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Fiat Chrysler boss shakes up global car business

Mary Barra, chief executive of General Motors, received a lengthy and unusual email back in March from one of her direct competitors, Sergio Marchionne.

Ms. Barra had never met Mr. Marchionne, CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. And she was in no way expecting their first contact to be an offer to discuss a potential blockbuster of a merger.

The email, according to two people familiar with it, laid out in detail how global car makers needed to consolidate to save money and suggested that a combination of GM and Fiat Chrysler could cut billions of dollars in costs and create an automotive superpower.

His analysis did not interest Ms. Barra or other GM executives and board members. Instead, Mr. Marchionne’s request for a meeting on the subject was turned down, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

It was a rare rejection for Mr. Marchionne, the mastermind behind the merger between the Italian automaker Fiat and Chrysler, the American car company that required a government bailout to survive the last recession.

Mr. Marchionne, however, is not one to be put off by rejection.

A month later, on April 29, in a routine analyst conference call, he doubled down.

Instead of following the usual script, in which chief executives discuss the current state of their operations, Mr. Marchionne stunned the Wall Street analysts by devoting the entire call to his sudden and intense appeal to automakers to merge.

“I think it is absolutely clear that the amount of capital waste that’s going on in this industry is something that certainly requires remedy,” he said. “A remedy in our view is through consolidation.”

Amazon's sales reporting change could raise tax bill

Amazon, the global online retailer, is changing the way it records sales in a move that could see it paying more tax.

Transactions carried out in European markets were previously recorded in Luxembourg, with which Amazon had a low-tax agreement.

Now sales made through subsidiaries in the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy will be registered in those countries, the retailer has said.

Amazon had received heavy criticism for its tax avoidance policies.

"More than two years ago, we began the process of establishing local country branches of Amazon EU Sarl, our primary retail operating company in Europe," the company said in a statement.

"As of 1 May, Amazon EU Sarl is recording retail sales made to customers through these branches in the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy.

"Previously, these retail sales were recorded in Luxembourg."

Amazon added that it was "working on opening a branch for France".

In recent years, the European Union has intensified its investigations into the tax deals negotiated by global companies with countries such as Ireland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

It suspects that such deals amount to illegal state aid and distort competition.

Last year, the European Commission - the EU's executive arm - launched a formal investigation into Amazon's tax arrangements with Luxembourg.

And the EU is also looking into tech giant Apple's tax dealings in Ireland, coffee-shop chain Starbucks' dealings in the Netherlands, and Italian carmaker Fiat's agreement with Luxembourg.

At least 104 people died due to ignition switch defect.

The failure of the automaker General Motors or GM about ignition switch defect resulted in loss of life of at least 104 people.

The unveiling could make General Motors to pay a record fine in addition to what it is paying to victims and to cover the cost of replacing 2.6 million switches in older model cars.

The Justice Department found General Motors of criminal wrongdoing. Company has accepted the defect and carrying out investigation which can act in company’s favor.

This makes them separate from Toyota, who hid reports of unintended acceleration in vehicles and had to pay $1.2 billion as fine.

In the investigation, it was seen that whether or not GM has intentionally not disclosed the issue.

General Motors said, “We are cooperating fully with all requests, but we are unable to comment on the status of the investigation including timing.”

Mary Barro, GM CEO has repeatedly apologized for the switch defect. She has also brought in independent counsel, Kenneth Feinberg to go through the claims and know who are eligible for compensation.

The number has increased to 104 deaths from 13 deaths and more cases are under review.

The defective switches could easily move from run position to accessory position while the car was being driven.

The change disabled the brakes, power steering and also deactivated the air bags.

GM is cooperating with the inquiry, but its penalty will be considerable seeing the 104 deaths taken place due to the defect.

Last year some of the company employees were dismissed, and former employees were also under investigation and they are chances that they may face criminal chance.

In 2014, GM has sent around $3 billion on recalls and other safety issues and $600 million have been set aside for compensation of victims.

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Forget politics and religion. One of the biggest debates on Wall Street these days is whether oil and energy stocks are toxic or terrific.

In some ways, it looks like a smart move. Oil plunged below $45 a barrel in January. Back then, people couldn't seem to sell energy stocks fast enough. In recent weeks, oil has staged a mini-rally. Now it's trading around $60 a barrel.

That's still far from the glory days of over $100 a barrel that the industry saw as recently as last summer, but for drillers, it's a lot easier to make a profit when oil is back around the $60 mark. Bank of America thinks "the bottom is well behind us."

Stay away from oil?

But there are still plenty of naysayers. Goldman Sachs (GS) just predicted that oil will return to $45 a barrel in the fall. Cheap gas prices should make many Americans happy and help boost the U.S. economy, but they won't aid corporate energy profits.

Prominent investor Jeffrey Gundlach has gone as far as saying that it "makes no sense" to buy oil or energy stocks now.

"Too many people think it's cute to make a distressed play on energy," said Gundlach, founder of DoubleLine Capital, which manages over $63 billion. "Usually the people who buy because they think it's clever end up selling to other people at a lower price."

Valuations are still high

Oil prices may be lower than they were a year ago, but the stocks don't look that cheap, according to research by investment strategist Ed Yardeni.

"The energy earnings outlook still remains pretty dismal compared to a year ago" says Yardeni.

How to play it...safe

Most investors already have exposure to energy because they own mutual funds that invest in many U.S. stocks from different industries. So if energy rebounds, you get a win. And if it plummets again, you are protected somewhat.

If you want to go further than that, you will probably want to do your homework and only buy certain energy stocks (that's what the hedge funds did) or buy a fund that just tracks the crude oil price.

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The president of the European Central Bank reiterated his call on Friday for euro zone countries to reform their economies, warning that future growth would remain modest.

Easy financing should not stop reform, he said.

"It should ... be clear that the argument that accommodative monetary policy constitutes an excuse for governments and parliaments to postpone their reform efforts is incorrect," Mario Draghi said.

In making his appeal, Draghi warned countries that Europe still faced difficult times ahead, despite the boost that the ECB's money printing is giving the economy.

"The economic outlook for the euro area is brighter today than it has been for seven long years," he said, before pointing to high levels of debt in parts of the euro currency bloc and entrenched high unemployment that he said "haunts too many countries".

"A cyclical recovery alone does not solve all of Europe’s problems," Draghi told an audience of central bankers and academics at an event organized by the ECB in Portugal.

"While some of the effects of the crisis on investment and employment are expected to unwind, potential growth is projected to remain well below pre-crisis growth rates," he said.

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Facebook recently launched cross platform video calling in Messenger, offering a new service to their more than 600 million active users. At launch, the service was restricted to just under 20 countries, though not Australia but that’s now changed with users now able to make video calls across Android and iOS.

David Marcus, vice president of messaging products, announced the addition of more countries in a Facebook post today, saying:

“We’re happy to share we’ve now rolled out the capability globally, with the exception of a few countries we’re still working on improving quality for. So make sure you get the latest and greatest version for iOS and Android, give it a try, and as always… tell us how we can make it even better for you!”

Facebook has been building out their Messenger platform of late, introducing ways for companies to add functions through apps plugging into the service. This has perhaps been in response to a bit of backlash that Facebook suffered when they separated the app from the main Facebook app. Adding the ability to video chat with other Facebook users brings Messenger on par with a number of other competing services.

If you’ve not had a chance to try it out, you can install Messenger now and start video chatting right now.

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1. Avoiding work is often the No. 1 priority, even if it means hiding.

2. Getting called in on the weekends = cranky, hungover staff members.

3. Getting hit on at the drive-thru window is an everyday experience, and we laugh at you as you drive up to the next window.

4. Getting teased by your “friends” is also a common experience.

5. Sometimes we actually love the Happy Meal toys… but we would n

ever, ever admit it.

6. We have all tried, and failed, to make a burger that looks like they do in the ad.

7. Breaks are a great time to sit down and ask yourself why you work at McDonald’s.

8. If its 10 minutes before closing and an entire drunk house party turns up, this is literally all of us behind the counter:

9. We have all experienced performance anxiety over creating the perfect soft serve.

10. When the register doesn’t add up at the end of the night, this is what it feels like as you get told off.

11. Yeah, we know we smell like grease. We’re too tired to really do anything about it at the end of the night, though, so we’ll probably just turn up to your house party like this:

12. Literally though that grease doesn’t come off; it has the ability to survive multiple showers with soap.

13. We’d only charge people for sauce if they were rude.

14. Working at a 24-hour store is literal hell.

15. There is a weird divide between McDonald’s workers and McCafé workers.

16. If you bring your kids in to eat multiple times a week, we’re probably judging you out the back.

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Multiple reports from Chinese news site United Daily News (UDN) have claimed that Apple is moving the release of its upcoming iPhone 6S up from September to August.

Apple's new flagship is rumored to be pushed up a month as a result of an excessive component yield. Of course, this would be a pleasant change of pace for Apple loyalists.

According to the reports, Apple has upped the amount of components ordered by a staggering amount, which could indicate the preparation for an early release.

Rumors of a new handset a month early sound enticing, but there are a few things to bear in mind before you say "au revoir" to your current iPhone. For one, there's a distinct possibility that Apple won't have iOS 9, which is expected to be announced at WWDC next month, tweaked to its liking in time for an August release.

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