David Gelles

Several Republicans with knowledge of Cambridge’s business said that fallout from the Facebook scandal — combined with widespread doubts about the accuracy of Cambridge’s psychological profiles of voters — had effectively crippled the firm’s election work in the United States. “They’re selling magic in a bottle,” said Matt Braynard, who worked alongside Cambridge on the Trump campaign, for which he served as the director of data and strategy, and now runs Look Ahead America, a group seeking to turn out disaffected rural and blue-collar voters. “And they’re becoming toxic.”

In a matter of hours this week, the Trump administration twice weighed in on one of the central issues shaping business and society today — just how much market power big companies should be allowed to amass. Yet in back-to-back developments, two federal agencies arrived at starkly different conclusions, and one company, AT&T, found itself on opposite sides of the debate.

On Oct 22, AT&T said it planned to acquire Time Warner for $85.4 billion — the biggest deal of the year. On Oct 21, British American Tobacco offered $47 billion for the portion of Reynolds American that it does not already own. And this week, the chip maker Qualcomm is expected to make a $37 billion offer for the rival company NXP Semiconductors. Such megadeals are often postponed during times of political or economic uncertainty. Yet at what feels to many like a tumultuous moment for the global economy, many corporate titans apparently see smooth sailing ahead.

The most imminent economic concern may be the outcome of the race for the White House. Though Donald Trump has positioned himself as a successful businessman, economists have warned of market upheavals if he is elected. But with Hillary Clinton’s lead over Trump wide and still growing with less than three weeks until Election Day, chief executives appear to be betting that the race is all but over. But while corporate executives are monitoring a laundry list of political and economic risks, no single factor appears to be a major cause for concern. Instead, there is a growing sense that the combination of slow but steady economic growth, rapid technological innovation and an uncertain geopolitical landscape is here to stay for some time, or what business leaders call “the new normal.”

[Commentary] There is a surprisingly ambitious, and risky, unifying theme hidden in the oddball assortment of websites and internet services that Verizon has acquired over the last year or so: The company is rethinking who its customer actually is. Verizon is imagining a future when its most important client may not be a mother signing up for a family cellphone plan in the Verizon store. Instead, the customer will be corporations — advertisers — that want to reach that family, and that are willing to pay Verizon to help them do so.

A Russian crime ring has amassed the largest known collection of stolen Internet credentials, including 1.2 billion username and password combinations and more than 500 million email addresses, security researchers say.

The records, discovered by Hold Security include confidential material gathered from 420,000 websites, ranging from household names to small Internet sites.

Time Warner is playing defense. The company has amended its corporate bylaws and removed a provision that allowed shareholders to call a special board meeting.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Time Warner said the change was effective immediately.

The move gives shareholders -- and 21st Century Fox -- fewer avenues to press the company into a potential deal with Fox, which recently made an unsolicited $80 billion offer to combine the companies. Without the ability to call a special meeting, shareholders supportive of a Fox offer would not be able to replace Time Warner’s board of directors before the company’s next annual meeting, which would likely come next June.

Telecommunications bankers are running out of deals to pitch. Since 2011, a rush of multibillion-dollar acquisitions has reshaped the United States wireless market.

Now, with Sprint and T-Mobile zeroing in on an agreement to join forces, one of the last big deals for the industry may be nearing an announcement. Some of the deals that have led up to this moment were foregone conclusions.

Verizon always planned to take full control of Verizon Wireless, but waited until the debt markets could support its $130 billion purchase from Vodafone, its partner in the venture. Others had been long rumored and finally came to fruition. After AT&T was blocked by regulators in its attempt to acquire T-Mobile, it was expected that T-Mobile would try to grow on its own. That’s why it merged with MetroPCS. O

thers were surprise moves that set off a chain reaction that is still playing out. AT&T, unable to buy more wireless customers, has turned its attention to television, agreeing to buy DirecTV.

The lines separating telephone, Internet and television companies, meanwhile, continue to blur, as each muscles into the others’ territory. But between these announced deals and the impending announcement by Sprint and T-Mobile, it is hard to see what meaningful assets telecommunications companies can set their sights on next. In the wake of all this consolidation, there are only a few potential targets remaining.

Media General said that it would acquire LIN Media for $1.6 billion in a cash and stock deal that will create the second-largest local television broadcasting company.

Both Media General and LIN Media operate local television stations that act as affiliates to the big broadcast networks like ABC, CBS and NBC. The combined company will own 74 stations in 46 markets and reach 26.5 million households, or 23 percent of the market in the United States. It will rank behind only Sinclair Broadcast Group in terms of number of stations operated.

A full month after the Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal was struck, Charter is still hanging around.

Most notably, Charter has not withdrawn the full slate of directors that it nominated to Time Warner Cable’s board just one day before Comcast swooped in. Putting forward 13 directors to replace Time Warner Cable’s existing board was Charter’s boldest move to date, and paved the way for a nasty proxy fight.

So why hasn’t Charter withdrawn its slate? Charter says it is simply keeping its options open. After all, Time Warner Cable still hasn’t announced a date for its annual meeting, Charter notes, and the Comcast deal has yet to be approved by shareholders or regulators.

“There’s no rush in withdrawing it,” said Justin Venech, a company spokesman. “We’re going to leave it there.” It wasn’t the strongest slate to begin with, and did not include any close allies of John Malone, whose Liberty Media has a large stake in Charter. And Charter says it is not lobbying Time Warner Cable shareholders to vote for its preferred directors.