost completely wiped out over the past five and a half years, falling 97% since 2013.
• Analysts say the outlook is discouraging. Of the few surveyed by Bloomberg who cover the name, none rate the stock a "buy," two carry a "sell" rating, and four say "hold."
• Analysts say a combination of overwhelming store environments, offerings that don't reflect the latest trends, and expensive sourcing and supply chain costs have brought the retailer to its knees...

• PG&E's credit rating was cut to junk at S&P Global Ratings, sending shares down more than 10% early Tuesday.
• The downgrade came as bad news has piled up for PG&E amid its potential liabilities from last year's California wildfires, the credit-rating agency said.
• On Friday, the utility announced that its board of directors would review the company's management. Meanwhile, a report said PG&E was considering filing for bankruptcy protection...

• Corporate raider Edward Bramson is agitating for more control of Barclays and is maneuvering to change the composition of the company's board of directors.
• The latest gambit by Bramson comes after Barclays rebuffed his effort to become a non-executive director.
• Bramson's hedge fund Sherborne Investors holds a more than 5% in Barclays and has been lobbying for cuts to its investment bank...

• A New York law firm is garnering support for a shareholder lawsuit against Apple.
• That's after the company issued a shock revenue warning on Wednesday.
• Bernstein Liebhard said Apple CEO Tim Cook can't reconcile his November optimism about iPhone sales in China with Wednesday's warning, where he blamed China's slowing economy for poorer-than-expected sales.
• Apple has been ignoring the bigger reality about smartphones, which is that demand is slowing and they have become commoditised...

• Apple told investors on Wednesday to expect revenue from its holiday quarter to be around 8% lower than previously anticipated.
• CEO Tim Cook largely blamed weak iPhone sales, "primarily" in China. The company saw its stock plunge in after-hours trading and when the market opened on Thursday.
• The last time Apple made such a shocking announcement was in 2002, years before the introduction of the iPhone...

• Bristol-Myers Squibb has agreed to acquire Celgene, the drugmakers announced Thursday in a deal valued at $74 billion.
• The deal will pay Celgene shareholders one BMS share and $50 cash for each Celgene share they own.
• The deal combines a massive pharmaceutical company with a biotech giant, both of which have a big presence in cancer drug development...

• Tesla has added two new board members, it said Friday: Larry Ellison and Kathleen Thompson-Wilson.
• The new appointments are part of Tesla's $20 million settlement with US regulators in September.
• Last month, Robyn Denholm replaced CEO Elon Musk as chairman of the board...

• The deadline to submit bids for Sears' business is 28 December.
• Chairman Edward Lampert and his hedge fund ESL Investments outlined a plan earlier this month to buy up the rest of Sears for up to $4.6 billion in cash and stock. However, sources told CNBC that as of Thursday afternoon Lampert had not submitted his bid or rounded up financing.
• These sources also told CNBC that ESL is currently the only party offering to buy Sears as a whole...

• Carlos Ghosn's fall from grace has been dramatic and new allegations means he will likely spend Christmas behind bars.
• The auto executive has spent a month in jail following his initial arrest in Tokyo and is now suspected of passing personal losses onto Nissan.
• Ghosn was rearrested on Friday diminishing his chances of making bail as prosecutors make new allegations...

• Cigna is set to officially close its deal to acquire pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts.
• The deal was announced in March but took some time clearing regulatory hurdles from state insurance agencies as well as the Department of Justice.
• The deal combines a health insurer and a company that helps negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs in the form of rebates on behalf of health plans.

Cigna is about to close on its deal to acquire healthcare giant Express Scripts...

• British pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline will combine its consumer health business into a joint venture with US rival Pfizer to create a medical superpower.
• The deal could forge the largest provider of medicinal products sold directly to the public in the world.
• The move means that GSK will split into two businesses going forward.

Two of the world's largest pharmaceuticals companies are set to merge in a joint venture which could have combined sales of nearly $10 billion...

• Helios and Matheson, the parent company of MoviePass, reached an agreement with its creditors Tuesday to reduce its outstanding debt.
• The move also will eliminate all of its outstanding convertible notes and replace them with non-convertible notes.
• By eliminating its convertible notes, the company freed itself up to sell potentially billions of new shares of stock.
• But the move comes on the same day that the Nasdaq could delist Helios and Matheson's stock...

• Market volatility at the end of 2018 put a pause on the IPO pipeline, but tech investment bankers expect the deals to flow at the turn of the calendar year.
• With a long list of marquee names like Uber and Lyft, IPOs in 2019 could set new records in terms of valuation and exits for Silicon Valley venture capitalists.
• But VCs aren't the only ones set to win. Bankers expect to see private equity firms try their hands at tapping the public markets, as well...

• Helios and Matheson, the parent company of MoviePass, has scheduled another shareholder meeting.
• Unlike a meeting it cancelled last month, this is its standard, annual gathering of shareholders, where investors will get to vote on its director nominees and what it pays executives.
• Even those proposals could prove controversial, considering how much the company's stock has declined this year — as much as 99% from the start of the year...

• Brian Norgard, the former head of product at dating app Tinder, joined the board of directors of  StockTwits, a  Twitter-like site for people interested in talking about finance and stocks.
• Norgard will help StockTwits expand into new areas of financial technology and media.
• He announced his departure from Tinder in November.

A former executive at dating app Tinder is joining the board of directors of a fast-growing financial technology company...