COMPANY NEWS IN BRIEF

Steinhoff to sell company jet

Steinhoff International Holdings NV, the South African retailer laid low by an accounting scandal, is selling one of its more high-flying assets as it seeks liquidity to keep itself alive.

The owner of UK discounter Poundland and bedding supplier Mattress Firm in the US is in discussions with a potential buyer of a 2006 Gulfstream G550 private jet that’s shuttled executives around the world, according to a person familiar with the situation. The luxuriously appointed craft previously had a price tag of about US$25 million.

The plane was put up for sale after the company announced on 5 December that it had uncovered accounting irregularities, the person said.

MONEYWEB

Facebook looking to crypto-currencies

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave cryptocurrency enthusiasts a little optimism for the new year.

Zuckerberg referenced cryptocurrencies in a posting Thursday in which he laid out how he will spend 2018 trying to correct persistent problems - including the proliferation of hate speech and misinformation - that have dogged his wildly popular social network for the past two years.

“There are important counter-trends to this - encryption and cryptocurrency - that take power from centralised systems and put it back into people’s hands,” Zuckerberg wrote. “But they come with the risk of being harder to control. I’m interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of these technologies, and how best to use them in our services.”

MONEYWEB

Twitter says world leaders have special status

Twitter Incorporated on Friday reiterated its stance that accounts belonging to world leaders have special status on the social media network, pushing back against users who have called on the company to banish US President Donald Trump.

"Blocking a world leader from Twitter or removing their controversial Tweets would hide important information people should be able to see and debate," Twitter said in a post on a corporate blog.

Twitter had already said in September that "newsworthiness" and whether a tweet is "of public interest" are among the factors it considers before removing an account or a tweet.

NAMPA/REUTERS

The Internet Association, a trade group representing companies such as Google parent Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Incorporated, said on Friday that it intends to join an expected lawsuit against a decision to roll back net neutrality rules.

One of the group's members, e-commerce site Etsy Incorporated, said that it would separately also join the legal effort. Several states including New York and public interest advocacy groups have said they intend to sue to stop the mid-December ruling by the Federal Communications Commission.

NAMPA/REUTERS

NSA chief to retire

National Security Agency director Mike Rogers has announced plans to retire this spring and has said he expected a successor to be nominated and approved by the US Senate this month, according to a report on Friday.

Rogers, who heads the US Cyber Command, made the announcement to agency staff, a Washington Post reporter said in a post on Twitter. NSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

NAMPA/REUTERS