Uber Technologies can shift into dealmaking gear. The $150 billion ride-sharing firm’s stock is richly priced, even after dipping 9% on slower booking growth revealed Thursday. That gives Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi a valuable currency to spend – say, on a mooted approach for flight-booking portal Expedia. Thing is, there are better targets, like grocery-delivery app Instacart. Uber has kicked the tires on $21 billion Expedia, the Financial Times reported, though Khosrowshahi now says his company would likely stick with the small and familiar on M&A. Despite protestations, the appeal of striking big deals now is obvious. Uber’s nearly 69% stock rise in

High-end cruise line Viking is riding a grey wave. The California-based firm has filed to go public in New York, at a potential price of $10.8 billion, higher in relative valuation terms than its much larger peers Carnival and Royal Caribbean. In its favor is a reliance on older, richer customers. That is fuel for rapid growth, though investors will be subject to the whims of the fortunate few, in more ways than one. Viking is not shy about targeting a fairly narrow demographic for its fleet of nearly 100 boats. CEO Torstein Hagen, who also founded the company almost three decades

No man is an island, but General Electric boss Larry Culp might wish he were. The industrial firm he runs was buffeted in the second quarter by inflation, war, supply-chain problems and politics. While earnings tripled year-on-year, much of the business is still shrinking, and Culp is likely to miss a key cash-flow target for this year. The consolation is that if it weren’t for his tireless tinkering, things would be worse. GE is preparing to split into three listed businesses starting next year, and their prospects couldn’t be more different. Revenue from the division that makes and services jet engines increased by 27%

A former Uber Technologies rival is flagging down a new business model. Gett once aimed to challenge the $84 billion giant in the ride-hailing market. Now the British-Israeli company, which said on Wednesday it’s going public via a merger with a U.S. special-purpose acquisition company, is betting companies will control taxi spending in the same way that they monitor airline and hotel expenses. Founded in 2010 by Dave Waiser, Gett has had a bumpy ride. Back in 2016 it was valued at $1.4 billion in a funding round backed by investors including car giant Volkswagen. Now it aims to combine ride-hailing and

Two railway operators have set out for the same destination, but with different chances of reaching it. Canadian Pacific Railway and Canadian National Railway both want to buy U.S. rival Kansas City Southern. After Canadian Pacific’s $27 billion revised effort on Tuesday, the two have made offers that, boiled down, aren’t much different. Canadian Pacific’s currently looks more likely to happen, though, which gives it the edge. Both bidders covet an unbroken route from Canada to Mexico, traversing the United States. That should, each believes, entice a greater share of freight from road to rail. Kansas City agreed in March

Washington and Beijing are taking turns hitting China’s U.S.-listed companies. Didi Global’s shares fell more than 20% on Tuesday after app stores in the People’s Republic had to delete it, following a Chinese regulator’s crackdown. Frothy markets may make investors overly optimistic. But it’s perilous to ignore both governments as they signal more curbs. Investors are lapping up Chinese technology companies going public on U.S. exchanges. Last week, Didi’s shares rose 20% from its initial public offering price. Companies in the People’s Republic listing in the United States are already expected to rake in more than the $12 billion raised

Wall Street’s professionals are always likely to look down on amateurs. That’s even true when the retail-investing crowd gets something right, if it’s for the wrong reasons. So it is with car-rental outfit Hertz Global. Traders using Robinhood Markets went head-to-head with billionaire investors over Hertz’s bankruptcy. Their enthusiasm kept the stock price alive even as shareholders seemed likely to get essentially nothing once creditors had taken their due. They turned out to be right, this time, but they were lucky. The car-rental firm filed for Chapter 11 protection last May with some $19 billion in debt. At the time

Who said big deals have to be bad for consumers? Recently proposed U.S. railroad mergers have put the pros and cons of consolidation into the regulatory spotlight after a two-decade pause. One worry is that reduced competition can cause prices to skyrocket. In reality, that hasn’t happened. The last mergers of so-called Class 1 railroads were in the 1990s, like the one between Burlington Northern Railroad and Santa Fe Pacific. After watchdogs cracked down, they stopped – until March this year, when Kansas City Southern became the target of a bidding war between two Canadian operators. The timing coincides with

Silicon Valley investor Altimeter Capital has sketched a handy roadmap for speeding hot Asian technology companies to overseas public markets. Southeast Asian ride-hailing-to-delivery-to-payments group Grab is listing in New York via a combination with a blank-cheque firm. It’s the largest so-called SPAC merger, with a structure that cushions the SoftBank-backed company’s amped-up $39.6 billion equity valuation. Bankers have been scratching their heads over ways to introduce U.S. investors to fast-growing companies from a relatively unknown region. One approach is to assign conservative growth forecasts and valuations. That’s what RMG Acquisition Corp II, led by Riverside Management’s Jim Carpenter, did in

Travis Kalanick is leaving Uber Technologies without a clear path to profit. The ride-hailing app’s co-founder and former chief executive is leaving the board after being sidelined and selling most of his shares, worth more than $2.5 billion. The $53 billion firm has also moved on from his tumultuous leadership that major investors brought to an end two and a half years ago. But his successor has yet to work out how to make money. Kalanick has been playing a marginal role at the company for a while. He stepped down as chief executive in 2017 after an outcry over

The Russell 1000’s transportation industry group is expected to see 19Q3 net income increase 4.5% from the prior year. Within the group the largest drag is the trucking sub-industry, which is expected to decline 55.2%. Ride sharing giants, and sub-industry constituents, Uber Technologies Inc (UBER.N) and Lyft Inc (LYFT.O) both beat net income expectations, but saw year-on-year (YoY) net income declines of 17.8% and 86% respectively. Analysts anticipate that Lyft will be the first to reach positive YoY net income in the first quarter of 2020.

There’s logic to a Volkswagen-Tesla alliance. But cooperation will only become likely if things get a lot worse for Elon Musk’s $40 billion electric-car maker. Tesla’s shares jumped almost 2% as the stock market opened on Thursday after a report that VW Chief Executive Herbert Diess is interested in acquiring at least a stake in Musk’s company. “Diess would go in right away if he could,” said one of his top managers, according to Manager Magazin. VW denied the report, mostly erasing Tesla’s gains. It’s easy to see why the $80 billion behemoth would be interested. Electric batteries will be