The daily business briefing: April 10, 2019

EU flag outside of Houses of Parliament in London

(Image credit: TOLGA AKMEN/AFP/Getty Images)

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1. EU to vote on May's request for another Brexit delay
2. Avengers: Endgame crushes box office presale records
3. Report: Uber to raise $10 billion in IPO
4. 24 charged in $1.2 billion Medicare brace scheme
5. Lawmakers question tech executives in hearing on white nationalism

published 10 April 2019

1. EU to vote on May's request for another Brexit delay

British Prime Minister Theresa May met with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday ahead of Wednesday's emergency summit in Brussels, where European Union members will vote on May's request for another delay of the U.K.'s planned departure from the trading bloc. All of the EU's members have to agree for May to get the second Brexit extension she has requested in three weeks. France stepped back from its hardline stance and suggested Tuesday it would accept another Brexit delay. France and other EU countries have expressed mounting frustration with the failure of British lawmakers to agree on Brexit terms, raising the possibility that the U.K. could crash out without a deal in just a few days if the extension request is denied.

Avengers: Endgame has smashed Hollywood records in its first week of presales. On Tuesday, a week after presale tickets first went on sale, the 22nd film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe had sold nearly twice as many tickets on Atom Tickets as Aquaman, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Avengers: Infinity War, and Captain Marvel combined. Endgame, which is due in theaters on April 26, is expected to close some story lines left open in Infinity War, and could prove to be the last film for several iconic Marvel characters.

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Uber has decided to aim to sell $10 billion worth of stock in its initial public offering, Reuters reported late Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. An IPO that big would be one of the biggest tech debuts ever, and the largest since Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba's 2014 IPO. Uber was last valued at $76 billion in the private fundraising market, but the ride-hailing giant's IPO would place its value between $90 billion and $100 billion. Investment bankers previously estimated that Uber could be worth $120 billion, but the figure appeared to have fallen after the disappointing performance of smaller rival Lyft's stock after its recent IPO.

Federal officials said Tuesday that they had broken up a $1.2 billion Medicare scam and arrested 24 people. "These defendants — who range from corporate executives to medical professionals — allegedly participated in an expansive and sophisticated fraud to exploit telemedicine technology meant for patients otherwise unable to access health care," said Brian Benczkowski, an assistant attorney general. Authorities described the scheme, which involved overseas call centers that got patients' Medicare numbers, as one of the biggest health-care frauds in U.S. history. It allegedly involved doctors who prescribed back, shoulder, wrist, and knee braces that unsuspecting elderly and disabled patients did not need. The doctors allegedly received kickbacks from durable medical equipment companies.

The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing Tuesday on the rise of white nationalism, prompted by last month's shootings at two New Zealand mosques that left at least 50 people dead. YouTube livestreamed the hearing, but had to disable the chat after about 30 minutes due to an influx of racist and anti-Semitic comments, The Associated Press reports. Executives from Google and Facebook were asked by lawmakers how their companies are working to keep hate crimes from spreading; the New Zealand gunman livestreamed his attack and posted a racist manifesto. "There is no place for terrorism or hate on Facebook," the company's director of public policy, Neil Potts, said. "We remove any content that incites violence."

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.