Wednesday Morning Reads

Stocks

Comcast has formalized its offer for British broadcaster Sky (OTCQX:SKYAY), along with commitments to maintain its annual budget and editorial board independence, in a deal valued at about $31B. Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) said the "superior" cash bid was a 16% premium to the existing offer from Twenty-First Century Fox (NASDAQ:FOX), which has also been trying to buy the 61% of Sky that it doesn't already own.

As it works to save its struggling $3.9B acquisition of Tribune Media (NYSE:TRCO), Sinclair Broadcast Group (NASDAQ:SBGI) has reached deals to sell nearly two dozen TV stations in order to gain government approval. The stations are being sold to various parties, including Standard Media and Meredith (NYSE:MDP), and are expected to close simultaneous with the Tribune transaction near the end of Q2.

Big payday for Google CEO Sundar Pichai. An award of 353,939 restricted shares he received before a promotion in 2014 will vest today. Currently worth about $380M, making it one the largest single payouts to a public company executive in recent years. Alphabet's (GOOG, GOOGL) stock has surged 90%since the grant date, compared with a 39% advance of the S&P 500.

The company formerly known as Yahoo, Altaba (NASDAQ:AABA), has been fined $35M by the SEC for its response to a 2014 cybersecurity breach on hundreds of millions of user accounts that wasn't disclosed until 2016. While federal law doesn't require firms to inform shareholders of every hack attempt, companies can't mislead investors about the scope of an attack and must tell them about events that are material to investment decisions.

After attending a state dinner on Tuesday, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Tim Cook is staying in Washington for a closed-door meeting today in the Oval Office. There was no agenda posted, but Cook has been a fan of Trump's tax law which is helping the company to repatriate some of its overseas cash, with plans to contribute $350B to the U.S. economy over the next five years.

Driven by its wealth management business, Credit Suisse (NYSE:CS) has delivered its best quarterly results since CEO Tidjane Thiam launched his restructuring plan for the bank two years ago. Following 6.6B Swiss francs ($6.7B) of losses in 2015 and 2016, and a big tax writedown that wiped out gains last year, Credit Suisse posted 694M francs in first-quarter net income. CS +5.1% premarket.

Striking a last-minute wage deal with its labor union on Monday, General Motors (NYSE:GM) and South Korea are now considering raising the size of their investment in the U.S. automaker's local unit from a previously proposed $2.8B. According to Reuters, a preliminary deal on the financial assistance - reportedly worth $4.4B - is likely to be signed on Friday.

The new title "reflects our strategic transformation as a leader in the nutrition industry," said Herbalife (NYSE:HLF) CEO Rich Goudis, changing the company's name to "Herbalife Nutrition." A two for one stock split is also in play, effective May 7. Herbalife Nutrition will begin trading under its new name today, but retain ticker symbol "HLF."

Shire climbed over 4% in after-hours trading on reports that it's reached a breakthrough in talks with Takeda Pharmaceutical (OTCPK:TKPYY). The latter was said to have sweetened its fifth buyout offer to $62B, with a preliminary merger deal set to be announced today. Shire (NASDAQ:SHPG) is also expected to extend a regulatory deadline, allowing Takeda to carry out more due diligence and firm up its bid.