Yahoo's Asia Strategy, Redux: Top Stories for Wednesday

Yahoo disappointed on profit and revenue but shares reversed course and rose after hours on hope the company may cash in on yet another Asia investment. Yahoo announced the sale of China's Alibaba during its last earnings announcement. This time it might be Yahoo Japan, the company's "one shareholder-pleasing play," per Fortune. CEO Marissa Mayer, during the Q1 earnings call, revealed only that Yahoo had retained advisors for a possible sale. But that was all the market needed to hear. Or, maybe the only thing it wants to hear. "Traders don’t care about Yahoo’s new mission statement or future growth; they want cash," writes Fortune's Erin Griffin. "Desperate to please them, CEO Marissa Mayer has one play left: Yahoo Japan." Yahoo's stake in Yahoo Japan is worth about $14 billion, which is about 1/3 of its own $41 billion market cap.

*** A high-frequency trader in the UK has been charged with fraud and stock manipulation which contributed to 2010's flash crash — "15 minutes of chaos that shook the world’s biggest markets and prompted investors both big and small to question how such a vital part of the economy could be brought to its knees," write Nathaniel Popper and Jenny Anderson in the New York Times in a lede they should both be hanging on their office walls. If prosecutors have it right, Navinder Singh Sarao did all this from his suburban row house, possibly in his pajamas. The incident — all the more harrowing for its brevity — saw the Dow plummet nearly 1,000 points. Markets recovered but since there was no underlying news to explain the jolt it was, to say the least, unsettling to traders who may make fortunes on uncertainty but also hate it. Sarao is charged with 21 counts of manipulation, fraud and spoofing in a complicated scheme to fool the market into believing there was heightened demand for futures in the S&P Index. He is accused of scamming the market on 40 separate trading days, netting some $40 million.

*** Six US Senators are urging regulators to block Comcast's proposed $45.2 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable. The timing: Comcast meets with Department of Justice officials and, Reuters reports, FCC staffers brief commissioners on their analysis. The senators, all Democrats, say the tie-up would be anti-competitive for broadband. "... with only a handful of cable and Internet providers dominating the market, consumers are often left with little choice but to pay the price a given provider demands and have little say over what content is made available to them." Internet access is the battle line, not what company overcharges you for channels you don't want. As poor as the competition between cable and satellite companies may be, it's virtually non-existent in broadband. Or as Adi Robertson puts it in The Verge: "There is absolutely no way that Comcast can argue it would have meaningful competition in wired broadband or cable after the merger. It’s impossible." Comcast tries, Robertson writes, by "comparing itself to pretty much any company that offers internet or video service in any form."

*** Google might unveil its wireless service as early as today. "In a key development," sources tell Ryan Knutson and Alistair Barr report for The Wall Street Journal, customers will be charged only for the data they use. Metered use and data rollover plans are becoming more common, but Google's entry can only raise the profile for what the industry calls "breakage." Google's service will run on only the Sprint and T-Mobile networks, and only on the Nexus 6 phone. But — another cool feature — users will be able to dynamically switch between those two carriers for the best available signal.

*** The CEO of Rolls-Royce is not the Rolls-Royce of CEOs: John Ripton is out — "abruptly" — write Peggy Hollinger, David Oakley and Elizabeth Paton in the Financial Times. Stepping right into the driver's seat is Warren East, a former engineer who had been a non-executive member of the board. Rolls-Royce has had a "string of profit warnings" but the news was a "bolt from the blue," especially after announcing a $9 billion passenger jet engine order, "the largest in its history."

*** What's behind the surge in Oklahoma's earthquakes? The scientific consensus is that they are "largely caused by the underground disposal of billions of barrels of wastewater from oil and gas wells," writes Michael Wines in The New York Times. There's no doubt something's wrong; until the oil and gas boom of the last decade  Oklahoma averaged less than two magnitude 3.0 quakes a year. The state had a record 585 lin 2014, second only to Alaska. Oklahoma had resisted blaming oil and gas for the tremors in this oil and gas state — until now. But official acquiescence has not yet been accompanied by official action, to the consternation of state Rep. Cory Williams. “I want a moratorium and then an action plan," he said. "The only way to protect the public is to say, 'We’re done for now.'"

*** Chipotle's carnitas drought is likely to continue for the rest of the year, "threatening to undercut the restaurant chain’s growth," writes Craig Giammona in Bloomberg. The pulled-pork pinch contributed to a Q1 sales miss and prompted the Mexican fast casual chain to engage in "rolling blackouts" — rotating locations where carnitas were available every few weeks. The strategy hurt sales, CFO Jack Hartung says, by causing "confusion … about where and when we’re out of carnitas" among customers who — to make matters worse — weren't much into substituting chicken or steak. We're not sure whether it was a reluctant second choice, but, for the record, Hillary Clinton ordered a chicken burrito bowl.