The Fortune 500 comes out just once a year, but the companies on it make headlines every day. Here then are today’s highlights of news and happenings coming from the biggest names in business.
By Shelley DuBois, reporter
WALGREENS’ BIG BRANDING PUSH The drug store is launching its first national advertising campaign in hopes that customers will choose Walgreens (WAG) brand products over others in the store. The campaign, which involves partnerships with news and parenting websites as well as blogs targeting women, heavily features Walgreens pharmacists recommending the store’s products. [New York Times]
A TAD ANTICLIMACTIC Apple’s (APPL) iPhone that carries the Verizon (V) network officially went on sale Thursday, but apparently the lines outside of both Verizon and Apple stores were a little disappointing. Not that the phones didn’t go like hotcakes–between 250,000 and a million of them were sold on pre-order. [CNN]
IT WAS WORSE THAN YOU THOUGHT The government’s Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is releasing reports from an investigation into how close Citigroup (C) and Morgan Stanley (MS) came to bottoming out during the financial crisis. The verdict? Really, really close. [New York Times]
YAHOO BUILDS DIGITAL NEWSTAND It’s called Livestand, and it’s a kind of software that is supposed to personalize content for phones and tablets and allow magazine and newspaper publications to publish on mobile devices without having to write their own apps. It’s part of Yahoo’s (YHOO) attempt to ride the mobile wave, which it’s catching much later than Apple or Google (GOOG). [Wall Street Journal]
WAIT, IS THAT A RACING TRUCK? Ford (F) announced plans to sue Ferrari for calling its new Formula 1 racing car an F150. Ford accused Ferrari of doing that in order to capitalize off of the good branding built around Ford’s F-150 truck. Ferrari countered that consumers probably wouldn’t confuse a racing car with a commercially available truck, but that it would tweak the name anyway. [BBC]
CHAPTER 12 IN THE BLOCKBUSTER TRAGEDY Blockbuster (BBI) still can’t get its act together after taking on creditors to crawl back from bankruptcy. Said creditors disagreed about whether or not to give more cash to the company to fund its turnaround strategy. Instead, Blockbuster will offer itself up for sale. [Wall Street Journal]