• Paul Singer's Elliott Management has hired Jean-Yves Magnan as deputy chief financial officer, according to people familiar with the matter.
• Magnan, who was previously chief financial officer of Citi's cards division, started at the $35 billion hedge fund at the end of May.
• Magnan's hiring shows how Elliott is trying to deepen its bench of C-suite executives as the fund gets larger and more complex...

• MoviePass owner Helios & Matheson plunged to a new low after proposing a reverse-stock split.
• The move could help the company maintain Nasdaq's minimum $1 share price and avoid delisting.
• "The failure of stockholders to approve this Proposal 3 could have serious adverse effects on the Company and its stockholders," the company said in a regulatory filing...

Disney has raised its offer for 21st Century Fox assets to $38 a share, or a total of $71.3 billion in cash and stock.

The increased offer comes after Comcast crashed Disney's attempt to buy the assets with a $65 billion bid of its own just one week ago, after the US Justice Department approved the AT&T-Time Warner merger...

• Civil rights groups and a shareholders are putting pressure on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to stop selling the Amazon Rekognition facial recognition software to law enforcement agencies.
• The groups raise privacy concerns, along with worries about how the software can be used to unfairly target vulnerable communities.
• Amazon has defended its practice of selling to law enforcement, saying that the software has already helped find victims of abduction...

• Facebook has beefed up the power of its audit committee, which is chaired by former White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles.
• The committee will monitor Facebook's social impact, privacy safeguards, and cybersecurity risk.
• It is being seen as a major concession to shareholders, who have campaigned for a risk committee.
• They welcomed the news, but said Facebook will be judged by its actions, not its promises...

• Elon Musk bought about $25 million worth of Tesla stock this week.
• His purchases come after Musk announced to Tesla employees that the company was cutting 9% of its workforce.
• It could be a signal to employees and Wall Street that he's still optimistic about the future of Tesla.

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk has personally purchased about $25 million worth of stock in his own company, according to a filing with the SEC on Wednesday.

(Reuters) - Verizon Communications Inc named Chief Technology Officer and former Ericsson boss Hans Vestberg as its new Chief Executive on Friday, saying he will replace current CEO Lowell McAdam on Aug. 1...

• A handful of large Allergan shareholders are privately discussing bringing back former Allergan CEO David Pyott in a chairman role, according to people familiar with the matter.
• It's unclear if investors have formally reached out to Pyott yet to discuss a return to the company...

• Norway's $1 trillion wealth fund said on Wednesday it had backed an initiative to wrest the role of chairman away from Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk.
• The proposal, which was defeated in a vote at Tesla's annual meeting of stockholders on Tuesday, represented the strongest challenge yet to Musk's grip on the Silicon Valley car company...

Stephen Brashear/Getty

• Howard Schultz is stepping down as Starbucks' chairman.
• The former CEO has long been dogged by rumors regarding presidential aspirations.

Starbucks executive chairman who long served as the CEO of the chain is stepping down...

• Mars Inc — the company behind Snickers, M&Ms, Milky Way, Pedigree, Uncle Ben's Rice, and other food brands — has historically been a very secretive company.
• But the 106-year-old company, which is entirely owned by the Mars family, has been opening up about its business and what's next for the company.
• Business Insider spoke to Mars chairman Stephen Badger about why the $35 billion firm is ditching its secretive past and why it is "100% committed to staying private."...

• At Facebook's annual meeting, company officials faced criticism from investors and a slew of shareholder proposals urging reforms.
• Addressing concerns about the abuse of Facebook's service, CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his team repeated talking points they've previously made to the press or in Congress.
• Zuckerberg and company ignored pointed concerns about the company's governance, a longstanding thorn in the side of many investors...

• Merger and acquisition (M&A) activity is off to a record start in 2018, with more than $2 trillion in deals announced through May 21.
• While that may seem like a positive on the surface, many pundits across Wall Street have warned it's a late-cycle signal.

There's an old adage that says it's possible to have too much of a good thing. And unfortunately for investors, there's a growing faction of experts who see such a scenario playing out in markets...

S&P 500 companies have returned a record $1 trillion to shareholders over the past year.

• The dividend and buyback surge has been helped by corporate tax cuts introduced by Republicans.
• Earnings per share of S&P 500 companies surged 26% in the March quarter...

REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski

• After years of longstanding problems, Deutsche Bank's new head, Christian Sewing, has demanded the bank change its strategy.
• Shareholders expect answers to a number of questions at Deutsche Bank's Annual General Meeting, to be held today.
• Klaus Nieding, vice president of German association for private investors, Deutsche Schutzvereinigung für Wertpapierbesitz, says the bank's problems can't go on forever...

REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

• FT: Barclays board has considered the possibility of a merger with Standard Chartered.
• The possible deal is one plan being considered to ward off activist investor Edward Bramson, who has built a 5.4% stake in Barclays.
• Neither side has issued statements to shareholders, suggesting no serious talks have taken place.

LONDON — Barclays has considered the possibility of merging with Standard Chartered Bank, according to a report in the Financial Times...

• Walmart is planning to buy back $20 billion of its own shares over the next two years.
• But its $16 billion Flipkart acquisition could put a dent in those plans, according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Scot Ciccarelli.
• Watch Walmart trade in real time here.

There's a different risk to Walmart's Flipkart acquisition than what everybody's talking about...

• Following the successful passage of the GOP tax law, many parties across Wall Street were nervous about how US companies would use excess cash.
• Data from S&P Dow Jones Indices suggests their biggest fears are coming true, although they argue it may not be as big of a deal as previously thought.

When the GOP tax law was passed, Wall Street was very vocal about what US corporations should do with the mountain of proceeds coming their way...

• There have been a number of recent cases in which high-profile CEOs have been publicly penalized with fines and jail-time by European governments.
• CEOs that are guilty of similar transgressions have been held less accountable in the U.S.
• America would arguably benefit from adopting the European approach, forcing the government to play a more judicious role in punishing offending businesspeople...

• Long-serving Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao is to step down in October this year.
• He will be succeeded by the telecoms firm's current chief financial officer, Nick Read.
• The announcement of Colao's departure comes less than a week after Vodafone announced a $22 billion deal with Liberty Global.

LONDON —Vodafone announced on Tuesday that long-serving CEO Vittorio Colao will step down later this year...

• Under Armour hosted its annual shareholders' conference on Wednesday.
• The company's executive team was questioned by the audience on topics related to its work on improving its reputation with younger consumers and women.
• "How are you actually trying to design and make things that your customers want?" one shareholder asked.

Under Armour's executive team was peppered with hard question from shareholders on Wednesday...

Reuters

• Another Facebook shareholder has called on the company to overhaul its governance after the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
• The California State Teachers' Retirement System said Facebook's dual-class share structure means the firm operates like a "dictatorship."
• Other shareholders have called on CEO Mark Zuckerberg to resign as chairman because he has too much control over the company...

Reuters

• Japan's Takeda reaches a deal to buy London-listed Shire for $61.5 billion after weeks of negotiations.
• Shareholders still need to approve the deal and Shire shares are trading at below the offer price, suggesting shareholders could have reservations about the deal.

Takeda Pharmaceutical agreed to buy London-listed Shire for £45.3 billion ($61.50 billion) on Tuesday after the Japanese company raised the amount of cash in its offer to $30.33 to secure a recommendation...

• Tesla chief executive officer Elon Musk has long been an outspoken critic of short seller behavior that's made his company the most shorted in the US equity market.
• Financial analytics firm S3 Partners has compiled data to suggest it's getting much more difficult to short Tesla, and it explains how this could permanently alter how the stock is traded.

If you pay attention to Elon Musk's public comments — or simply follow him on Twitter — then you know he loathes traders who short Tesla's stock...