Briefcase

Rate of new

home construction dips

New U.S. home construction continued to decline in November and permits plunged as high borrowing costs paired with widespread inflation eroded housing affordability and demand.

Residential starts decreased 0.5% last month to a 1.43 million annualized rate, according to government data released Tuesday. Single-family homebuilding dropped to an annualized 828,000 rate, the lowest since May 2020.

Applications to build, a proxy for future construction, decreased 11.2% to an annualized 1.34 million units. Permits for construction of one-family homes fell 7.1% to the weakest pace since 2020.

Amazon.com settles dispute

Amazon.com settled European Union antitrust investigations over how the U.S. ecommerce giant allegedly abused rivals’ sales data to unfairly favor it own products and squeeze out other traders on its platform.

The European Commission said Tuesday it accepted a number of proposals from Amazon, including a vow to stop using nonpublic data on independent sellers on its marketplace for its competing retail business.

Amazon also pledged to address concerns about the way its Buy Box for showcasing specific offers and Prime unduly favored its own retail business, as well as marketplace sellers that use Amazon’s logistics and delivery services. The commitments include a promise to display a second Buy Box, immediately underneath the first one.

Musk seeking new Twitter CEO

Elon Musk is actively searching for a new chief executive officer for Twitter Inc., CNBC’s David Faber reported, after the billionaire lost a straw poll he posted on the social media site that asked users whether he should relinquish his role as head of the company.

More than 10 million votes, or 57.5%, were in favor of Musk stepping down, according to results that came in Monday morning. Musk committed to abide by the results when he launched the survey, but nearly a day later he had tweeted more than 10 times without directly addressing the outcome. Musk responded to a tweet suggesting the poll may have been manipulated by bots with a single word: “interesting.”

From wire report