Category Archives: Finance

Stock markets, and business news plus personal money advice

Facebook to Lay Off 11,000 Employees, Says CEO Zuckerberg

(CNN & Local report) – November 9th, 2022

Facebook parent company Meta on Wednesday said it is laying off 11,000 employees, marking the most significant job cuts in the tech giant’s history.

“Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post to employees. “I’ve decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go.”

The job cuts will impact many corners of the company, but Meta’s recruiting team will be hit particularly hard as “we’re planning to hire fewer people next year,” Zuckerberg said in the post. He added that a hiring freeze would be extended until the first quarter, with few exceptions.

In September, Meta had a headcount of more than 87,000, according to a filing with the SEC in September

Last month, the company posted its second quarterly revenue decline and said that its profit was cut in half from the prior year. Once valued at more than $1 trillion last year, Meta’s market value has since plunged to around $250 billion.

“I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here,” Zuckerberg wrote in his post Wednesday. “I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.”

Shares of Meta rose 5% in extended trading Wednesday morning.

Head to CNN

Demand for Bonds, Crashed Treasury Site

(CNN) The demand to buy US Series I savings bonds this week has been so great that it temporarily crashed the Treasury web site where those bonds are purchased. That could mean some investors’ requests may not be processed in time to lock in the bond’s 9.62% rate by the October 28 deadline.

TreasuryDirect.gov was alerting users to that possibility on Thursday, citing “unprecedented” volumes. “We cannot guarantee that your bond purchase will be completed before this deadline if your account or purchase requires additional customer support for issues such as identity verification.”

Treasury said Thursday it has since fixed the underlying technical issues and has more than doubled the connectivity capacity of the site to allow more customers to successfully set up accounts and purchase bonds. But, a Treasury official noted, there might still be some intermittent issues depending on traffic in the next two days.

More on CNN Business

CNN: Elon Musk Acquires Twitter, Fires CEO

 

Elon Musk has completed his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, a source familiar with the deal told CNN Thursday.

Musk fired CEO Parag Agrawal and two other executives, according to two people familiar with the decision.

The deal’s closing removes a cloud of uncertainty that has hung over Twitter’s business, employees and shareholders for much of the year. After initially agreeing to buy the company in April, Musk spent months attempting to get out of the deal, first citing concerns about the number of bots on the platform and later allegations raised by a company whistleblower.

Head to CNN Business