Washington's not letting up on giving back

Your first source for understanding business in greater Washington  •  Mon., Dec. 22, 2014 View in your Web browser

Washington’s not letting up on giving back

Welcome to CapBiz A.M., your morning primer on business news with a focus on Washington. Giving back:Washington’s charity community is grappling with the pullback in government spending, which has cut grants and pinched the resources of businesses that rely on federal spending. Still, many local companies have risen to the challenge. (CAPBIZ) Subpar suburbs: The District, Maryland and Virginia each added several thousand jobs in November, and each saw its unemployment rate dip. However, the statewide numbers mask weaker conditions in the Washington suburbs. (CAPBIZ)

Patent purge: ObjectVideo, a Reston-based developer of video analytics technology, has sold its entire portfolio of patents and their corresponding license agreements to a Canadian company for $80.3 million. (CAPBIZ)
Busy bee: Bo Blair, Washington’s restaurateur to the millennials, owns 20 restaurants, bakeries, bars and assorted entertainment properties from Washington to the island of Nantucket, and he has an awfully busy year ahead. (CAPBIZ)
Pushing Pillsbury: When Debby Baum and Sheila Harvey were young lawyers, they were reminded that the legal profession was an old boys club. Today, they’re helping lead one of the world’s largest law firms,and they’re still shaking things up. (CAPBIZ)
Capitalizing on Cuba: U.S. businesses have begun imagining ways to capitalize on last week’s announcement that the United States will restore diplomatic ties with Cuba. However, in many cases, they may have to be patient. (AP)

Show must go on? The aborted release of the action comedy “The Interview” has raised follow-up questions for Sony Pictures, as an outside attorney for the Hollywood studio insisted Sunday that the film “will be distributed.” The question is, how? (WSJ)
Fast forwarding: For all of its influence as a cultural force, YouTube is still finding its way as an economic one. It will be up to Susan Wojcicki, who has quietly become one of the most powerful media executives in the world, to chart that course. (NYT)

Statistically speaking: The numbers of women in science and technology are dismal, except in one field: statistics. The discipline, which used to have all the allure of an actuarial table, has been rebranded as part of the hot high-tech field of data science. (WP)

On Wall Street

Stocks closed the week with three straight days of gains, pushing the S&P 500 to its second best week in nearly two years. (Get the latest updates here)

What’s on tap today

Chicago Fed National Activity Index (8:30 a.m.)

Existing Home Sales (10:00 a.m.)

Help: What your company can learn from the craft beer industry (OSB)

Follow: Catalogue for Philanthropy Washington D.C.  

Extra: How cheap gas changes where we live (WP)

Extra II: By the way, we’re moving, sort of. (WP)

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