Tuesday, March 3, 2015

3.3.15

Entertainment:
·         The UK government’s culture secretary Sajid Javad today announced that the co-production treaty between the UK and China has been formally ratified
·         Warner Bros. gets serious about mobile with 5 new games, including Game of Thrones
·         Synacor, which provides TV Everywhere and portal solutions to small-and-medium sized pay-TV operators, has partnered with thePlatform to integrate the latter's mpx video management system
·         Netflix is closing a deal in the vicinity of $12MM for worldwide rights for ‘Beasts of No Nation’
·         Vega Baby, the Singapore-based film production and distribution company, has set up a fund to finance two to three films a year with budgets up to $10MM
·         Broadway ticket sales dropped $4.6MM from the previous frame for the week ending Sunday
·         Oprah’s Chicago-based Harpo Studios will close its doors, with the 26-year-old company's productions transitioning to OWN headquarters in Los Angeles
·         The major American broadcast networks declined to carry live Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress boycotted by many leading Democrats Tuesday
·         Republic Records and independent film and television studio IM Global have announced a multi-picture co-financing and co-production relationship for a series of music-driven titles
·         Warner Bros. has attached Jennifer Lawrence to star in director Steven Spielberg’s “It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War”
·         Younger audiences watch more hours of video on YouTube and other digital outlets than TV — simply because they find it more enjoyable and relevant to their lives, according to a new study
·         Smashd.co, which debuted March 2, is a new online news vertical founded by Troy Carter (Atom Factory) dedicated to uncovering the personalities and trends in “tech, culture and hustle”
·         Improbable has an ambitious plan to help indie game studios make MMOs
·         SXSW will use a mobile app that takes advantage of location-aware Apple iBeacon technology to bring people together
·         Connected TVs surpass Blu-ray disc players in app delivery
Tech:
·         Google says its new wireless service will operate on a much smaller scale than the Verizons and the AT&Ts of the world, providing a new way for relatively few people to make calls, trade texts, and access the good old internet via their smartphones
·         Waze is now included in the section of apps that make up Google Mobile Services, or the pre-installation software bundle Google offers to smartphone and device OEMs building Android gadgets
·         Pebble announced Pebble Time last week, the next-generation version of its Pebble smartwatch, and today it’s revealing another new product: Pebble Time Steel
·         Alibaba Group’s announcement yesterday that it will launch a non-$316MM fund for entrepreneurs in Taiwan was overshadowed by a government investigation into its local operations
·         Tinder’s “Rewind” functionality just went live, finally giving users the ability to go back in time and swipe right instead of left
·         A pair of Twitter vets today launched a handy mobile application called OneShot that makes it easier to share screenshots of text to Twitter, along with your comment and a link to the page in question
·         Twitter has launched an embedding feature for Twitter-hosted videos, letting you put any movies shot using its native video capture and publishing tool on your site
·         NextVR, which is developing technology to capture 3D, broadcast-quality virtual reality, said today that it will be adding "light field" capture technology to its platform
·         Los Angeles-based advertising technology developer Vantage Media said this morning that it has rebranded the company, and has changed its name to Katch, as a new focus on its software platform
Deals:
·         PCH International, the company that designs supply chain solutions for hardware startups, is buying Fab for an undisclosed amount
·         Purch, a network of digital media publications, is acquiring comparison-shopping app Consumr
·         Western Digital said this morning that its subsidiary, HGST, has agreed to acquire object storage software developer Amplidata
·         Springleaf agrees to $4.25B deal for Citigroup’s OneMain
Business:
·         Warren E. Buffett, the billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, has released his annual shareholder letter, and it is unusually critical of the financial industry
·         Barclays said on Tuesday that it fell to a loss in 2014 as its annual results were dragged down by charges related to potential fines and litigation costs for past conduct by its employees
·         Caesars Entertainment's 6.3% rise in fourth quarter was not enough to lift the casino operator out of the red this year, as the company reported a 2014 net loss of $1.01B, compared with a year-earlier loss of $1.76B
·         Best Buy unveiled plans to buy back shares for the first time since 2012 and boosted its dividend by 21%, as the electronics retailer posted better-than-expected profit in its holiday quarter
Exec Moves:
Retail:
Startups:
·         Haltbox is a social & professional networking site that allows members to create connections, search for jobs, and find potential clients
·         Booker, which is a web-based platform enabling businesses to sell their services online, through their website, network of partner sites and apps, raised $35MM in its Series C
Government:
·         Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned the United States on Tuesday against agreeing to a nuclear deal with Iran and working with a country "deeply rooted in militant Islam", saying Tehran "will always be an enemy of America"
·         Australian shares fell back from seven-year highs today after the Reserve Bank of Australia surprised markets by holding interest rates at 2.25% instead of lowering rates for a second consecutive month
·         Hillary Clinton’s exclusive use of a personal e-mail address as secretary of state has sparked alarm even among many of her supporters, but current and former State Department officials are defending the practice as they explain how she used e-mail during her four years in the job
·         Retired four-star general David Petraeus reached a deal with the Department of Justice and plead guilty to one count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified information

Other:

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