Smoking Vice business

“Altria will pay a USD$2 billion bonus to Juul's 1,500 employees as part of the price for its stake in the e-cigarette maker. While that averages out to USD$1.3 million a head, actual payouts in the form of special dividends will depend on factors such as longevity at the company, CNBC says. The maker of Marlboro cigarettes is paying a total $12.8 billion for a 35% stake, valuing the California startup at $38 billion. Juul recently said employees can only vape outside company facilities to conform with laws governing the use of tobacco in the workplace. • Here’s what people are saying.

Wow, nice vice bonus 1.3 million average for 1500

Many may know, in our own area in Smiths Falls, Canopy Growth has created over 100 millionaires that work at this local company. I understand everyone that works there is a shareholder of some sorts. Those early employees got vested early and have benefited immensely for working their buts off and taking a chance on a new industry.

Employees investing in the company they work for is a very good thing. I see many examples of this happening with those that are public companies and some private companies. Good lessons here for private companies and employees to work towards.

Tim

Today’s top stories in the New York Times

The speed read

Deals

• The tobacco giant Altria confirmed that it would pay nearly $13 billion for a 35 percent stake in the vaping company Juul. To sweeten the deal — and presumably to ease concerns about tying up with a tobacco company — Juul’s 1,500 employees will share a bonus of $2 billion. (NYT)

• Cigna closed its $54 billion deal to buy Express Scripts. (Reuters)

• Naspers led a $1 billion investment in the Indian food-delivery service Swiggy. (FT)

• Hillhouse Capital, Sequoia Capital and GIC invested $320 million in the South Korean food delivery start-up Woowa Brothers, valuing it at about $2.6 billion. (Reuters)

• SoftBank led a $385 million investment in the auto-finance start-up Fair. (WSJ)

• M.&.A. activity nose-dived at the end of 2018 as the confidence of deal-makers sagged amid market volatility and increased borrowing costs. (FT)

Politics and policy

• Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned in protest of President Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria. That leaves the president unbound.

• Mr. Trump has torpedoed a spending deal, putting the government on course for a shutdown at midnight tonight. (NYT)

• Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, is said to be taking a cautious approach to implicating Mr. Trump in legal filings he is preparing. (Bloomberg)

• Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain is reportedly considering her options about a Plan B to avoid a “no-deal Brexit.” The Bank of England says that uncertainty over Brexit has “intensified considerably” in recent weeks.

• Here’s a report card on how populism is faring. (DealBook)

Trade

• China reportedly plans to order more soybeans from the U.S. (Reuters)

• How the Huawei debacle could divide the world. (Related: Some global banks have cut ties with the company.)

• The winner of this year’s Nobel in economic science says the big problem with the trade war is that people are overlooking how important it is to share. (Bloomberg)

Tech

• Facebook is said to be developing a cryptocurrency pegged to the dollar as a way of facilitating money transfers via WhatsApp. (Bloomberg)

• Speaking of WhatsApp, the platform is struggling to curb the sharing of child pornography. (FT)

• Uber’s driverless cars are back on the road, ending a hiatus after a fatal accident in Arizona. (NYT)

• AT&T’s first piece of 5G hardware, a mobile hot spot, goes on sale today. (Ars Technica)

• Mat Baxter, the C.E.O. of the ad agency Initiative, has called for the industry to “take a collective stand” against Facebook. (WSJ)

• Spotify settled a $1.6 billion copyright lawsuit with the music publisher Wixen. Terms have not yet been disclosed. (TechCrunch)

Best of the rest

• Singapore plans to expand its criminal investigation into the 1MDB scandal to include Goldman Sachs. (Bloomberg)

• Planned Parenthood has been accused of mistreating its pregnant employees. (NYT)

• Walgreens is to embark on a plan to save more than $1 billion a year. (Reuters)

• Should Disney have been allowed to trademark the phrase “Hakuna Matata”? (NYT)

• How so-called collateralized loan obligations have made a lot of people very, very rich. (Bloomberg)

• Why you should make sure your kids have PowerPoint skills. (NYT)

Thanks for reading! We’ll see you next week.

You can find live updates throughout the day at nytimes.com/dealbook.

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Smoking Vice business

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