Rising economic headwinds are yielding inflation hampering revenue growth of tech companies, forcing many to cut workforce. This has erased significantly the Covid-induced economic gains made by some US tech giants, creating a wide gap between Apple and others.

In the report below, Insider noted that the Cupertino giant is now worth more than fellow tech giants Alphabet, Amazon and Meta combined, after it ended trading Wednesday with a market value of $2.307 trillion.

At the same time, the market caps of its three tech giant peers added up to $2.306 trillion at the close of trading Wednesday. Google parent Alphabet’s market cap stood at $1.126 trillion, Amazon’s at $939.78 billion and Facebook parent Meta’s at $240.07 billion, Yahoo Finance data showed.

Overall, Big Tech stocks suffered a brutal selloff last week on the back of disappointing quarterly earnings. But Apple’s stock has outperformed its peers after it beat Wall Street’s revenue and profit forecasts for its fourth quarter.

The iPhone maker’s shares soared 8% in the wake of its results. After their earnings reports, Meta plunged more than 20%, Amazon fell about 10%, while Alphabet saw a single-digit decline.

Alphabet, Amazon and Meta’s lackluster earnings signaled that demand for digital advertising is flagging. The poorly-received results have helped wipe billions off their market values as their shares fell, and pushed Amazon out of the trillion-dollar market cap club.

Over the past five sessions, Apple’s stock has risen 0.16%, while Alphabet has fallen 5.7%, Amazon is down 17.0% and Meta has lost 7.6% over that period.

Despite Apple’s achievement, its market cap has fallen back from its $2.193 trillion value at the end of 2021. A series of headwinds — high inflation, rising interest rates, fears of recession and the Ukraine war among them — have meant tech stocks have struggled in 2022 as investors lost appetite for higher risk assets.

In May, Saudi Aramco surpassed Apple as the world’s most valuable company due to the oil windfall orchestrated by Russia-Ukraine war. The company amassed as much as $1 billion monthly in revenue. Though the surge in oil price is gradually subsiding, Aramco still has a high edge over Apple as a result of the global economic downturn.

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) may start a fresh strike action a few weeks after it ended the notorious eight month long strike by the order of the court.

This is due to developments that have followed the union’s efforts to resume academic activities in Nigeria’s public universities.

On Friday, the University of Jos chapter of ASUU ordered its members to stay at home indefinitely, pending when the federal government pays their withheld salaries.

On Thursday, Punch reported that the returning lecturers have been offered half salaries by the federal government even though they’ve not been paid since February. The federal government had in the midst of the strike, initiated no-work no-pay policy, but ASUU is believed to have had that resolved through the intervention of the House of Representatives.

The federal government’s decision to pay half salaries seems to have betrayed everything the parties have agreed on besides court order to call off the strike. It has also rolled off a stone that will likely pave way for another strike.

A statement signed by Professor Lazarus Maigoro of the Jos chapter of ASUU said its members have been directed to stay at home (though not on strike) until 50 percent of their salary backlog is cleared.

The statement partly reads: “One of the issues agreed at the meeting was that 50% of the backlog of eight months arrears of our withheld salaries will be paid to our members immediately but as at the time of writing this press release, only 17 days prorated October salary was paid to our members by the office of the Accountant General of the Federation.

“Having stayed for about nine months running now, our members in the University of Jos considered this an insult to them by the Accountant General of the Federation.

“Is the Accountant General of the Federation actually answerable to the Minister of Labour? So, if today the Minister of Agriculture directs the Accountant General of the Federation to withhold the salaries of the staff of the Agricultural Research Institutes who have been on strike for over a year, will he obey that?

“We wonder why Ngige is keen about withholding the salaries of ASUU members because staff of some Agricultural Research Institutes have been on strike for almost a year but they have been receiving their salaries regularly. Is this policy only for ASUU members?

“We are also aware that the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, wrote a memo to the Accountant General asking him to pay our members only from the day we suspended the strike. By this singular act, the Minister of Labour and Employment has casualised the work of the University Lecturers unfortunately.

“This further creates doubts on our minds as to whether the understanding reached with the leadership of the House of Representatives on some of the issues will be implemented at all by those who are saddled with the responsibility of doing so in order to avoid further needless strikes.

“From all indications, the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, has personalized the matter between him and our union and is on a mission for vendetta.

“It has become crystal clear now that he wasn’t happy that the House of Representatives brokered a truce on some of the issues we went on strike for and has gone behind to undermine it.

“It is also very clear to us now why he shamelessly walked out on the leadership of the House of Representatives at one of the meetings with all stakeholders to the glare of all Nigerians because he never wanted any form of resolution to be reached on the issues being discussed and is the nation.

“In view of the bottleneck placed by Ngige towards paying our members the backlog of our salaries, the congress of ASUU University of Jos met today November 4, 2022 and resolved to stay at home, though not on strike until the backlog of the withheld salaries are paid.

“For the avoidance of doubt, our members are back to work, willing and ready to work but are unable to work. Based on the revised academic calendar for

the 2020/2021 session approved by the senate of the University, lectures should have started already but the challenge of lack of payment of salaries has constrained our members from going to the classroom to teach.

“What this implies is that the students who have resumed already will have to wait indefinitely while we wait for our withheld salaries to be paid to us”.

The Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) has drawn the attention of car users and dealers in Nigeria to some particular models of Lexus vehicles which have been recently recalled by the Toyota company due to detected faults.

This is contained in a statement issued by The Corps Public Education Officer, Assistant Corps Marshal, Bisi Kazeem, on Friday, in Abuja.

The statement reads:

“The Federal Road Safety Corps wishes to draw the attention of the motoring public, particularly those who are presently using Lexus NX260, Lexus NX3650h and Lexus NX400h+ manufactured between 31 March, 2021 to 26 April 2022 to a faulty programming of the Lane Keeping Assist (LKA) System, which has prompted the Company to recall the categories of the listed vehicles.

“According to the report contained in a memo forwarded by the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the company is also recalling 6,491 Lexus NX260 with defective Electric Parking Brake (EPB) system which was manufactured between 19 April 2021 and 15 July 2022.

“The withdrawal is specifically premised on the fact that the vehicles will pose safety hazard to their users thereby leading to crashes.

“The Acting Corps Marshal, Dauda Ali Biu is by this notice, admonishing the general public, particularly dealers and drivers of these categories of vehicles, to desist from selling or using the identified vehicles on Nigerian roads to avoid any mishap”.

Twitter employees facing mass layoff have filed a class action lawsuit against the company with the US federal court in San Francisco, alleging that they were not given enough notice as stipulated under federal law that they would be laid off.

On Thursday evening, Twitter employees were informed via a company-wide memo that they will receive a notice by 12 p.m. ET Friday that informs them of their employment status.

“If your employment is not impacted, you will receive a notification via your Twitter email. If your employment is impacted, you will receive a notification with next steps via your personal email,” a copy of the memo said.

Though the staff have been in anticipation of mass layoff as soon as Musk’s Twitter acquisition bid got close to reality, their concern hangs on the timeframe of the notice, as Musk had denied earlier reports that he plans to cut 75% of the company’s workforce. Some of the employees said they’d discovered that have been let go on Thursday when they couldn’t access their work accounts.

While the layoff is aimed at half of Twitter’s staff – saving about 25% of the employees who were reportedly on the sack-list earlier, the abrupt notice is believed to have broken a federal law. The federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act requires 60 days’ notice for mass sackings at large employers.

Musk’s layoff plan impacts half of Twitter’s 7,000 employees. Dozens of the affected employees have been noted posting on Twitter that they have been fired.

I was fired from Twitter this morning. I was responsible for the timeline refreshing the second you saw a good tweet

— Adam (@adamgreattweet) November 3, 2022

So far, the class action lawsuit is being pushed by about five Twitter employees who were fired before the notice came on Thursday. One said he was fired on November 1, while three said they were not informed at the time of filing but had been locked out of their email accounts.

As noted by the Guardian, Musk is known for using a similar layoff pattern at Tesla, where the company sought to obtain full release from its obligations under the Warn Act by offering severance of one or two weeks’ pay instead.

“Plaintiffs here are reasonably concerned that, absent court intervention, Twitter will engage in similar behavior and seek releases from laid-off employees without informing them of their rights or the pendency of this case,” the court filing stated

Musk’s move to cut Twitter’s workforce is tied to his efforts to cut the company’s running cost. He started by firing chief executive, Parag Agrawal, the finance chief, Ned Segal, and the legal affairs and policy chief, Vijaya Gadde.

He has also introduced $8 per month pay for the verification blue tick as a means of generating more revenue for Twitter. Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter is believed to be overpriced and he is working to replenish it as soon as possible. Musk has also directed Twitter’s teams to save as much as $1bn in annual infrastructure cost by slashing funding for cloud services and servers.

There is also a report that Musk has found a way to avoid paying sacked Twitter executives their severance packages. That also is expected to lead to another lawsuit which Musk has tried to avoid.

The world’s richest man completed the Twitter deal last Friday to stop the case, which was already taken to court by the company, from going to trial.