While the Delta variant threatens Disney’s big theme park reopenings (and its recent return to profit in that sector after a year in the red), Big Mouse’s streaming service continues to deliver. Disney+ wrapped its fiscal Q3 with more than 116 million subscribers worldwide, exceeding analysts’ expectations - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch
German shoe and apparel giant Adidas is selling the Reebok brand to Authentic Brands as part of a $2.5 billion deal, a haircut for Adidas, which bought the company for $4 billion 16 years ago. Reebok joins a “stable” of “struggling brands,” including Brooks Brothers and Forever 21 - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg
The Journal explores how 36-year-old outside Ryan Cohen managed to take over “America’s most talked-about company”—GameStop—in a matter of months thanks to “little more than a minority stake and a sharp tongue.” Cohen, co-founder of online pet store Chewy Inc., now sits as GameStop chair and is charged with the daunting task of “revamp[ing]” the company’s business—“if only to justify the stock’s remarkable run” - WSJ
The latest funding round for Reddit—the “virtual town square of the consumer internet”—netted the company another $410 million and valued it at more than $10 billion, up a staggering $4 billion in just the past 6 months. Fidelity Investments took the lead on the latest funding round - NYTimes and WSJ
“Robust demand” has propelled home prices to new heights “in nearly every corner of the U.S.,” as basic supply-and-demand economics benefit sellers. Though “the homebuying frenzy” has slowed “in recent months, home-price growth has yet to cool” - WSJ
UK regulators are pushing back on Facebook’s planned acquisition of gif-provider Giphy (announced last year), thanks to provisional findings that “the deal would harm competition between social-media platforms and tin the display advertising market” - WSJ and Law360
Coincidentally, that news came as FTC Chair Lina Khan laid out her position across the Atlantic on Thursday that antitrust enforcers—like the agency she heads—should “more frequently move to block mergers that threaten competition rather than relying on traditional remedies to fix deals and then approve them.” In particular, Khan raised concerns with both behavioral remedies and asset divestitures, calling them potentially “inadequate” - Bloomberg
A new WSJ analysis of firms that audit private entities shows disturbing lack of scrutiny in the industry itself, with firms “essentially polic[ing] each other, often with no public disclosure” and regularly giving “top grades to one another.” While early-2000s accounting scandals led to government oversight of public company audits, there’s no similar requirement for private entities, creating “a big hole” in the system that’s likely a disaster just waiting to happen - WSJ
As I recent visitor to the paint aisle myself, let me confirm for you that the struggle to select the seemingly most basic of paint colors is real. Uncomfortably real - WSJ
Stay safe, get vaxxed, and have a great weekend,
MDR
