Suspicious options trading in Equifax following its massive data breach has drawn scrutiny from the Feds. Reuters / Brendan McDermid

Raise your hand if you've heard this before: There may have been some funny business around the Equifax hack.

In the latest development, the House Financial Services Committee is now looking at some Equifax options trading that took place following the initial discovery of the breach, but before it was disclosed to the public, according to a report from CNBC's Liz Moyer.

The activity in question occurred on August 21, when a block trade for 2,500 units of an Equifax put contract was made at 1:36 p.m. ET, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The puts represented a wager that the company's stock price would drop to $135 by September 15. Equifax closed at $139.89 the previous trading day, so in order for the trade to be profitable, the stock would've had to drop 3.5%.

That happened on September 8, the first day of trading after the hack became public. The stock dropped 14%, closing at $123.23. Assuming the trader, or traders, who made the bet on August 21 haven't yet closed their position and taken profits, their total gain would amount to more than $10 million.

And if the options market is to be believed, traders think Equifax's stock has further to fall. As of last week, they were paying the highest premium since October 2014 to protect against a 10% decline in shares over the next six months, relative to wagers on a 10% gain. While it's come down from those highs, it's still far above its average over the period.

According to the CNBC report, which cited a source familiar with the investigation, the lawyer for the committee has inquired about how out of the ordinary the size of the trade was, where the options switched hands, and what types of traders would've been active at the time.

The investigation isn't the first foray into suspicious Equifax trading following the hack. On September 18, Bloomberg reported that the US Justice Department was investigating whether top company officials violated insider-trading laws when they sold Equifax shares before the company disclosed the hack.

The report said that Equifax's chief financial officer, John Gamble; president of US information solutions, Joseph Loughran; and president of workforce solutions, Rodolfo Ploder, were those under scrutiny. The three senior executives dumped almost $2 million worth of stock days after the company learned of the breach, Securities and Exchange Commission filings show. An emailed statement from the credit-monitoring agency said the executives "had no knowledge" of the breach beforehand.

As these latest developments show, authorities are still sifting through the wreckage of the hack for signs of wrongdoing. And if the past week has been any indication, there could be more to come.

Markets Insider

Original author: Joe Ciolli

Google has signed a $1.1 billion cooperation agreement with HTC, the technology company said in a statement on Thursday, after trading of HTC shares were halted on Taiwan's stock exchange before the announcement.

The move, first rumored earlier this month and then re-emerged this week, is the search giant's latest attempt to juice up its growing hardware division.

Google hardware exec Rick Osterloh said in a statement: "With this agreement, a team of HTC talent will join Google as part of the hardware organization."

"These future fellow Googlers are amazing folks we’ve already been working with closely on the Pixel smartphone line," Osterloh said, adding that the deal includes a non-exclusive license for HTC intellectual property.

This isn't the first time Google's took a stake in a smartphone manufacturer, and it isn't clear why it will be successful this time round.

In 2011, Google bought Motorola in a $12.5 billion deal, only to resell it to Lenovo for $2.91 billion three years later (Google had sold off other parts of Motorola earlier).

At the time, Google said it deemed the overall operation to be a "success," as it retained Motorola's most valuable asset, its patent portfolio.

Lately, Google has shown signs of taking an Apple-like strategy towards its products. With its new devices, it's taking care of both Android, the software, as well as the hardware.

In April 2016, the search giant hired Rick Osterloh, ex-Motorola chief operating officer, as its first ever hardware czar, and formally put together a hardware team under his leadership.

That resulted in the first-ever solely-Google-branded phone, the Pixel (as well as the larger Pixel XL), and also the Daydream View virtual reality headset. Earlier this year, the Google Home smart speaker followed.

What's more, is that Google is rumoured to be entering the chip-manufacturing space, to compete even better with deeply integrated systems like Apple's iPhone without having to rely on third party companies like Qualcomm.

When the first batch of made-by-Google devices was unveiled, Osterloh said that hardware was an important component of the tech titan's business, and that they would be in it "for the long run." The acquisition of HTC looks like further proof of this commitment.

Notably, HTC also acted as the "ghost" manufacturer for both Pixel handsets last year, and is tipped to be once again as the company behind the forthcoming "Pixel 2" (with LG reportedly taking care of the larger, higher-end "Pixel 2 XL" instead).

In addition to a refreshed phone lineup, a new Pixel-branded Chromebook is also expected to make its debut at Google's dedicated event, taking place on October 4.

Get the latest Google stock price here.

Original author: Edoardo Maggio

Original author: Julie Bort and Biz Carson

A bull's-eye touched down on the island of Dominica on Monday evening. As of Wednesday at 7 p.m. PT, that eye has re-emerged — this time between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

So far, Hurricane Maria's devastation has been severe. In Dominica, it tore roofs from homes; picked up and scattered trees like matches; and choked streets with floods. In Puerto Rico, it brought similar destruction and has left the island completely without power.

Even before the storm made landfall on Monday, meterologists saw something at the center of the storm that portended evil.

"Maria is developing the dreaded pinhole eye," the National Hurricane Center posted.

On Wednesday evening, that eye reappeared.

That tiny circle in the center of the storm can be a sign that a hurricane will wreak havoc. In general, the smaller the eye, the faster the hurricane will spin — and the faster the spin, the stronger the storm.

It all comes down to energy conservation, Ryan Maue, a research meteorologist and adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, told Business Insider. Just as figure skaters appear to give themselves an extra boost of momentum by tucking in a leg or an arm, a hurricane with a tighter inner eye is likely to spin faster.

Hurricanes have three essential elements that can be traced from the inside out.

Business Insider / Mike Nudelman

At the center is the eye, an eerily peaceful region that's generally between 12 and 30 miles in diameter.

Circling the eye is what's known as the hurricane's eyewall, a ring of dense, towering vertical clouds that swirl around the eye. The heaviest rains and strongest winds are found inside the eyewall.

The outermost region is characterized by what is known as spiral rainbands, heavy showers that trace an inward spiral toward the storm's center.

At 6 p.m. ET on Monday, Maria's pinhole eye measured roughly 10 miles in diameter, according to The Associated Press. That suggested danger to the thousands of meteorologists watching it from around the world.

However, an eye with a 10-mile diameter is still more than four times as large as that of 2005's Hurricane Wilma, which set a record for the lowest central pressure of any hurricane, at peak strength. (The stronger a storm, the lower the central pressure.)

Maria's 160-mph winds still proved devastating for Dominica, and by the time they reached Puerto Rico, they'd ramped up to 175-mph.

By Wednesday, the storm had damaged "everything in its path," in Puerto Rico according to reports.

Maria is now headed toward the Dominican Republic, but Puerto Rico continues to experience "catastrophic" flooding from rainfall and storm surge as of Wednesday night, the NHC reported.

Hurricane warnings are in effect for the Dominican Republic, where conditions are "now deteriorating," according to the NHC, along with Puerto Rico, Culebra, Turks and Caicos, and the southeastern Bahamas.

Original author: Erin Brodwin

When it comes to requesting data on Twitter users, the US remains the leader among governments around the world. But other countries are quickly catching up.

According to the latest transparency report from Twitter, information requests by the US fell to 2,111 in the first half of this year. That was down 8% from the second half of 2016. Even with that drop, other countries still trail far behind, as we can tell from the chart from Statista, which is based on Twitter's data.

But if you'd looked at a chart of the data from the previous reporting period, the US would have had an even bigger lead. The number of information requests coming from Japan jumped 42% from the second half of 2016 to the first half of this year. India made 55% more requests in the most recent period, compared with the one immediately prior, and South Korea 63% more.

Just because a country makes a request doesn't mean Twitter hands over the information. In its report, Twitter said it pushes back against such requests whenever possible. Before handing over user data, it considers the nature of the crime, whether government followed the correct legal processes in making their requests, and the kind of information government are requesting. While the company granted the vast majority of requests coming from the United States so far this year, it denied all of the ones Turkey's made.

Mike Nudelman/Business Insider

 

 

 

 

 

 

Original author: Caroline Cakebread

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Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Sen. Mark Warner. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

There are likely "a lot more" fake Facebook accounts affiliated with Russia than what the company has so far disclosed, the vice chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner, said on Wednesday.

Warner, who is helping lead the committee's investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election, told CNN's Jake Tapper that the 470 fake accounts Facebook identified as having ties to Russia "doesn't pass the smell test."

He pointed to Facebook's removal of 30,000 fake accounts ahead of France's presidential election earlier this year as evidence that there were likely more than only 470 fake accounts used by Russia during the US election last year.

“To me that just doesn’t pass the smell test in terms of that number of accounts affiliated with Russia," he said. "I think there’s a lot more.”

Facebook disclosed earlier this month that $100,000 worth of ads were purchased on its platform by Russian-affiliated accounts during the months surrounding the US presidential election. The revelation has prompted investigators to call on Facebook and Twitter to testify in a public hearing on Russia's use of social media to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Warner said that the number of "dummy" accounts affiliated with Russia was “more significant” than the purchased ads because the accounts were used to "drive" the sharing of fake news stories and even organize real-world rallies opposing Hillary Clinton. He had previously said that Facebook's disclosure of Russian ads was just the "tip of the iceberg."

“The level of sophistication of some of this effort on the social media side and the level of targeting really leaves me with a lot of questions and questions we’re going to want Facebook to answer in public," Warner said Wednesday.

While a date for the hearing hasn't been set, Warner told CNN that Twitter would brief his committee privately on its findings next week.

A Facebook spokesperson said the company continues "to cooperate with the relevant investigative authorities." Twitter didn't respond to a request for comment.

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Original author: Alex Heath

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Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos REUTERS/Rick Wilking

An investment bank's report that Amazon is tip-toeing around the pharmacy space sent Wall Street scrambling to understand CEO Jeff Bezos' next move.

Analysts at Leerink Partners wrote that Amazon may be in discussions with mid-sized pharmacy benefit managers "in an effort to get into various contract arrangements."

Pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) act as the gatekeeper between whoever is paying for your drug (Medicare, your insurer etc.) and whoever is selling the drug to you.

They manage lists called formularies that determine which drugs you can and cannot have. The companies first popped up in the 1960s to help insurers handle mountains of paperwork. Now PBMs navigate the expensive, opaque system that is American healthcare. About 80% of the market is controlled by the biggest three PBMs, Express Scripts, CVS Health and UnitedHealth Group.

"Our specialists indicated that Amazon may be speaking with mid-sized PBMs now in an effort to get into the pharmacy services space," said the Leerink report. "It may take ~24 months to get licensed in 50 states, but our specialists believe that this is the direction Amazon is moving in."

If you had your druthers

Andrew Miller, Vice President of Operations at of Detroit-based PBM Meridian Rx, doesn't think that necessarily has to take that much time for Amazon to enter the space.

"If I were Amazon... I'd be looking to buy a small mail order facility. Amazon's strength is obviously the distribution so if you bought a small mail order licensed in 50 states it would be plug and play," he said. "I think they're looking for an adjudication system, and I think they're looking for a network of pharmacies."

In its report, Leerink seems to imply that Amazon is talking about partnering up with a PBM once it has a pharmacy business. That's because the pharmaceutical business requires more than just your regular logistics company. You need to know how to navigate the healthcare system.

Leerink highlighted that in its report, addressing concerns that Amazon's entrance into the field would hit distributors the hardest.

From the report [emphasis ours]:

Throughout the trip, investors were very persistent in asking about the impact of Amazon. CAH [Cardinal Health] highlighted that the biggest risk could be home delivery of medical products, but the issue here is that medical billing is very complicated.

If a member wants a product delivered to his or her home, and if they want that product covered by his or her insurance, then making sure that the claim is sent to the plan in a proper format is critical. It is unclear to us, as of now, how Amazon would manage through this challenge. 

A PBM could help with that. And maybe not just partnering with one. If you're Amazon not just buy a PBM and not have to deal with another party at all? If there's anything PBMs get knocked for, it's their lack of transparency. Critics accuse PBMs of having their hand in every part of the distribution chain — of taking rebates from drug companies in exchange for a good spot on formularies, for example.

So why would a giant like Amazon want to bother with all that?

Rumors and speculation

Miller told Business Insider that about 3 weeks ago he was contacted by a consultant doing research for an unnamed company with 270,000 employees in the retail space. The consultant said the company employed pharmacists.

"You get weird calls but usually you can figure out who they are pretty quick, this one I haven't been able to figure out." 

This is what the consultant talked to Miller about:

The retailer is looking into buying a small to mid-sized PBM. If the acquisition cost is under a certain price, the purchase wouldn't need board approval. If it's over a certain price, though, the purchase would need board approval. They also discussed the retailer partnering with a PBM.

"To my knowledge, they talked to seven to eight mid-level PBMs and the board was going to meet within the next month [as of 3 weeks ago] to decide its action," Miller said.

We asked Amazon if they were the ones poking around asking these questions, or if it employs pharmacists, and the company said that it simply doesn't respond to rumors and speculation. Amazon is also larger than the company described to Miller. 

So maybe it's not just Amazon poking around. There are a couple other possibilities. Whoever else it is, they want a piece.

Original author: Linette Lopez

Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and the world's richest man, is not usually one to look back. Indeed, his first and most famous book to date was titled "The Road Ahead." 

So it's no surprise that Gates had a philosophical answer when pressed at a Bloomberg event today on whether or not he regrets "control-alt-delete," the infamous two-handed keystroke for logging in to or restarting a Windows PC.

“You can’t go back and change the small things in your life without putting the other things at risk,” Gates said, according to a report in Quartz.

However, Gates does go on to admit that if he could change one thing without affecting linear time too harshly, he would have made it a single button. 

This isn't the first time Gates has made this point, either: Back in 2013, Gates said that he originally intended for "control-alt-delete" to be a single button, but IBM got in the way. Back around 1980, when the two companies were collaborating on the original IBM PC, Microsoft couldn't get IBM to spare a dedicated button on the keyboard.

This is something that IBM PC co-creator David Bradley once copped to, during a panel discussion at a media event. 

"I may have invented it, but Bill made it famous," Bradley said — leaving Gates, also sitting on the stage, looking somewhere between bemused and annoyed. 

You can watch that moment here:

For all the second-thoughts about it, control-alt-delete has stuck around: It's still in current versions of Windows 10, now used primarily to access the task manager or to switch logged-in users quickly.

Get the latest IBM stock price here.

Original author: Matt Weinberger

Apple's new Watch made lots of headlines on Wednesday — but for all the wrong reasons.

The latest version of the company's wrist-worn gadget — the Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE — was found to have an embarrassing glitch.

It turns out that the watch's LTE cellular connectivity, which is supposed to let users make phone calls directly from their wrists and has been touted by Apple as a key selling point, doesn't always work very well. 

Actually, it's a bug with the watch's Wi-Fi, but the end-result is the same: LTE doesn't work the way it's supposed to. Reviews of the device, which hits stores shelves on Friday, were merciless. Apple's stock fell as much as 3% at one point on Wednesday. 

Apple is working on a fix, which will be delivered in a future software release, an Apple spokesperson told Business Insider. 

But the issues with Apple's new watch don't stop at bad reviews, inconsistent wireless, or even a short battery life. (It can only manage an hour of talk time when using LTE.)

The problem with the Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE is that it's a sign that Apple has lost sight of the principle that led to its meteoric rise: Apple doesn't sell technology for technology's sake. It figures out what people want to do (even when people don't know it themselves) and provides technology to make it possible. 

"Part of the hardest thing about coming up with new products is to figure out a really cool set of technologies that you can implement it with and make it easy, but also figuring out something that people want to do," late Apple CEO Steve Jobs once said.  "We've all seen products that have come out that have been interesting but just fall on their face because not enough people want to do them." 

 

AppleHarvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen puts this same concept in a similar way he calls the "jobs to be done" theory. In an over-simplified nutshell, consumers don't buy technologies or products, they pick things that can complete specific jobs for them. 

And recently, at least one Wall Street analyst has suggested that Apple has lost its ability to find new jobs to be done. 

"[Apple chief design officer] Jony Ive's Industrial Design Group has shown a knack for identifying jobs even before consumers know of their need. The iPod's '1,000 songs in your pocket' was an example. Moreover, Apple's functional organization and metrics appear to align with the jobs to be done approach. Still, the company seems to be struggling to identify the jobs for Apple Watch and Apple Pay," UBS analyst Steven Milunovich wrote last year. 

Beyond beach bums

Apple/ScreenshotSo what's the Apple Watch Series 3 With LTE's job? 

Here's the marketing copy Apple wrote on its website:

Answer a call from your surfboard. Ask Siri to send a message. Stream your favorite songs on your run. And do it all while leaving your phone behind.

Are these really jobs that consumers are trying to fill? Hardcore surfers who want to answer pressing business calls in the ocean seems like a niche.

Siri can already send a message from an iPhone, and there isn't a ton of evidence that that's a popular feature on the phone, anyway. Having the ability to leave your phone at home is a big deal for runners but that's still a subset of the general population. 

Here's how Apple COO Jeff Williams introduced the new watch earlier this month:

Now you have the freedom to go anywhere with just your Apple Watch. This has been our vision from the very beginning and we believe built-in cellular make Series 3 the ultimate expression of Apple Watch. Now you can go for a run with just your watch and still be connected. You can leave your phone when you go to the beach or just run a quick errand. And it’s really nice to know you can be reached if needed while staying in the moment.

...

For Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, we developed a custom wireless chip, we call W2. There’s nothing else like it. It delivers up to 85% faster Wi-Fi while being 50% more power efficient for both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. And we’ve added a barometric altimeter. So now you get flights of stairs climbed and elevation gains after a workout. We’re also releasing an app for developers. This can be great for skiing and snowboarding acts. 

Of course, the biggest challenge of all was adding cellular. You see, our little watch is already packed, and you have to add antennas, radios, power amplifiers, a SIM card. And if you don’t do it right, it gets so big it looks like a house arrest bracelet and you’re not going to want to wear it.

Aside from this specific use case Apple keeps repeating that involves a beach bum who also needs to pick up important calls from the shore, the main sales pitch is focused on how impressive the device is technologically.

Apple

Selling the wrong thing

Sure, it's an achievement that Apple figured out how to make LTE wireless work on a such a small device, and managed to do it with same sized-battery as the previous, non-LTE model. But most people don't buy $400 gadgets because the cellular chip is so technically impressive.

One hour of "talk time" battery life may actually be a huge accomplishment given how power-hungry an LTE modem is. But for the average consumer, one hour of talk time sounds like a weakness, not a selling point.

The potential of the Apple Watch is easy to see. If it didn't have any battery issues, and it were slightly more powerful, it's easy to imagine it replacing a phone for some people. If and when it gets packed with more advanced sensors, it could become a critical tool that everyone needs to keep an informed eye on their health. And someday, if technology breaks the right way, you could leave your keys at home and use your watch as your universal ID to do everything from starting your car to unlocking the door at the office. 

But consumers don't buy the potential of a product, they buy a device to fill a specific job in their lives today. And adding LTE to the Apple Watch doesn't really solve any additional use cases, except maybe for a runner. Instead, it seems like Apple released this cellular watch because it was on a hardware roadmap from two years ago — "this has been our vision from the very beginning" — and because it could.

And that's ultimately a much bigger problem with the Apple Watch than some pre-release glitches. 

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Original author: Kif Leswing

A close-up of Apple's new app drawer in iMessage.AppleWhen you downloaded iOS 11, you may have noticed something new inside iMessage: a strip of app icons at the bottom of the screen. 

The icons, called an app drawer, include a brand-new GIFs button, quick access to the App Store, the ability to send songs via Apple Music, and more.

The new app drawer is Apple's way of building off the changes it made to iMessage in iOS 10. Back then, Apple introduced a special iMessage App Store and added drawing features. But iOS 11 takes things one step further — and it's going to make your life a lot easier. 

Here's how to use the new iMessage:

Original author: Avery Hartmans