#acquisition

Capital One's CEO, Richard Fairbank, received $40 million in total compensation for 2025. His unique pay package does not include a traditional cash salary but is instead entirely performance-based, consisting primarily of performance share units and a one-time stock and cash award tied to the company's acquisition of Discover Think they really care about any of these post ! Nope

Hertz sells facility near Mitchell International for $4.5 million

Welcome to the layoff machine.
You are no longer in the security business. You are in the LR business.

To Astrix customers: Palo Alto Networks is in your future.

Let’s face it, without poor leadership here, they wouldn’t be:
} Ridiculous amount of offshoring
} Incompetent leadership, whether onshore or offshore
} People with H1B in Sr Mgmnt roles, bullying and laying off US Citizens

Without the psychopaths in Legal, HR and Leadership roles,
There wouldn’t be:
} Millions spent on nonsense while laying people off on a monthly basis
} Disgusting layoff packages that highly contradict what they put on Sparq
} Terrible unchecked, toxic acquisitions like OI Change Healthcare
} Bullying, harassment and intimidation of employees, former employees and providers who speak up. People are now taking to the media because if this! SAD!!!!
} Protection of several, possibly all bullies in leadership roles.

A federal bankruptcy judge approved the sale of Jasper Rubber Products. Jasper Acquisition Co. LLC purchased the company for $8.03 million. This decision allows for the potential restart of operations at the Dubois County facility. First Brands Group LLC, the parent company, previously shut down operations. The shutdown resulted in roughly 330 layoffs in April.

Jasper, Indiana

https://www.theindianalawyer.com/articles/bankruptcy-judge-approves-8m-sale-of-jasper-rubber-assets

XOM has sold its Australian assets to Woodside. Why would XOM announce the potential acquisition of Woodside when they are minimizing foot print in Australia? 🇦🇺

Is this a co-k block so Shell or BP don’t purchase Woodside?

Who is on to explain the North Sea SALE includes 30% India resources?

On February 15, ExxonMobil announced that the company's Huizhou Daya Bay R&D Center officially started construction in the Huizhou Daya Bay Petrochemical Park.

The Daya Bay R&D Center is ExxonMobil's second R&D center in China after the Shanghai R&D Center. The new Daya Bay R&D Center will focus on R&D activities in the fields of novel chemistry, process development and process scale-up. The center is ExxonMobil's first comprehensive R&D center equipped with pilot equipment outside the North American headquarters. It integrates product R&D and process development. It is planned to be constructed in two phases, and the first phase is scheduled to be opened in 2025.

"The construction of the Daya Bay R&D Center will further meet the growing market and technology needs in the Asia-Pacific region," said Wan Lifan, chairman of ExxonMobil (China) Investment Co., Ltd., and the R&D center will bring dozens of high-level R&D jobs , to introduce high-level chemical talents for the local area, and further strengthen international technical exchanges and cooperation. ExxonMobil has established a good strategic partnership with Guangdong Province, which will provide strong support for Guangdong to build a world-class green petrochemical industrial cluster.

ExxonMobil stated that the company has safely completed the hoisting of large heavy equipment for the Huizhou ethylene project. At present, the construction of the main factory area of the first phase project is progressing smoothly, and the supporting projects and the main factory area are advancing as planned. The start of the Daya Bay R&D Center is another important milestone since the start of construction in 2020.

The ExxonMobil Huizhou Ethylene Project is the first major petrochemical project wholly-owned by an American company in China, with a total investment of over US$10 billion, and will be constructed in two phases. The first phase of the project will build a 1.6 million tons/year ethylene cracking unit, as well as mid-downstream high-end polyethylene, polypropylene and other production equipment and supporting facilities. The production of various high-end chemical products will help reduce the import of high-performance polymers in the Chinese market rely.

ExxonMobil said the Huizhou project will produce chemicals used in packaging, automotive, industrial and consumer goods, and hygiene and personal care products. The project adopts industry-leading technology to improve energy efficiency, which is in line with the development direction of China's national petrochemical industry and will help reduce the Chinese market's dependence on imports of high-performance polymers.

https://www.echemi.com/cms/1231239.html

https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/oreilly-automotive-bids-for-genuine-parts-auto-unit--bloomberg-93CH-4773945

O’Riley buying NAPA Auto.

Shell can’t drill it’s self to prosperity so it’s levers are buy Shell stock, offload marginal production, and try to buy a company with existing production. Shell needs a big move within the next 6 months.

How’s a Woodside and Shell marriage? Certainly satisfy the Asia market while reduced investment in the ME.

How’s Kosmos? Cheap and get instant gas to Europe

Barrette Outdoor Living Inc. laid off 63 workers at its Salisbury manufacturing site. The company cited revenue decline and economic downturn as reasons for the job cuts. Employees and the state received no prior notice of the layoffs. A WARN report was filed on July 1, effective immediately. Barrette Outdoor Living was acquired by Oldcastle APG in 2021.

Salisbury, North Carolina

https://amp.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/article316361814.html

Congo Brands is reducing its workforce. The company will cut 28 positions. These job reductions are at its Louisville headquarters. Business changes were cited as the reason for the layoffs. This action follows Celsius Holdings' acquisition of Alani Nu.

Louisville

https://www.bizjournals.com/louisville/news/2026/07/01/congo-brands-warn-notice.html

Hotel Boulderado workers are organizing to form a union. This effort follows layoffs, reduced hours, and increased workloads. These changes occurred after AJ Capital Partners bought the hotel in March 2025. Approximately two dozen employees have lost their jobs since the acquisition. Workers cite concerns about job security and declining service quality.

Boulder, Colorado

https://boulderreportinglab.org/2026/07/01/hotel-boulderado-workers-launch-union-drive-citing-layoffs-and-cuts-under-new-ownership/

Giant Eagle officially was bought by Krogers for $1.65 billion dollars. I knew back then 10-15 years ago and I had tried warning folks. I think I made a post about it on here back then and was accused of making it up and one person even said it looks like a toddler posted it. When I began seeing Giant Eagle doing a lot of cuts and penny pinching trying to make their books look good, I knew then they were either going out of business or trying to get bought out. Then there was a lot of turnover at their corporate offices and it seemed like corporate didn’t care what went on at their stores anymore too. I knew something was going on.

Apache has been approached by several large public and a Malaysian NOC with the intent to sell or farm down Apache interest in Block 58. Given Apache is varied by TFE until first oil will TFE have first right of refusal?

Stockholders have voted in favor of the acquisition! Let the sh-t show resume and the Rifs continue.

They're spending money on real estate

Just checking in to make sure everyone remembers that media over networks was absolutely the future. It was clearly the defining strategic vision of the decade, and there was never any reason to question whether combining a telecommunications giant like ours with one of the world's largest media businesses would create enormous synergies and long term value for both customers and shareholders.

The Time Warner acquisition was a masterclass in strategic acquisition. The strategy worked flawlessly, shareholder value soared, and the industry has been racing to copy the playbook ever since. It has become the gold standard for how transformational acquisitions should be executed. It demonstrates how 2 large companies can great enormous synergies when they come together. The only thing acquired faster than Time Warner was our confidence.

In addition PE Firm acquiring Wireless Maritime(Cruise Ships)

They buy a company for billions of dollars. They lay off all the experts that grew that company to billions of dollars and in their place put in Verizon cronies that have no clue how to run the newly acquired business. Then they are all surprised when it all fails. Buy the company, keep the experts and cash in. It’s not that hard…

Private Equity apparently putting up decent chunk of cash.

https://www.lightreading.com/network-platforms/bt-unloads-loss-making-international-unit-in-verizon-tie-up

Do we have money for this ?

PNC Bank's acquisition of FirstBank led to widespread customer issues. Former FirstBank customers reported long lines at branches and long phone wait times. Some customers experienced strange problems, including access to other people's bank accounts. One customer found her debit card registered to an old, incorrect address. PNC Bank is investigating these matters and deploying additional customer support resources.

Denver, Colorado

https://www.9news.com/article/money/consumer/steve-on-your-side/former-firstbank-customers-issues-long-waits-pnc-transition/73-59c03a40-a873-46a0-b58b-7ab5e784f42f

Buckle up
https://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-bt-group-international-joint-venture

Optum is in talks with New York health systems to sell some orthopedic, general surgery and urology services.

https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/optum-weighs-sale-new-york-specialty-practices

Lots of murmurs from Oxy HQ as to direction and the possibility of some form of consolidation into the CVX umbrella. Berkshire recommends that this transaction occur before 2026 Midterms so there are no regulatory hiccups.

What do the CVX veterans think about this marriage? Certainly lots of advantages on both the GoA and Permian fronts.

How much of the Devon staff is kept from Past acquisitions? WPX for starters….

Wow! Verizon now has a ton of money to make purchases!!

https://pulse2.com/verizon-wins-nearly-3-2-billion-in-fcc-spectrum-licenses/amp/

It's over for Nokia. Elon is planning to buy T-mobile. There goes Nokia's ONLY major customer in USA. Elon going to buy T-mobile and sell Starlink.

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/musks-starlink-plots-become-mobile-carrier-td-cowen-sees-possible-t-mobile-buyout

Rex Tillerson recently visited LT with a very pessimistic outlook of market and economic prospects. He highlighted that factors leading to a black swan are highly probable. As we all know this will be a perfect opportunity for XOM to grow inorganically and further cement its position as a market leader.
What type of event do you predict?
Last time we were given the COVID crisis this time maybe consequential…nonsense or fortuitous?

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/musks-starlink-plots-become-mobile-carrier-td-cowen-sees-possible-t-mobile-buyout

Read the comments after the article, too.
Lots of interesting info.

Would this result in more layoffs or more hiring?

CompanyCam, a construction tech startup, recently conducted a round of layoffs. Former employees announced the job cuts on LinkedIn. The affected positions were primarily in marketing and multimedia. These layoffs occurred despite the company's recent growth indicators. CompanyCam became Nebraska's first unicorn company and made an acquisition this year.

Lincoln, Nebraska

https://siliconprairienews.com/2026/06/companycam-conducts-round-of-layoffs-amidst-indicators-of-continued-traction/

If you want to know why the company is doing what it is doing, here’s a small lesson in Private Equity and Leveraged Buyouts. Basically, a larger company finds a smaller healthy company that has employees that they are paying well and has invested a lot of money in research and development. They buy that company with debt, fire the workers, disband R&D and offload debt. They then use all the money doing that generates to pay themselves. This has been an ongoing trend the last 20 years and has ramped up in the last 10. This is in turn destroying the working class by making all these companies like zombie versions of themselves.

In the 1970’s when THEY DEREGULATED THE STOCK MARKET AND THE FINANCE INDUSTRY, PRODUCTIVITY DIVERGED FROM WAGES. If we were to bring back the New Deal Reforms from the 50s/60s, we would close the gap of productivity & wages, and it would make normal people wealthier as opposed to bankers and financiers.

There are a lot of murmurs at the C suite about direction of oil & gas and specifically Oxy’s place in that space. Its evident that the Anadarko purchase poorly positioned OXY as a specialist player (Top onshore, EOR and ME partner of choice) and significant energies, focus, and capital deployed to run and maintain the GoA offshore assets. Predicting that once oil stabilizes at $60 ish a barrel some company altering transformations are about to take place…

Perkins & Co has been acquired. CliftonLarsonAllen completed the acquisition. The deal resulted in layoffs. These layoffs affected employees in Portland. The acquisition reflects challenges for independent firms.

Portland, Oregon

https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2026/06/25/perkins-and-co-cla-cliftonlarsonallen-acquisition.html

Hi there, the company I worked for has been bought by Accenture. What can you tell me about Accenture? Is it a good place to work? Flexibility? Overtime? Career plan? Salary? Etc.

I wonder how long more before the market realizes that the current share price is unsustainable and start to drop to $1+ level? The addition of Lexmark will pull Xerox pre-consolidation price of $2 further down for the debt that is being accumulated.

Crypto mergers and acquisitions surged in the first half of 2026. Deal volume reached $9.37 billion, a 26x increase from last year. A Bitcoin market downturn forced many crypto companies to cut staff. Traditional financial firms are acquiring crypto licenses and infrastructure. They prefer buying these assets rather than building them internally.

https://letsdatascience.com/news/wall-street-drives-937b-crypto-ma-amid-layoffs-73c1329d

Layoffs are nothing new at Cisco. I often joke that there are three unavoidable things in life: taxes, death, and Cisco layoffs. But this latest round feels different. I've noticed a significant shift in attitude from the executive leadership team, and it's unsettling.

On one hand, I'm glad the "#WeAreFamily" and "#WeAreCisco" messaging has largely disappeared. Those slogans always felt difficult to reconcile with the reality of recurring layoffs. On the other hand, what has replaced them may be even more troubling. The message now seems to be that layoffs are simply part of life and should be expected. Fran has openly stated that Cisco does not offer job security. Mark's focus appears to be relentless cost-cutting. And Chuck seems willing to support whatever is necessary to keep the stock price moving upward.

What does that create? A company that grows through acquisitions, cuts headcount quickly, and offers fewer opportunities for long-term career development.

Why do I say that? If your skills happen to align with current business priorities, you're probably safe for the moment. But if your expertise is no longer considered strategic, you may find yourself included in the next round of layoffs.

I know Fran often highlights internal mobility as a strength, but in more than ten years at Cisco, I have never personally seen someone targeted for a layoff successfully secure a new role through the standard internal hiring process. I have seen people land other positions, but typically because they had strong networks and someone actively advocated for them. Once your name appears on a layoff list, hiring you can be seen as challenging a decision already made by management and approved by HR. Few people are willing to do that.

Meanwhile, only a limited number of roles seem to be available internally, while acquisitions continually bring in new talent and headcount. Combined with the lack of meaningful internal redeployment, it creates the impression that Cisco would rather acquire or hire externally than invest in helping existing employees develop the skills the company says it needs for the future.

So what are we left with?

For me, it no longer feels like a career. It feels like a gig, just a paycheck until something better comes along.