The Fortune 500 comes out just once a year, but the companies on it make headlines every day. Here then are today’s highlights of news and happenings coming from the biggest names in business.
By Shelley DuBois, reporter
JPMORGAN COULD INVEST IN TWITTER The bank is thinking about putting some of the money from its $1.2 billion digital growth fund into the microblogging site, which would give JPMorgan (JPM) a minority stake in Twitter. The investment, should it happen, would value Twitter at about $4 billion. [Wall Street Journal]
GOOGLE EXERTS ITS POWER over search, after evaluating if certain sites offered enough useful information to warrant their rankings, and dropping the ones that didn’t. The ranking changes seriously affected several online companies, whose revenue can vary drastically based on how they turn up in Google (GOOG) search. [Wall Street Journal]
VIDEO ON THE INTERNET IS OUR FRIEND says Comcast (CMCSA) CEO Brian Roberts in an interview. That’s despite the fact that online competitors are cutting in on Comcast’s share of viewers’ video consumption. But Roberts insists that internet videos keep Comcast in the broadband business, which is doing well. [Wall Street Journal]
GOLDMAN TO PAY BACK BUFFETT Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA) CEO Warren Buffett said in his annual letter that Goldman Sachs (GS) would probably get approval from the Federal Reserve to pay back the $5 billion that Buffett invested in the bank during the crisis. Goldman has been on the hook for paying Berkshire Hathaway 10% interest on the $5 billion, which is why Buffett also wrote that in his letter that, “the redemptions are nevertheless unwelcome. After they occur, our earning power will be significantly reduced.” [Bloomberg Businessweek]
WE’RE GOING TO MEXICO maybe, 3M (MMM) CEO George Buckley warned, expressing his frustration with President Obama’s efforts to repair relations with big companies, which Buckley still views as inexcusably anti-business. Buckley said that if the U.S. didn’t get more business friendly in a hurry, especially regarding the difficulty of obtaining visas for foreign workers, then shifting operations to Canada or Mexico could seem more and more attractive. [Financial Times]
NO THREAT OF IRREPARABLE HARM to Kraft (KFT), now that its partnership with Starbucks (SBUX) is coming to a tortured end. A federal appeals court ruled that despite Kraft’s claims to the contrary, Starbucks taking control of the distribution of its branded packaged coffee–an operation formally controlled by Kraft–won’t cause any problems that Kraft can’t repair. [Wall Street Journal]
