Business News at a Glance

Amazon HQ2 Watchers Say Northern Virginia Checks the Most Boxes

Amazon won’t say a word about where it plans to put its much-hyped second headquarters, but the growing consensus is that the place that checks the most boxes is Northern Virginia. In online betting forums, it has the best odds of landing the project. Analysts at Citi recently said most investors they spoke with also expected HQ2 to end up in the Washington area, noting that Northern Virginia is home to Amazon’s cloud computing division’s “largest and fastest-growing office outside of Seattle." Crystal City, an older office area being revitalized just across the Potomac River from Washington, may offer the best site.

Hedge Fund Manager Running Sears Was Able to Cut His Losses

Edward S. Lampert has spent the last 14 years steering Sears as it spun off businesses, took on debt and, this week, filed for bankruptcy protection. His hedge fund, ESL Investments, appears to have racked up a much more modest loss than the company’s bankruptcy filing would suggest. ESL’s nearly 50 percent stake in Sears will probably be wiped out in bankruptcy. But that loss is offset by gains elsewhere: Lampert has collected hundreds of millions of dollars in interest and fees from Sears. He also took stakes in businesses that were spun off from the company, and some of those investments are doing well.

CBS Has a New Head of Programming

Showtime chief executive David Nevins is getting a piece of Leslie Moonves’ old job at the CBS Corp., the company announced on Thursday. Nevins has been elevated to chief content officer at CBS, a new position that will give him oversight of the network’s programming, CBS Television Studios and the company’s streaming service, CBS All Access. Nevins will report to Joe Ianniello, the acting chief executive of the CBS Corp., who replaced Moonves last month. The company also announced Thursday that Christina Spade, the chief financial officer of Showtime, would fill that job at CBS.

Penguin Random House Merges Two of its Successful Publishing Lines

Penguin Random House, the largest publishing company in the United States, is merging two of its most prestigious publishing lines, Random House and the Crown Publishing Group. The new joint division will be lead by Gina Centrello, currently the president and publisher of Random House. In a memo to employees, Madeline McIntosh, the chief executive of Penguin Random House U.S., said that Crown and Random House “will retain their distinct editorial identities.” The merger comes at a moment when big publishing houses are trying to adapt to the shift toward online retail and marketing.

The Titanic’s Artifacts Are About to Change Hands

Some of the richest people in the world lost everything when the Titanic sank. Now a consortium of new-money risk takers banded together to submit a $19.5 million bid to buy the once-lost treasures of the ocean liner, thwarting a group of British museums backed by the National Geographic Society and James Cameron, who directed the 1997 movie “Titanic.” The museums could muster only $19.2 million and withdrew this month. The new hedge-fund owners — Apollo Global Management, Alta Fundamental Advisers and PacBridge Capital Partners — said they would keep the collection as a tourist draw, but declined to comment further.

Future for Women in Shaping Cars of Tomorrow

Only a handful of colleges and universities offer bachelor’s degrees in automotive design, typically called transportation design and often a subset of industrial design. Women still account for a small percentage of graduates, but their numbers are increasing, the schools say. Over the last seven years, the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, has noted a 25 percent increase in the number of women enrolled in the school’s transportation design programs. Alumnae have gone on to key industry posts. Some believe the natural evolution of automobiles will spur greater demand for female designers.