Here are the business stories making the headlines across Scotland and the UK this morning.
Stonehaven entrepreneur launches new taxi firm
A Stonehaven man has launched a new taxi firm covering south Aberdeenshire.
Paul Haldane is behind the wheel of the business venture Zip Cabs. It comes less than three years after selling his previous taxi company.
He founded Dash Cabs in 2014, growing it into a fleet of 14 cars and 30 drivers before selling the business to a competitor in February 2022. Now he’s hoping to repeat his previous success with Zip Cabs and build a team of around 25 drivers within the next 12 to 24 months.
Waitrose food hall in Aberdeen Dobbies to close within weeks
The Waitrose food hall within Dobbies Garden Centre in Aberdeen is to close.
The food hall opened at the Lang Stracht store in June 2023 in a space previously occupied by Sainsbury’s.
John Lewis, which owns Waitrose, has confirmed the partnership to supply Dobbies has come to an end.
Spat deepens between Elon Musk and Ryanair's O'Leary
Elon Musk has suggested he could buy Ryanair and called for its chief executive to be fired amid a deepening spat between the pair.
The budget airline on Tuesday branded the Tesla chief executive an "idiot", and used the extraordinary row to promote its January sale.
Musk and Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary have been trading insults over the past week after O'Leary rejected the idea of using Musk's Starlink technology to provide wi-fi on flights.
Netflix beats forecasts and makes $82.7bn cash bid for Warner Bros
Netflix beat fourth-quarter sales expectations as subscribers topped 325 million and it made a sweetened all-cash offer for Warner Bros Discovery’s studio and streaming assets.
The California-based company reported quarterly revenue of $12.05billion, up 18% year-on-year and beating Wall Street estimates of $11.97billion. Net income of $2.42billion also topped analysts’ consensus forecast of $2.39billion.
However, shares of Netflix fell $4.18, or 4.8%, to $83.12 in after-hours trading in New York after the company warned that closing the Warner Bros deal would add $275million in costs for this year. Netflix said it would pause share buybacks to accumulate cash to help fund the acquisition.
Microsoft boss says a nation’s wealth now depends on the price of AI
Countries’ economic growth will be directly correlated to the cost of their artificial intelligence, Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft, has claimed
The cost of AI processing a unit of data — or a “token” as Nadella described it — would be key to a country’s economic success.
The Microsoft boss argued that “GDP growth will be directly correlated” to the cost of “tokens per dollar per watt”, during an interview with Larry Fink, chief executive of BlackRock and interim co-chair of the World Economic Forum.