Financial Daily Dose 11.30.2020 | Top Story: Salesforce in Talks to Buy Slack Technologies

Bay area business software powerhouse Salesforce is “in advanced talks to buy Slack Technologies,” the “buzzy newcomer on a mission to replace office email.” A deal could be announced as early as tomorrow, and it would mark Salesforces’ biggest-ever acquisition (as Slack has a market value of over $17 billion) - WSJ and Bloomberg

Venture capitalist, longtime Zappos CEO  and visionary, and Las Vegas booster Tony Hsieh passed away over the weekend at just 46. Hsieh, a “soft-spoken and introspective executive, developed a philosophy of business built around the idea that happy employees were the conduit to satisfied customers who would return again and again” - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch and TechCrunch

Ratings giant S&P Global has agreed to join forces with IHS Markit in a deal worth north of $40 billion that brings together two of the biggest providers of financial data in the world. S&P chief Douglas Peterson will lead the combined venture - PRNewswire and Bloomberg and NYTimes and WSJ and MarketWatch

A spate of documents that dropped last week in federal bankruptcy court in NYC showed that powerhouse consultant McKinsey & Company played an outsized role in “driving sales” of Purdue Pharma’s addictive painkiller OxyContin “even as public outrage grew over widespread overdoses” - NYTimes

Streetwise asks us to look past those vaccine-obsessed stocks and focus on the Treasurys market to suss out exactly how the economic recovery from Covid is going. While junk bonds have joined stocks in rallying hard over the past month, Treasury yields are staying stubbornly low. Here a few reasons why - WSJ

The pandemic has propelled Amazon to engage in “an extraordinary hiring binge this year, vacuuming up an average of 1,400 new workers a day and solidifying its power as online shopping becomes more entrenched in the coronavirus pandemic.” Big picture? That means an additional 427,300 workers just between January and October 2020 and workforce of more than 1.2 million globally for Bezos & Co. - NYTimes

TikTok has got itself another week in which to “complete a sale of its popular video-sharing app in order to resolve U.S. national security concerns.” December 4 is the new D-Day for the company - Bloomberg

The always-tenuous Russia/OPEC alliance appears to be “leaning toward extending oil production cuts for another two to three months” in hopes that the effort “will keep markets tight even as prices start to recover from Covid-19 inspired lows earlier this year” - WSJ and Marketplace and Bloomberg

A notable dark cloud over Elon Musk’s banner 2020 is the long-delayed Semi project, through which Musk hopes to deliver a viable electric semi-trailer vehicle to a risk-averse industry that’s already wary of Musk’s promises - WSJ

Among the hottest (and scarcest) commodities for many businesses in this Covid winter: the “humble space heater,” as the quest for continued outdoor dining and gathering pushes into the cold - NYTimes

Well, hygge, it’s been a good run. But the Swedes and their concept of Mys are the aspirational feeling of choice this winter. Here’s all you need to know  - NYTimes

Stay safe,
MDR