Catch up on the weekend’s top five stories with this list compiled by The Fly:
1. IBM (IBM) and Red Hat (RHT) announced that the companies have reached a definitive agreement under which IBM will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Red Hat for $190 per share in cash, representing a total enterprise value of approximately $34B. IBM and Red Hat will continue to build and enhance Red Hat partnerships, including those with major cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT) Azure, Google (GOOG; GOOGL) Cloud, Alibaba (BABA) and more, in addition to the IBM Cloud.
Red Hat will continue to be led by Jim Whitehurst and Red Hat’s current management team. Jim Whitehurst also will join IBM’s senior management team and report to Ginni Rometty. IBM intends to maintain Red Hat’s headquarters, facilities, brands and practices, and intends to suspend its share repurchase program in 2020 and 2021. The acquisition has been approved by the boards of directors of both IBM and Red Hat and is expected to close in the latter half of 2019.
2. The U.S. House of Representatives’ leading lawmaker on taxes suggested that a new tax cut plan touted by President Trump was unlikely to see action in Congress before 2019, and then only if Republicans keep their majority in November 6 elections, according to Reuters. “Really common sense tells you that [Trump’s new tax cut plan] is something, that as the Republicans retain the House and the Senate, that will advance in the new Congress,” Representative Kevin Brady said on Fox News.
3. Bank of America (BAC) and other bank giants have been clobbered lately in the market as investors worry that the current economic expansion will not last for long, but it looks like an “overreaction,” Andrew Bary wrote in this week’s edition of Barron’s. While it is understandable that investors are wary of banks, given their searing experience with them during the financial crisis, Bank of America has some “very good businesses valued cheaply” and can “almost bank on a comeback” for its stock, the report added.
4. Comcast (CMCSA) subsidiary Universal’s “Halloween” grossed $32M from 3,990 theaters in its second outing, where it stayed atop the chart to finish the weekend with a domestic tally of $126.7M. Overseas, the direct sequel to the 1978 classic slasher hit ended Sunday with $25.6M from 47 markets for an offshore total of $45.6M and $172.3M globally. The movie earned a B+ CinemaScore and sports 80% Rotten Tomatoes score.
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