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Here’s your checklist of everything to know in business and tech for the coming week, so you can feel up-to-date and well-rounded even if all you want to talk about is Meghan Markle’s baby. (Any day now!) Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
MARCH 24-30
What’s Up?
Follow the Money
Eight members of the Sackler family, owners of the pharmaceutical company that makes the potent (and highly addictive) opioid OxyContin, have been sued for fraud by New York State. They are accused of hiding profits and siphoning hundreds of millions of dollars from their company, Purdue Pharma, into personal offshore accounts while the business was under investigation for its role in stoking the opioid epidemic. Since OxyContin came on the market in 1996, more than 200,000 people in the United States have died from overdoses involving prescription opioids, and the Sacklers have become one of the country’s wealthiest families.
Unicorn Stampede
If you take a Lyft this week, pay attention — does it feel any different to use the world’s first publicly traded ride-hailing platform? Perhaps not, but at least you’re both going places. The company made its market debut on Friday, hitting the Nasdaq with much fanfare at $72 a share. It finished its first day of trading at $78.29 (putting its value at more than $26.4 billion), and its Silicon Valley brethren will be closely watching its progress. A wave of other big tech start-ups — known as “unicorns” once they cross the threshold of a $1 billion dollar valuation, although these are now technically “decacorns” — plan to follow in Lyft’s footsteps later this year, including Uber (Lyft’s bigger competitor), Slack, Pinterest and Postmates.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/30/business/the-week-in-business-sackler-opioid-brexit-boeing-apple.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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