Warner Bros. Discovery on Wednesday rejected Paramount Skydance’s amended takeover offer, the latest in a series of rejections in David Ellison’s pursuit of the streaming and cable giant.

The media company said it remains committed to the $82.7 billion deal it reached in December to sell its streaming service, studio and HBO cable channel to Netflix.

‘The Board unanimously determined that the Paramount’s latest offer remains inferior to our merger agreement with Netflix across multiple key areas,’ Warner Bros. Discovery Chairman Samuel Di Piazza said in a statement.

‘Paramount’s offer continues to provide insufficient value,’ he continued.

In a letter to shareholders, Di Piazza wrote that Paramount Skydance’s offer carries ‘significant costs, risks and uncertainties as compared to the Netflix merger.’ The way the Paramount deal is structured creates a ‘lack of certainty’ about its finalization, he added.

Di Piazza adds in the letter that if the company were to agree to the Paramount merger and it failed to close, it would result in a ‘potentially considerable value destruction.’

‘What matters most right now is our focus as we start the year,’ Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said in a memo to employees seen by NBC News. ‘Our operating plans remain unchanged, and our priorities for 2026 are clear and intentional.’

Zaslav wrote that the ‘review was conducted with discipline and rigor, and was supported by independent financial and legal advisors.’

On Dec. 22, Paramount Skydance increased its offer for Warner Bros. Discovery with a personal guarantee from billionaire Larry Ellison, who was backing the financing for the deal. His son, David Ellison, is the CEO of Paramount Skydance.

However, that was not enough for Warner Bros. Discovery. That beefed-up offer followed Warner Bros. Discovery’s Dec. 17 public rejection of Paramount. It also preceded multiple private rejections before Paramount Skydance went public.

In a statement Thursday, Paramount said it remained committed to the offer that WBD has rejected twice. “WBD continues to raise issues in Paramount’s offer that we have already addressed, including flexibility in interim operations,” Paramount said.

At stake is the future of one of the most storied media empires in the United States.

The bidding by Paramount also comes amid a monumental shift in the media and streaming landscape at large. On Monday, Versant Media, the cable network spinoff from Comcast, began trading as an independent company. Shares have plunged more than 20% over the course of those two days. (Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and NBC News.)

On CNBC, Di Piazza said it would be a mistake to compare Warner Bros. Discovery‘s cable networks to Versant. ‘Discovery Global is different, it has a lot more scale,’ he said.

Streaming companies such as Apple, Netflix and Amazon are also challenging traditional broadcasters such as Paramount-owned CBS for sports rights.

Warner Bros. Discovery controls properties ranging from CNN Worldwide and the Discovery Channel to HBO, as well as the Warner Bros. film studio and archive.

Despite the back and forth between Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount, Netflix has so far proceeded with the deal it inked Dec. 5, under which the world’s largest streaming company would acquire a stake in WBD.

Warner’s cable networks would be spun out into a separate company as part of that deal. However, Paramount Skydance wants to buy everything Warner Bros. Discovery owns.

Paramount’s controlling shareholders, the Ellisons, have suggested they could obtain regulatory clearance more quickly and easily than Netflix.

In mid-2025, the Ellisons acquired Paramount with approval from the Trump administration. But that approval only came after CBS News agreed to pay $16 million to President Donald Trump’s future presidential library over an interview that “60 Minutes” had conducted with then-presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Netflix, for its part, has met with Trump at the White House over the deal. But Trump has said either bidder poses potential problems, in his view.

Netflix said in a statement that it ‘welcomed the Warner Bros. Discovery board of directors’ continued commitment to the merger agreement’ the two companies reached last year. ‘Netflix and Warner Bros. will bring together highly complementary strengths and a shared passion for storytelling,’ Netflix’s co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said.

Di Piazza said on CNBC that the difference between Paramount’s offer and that of Netflix is that Warner Bros. and Netflix already ‘have a signed merger agreement’ that has ‘a clear path to closing.’ Di Piazza also said the Netflix deal offers ‘protections for our shareholders, if something stops the close, whatever that might be.’

Trump has said he will be personally involved in reviewing whichever merger proceeds.

Paramount did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump Media & Technology will merge with a fusion power company in an all-stock deal that the companies said Thursday is valued at more than $6 billion.

Devin Nunes, the Republican congressman who resigned in 2021 to become the CEO of Trump Media, will be co-CEO of the new company with TAE Technologies CEO Michl Binderbauer.

Shares of Trump Media & Technology, the parent company of President Donald Trump’s Truth Social media platform, have tumbled 70% this year but jumped 20% before the opening bell Thursday.

TAE is a private company and the merger with Trump Media would create one of the first publicly traded nuclear fusion companies.

“We’re taking a big step forward toward a revolutionary technology that will cement America’s global energy dominance for generations,” Nunes said in a prepared statement.

TAE focuses on nuclear fusion, a technology that combines two light atomic nuclei to form a single heavier one. It releases enormous amount of energy, a process that occurs on the sun and other stars, according to the United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency.

TAE and Trump Media shareholders will each own approximately 50% of the combined company.

The companies say the transaction values each TAE common stock at $53.89 per share.

At closing, Trump Media & Technology Group will be the holding company for Truth Social and TAE, along with its subsidiaries TAE Power Solutions and TAE Life Sciences.

Apple’s top artificial intelligence executive is stepping down and will retire in 2026, the company announced Monday.

John Giannandrea had been at Apple since 2018, where his official title was senior vice president for machine learning and AI strategy.

He will be replaced by Amar Subramanya, who comes to Apple after a brief stint as corporate vice president of AI at Microsoft and more than a decade at Google.

Subramanya will report to one of CEO Tim Cook’s deputies, Craig Federighi, rather than to Cook directly, as Giannandrea had.

‘AI has long been central to Apple’s strategy, and we are pleased to welcome Amar to Craig’s leadership team and to bring his extraordinary AI expertise to Apple,’ Cook said Monday.

The abrupt change at a company known for its careful succession planning highlights Apple’s challenge as it tries to compete with top AI developers such as Google, ChatGPT owner OpenAI, Meta and Microsoft.

Earlier this year, Apple delayed the release of an upgraded version of Siri with AI powered features. At the time, it said it was going to ‘take us longer than we thought’ to develop the new version.

The company said it anticipated rolling out new features ‘in the coming year,’ but it has not offered any more specifics.

‘We’re making good progress on it, and, as we’ve shared, we expect to release it next year,’ Cook said on the company’s quarterly earnings call in late October.

“With Apple Intelligence, we’ve introduced dozens of new features that are powerful, intuitive, private and deeply integrated into the things people do every day,” Cook said on the Oct. 30 call

The company is targeting the spring to release the upgraded Siri, Bloomberg News recently reported.

While Apple’s iOS and macOS are integrated with ChatGPT, those features are somewhat limited.

In recent weeks, Apple has reportedly neared deals to integrate with Google’s Gemini, as well as AI models from Perplexity and Anthropic.

Apple’s stock has also felt the effect of what some perceive to be its lagging AI services.

This year, Apple shares have returned 13%, which tops both Amazon and Microsoft. But shares of Oracle have popped 20%, Nvidia has surged 34%, and Google parent company Alphabet has soared 65%.

Still, Apple remains the world’s second-largest publicly traded company, with a market value of $4.2 trillion, behind only Nvidia.

Overall, the S&P 500 has risen almost 16% this year.

Starbucks will pay about $35 million to more than 15,000 New York City workers to settle claims it denied them stable schedules and arbitrarily cut their hours, city officials announced Monday.

The company will also pay $3.4 million in civil penalties under the agreement with the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. It also agrees to comply with the city’s Fair Workweek law going forward.

A company spokeswoman said Starbucks is committed to operating responsibly and in compliance with all applicable local laws and regulations in every market where it does business, but also noted the complexities of the city’s law.

“This (law) is notoriously challenging to manage and this isn’t just a Starbucks issue, nearly every retailer in the city faces these roadblocks,” spokeswoman Jaci Anderson said.

Most of the affected employees who held hourly positions will receive $50 for each week worked from July 2021 through July 2024, the department said. Workers who experienced a violation after that may be eligible for compensation by filing a complaint with the department.

The $38.9 million settlement also guarantees employees laid off during recent store closings in the city will get the chance for reinstatement at other company locations.

The city began investigating in 2022 after receiving dozens of worker complaints against several Starbucks locations, and eventually expanded its investigation to the hundreds of stores in the city. The probe found most Starbucks employees never got regular schedules and the company routinely reduced employees’ hours by more than 15%, making it difficult for staffers to know their regular weekly earnings and plan other commitments, such as child care, education or other jobs.

The company also routinely denied workers the chance to pick up extra shifts, leaving them involuntarily in part-time status, according to the city.

The agreement with New York comes as Starbucks’ union continues a nationwide strike at dozens of locations that began last month. The number of affected stores and the strike’s impact remain in dispute by the two sides.

Tech billionaires Michael and Susan Dell announced Tuesday that they are pledging $6.25 billion to create some 25 million additional ‘Trump Accounts’ for children across the country.

These accounts will be seeded with $250 each, and available for children who missed the eligibility cutoff for the $1,000 federally funded ‘Trump Accounts’ for babies born after Jan. 1, 2025.

Children living in ZIP codes with median incomes below $150,000 will be the first to receive the funds, the White House said.

‘The greatest investment that we could possibly make is in children,’ Susan Dell said alongside President Donald Trump at the White House.

‘It’s really an amazing moment that two people would do that kind of a contribution,’ Trump said.

The president said he was also talking to other wealthy donors and friends to potentially make similar contributions.

Asked how this donation came to be, Michael Dell said: ‘We started talking about Texas only at the beginning. And then we thought about it some more, and we went back and forth, as we do on these things, and this is where we ended up.’

The Dells said they considered making the pledge for a long time. But they said they didn’t want the pledge to be the end of their involvement.

Michael Dell encouraged states to ‘really grow financial literacy’ to help educate families about how the accounts and markets work.

‘These deposits will reach the accounts of most children age 10 and under who were born prior to the qualifying date for the federal newborn contribution,’ the Dells said in a statement issued by their foundation.

‘Children older than 10 may benefit, too, if funds remain available after initial sign-ups,’ the Dell family said. ‘It is an incredibly practical and direct step to help families begin saving today.’

The Dells say they ‘believe this effort will expand opportunity, strengthen communities, and help more children take ownership of their future.’

The Dell family gift “is expected to reach nearly 80% of children age 10 and under across 75% of U.S. zip codes,” according to the nonprofit Invest America.

Children born after Jan. 1 and until Dec. 31, 2028, will receive an account infused with a $1,000 investment from the U.S. Treasury, as part of the recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill.

The accounts will open and begin accepting contributions starting on July 4, 2026. The accounts will initially be held by a financial firm designated by the Treasury Department, but later will be able to be transferred to any brokerage firm.

Those accounts will also be eligible for additional contributions of up to $5,000 per year until the beneficiary child reaches age 18. Withdrawals from the accounts are not permitted until the children reach that age.

Trump accounts can be invested only in low-cost index funds or ETFs that either mirror the S&P 500 or ‘another American stock index,’ according to the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

‘These investment accounts are simple, secure, and structured to grow in value through market returns over time,’ the Dell family said.

‘Trump Accounts represent a potentially valuable tool for building up savings and tapping the power of compound growth for the young,’ Charles Schwab tax planning director Hayden Adams recently wrote.

If a family could contribute and invest the maximum $5,000 per year in the accounts, and with a reasonable growth rate of about 6%, ‘by age 18, the child’s account would hold around $191,000 in assets.’

Once a child turns 18, the accounts are eligible to be converted to a traditional individual retirement account, ‘meaning it could continue to accumulate potential gains on a tax-free basis’ for many years.

The Dells are one of the wealthiest families in America, with a fortune of nearly $150 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires. The family’s primary source of wealth is Dell Technologies, the company founded by Michael Dell in 1984.

In recent years, the value of Dell shares have been fueled by the booming AI revolution, for which Dell is a supplier of servers and other technology.

MILAN — The Prada Group announced Tuesday that it has officially purchased Milan fashion rival Versace in a 1.25 billion euro (nearly $1.4 billion) deal that puts the fashion house known for its sexy silhouettes under the same roof as Prada’s “ugly chic” aesthetic and Miu Miu’s youth-driven appeal.

The highly anticipated deal is expected to relaunch Versace’s fortunes, after middling post-pandemic performance as part of the U.S. luxury group Capri Holdings.

Prada said in a one-line statement that the acquisition had been completed after receiving all regulatory clearances.

Prada heir Lorenzo Bertelli will steer Versace’s next phase as executive chairman, in addition to his roles as group marketing director and sustainability chief.

The son of co-creative director Miuccia Prada and longtime Prada Group chairman Patrizio Bertelli has said he doesn’t expect to make any swift executive changes at Versace. But Bertelli has said that the company, which places among the top 10 most recognized brands in the world, has long been underperforming in the market.

Prada has underlined that the 47-year-old Versace brand offered “significant untapped growth potential.’’

Versace has been in the midst of a creative relaunch under a new designer, Dario Vitale, who previewed his first collection during Milan Fashion Week in September. He had previously been head of design at Miu Miu, but his move to Versace was unrelated to the Prada deal, executives have said.

Capri Holdings, which owns Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo, paid $2 billion for Versace in 2018, but had been struggling to position Versace’s bold profile in the recent era of “quiet luxury.″

Versace represented 20% of Capri Holdings 2024 revenue of 5.2 billion euros. An analyst presentation for the Prada deal said that Versace would represent 13% of the Prada Group’s pro-forma revenues, with Miu Miu coming in at 22% and Prada at 64%. The Prada Group, which also includes Church’s footwear, reported a 17% boost in revenues to 5.4 billion euros last year.

The Prada Group has already begun preparations to incorporate crosstown rival Versace into its Italian manufacturing system, a point of pride for the group.

“Making a bag for one brand or another, the know-how is the same,″ Bertelli told reporters last week at the group’s Scandicci leather goods factory, which already makes bags for the Prada and Miu Miu brands and will soon add Versace.

The Prada Group’s has invested 60 million euros in its supply chain this year, including a new leather goods factory near Siena, a new knitwear factory near Perugia as well as increasing production at its factory Church’s footwear factory in Britain and expanding another Tuscan factory. That’s on top of 200 million euros in investments from 2019-24.

Prada’s efforts include an academy that has trained some 570 new artisans over the last 25 years in an in-house training academy operating in the Tuscany, Marche, Veneto and Umbria regions.

Last year, Prada hired 70% of the 120 artisans who trained in the academy. The number of trainees rose by 28% to 152 this year.

Outages on Shopify’s e-commerce platform have been resolved, the company said late Monday, bringing to an end a daylong glitch on the annual ‘Cyber Monday’ shopping day.

Some merchants that use Shopify’s service to sell goods online said they experienced issues with checkouts through the company’s point-of-sale system.

Businesses that run on Shopify also had trouble logging into their administrative portals.

In a statement, Shopify said: ‘We had a system degradation that has now been mitigated.’

Throughout the day, business owners posted angry messages directed at the company on X, where Shopify President Harvey Finkelstein had posted ‘HAPPY CYBER MONDAY! Let’s finish strong!’ earlier in the day, with an emoji of a flexed arm.

One business, Costack Spices, based in London, replied: ‘How??? [We] cannot fulfill orders or log on,’ with three red-faced emojis. In a follow-up, the company posted, ‘This is unbelievable.’

Another user wrote, ‘@ShopifySupport I haven’t been able to access it for the last couple hours.’

Shopify replied to most users on X with the same message: ‘We are aware of an issue with Admins impacting selected stores, and are working to resolve it.’

In 2024, merchants using Shopify services recorded $11.5 billion in sales from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, the company said, with more than 76 million customers buying from businesses powered by the platform.

Shopify provides website design tools, online checkout services and digital advertising products to businesses of all sizes. The company says that millions of merchants use its services.

While Shopify’s share of Cyber Monday sales may be limited, smaller businesses that rely on the company to process their transactions may have missed out on crucial sales at the start of the all-important holiday season.

Total Cyber Monday sales are expected to be more than $53 billion, according to Salesforce.

Shopify stock ended the trading day down 5.9%.