News on Yacktman Svc Fund (YACKX)

By Deepa Seetharaman SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc posted a much larger-than-expected loss in the second quarter as it continues its rapid pace of investment in new businesses such as digital content and consumer electronics. Amazon's stock price has dropped 10 percent so far in 2014, with investors leery of betting on its long-term growth at the expense of little to no profit. Amazon is investing heavily in new businesses and hardware products, as it prepares to take on major tech rivals from Apple Inc and Google Inc to Netflix. Chief Financial Officer Tom Szkutak said Amazon had a "tremendous amount of opportunities" and its investments were "certainly impacting short-term results." The company is spending more than $100 million on original video content in the third quarter, a substantial increase compared to last year and the second quarter, Szkutak said.

Visa Inc, the world's largest credit and debit card company, cut its revenue forecast for the year, as growth in cross-border transactions slowed amid a strengthening of the U.S. dollar. Visa, which gets about 60 percent of its total transaction volume from outside the United States, cut its full-year revenue growth forecast to 9-10 percent from 10-11 percent. International transaction revenue rose less than 1 percent to $854 million in the latest quarter. Wedbush Securities Inc analyst Gil Luria said Visa's international transaction revenues was growing at the lowest rate since the financial crisis.

(Reuters) - Starbucks Corp on Thursday said quarterly sales at established stores in its dominant Americas region grew a somewhat stronger-than-expected 6 percent, including a 7 percent rise for the United States. The third fiscal quarter results from the world's biggest coffee chain followed disappointing quarterly results from McDonald's Corp and Dunkin' Donuts parent Dunkin' Brands. Shares in Starbucks were up just 0.4 percent in extended trading following its results. Analysts, on average, expected Starbucks quarterly same-store sales to rise 5.1 percent globally and for the Americas region, according to Consensus Metrix.

By Ryan Vlastelica NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks finished a quiet session mostly flat on Thursday as earnings painted a mixed picture of the economy, though the S&P 500 set another record closing high. With 41 percent of S&P 500 companies having reported results so far, 68 percent have posted earnings that topped expectations, according to Thomson Reuters data, above the long-term average of 63 percent. Caterpillar Inc raised its full-year outlook but posted a decline in sales, pushing its stock down 3.1 percent to $105.04. The S&P 500 gained 0.97 of a point or 0.05 percent to end at 1,987.98, its second record closing high in a row.

By Daniel Bases NEW YORK (Reuters) - Representatives for holdout investors and Argentina in the country's ongoing debt default met for about three hours with a court-appointed mediator in New York on Thursday, less than a week before Argentina could once again default. Several members of Argentina's delegation left the Manhattan office of special appointee Daniel Pollack around 3:30 p.m. EDT but declined to comment on the talks. Edward Friedman, a lawyer for Aurelius Capital Management, one of two leading holdouts, emerged shortly after, also without commenting. Argentina faces its second default in 12 years if it fails to cut a deal with the hedge funds demanding full payment, instead of a reduced amount, for defaulted bonds.

By Nate Raymond NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Thursday expressed concern over a proposed $450 million settlement of claims Apple Inc conspired with five publishers to fix e-book prices, saying its provisions could drastically reduce money paid to consumers depending on appeals. U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan said she found "most troubling" a clause requiring Apple to pay only $70 million if an appeals court reversed her finding that the company is liable for antitrust violations and sent it back to her for further proceedings. She also took issue with the lack of any requirement for Apple to pay interest while the appeals go forward. The comments came a week after 33 U.S. states and territories and lawyers for a class of consumers submitted the settlement for Cote's preliminary approval, and to avoid a scheduled Aug. 25 damages trial.

By Chuck Mikolajczak NEW YORK (Reuters) - In the days after its infamously mishandled initial public offering in May 2012, it looked as if Facebook would struggle to become a must-own for fund managers. The gains represent a reversal of fortune for the social media company.

By Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK (Reuters) - The federal judge who oversaw the trial of five associates of imprisoned swindler Bernard Madoff on Thursday refused to overturn their convictions for helping their former boss run one of the world's biggest Ponzi schemes. U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain found sufficient evidence for jurors on March 24 to have convicted back-office director Daniel Bonventre, portfolio managers Annette Bongiorno and Joann Crupi and computer programmers Jerome O’Hara and George Perez after the five-month trial. Swain also said the defendants were not entitled to a new trial, rejecting arguments that prosecutors had made prejudicial remarks during their opening and closing statements, including referring to their defenses as "ridiculous" and "absurd." "Although the court had expected the government to take a higher and less rhetorical road," Swain wrote, "the government's summation – when considered in the context of the meticulous presentation of all of the evidence, arguments in the trial as a whole and the curative instructions – did not so taint the trial so as to make it fundamentally unfair." Judges give jurors curative instructions to eliminate the risk of prejudice from tainted statements or evidence.

(Reuters) - Lloyds Banking Group is expected to announce early next week that the British bank would pay between 200 million pounds and 300 million pounds ($509.52 million)to settle benchmark interest rate (LIBOR) fixing allegations, the Financial Times reported late on Thursday. Lloyds is expected to announce the payment before declaring its first-half results, the media agency reported citing people familiar with the situation. One person familiar with the situation told the FT that Lloyds was likely to face less political criticism than Barclays did as it has changed its top management since the alleged misconduct took place and it is now clear that many banks were involved. Lloyds, FCA, CFTC and DoJ could not immediately be reached for comment.($1 = 0.5888 British Pounds) (Reporting by Aashika Jain in Bangalore;

WASHINGTON (AP) — The risk of losing your job is getting smaller and smaller.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Staking out a populist stand ahead of the midterm elections, President Barack Obama on Thursday demanded "economic patriotism" from U.S. corporations that use legal means to avoid U.S. taxes through overseas mergers.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 300 passengers perish when their plane is shot out of the sky. Airlines suspend flights to Israel's largest airport after rocket attacks. An airliner crashes during a storm, and yet another disappears. Aviation has suffered one of its worst weeks in memory, a cluster of disasters spanning three continents.

WASHINGTON (AP) — After spending nearly $300 million on a new computer system to handle disability claims, the Social Security Administration still can't get it to work. And officials can't say when it will.

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — An Air Algerie flight carrying 116 people from Burkina Faso to Algeria's capital disappeared from radar early Thursday over northern Mali during a rainstorm, officials said. France deployed fighter jets to search for wreckage and the country's president said the plane most likely crashed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. science advisory report says Japan's Fukushima nuclear accident offers a key lesson to the nation's nuclear industry: Focus more on the highly unlikely but worst case scenarios.

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — An Air Algerie flight carrying 116 people from Burkina Faso to Algeria's capital disappeared from radar early Thursday over northern Mali during a rainstorm, officials said. France's foreign minister said no wreckage had been found, but that the plane "probably crashed."

LONDON (AP) — Markets were solid Thursday as geopolitical tensions largely related to the downing of a Malaysia Airlines jet over Ukraine subsided somewhat and after further upbeat U.S. jobs data was offset somewhat by surprisingly weak homes data.

If you want a successful business, you almost always have to go through this intense startup period. When the business gains success and momentum, far too many business owners fail to recognize they can and should shift the intensity and begin to put up some simple guardrails.

(Refiles to correct spelling of Allston in fourth paragraph) By John McCrank NEW YORK, July 17 (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has been seeking information on 10 registered broker dealers as part of an ongoing investigation into high-frequency trading strategies, according to an internal SEC document reviewed by Reuters. The regulator told its staff in late March that it was interested in seeing any tips, complaints, or referrals that they receive concerning the brokers and high frequency trading. ...

A "Benefit Corporation" (B Corp) is a company that engages in socially beneficial practices and considers how their business decisions will impact their employees, suppliers, community, consumers and the environment. I believe a company doesn't have to be exclusively a nonprofit or a for-profit and a B Corp is the perfect hybrid of the two--a company structured to make a profit while also providing social benefits.

Like most people, I send dozens of emails a day. Pretty much anything that I work on can be dealt with using email. But is that always the right choice?

Asking these questions doesn't always come to mind right away, but these are crucial if you own a franchise. Franchises are constantly growing and by nature have a lot of people working higher positions, so the managers working with you are constantly changing.

Google recently released report acknowledging the lack of diversity in their workforce kicked up a storm. The company says, most of its workforce is white (61%) and male (70%). Worse, a mere 17% of Google's tech workforce is women. By and large, this is not Google's fault.

Walmart could be the next battleground in the fight over gun rights in retail chains after a loaded revolver was found in the bathroom of a South Carolina store. On the afternoon of Saturday, July 12, a man with a concealed carry permit left his gray Smith & Wesson revolver, loaded with five live .38 caliber rounds, atop the toilet paper dispenser in a stall of the rear men's bathroom of a York, South Carolina Walmart, according to a police report.

But we can't blame our problems with work on work itself because "work" as an entity doesn't exist. It has no consciousness. Work is what we do and it is so much a part of what we are.

If you're thinking of starting a restaurant, you need to sit down and ask yourself: "Do I really have what it takes to succeed? Do I love food and making money enough to make these things my life?"

A Subway worker in Freeport, Texas, claims she was forced to continue working her shift while suffering from a stomach bug, then was fired the same day. Elizabeth Taff, 24, says she was so sick she could barely stand up straight and vomited several times during her shift on July 11, but her manager refused to let her leave unless she found someone to cover her shift.

As people, we've become accustomed to asking questions publicly, digging deeper and going past the advertising noise that bombards our senses every single waking minute.

The other day the German minister of justice, Heiko Maas, was asked in an interview how often he is using Google to crawl the Internet. His answer: "Everyday and in an exorbitant manner. Therefore, unfortunately, I am part of the problem."

The concept of a curated identity is nothing new, but increased connectivity and consumer conscience has certainly paved the way for what is now a burgeoning market, that ultimately serves to give us more choice, control and flexibility when it comes to what we wear.

Have you ever laid awake at night thinking about that entrepreneur who has already forged the path that you are on? I often think of an entrepreneur who has already accomplished much of what I am setting out to do. He is a legend when it comes to real estate brands in New England. His name is Richard DeWolfe.

While we often can't anticipate such occurrences, we can plan for them and plan for the proactive communications and actions that need to happen to keep the organization on track.

Money can only buy happiness up to a point. But just how much you need to get to that threshold really depends on where you live, according to a new analysis by Doug Short, vice president of research at investment group Advisor Perspectives. Short's analysis found that if you live in a place like Hawaii, where the cost of living is relatively high, you need to make $122,175 per year before some extra cash doesn't really translate into more happiness. In Mississippi, by comparison, the threshold at which more money stops making you happier is a lot lower: $65,850 per

On July 21, 2010, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act became law. As with human 4-year-olds, the party parents throw may be a little duller than on the first birthday, but the toddler now appreciates the present in the box more than the box itself. Let's look at what's in the box.