Significant Digits For Monday, March 5, 2018


You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news.

4 Oscars

“The Shape of Water” won best picture last night at the Academy Awards in addition to directing, production design and original score, capping off an exciting if somewhat predictable evening. [ABC News]


13 people

Number of Delta Air Lines passengers who took advantage of an offered discount for NRA members. Georgia killed a $40 million tax break for the airline in light of their position to discontinue the offer. [USA Today]


$100,000 bonus

Because even broad gains for workers must be hijacked so that only a slim percentage benefit greatly, United Airlines is ending an on-time bonus of $300 and replacing it with an incentives package that will reward one employee with a $100,000 bonus and 10 employees with a $40,000 cash or car bonus, along with 1,360 who get smaller prizes. This cuts the bonuses paid out by management by tens of millions. [The Points Guy]


$31.3 million

Value of stocks that Trump confidant Carl Icahn dumped in advance of the announcement that the President would impose a 25% tariff on steel imports and a 10% tariff on aluminum. [The Los Angeles Times]


£364 million

Carillion, a British firm that specializes in construction, is in basically a state of financial collapse, and that’s a problem because they are major contractors for the U.K. government, which has a lot of money tied up with them. However, a proposal from EY presented in mid-December would have broken up the company and allowed the government to retrieve £364 million from Carillion, of which £218 million could go to pension funds with a £1 billion deficit. That plan was rejected, and people want to know why. [The Guardian]


$20 billion

iHeartRadio is working towards a bankruptcy filing; the company owes about $20 billion in debt, and it missed a Feb. 1 interest payment on a bond that had a 30-day grace period. [Bloomberg]


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If you see a significant digit in the wild, send it to @WaltHickey.