DealBook Briefing: Could General Electric Be Dropped From the Dow?<br />• Gillian Tan writes, “Despite the $20 billion price tag, the deal seems like a bargain.” (Gadfly)<br />• Lex writes, “Any spinoff would put paid to the Thomson family’s decade-long hopes for combining a media business with financial services.” (Lex)<br />• The trial in Waymo’s lawsuit accusing Uber of stealing its driverless car technology is set to start today.<br />Blackstone’s $20 billion deal (including debt) for control of the company’s financial<br />and risk division highlights the growing ambitions of private equity firms — and how they need to spend nearly $1 trillion in uninvested capital.<br />“The committee reportedly prefers for the Dow to incur no more than a 10:1 ratio<br />between the component companies’ highest share price and lowest share price.<br />“We are excited to partner with Thomson Reuters — one of the most trusted companies<br />in financial technology,” Martin Brand of Blackstone said in a statement.<br />He said he would bring Republicans and Democrats together around a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan to “give us the safe, fast, reliable<br />and modern infrastructure our economy needs and our people deserve.”<br />Mr. Trump offered few details on his infrastructure proposal.
