Advertisement

Amazon gives big rewards to vaccinated workers, Zoom's Five9 acquisition facing DOJ scrutiny, Netflix buys Roald Dahl's entire catalogue

Yahoo Finance's Brian Sozzi and Emily McCormick break down today's top headlines from Amazon, Zoom, and Netflix.

Video transcript

BRIAN SOZZI: Let's get down to business here and hit some of the hottest headlines you need to know right now.

Companies and municipalities have offered all kinds of creative incentives to encourage people to get vaccinated. But Amazon has kicked it up a notch. The company last month started a sweepstakes to reward employees who got their shots. The 18 prizes include cars, a $12,000 vacation package, and cash awards of $100,000 to $500,000. Eight winners have been announced so far. Amazon's sweepstakes ends October 21st.

And Zoom's nearly $15 billion deal to buy five9 is coming under scrutiny from a Justice Department led panel for potential national security risks. A license application tied to the deal is being examined by the inter-agency committee called team telecom. Zoom's ties to China have recently gotten more attention from the US government, including the Justice Department last year charging a China based Zoom executive with conspiring to disrupt video conference commemorations of the Tiananmen Square protest.

Netflix has bought the entire catalog of author Roald Dahl for an undisclosed amount. The works of Dahl including "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", "Matlida", and "The BFG" have already been the subjects of multiple film, TV, and stage interpretations. Netflix remains the largest streaming service by far with more than 209 million paid subscribers. And Emily, that just made me realize, I don't think I've ever seen "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." clearly I need to get out of my rock.

EMILY MCCORMICK: Brian, you need to get out from under your rock. It's a great movie. I've seen a couple of versions of that, that have been made here. But we were talking earlier about Disney and Disney Plus and the bet on nostalgia that that streaming platform has really been based on. But it does seem like this latest move is a bid at a similar strategy here from Netflix. And Wall Street does seem to be cheering that. We do see the stock up about 3% this morning.