Business

Billionaires are only getting richer (of course), and 4 other business stories you need to read

We read all the news today so you wouldn't have to. Here are the highlights (and some lowlights) from the business world today.

Posted Updated

By
Allison Morrow
, CNN Business
CNN — We read all the news today so you wouldn't have to. Here are the highlights (and some lowlights) from the business world today.

EVERY SINGLE THING IS BROKEN

Just when we thought 2020 couldn't get much darker, we get a report that really brings it all home.

Over the past three months, as millions of Americans have filed for unemployment, billionaires have been swimming in their ever-growing pool of gold coins à la Scrooge McDuck.

Here's the deal: US billionaires have become $565 billion richer since March 18, according to a report published Thursday by the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank. Total wealth for billionaires now stands at $3.5 trillion, up 19% from the low point near the beginning of the pandemic.

BIG PICTURE: The deep divide between haves and have-nots is widening, and that is only going to fuel the civil unrest that is playing out across the country.

Meanwhile, for the nonbillionaire set, this is what counts as good news lately: Only 1.9 million Americans filed for first-time unemployment benefits last week.

That figure is three times the pre-pandemic record. The silver lining is that it is down for the 10th straight week (from a peak of 7 million).

But brace for some more bad news: The May jobs report is expected to show monthly unemployment is at 20% — the highest on record since 1948.

ZOOM ZOOM

ZoomInfo just went public. No, not that Zoom.

ZoomInfo is a business-to-business database software company that's been around since long before Zoom the video app took over our work-from-home lives. The B2B firm came in hot Thursday: shares nearly doubled as soon as they started trading.

We're assuming investors know the difference between the two companies, but I wouldn't be surprised if ZoomInfo got a little boost from its name twin, which is one of Wall Street's biggest success stories of the year. (And after all, investors lately don't seem too bothered by details, like, say, the pandemic, or the racial injustices that have sparked outrage across the world. You know, hiccups.)

BIG PICTURE: The IPO market chill seems to be thawing. ZoomInfo's IPO came the day after a strong debut by Warner Music Group, the label behind Cardi B and other big stars, on the Nasdaq.

THE MAVERICK CANDIDATE?

It's no secret that Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has flirted with notion of running for president. What billionaire hasn't?

But on Thursday, Cuban revealed that as recently as a few weeks ago, while the rest of us were Instagramming our sourdough loaves and re-learning Spanish, he was talking to a pollster about how he'd fare as an independent running against Trump and Biden.

"I dominated the independent vote," Cuban said in an interview with David Axelrod on The Axe Files podcast. "But in aggregate, I was only able to get up to 25%."

In the end, he said, he couldn't convince his family the odds were worth it. "My family voted it down," Cuban said of a presidential bid. "Otherwise I would have."

DO MORE THAN TWEET

Companies are still figuring out their place in the national conversation about race. Some are making donations. Some are tweeting. The sentiment is nice, but few if any of the big names out there can say they've been so progressive within their own offices.

For many black Americans, the corporate tweets and executive memos ring hollow from companies that too often have overlooked systemic racism in their business practices, writes CNN Business' Chauncey Alcorn. Instead of tweeting, Chauncey says, here are five things businesses can do instead.

And for consumers looking for ways to support black businesses, we've pulled together some resources here.

TENSION IN HONG KONG

Today is June 4, aka May 35th — one of the many covert names created to evade Chinese censors when discussing what the rest of the world recognizes as the Tiananmen Square massacre. So there's a painful irony in the news that HSBC and Standard Chartered — two British lenders that are pillars of Hong Kong's banking system — have publicly backed China's move to tighten its grip on the semi-autonomous city.

Neither bank can afford to run afoul of Chinese leadership, given how much of their business hinges on operating in Hong Kong and mainland China. But the timing of the announcement, on the eve of the Tiananmen anniversary, was a slap in the face to those in Hong Kong who fear Beijing is using the security law as leverage over foreign businesses.

"It is a colossal misjudgment because you cannot as a British company the size of HSBC be seen to be advocating for what is a fairly flagrant breach of international law in a rules-based system," one British lawmaker told Bloomberg News. "This is tactically clever, but strategically stupid..."

IN OTHER NEWS

Warehouse workers are suing Amazon for putting their families at risk of coronavirus. The publisher of The New York Times weighed in after dozens of staffers publicly revolted over an opinion piece in which Republican Sen. Tom Cotton called for the US military to be deployed to cities across the country during the current protests.The European Central Bank is expanding its bond-buying program to combat the region's deepest downturn since the Great Depression.

Copyright 2024 by Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.