Business in brief

Published 4:34 pm Monday, March 11, 2024

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has issued a budget proposal for a second term aimed at getting voters’ attention with tax breaks for families, lower health care costs, smaller deficits and higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations. The proposal for fiscal 2025 is unlikely to pass the House and the Senate and become law. It’s an election year blueprint sketching what the future could hold. If it became law, deficits could be pruned $3 trillion over a decade. Parents could get an increased child tax credit. Corporate taxes would jump upward. Billionaires would be charged a minimum tax of 25%.

Social media company Reddit is looking to raise almost $750 million in an initial public offering of its common stock. The company said in a regulatory filing that the IPO will include 22 million shares of Class A common stock. Reddit is offering approximately 15.3 million shares, while the selling stockholders are offering about 6.7 million shares. Reddit anticipates that the IPO will be priced between $31 and $34 per share.

Choice Hotels is abandoning its hostile $8 billion takeover bid for Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. Choice said Monday that while it received support from some Wyndham shareholders, it wasn’t sufficient enough to conclude that a deal could be done with Wyndham board already in opposition. Choice launched a hostile takeover offer for Wyndham in December after repeated attempts to reach a deal with the rival hotel chain were rebuffed. Wyndham runs Days Inn, La Quinta, Ramada and a host of other brands. Choice runs about 7,500 hotels in 46 countries, including the Howard Johnson, Super 8 and Travelodge brands.

A federal judge in Texas has blocked a new rule by the National Labor Relations Board that would have made it easier for millions of workers to form unions at big companies. The rule, which was due to go into effect Monday, would have set new standards for determining when two companies should be considered “joint employers” in labor negotiations. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups sued in November to block the rule.

DETROIT — Sales growth of electric vehicles in the U.S. has started to slow, and polls show it’s due in part to anxiety over running out of battery power and too few charging stations. But Rick Wilmer, the new CEO of ChargePoint, an EV charging network, says the number of charging stations and plugs is increasing rapidly.

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