The Big Business Quiz 2022: 22 Business Trivia Questions

Apple became the first US company to be valued at over $3 trillion on Jan. 3, 2022. The company became the world’s first trillion-dollar company in August 2018 and passed $2 trillion in 2020. Apple alone is more valuable than Boeing, Coca-Cola, Disney, Exxon-Mobil, McDonald’s, Netflix, and Walmart combined.

Is Apple still the most valuable company in the world?

By May 2022, Apple shares have fallen nearly 20%. On May 11, Oil giant Saudi Aramco surpassed Apple as the world’s most valuable firm with a market valuation of just under $2.43 trillion. Apple is, as of May 2022, worth $2.37 trillion.

Microsoft announced on Jan. 18, 2022, it is buying “Call of Duty” and “Candy Crush” maker Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion –  the biggest gaming industry deal in history. The purchase pushes Microsoft past Nintendo as the third-largest video game company by global revenue, behind Sony and Chinese tech giant Tencent.

ViacomCBS Inc announced it’s changing its name to Paramount. The media conglomerate that owns CBS, Showtime, MTV, Comedy Central, BET, Nickelodeon, Smithsonian, Paramount Pictures, Paramount+, Pluto TV, and more announced the change during a presentation of its streaming strategy on Feb. 15, 2022.

Stolichnaya (Stoli) vodka has long been marketed as Russian vodka, but its production facilities have been in Latvia since 2000, when its founder, Russian-born billionaire Yuri Shefler, was exiled because of his opposition to Putin. On March 4, 2022, the maker of Stolichnaya vodka announced a major rebrand – it will no longer be marketed as Russian and will be renamed Stoli. Stoli Group is a unit of Luxembourg-based SPI Group.

On Apr. 4, 2022, an SEC filing revealed that Elon Musk, the billionaire chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX and the world’s wealthiest person, had purchased a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter. Twitter will now have Musk as its largest shareholder, ahead of Vanguard, which owns 8.8 percent, and Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s former chief executive, who owns 2.3 percent. Musk has over 80 million Twitter followers.

In a deal valued at $44 billion, Twitter announced on Apr. 25, 2022, that it had entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Elon Musk. The transaction would result in Twitter becoming a privately owned company.

Did Musk drop out of the Twitter deal?

On May 13, 2022, Elon Musk tweeted, “Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts represent less than 5% of users.” On July  8, he said in a letter to Twitter that the company’s “misrepresentation of the number of spam accounts” might be a “material adverse effect (MAE)” that would allow him to walk away under the terms of the deal contract.

Was that the end of it?

Twitter filed a lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery against Musk on July 12, 2022, trying to force Musk to complete the takeover. Ahead of the Delaware court face-off on Oct. 17, Musk tweeted on Oct. 4, 2022, that buying Twitter would speed up his ambition to create an “everything app” called X and proposed to proceed with his original $44 billion bid to take Twitter, which he eventually did.

Lego is the world’s largest toymaker. The Danish toymaker halted deliveries to Russia in March 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine. On July 12, the company announced it’s ceasing all operations in Russia “indefinitely.”

Apple Pay Later, built into the Apple Wallet in IOS 16, allows users in the US to split the cost of an Apple Pay purchase into four equal payments spread over six weeks, with no interest and fees. Apple Pay Later is available everywhere Apple Pay is accepted – online or in-app. The service, which will work over the MasterCard network, puts Apple in direct competition with payment providers like Affirm and PayPal. IOS 16 will be available this fall as a free software update for iPhone 8 and later.

The Japanese yen is the third most-traded currency globally. The currency fell against the US dollar to levels last seen in 1998. The Bank of Japan, on June 10, 2022, gave a rare statement that it may intervene if the weakness persists.

Euro fell below 99 US Cents for the first time in two decades on Aug. 9, 2022. The euro’s all-time high of $1.18 was achieved shortly after its launch in Jan. 1999, but it then fell to a record low of 82.30 cents in October 2000. The last time the euro was valued below $1 was in July 2002.

Why is the euro falling?

Russian energy supplier Gazprom shut down its gas pipeline to Germany on Sept. 2, raising fear about rising energy prices and pushing the euro below parity against the US dollar.

Sri Lanka was the first nation to stop paying its foreign bondholders in May 2022. Russia followed in June due to sanctions the West laid amid the Ukraine war. El Salvador, Ghana, Egypt, Tunisia, and Pakistan are currently considered vulnerable to default but have not yet failed to pay their foreign bondholders.

What happened in Sri Lanka?

On July 9, 2022, Sri Lanka’s prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa agreed to resign after protesters stormed their residences and set fire to one. According to official data, Sri Lanka’s currency has collapsed by 80% since 2019, making imports more expensive, with food costs rising 57%.

Senior executives at Uber ordered the use of a “kill switch” to prevent police and regulators from accessing sensitive data during raids on its offices in at least six countries: France, the Netherlands, Belgium, India, Hungary, and Romania. The Guardian found the information on Uber files, a cache of leaked confidential company data published on July 11, 2022.

By May 4, 2022, 758 Tesla owners have complained to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that their cars have suddenly stopped on roadways for no apparent reason. According to the agency’s website, many feared a rear-end crash on a freeway.

Which Tesla models are affected?

The investigation covers phantom braking in an estimated 416,000 Tesla Models 3 and Y vehicles from the 2021 and 2022 model years. In February, the agency said it had no reports of crashes or injuries.

Expedia Group CEO Peter Kern, who earned $296.2 million last year, tops the Associated Press and Equilar’s list of top-paid male and female CEOs in 2021, published on May 26, 2022. Expedia Group is an online travel company that operates Expedia.com, Vrbo (previously HomeAway), Hotels.com, Hotwire.com, Orbitz, Travelocity, trivago, and CarRentals.com.

Who else is on the list?

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav comes in a close second with a yearly compensation of $246.6 million. After ServiceNow’s William McDermott, Apple’s Tim Cook settles for fourth place, with a humble $98.7 million paycheck.

Are any female CEOs on the list?

Lisa T. Su. Photo: Genevieve Martin, OLCF at ORNL, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

AMD’s (Advanced Micro Devices) CEO Lisa T. Su tops the female CEOs list with a yearly pay of $29.5 million (no. 22 overall), slightly ahead of General Motors CEO Mary T. Barra (no. 23 overall).

Geoffrey, the giraffe, is Toys”R”Us’s mascot. The toy brand went out of business in 2018 following a bankruptcy.

Is Geoffrey giraffe making a comeback?

By Oct. 15, 2022, all Macy’s stores across the US will include in-store Toys”R”Us shops featuring a photo opportunity with Geoffrey on a Bench.

Amazon announced on July 21, 2022, that it would acquire the primary care organization One Medical in a deal valued at $3.9 billion. The purchase is Amazon’s third-biggest acquisition, following its $13.7 billion deal to buy Whole Foods in 2017 and its $8.5 billion purchase of MGM studios earlier this year.

Ubisoft Entertainment is France’s biggest video games developer. It’s headquartered in the suburbs of Paris, with development studios worldwide. Ubisoft’s franchises include “Assassin’s Creed,” “Prince of Persia,” and “Tom Clancy’s.” China’s largest social network and gaming firm Tencent raised its stake in Ubisoft Entertainment on Sept. 7, 2022, in a deal that values the French game maker at almost $10 billion.

Telstra, Australia’s largest telecoms company, said on Oct. 4, 2022, it suffered a “small” data breach. The disclosure comes just two weeks after its rival Optus suffered an extensive cyberattack. According to the statement, only Telstra employees’ names and email addresses were stolen. The number of employees (current and former) affected was estimated at 30,000 in an internal Telstra staff email.

The Coca-Cola Company is ranked as the world’s top plastic polluter for the 4th consecutive year, according to the 2021 Break Free From Plastic report. In each year since 2019, Brand Audit found Coca-Cola branded products represent more pollution than the next two top polluters, PepsiCo and Unilever, combined. Claims about plastic packaging being eco-friendly made by big brands, including Coca-Cola and Unilever, are misleading greenwashing, according to a report by the Changing Markets Foundation. Case on point: The world’s largest plastic polluter, Coca-Cola, has spent millions promoting the notion that its bottles are 25% marine plastic.

Lemon-Dou, Coca-Cola’s first ready-to-drink alcohol beverage, was launched in Japan in 2018. It was Coca-Cola’s first entry into the alcohol beverage market since the late 1970s when the company owned a winemaker in California. Coca-Cola announced its latest alcoholic product on June 13, 2022: a can of the iconic cocktail Jack & Coke. It will be available in global markets and will debut in Mexico in late 2022.

OpenSea is an eBay-like site where people can browse millions of NFTs (non-fungible tokens), buy the images, and put their own up for sale. Since 2021 OpenSea has become the largest NFT marketplace worldwide. The company has raised more than $400 million from investors, at a value of $13.3 billion.

Troubled waters at OpenSea

NFT sales have dropped about 90 percent since September 2022. According to a June 6 New York Times report, OpenSea has seen a surge of NFTs seized by hackers and plagiarized NFTs, as sellers convert traditional artwork into NFTs and then list the images for sale without compensating the original creator.

Meta Platforms Inc, the owner of Facebook, plans to open its first physical store on May 9, 2022. The store will sell virtual reality headsets and video conferencing devices, including Ray-Ban smart glasses, Portal video-calling devices, and Oculus VR headsets. The store can be found in the Silicon Valley town of Burlingame, at the main campus of Meta’s Reality Labs division.