The daily business briefing: January 10, 2017

1. Yahoo's Marissa Mayer to leave board

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer will leave the company's board after the proposed sale of the internet pioneer's core web properties to Verizon, according to a filing Monday. Five other directors also will go. The move was not a surprise, as the new company will essentially be an investment company holding the remaining Yahoo assets, which include stakes in Alibaba Group Holding Inc. and Yahoo! Japan. The new company will change its name to Altaba Inc. After Mayer's turnaround efforts stalled, Yahoo agreed to sell the internet properties to Verizon for $4.8 billion. Since then, Verizon has questioned whether Yahoo's revelations about two massive hacks of user data had reduced the value of the Yahoo sites.

Bloomberg

2. Alibaba founder promises 1 million U.S. jobs after Trump meeting

Alibaba's founder and executive chairman, Jack Ma, left a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump on Monday promising that his Chinese e-commerce giant would create 1 million U.S. jobs in the next five years. Ma said Alibaba would accomplish the goal by supporting 1 million small businesses, particularly in the Midwest, and helping them sell agricultural products and other goods and services in China and the rest of Asia through its sales platform. Trump said he and Ma had a "great meeting."

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CNBC

3. Stocks trade flat as investors await Trump news conference

U.S. stock futures struggled for footing early Tuesday, inching up as the market awaited a much-anticipated midweek news conference by President-elect Donald Trump. "If Donald Trump succeeds to cheer up investors at this week's conference, we could see a fresh rally in the U.S. stocks and the U.S. dollar," said Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior market analyst at London Capital Group, in a note to investors. Stocks have rallied since Trump's election on the hope that his promised tax and regulation cuts and stimulus spending would help businesses. Falling oil prices weighed on stocks Monday, preventing the Dow from making another run for the 20,000 level.

MarketWatch Nasdaq

4. Volkswagen executive arrested over diesel emissions cheating scandal

The FBI has arrested Volkswagen executive Oliver Schmidt in connection with the German automaker's diesel emissions cheating scandal. Schmidt, a German who was a former top emissions compliance manager for the company in the U.S., was arrested over the weekend in Florida. He was arraigned Monday on a charge of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Investigators say he played a key role in the company's effort to use software to help diesel vehicles cheat to pass emissions tests. He allegedly helped try to convince regulators that the first indications of testing irregularities were caused by technical problems, not cheating.

The New York Times

5. Cost of raising a child rises to $233,610

The cost of raising a child in the U.S. from birth to age 17 rose by three percent in 2015 to $233,610, or nearly $14,000 a year, the Department of Agriculture said Monday. The main line items are housing, food, transportation, health care, education, and clothing. Housing alone accounts for as much as 33 percent of the cost. Child care and education add up to 16 percent, and that is before the bill arrives for college, which the government estimates at $45,370 for a private college and $20,090 for a public one.

The Associated Press