If Silicon Valley Wins, Do We? Your Top Headlines for Wednesday

Washington D.C. and Silicon Valley just don’t run at the same speed. The permission the FAA granted Amazon to test-drive its delivery drones was too little too late the company says. Amazon VP Paul Misener testified to the US Senate that engineers had already developed new models – the one that was approved is outdated. (Remember: Amazon must seek a new authorisation for each drone model it wants to fly.) “Nowhere outside of the United States have we been required to wait more than one or two months to begin testing,” he said. “What the FAA needs is impetus, lest the United States fall further behind.”

The most powerful woman on Wall Street thinks the Valley has it right, too. Ruth Porat, CFO at Morgan Stanley, will soon be CFO at Google. Porat is no stranger to the West Coast: she’s a California native, sits on Stanford’s board of trustees and has led financing rounds for the likes of Amazon and eBay. She’s also the most senior example yet of Silicon Valley flatly beating Wall Street in the talent war – as it should be.

All 150 passengers and crew of a Germanwings flight that crashed in the French Alps yesterday are presumed dead. The Airbus 320 flying from Barcelona to Düsseldorf appears to have quickly descended over 8 minutes from its normal cruising altitude before crashing into the mountain. No distress call was sent. One black box, the flight recorder, was recovered from the crash site, a remote area only accessible by helicopter. Despite several high profile accidents recently, we’re still in the safest time ever for air travel, according to the Aviation Safety Network, with one fatal crash for every 4.125 million flights.

Li Ka-shing, Asia’s second richest man with a name to match, is buying O2. The $15 billion deal will likely create the UK’s largest mobile network, by merging O2 with competitor Three.

The Brazilian private equity firm that already owns Heinz is looking to take over Kraft Foods, according to the Wall Street Journal. The deal with 3G Capital Partners – a big behind-the-scenes player in the food business, famous for buying up struggling companies and slashing costs – would likely top $40 billion. The packaged food business has known better days: Americans are actually starting to eat healthier. Three Kraft executives resigned last month after announcing quarterly losses of nearly $400 million.

Greece has a new deadline: April 20. That’s when it’s expected to run out of cash to pay wages, pensions and debt service – something like the much discussed US fiscal cliff, except Athens can’t just raise the debt ceiling. Greece is locked out of getting any more financing until it can convince its creditors that it’s making significant reforms. The government vows to present a list of such reforms by Monday. In the meantime, it’s searching for funds wherever it can, including in the bank accounts of its health service, public utilities and Athens’ metro.

Debates have ended in the Ellen Pao case. For those not in tech, that’s the gender discrimination suit against venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers that has been the talk of Silicon Valley for a month. My colleague Caroline Fairchild talked to four industry leaders about their lessons from the case. Read it here.

You’ve seen this quote a lot around LinkedIn this week: "Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening.” The viral – and unattributed – quote comes from a fantastic analysis by Havas Media SVP Tom Goodwin. He explains that value creation has moved from providing products to building the interface between producer and customer. Problem: this flattened economy creates far fewer jobs. Credit where credit’s due.

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