Stocks’ Record Month | Salesforce’s Push For Slack | End Of A Retail Empire

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Good morning.

The pandemic claims one of its most significant business casualties in the form of a billionaire’s retail empire. We also look at how November represented a record-breaking month for stock markets and at Salesforce’s bid to acquire Slack.

In The News Today

A Covid-19 testing site at Los Angeles’ Union Station that was set to close on December 1 for the filming of the movie He’s All That will remain open following public outcry.

Every American who wishes to be vaccinated against coronavirus will be able to be as soon as summer 2021, according to Lt. Gen. Paul Ostrowski of U.S. vaccine accelerator Operation Warp Speed. 

Top Take-Aways

November was a great month for stock markets—not just in Europe, but in the U.S. too, with Dow scoring its best monthly showing since January 1987, and the S&P 500 posting its best November ever.

With just two weeks to spare before a government shutdown deadline on December 11, a new coronavirus relief bill—or, at the very least, an omnibus spending package—remains at the top of the Senate and House of Representatives’ to-do list.

After a weekend of speculation that British billionaire Sir Philip Green’s companies were on the brink of collapse, his retail empire Arcadia group—including its flagship store Topshop—filed for bankruptcy, putting 13,000 jobs on the line.

The billionaire CEO of Dick’s Sporting Goods, Edward Stack, announced he will step down next year, ending a 37-year run in which he built the company from two small stores he and his siblings bought from their father into an 850-store chain.

Salesforce is reportedly expected to announce the acquisition of Slack, the workplace instant messaging startup, after market close Tuesday. It would be the software company’s largest acquisition to date, allowing it to compete with Microsoft’s collaboration business.

DoorDash is going public, and if all goes according to plan, its CEO, Tony Xu, and two other cofounders will all become billionaires, with the proposed IPO pricing valuing the business at between $23 billion and $32 billion.

Vista Equity Partners has acquired a majority stake of Gainsight in a deal that values the San Francisco-based company at $1.1 billion. Despite such solid outcome, the deal still falls flat of what some insiders and supporters would have hoped for the company.

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