At The Motley Fool, we know our readers like to be informed. We've scouted out today's most relevant news items and brought them to you all on one page. We hope you find this midday edition informative and useful.
UBS left in the dark
UBS (NYSE: UBS ) chief executive Oswald Gruebel resigned Saturday morning, leaving the already-struggling bank in an even more difficult situation. UBS now has the challenge of revamping its investment banking and finding a permanent CEO. Gruebel leaves the bank amid a scandal of illegal trades that resulted in large losses. Since his arrival in February 2009, Gruebel helped the bank recover from the losses of the financial crisis, which amounted to $21.8 billion in 2008. He also resolved a tax-evasion scandal and stemmed the outflow of wealthy investors from UBS's private bank.
The board appointed Sergio Ermotti, head of the European business, as the interim CEO. Ermotti will be the bank's third CEO in four years. Ermotti, who has been at the bank for only five months, is faced with the task of restructuring the investment bank, which has been struggling since before the trading scandal. Read more at The Wall Street Journal.
Netflix secures DreamWorks
Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX ) struck a deal with filmmaker DreamWorks (Nasdaq: DWA ) that's worth an estimated $30 million per movie for the movie studio over an unspecified period of time. The deal is seen as a game-changing move that will allow consumers to shift to the Internet for movies. Netflix's chief content director said the power is moving back to the content creators as DreamWorks ends a long-running pay-TV deal.
The deal comes during a hard time for the video-streaming company after it enraged costumers with an unexpected price increase and the separation of its two businesses. Netflix is also expected to lose content from Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS ) and Sony (NYSE: SNE ) after failing to renegotiate a deal with the Starz. Read more at The New York Times.
Amazon poses a threat to Apple
Analysts are confident that Amazon.com's (Nasdaq: AMZN ) new tablet will take a significant market share from Apple's iPad. Apple has sold around 29 million iPads since its 2009 release. The creator of the game-changing Kindle hasn't given any details about what the product will look like, but analysts expect it to be priced very low, like many of Amazon's products. The blog TechCrunch has reported that it will be a 7-inch tablet with a full color touchscreen that would run on the Google's Android system. The new device is expected to be named Kindle as well. Read more at Reuters.
Clorox's rough day
Clorox's (NYSE: CLX ) stock price declined in the hours before trading after activist investor Carl Icahn withdrew a slate of directors for the company and said shareholders would not support his plan for a sale. The company's shares fell sharply this morning and was down more than 4% at market close.
Company shareholders were reluctant to sell in a difficult financial environment and rejected a variety of Icahn's offers, the largest being for $10.7 billion, or $80 per share. Icahn had also mentioned Procter & Gamble and Kimberly-Clark as potential buyers. The company said the list of candidates has been withdrawn and that it feels confident that its own strategy will bring value to the company. Read more at Bloomberg.
So there you have it -- the top financial stories for this afternoon. If you are interested in getting all the news and commentary on these stocks sign up for My Watchlist -- it's free!
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