5 Companies That Had A Rough Week

The Week Ending Nov. 2

Topping this week's roundup of those having a rough week is Dell Technologies for facing increased opposition to its tracking stock plan and a lawsuit from activist investor Carl Icahn.

Also making the list this week are DRAM maker Micron, which was the apparent victim of a trade secrets theft effort; Apple, for taking heat from the financial community over its decision to stop disclosing unit sales numbers for its products; Google, whose employees staged a walkout to protest allegations of sexual harassment and inequality; and home device maker Yi Technology whose home cameras were found to have serious security vulnerabilities.

Not everyone in the IT industry was having a rough go of it this week. For a rundown of companies that made smart decisions, executed savvy strategic moves—or just had good luck—check out this week's 5 Companies That Came To Win roundup.

Dell Stock Swap Plan Hits Bumps As Icahn Increases Tracking Stock Stake, Sues For Alleged Financial Disclosure Failure

It was a rough week for Dell Technologies and its plan to go public through a stock swap involving VMware tracking stock (DVMT), thanks largely to activist investor Carl Icahn.

Earlier in the week Icahn, who has signaled opposition to the stock swap plan, disclosed that he has increased his stake in the tracking stock to 9.3 percent from 8.3 percent in early October.

Also earlier in the week investment firm P. Schoenfeld Asset Management, which advises clients that own more than $150 million of DVMT shares, said it would vote against Dell's "grossly inadequate" stock swap offer.

Both developments will make it tougher for Dell to win shareholder approval for the plan.

Then, on Thursday, the battle reached a new pitch when Icahn sued Dell Technologies alleging that the company didn't disclose financial information related to the stock swap and demanded that Icahn be allowed to review and potentially share material information related to the plan.

Chipmaker Micron Victim Of Trade Secrets Theft

U.S. semiconductor maker Micron had trade secrets relating to its DRAM technology stolen by Chinese and Taiwanese chipmakers, according to a federal grand jury indictment handed down this week.

The U.S. Department of Justice said Thursday that a federal grand jury indicted a China state-owned company, a Taiwanese company and three Taiwan nationals for allegedly stealing the trade secrets from Micron.

The indictment charged that Stephen Chen, a former executive at a Micron subsidiary in Taiwan, orchestrated the theft after he left Micron for a job at United Microelectronics Corp., a Taiwanese semiconductor foundry.

While at UMC Chen recruited two Micron employees in Taiwan to steal hundreds of trade secrets related to Micron's DRAM technology and transfer them to Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit, a company owned by the People's Republic of China.

Apple Takes Heat After 'Major Dent' To Sales Transparency

Apple came under fire from Wall Street this week after the company said it will no longer disclose unit sales numbers for its iPhones, iPads and Mac products, starting with the first quarter of fiscal 2019.

Apple's stock price plunged about 7 percent on Friday on the news. Wall Street analysts questioned the move, with a Wedbush Securities analyst saying Apple's decision puts "a major dent" in the transparency of the company's story.

Apple defended the decision with CFO Luca Maestri saying that "a unit of sale is less relevant" for the company today given its broader product portfolio and wider sales dispersion within product lines.

Apple has been seeing little unit-sales growth in its iPhone business recently: In its fourth fiscal quarter Apple sold 46.9 million iPhones, up less than 1 percent from the same period one year earlier.

Google Employees Stage Global Walkout Over Allegations Of Sexual Harassment, Inequality

Google found itself the focus of unwanted attention Thursday when employees staged a walkout from the company's offices worldwide to protest what they see as a workplace culture that fosters sexual harassment and discrimination.

The "Google Walkout" demonstrations are fallout from a New York Times investigative story that detailed years of sexual harassment and abuse allegations, multimillion-dollar severance packages for accused executives and a lack of transparency over the cases, according to a CNN Business story.

More than 60 percent of Google's offices around the world participated in the protest, according to a Washington Post story, with workers taking part in the walkout leaving their offices at 11:10 a.m. local time.

More than 1,000 people left Google's corporate headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., the CNN story said.

Yi Technology Fixes Serious Vulnerabilities In Home Cameras

Yi Technology scrambled this week to fix multiple code execution vulnerabilities in the firmware running its Yi Home Camera version 27US.

The vulnerabilities, discovered by Cisco Talos and widely reported on such sites as Threatpost, could allow an attacker to gain remote code execution on the Internet of Things devices via a command injection, bypass methods of network authentication, or disable the device.

That means an attacker could prevent the camera from recording, delete stored videos or intercept video feeds, according to the Threatpost report. They could even use the camera to launch attacks against other devices on a home network including laptop computers and smart TVs.

Cisco Talos worked with Yi Technology to develop a new version of the firmware to fix the bugs.