Kimberly-Clark's hand seen in GOP gifts
MADISON, Wis. -- A new Kimberly-Clark lobbyist and his wife gave Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature and their supporters more than $4,000 in late August, a little more than a month before GOP leaders decided to reconvene to consider tax incentives for the Texas paper-maker, campaign-finance reports show.
R.J. Pirlot registered to lobby for Kimberly-Clark on Aug. 22. He and his wife donated $4,250 to GOP legislators and committees that work to elect Republican lawmakers between Aug. 15 and Aug. 31. The contributions included $500 to Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, $250 to Senate President Roger Roth, $250 to Sen. Chris Kapenga and $250 to Assembly Speaker Robin Vos.
The donations came just weeks before Fitzgerald and Vos ordered the Legislature to reconvene in a lame-duck session after the Nov. 6 elections to consider a $100 million tax incentive bill for Kimberly-Clark. The company has said that if it doesn't get the tax credits, it will close a Fox Crossing plant that employs about 500 people.
The Assembly passed the bill in February, but it stalled in the Senate. Kapenga said he wouldn't support the measure, meaning all other Republicans would have to vote for it or persuade a Democrat to approve it.
-- The Associated Press
Auto group chief warns on interest rates
DETROIT -- Rising interest rates are putting pressure on U.S. auto sales and approaching the point where they will turn buyers away from new vehicles, according to the head of the National Automobile Dealers Association.
"Consumers are stretched at this point, budgets are tight," Wes Lutz, chairman of the association, told reporters after a speech to the Automotive Press Association in Detroit. "Payments have gone up. Cars are going up $1,000, $1,500, $2,000. It's a huge concern for us."
Interest rates on car loans are approaching 6 percent, up from as low as 2.5 percent, Lutz said. That is creating an affordability problem and driving buyers into used cars, he said. Auto sales will ultimately decline more rapidly unless automakers take steps to address rising new-car prices, he said.
"This should be concerning for everyone because the new vehicles are more fuel efficient and they're safer, and the goal is to get those vehicles on the road to eliminate the old vehicles," said Lutz.
-- Bloomberg News
Filmmaker joins Walton-backed venture
LOS ANGELES -- Filmmaker Sam Raimi will act as executive producer for the first series from NewTV, the mobile streaming venture backed by the Walmart heirs along with media giants like Disney, MGM and Viacom.
Madrone Capital Partners, an investing arm of the Walton family's Bentonville holding company, Walton Enterprises LLC, was the lead investor in a $1 billion funding round for NewTV that closed Aug. 7, according to a news release. Madrone is a private equity and venture capital firm in Menlo Park, Calif., managed by Rob Walton's son-in-law Greg Penner.
Rob Walton and the other heirs of Walmart Inc. founder Sam Walton have a combined net worth of about $170 billion.
Other investors include 21st Century Fox, Sony Pictures, Warner Media, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Alibaba. NewTV founder Jeffrey Katzenberg told Variety the streaming-video service will likely start in late 2019.
Digital production company Gunpowder & Sky posted the announcement about the series 50 States of Fear on its LinkedIn page. It states that Raimi "will take viewers deep into the urban legends that lurk in the shadows of our country."
-- Serenah McKay
Facebook gets 25% of digital ad revenue
NEW YORK -- Facebook Inc. is rapidly increasing its ad revenue from video, capturing 25 percent of the nation's digital ad spending in that category, according to a forecast released Tuesday.
Facebook is expected to bring in $6.8 billion in digital video ad revenue this year, up 42 percent from 2017, according to research firm EMarketer. The Menlo Park, Calif., company, which owns photo and video app Instagram, is outpacing video ad sales for other social media competitors, including Twitter Inc. and Snap Inc. Facebook commands 87 percent of U.S. social network video ad spending, compared with Twitter's 8 percent and Snap's 5 percent.
The growth comes as Facebook has been heavily investing in expanding its video offerings with several scripted shows such as Sorry for Your Loss, which stars Elizabeth Olsen and has received critical acclaim similar to network TV shows.
The longer-video format gives Facebook more opportunities to sell ads and encourage its 2.2 billion monthly active users to spend more time on the social network, analysts said.
Facebook's video ad sales are expected to represent nearly 30 percent of the company's total revenue this year, EMarketer said. That's a growth compared with EMarketer's estimates for 2017, when Facebook's video ad sales represented just 12 percent of the company's total ad revenue.
Video has become a popular way for advertisers reach consumers, as more people spend time watching shows on their smartphones. This year, video ads will represent a quarter of U.S. digital ad spending, according to EMarketer.
-- Los Angeles Times
U.S. safety agency disputes Tesla claim
WASHINGTON -- The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is taking exception to Tesla Inc.'s characterization of the agency's safety ratings.
On Sunday, Tesla Inc. released a lengthy blog post saying that it engineered the Model 3 to "be the safest car ever built" and that the federal agency's tests show that it has "the lowest probability of injury of all cars the safety agency has ever tested."
Tesla says the overall Vehicle Safety Score for Model 3 is the best such score of any vehicle in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's public records.
But in a statement Tuesday, the agency said that its crash tests combine into an overall safety rating and that it does not rank vehicles that score the same ratings.
"A 5-star rating is the highest safety rating a vehicle can achieve," the agency said in the statement, which did not name Tesla. "NHTSA does not distinguish safety performance beyond that rating, thus there is no 'safest' vehicle among those vehicles achieving 5-star ratings."
Tesla's Model 3 received five-star ratings in frontal and side crash tests, rollover prevention and overall. The 2018 Ford Mustang, Honda Accord, Subaru Impreza and Legacy and Toyota Camry also scored five stars in those categories in the most recent batch of agency testing.
-- Bloomberg News
Business on 10/10/2018