The daily business briefing: June 8, 2023

1. Google urges East Coast employees to work from home due to wildfire smoke

Google told its East Coast employees to work from home if they can, and "limit their exposure to outdoor air" as smoke from Canada wildfires pushed New York air quality to "unhealthy" levels, CNBC reported Wednesday. "Terraces across our New York campus will remain closed today," the internet search giant said in a memo, which CNBC obtained. The company issued advisories to workers in Detroit; Washington, D.C.; Reston, Virginia; Pittsburgh; and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. Google also issued similar notices to employees in Canada. Air quality in New York City remained at hazardous levels late Wednesday, with its level at 355 on the 0-to-500 air-quality index, the worst air quality of any major world city. Dubai was next at 167.

CNBC Bloomberg

2. CNN chief Chris Licht steps down

Chris Licht is stepping down as CEO and chairman of CNN after just over a year on the job, Warner Bros. Discovery confirmed Wednesday. "I have great respect for Chris, personally and professionally," Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said in a press release. "The job of leading CNN was never going to be easy." Licht's departure came days after a damaging profile of him in The Atlantic that described a "meltdown" at the network. The article detailed how Licht was seeking to court Republican viewers but had "lost the confidence of his own newsroom" after steps like a CNN town hall in which former President Donald Trump repeated his false claims about the 2020 election.

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Puck CNN

3. GameStop fires CEO Matt Furlong

Struggling video-game retailer GameStop fired chief executive Matt Furlong and promoted activist investor Ryan Cohen to executive chairman in the company's latest management shake-up, sending its stock plunging by more than 20% in after-hours trading on Wednesday. The company didn't give a reason for Furlong's termination. GameStop brought in dozens of e-commerce executives from Amazon and other companies in 2021 and 2022 as the brick-and-mortar chain tried to turn its business around by belatedly expanding online and starting a marketplace for nonfungible tokens, or NFTs. Many of the others who joined the company in that wave left last year as GameStop dialed back its online push and focused on streamlining operations in its stores.

Quartz The Wall Street Journal

4. U.S. stocks flat in 'news vacuum'

U.S. stock futures were little changed early Thursday as investors took a breather after the recent rally. Futures tied to the Dow Jones Industrial Average were flat at 6:30 a.m. ET. S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures were up 0.1%. The Dow rose 0.3% on Wednesday. The S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 0.4% and 1.3%, respectively. Investors appeared to be awaiting the next catalyst to steer the market. "We're in a bit of a news vacuum: Earnings are done, the debt ceiling is resolved, and we're waiting for the Fed next week," Barbara Doran, CEO of BD8 Capital Partners, said Wednesday on "Closing Bell: Overtime." "It's widely expected they will pause, but it's really going to be important what their guidance is."

CNBC

5. Surprise foreign rate hikes rattle bond market

Global bonds are struggling after two central banks unexpectedly raised interest rates in a sign more hikes could be coming to fight inflation. Shorter-maturity U.S. Treasury yields are approaching their highest levels since March; Australian equivalents have surged to their highest in more than a decade, according to Bloomberg, following the surprise rate hikes by the Bank of Canada and the Reserve Bank of Australia. The moves are eroding expectations that the Federal Reserve will start cutting rates in late 2023 as the economy remains strong despite higher borrowing costs. The Treasury is preparing to issue nearly $1 trillion of Treasury bills now that Congress has suspended the debt ceiling, and that could overwhelm buyers and push short-term rates higher, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Bloomberg The Wall Street Journal