• The Department of Justice has formally agreed on a $26 billion merger between telecommunications companies T-Mobile and Sprint, who are currently the third and fourth-largest U.S. wireless providers, respectively. Shares of both T-Mobile and Sprint reached all-time highs following the news.
• Capital One Financial Corp announced that personal information of nearly 100 million U.S. individuals was obtained in a successful hacking attempt. Information obtained includes close to 140,000 Social Security numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers. Shares of Capital One fell four percent following news of the incident, which is expected to cost between $100 million and $150 million to manage.
• The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved a roughly $5 billion settlement with social media company Facebook regarding the company’s privacy scandal with political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. The FTC investigation found that Facebook improperly allowed access to personal data from tens of millions of Facebook users around the time of 2016 U.S. elections. The fine is the largest ever imposed by the FTC on a tech company, beating the previous $22.5 million imposed on Google in 2012.
• American Airlines and United Airlines have extended their grounding periods for the Boeing 737 Max airplane into early November amid concerns that the troubled plane will not be recertified in the near future. Following the October 2018 crash of a 737 Max airplane that killed 157 passengers, Boeing has lost more than $8 billion and seen its shares drop more than 16 percent.
