Papa John relocates headquarters to Atlanta
Pizza delivery company Papa John’s plans to move its global headquarters to Atlanta from Kentucky next year, adding 200 jobs as it expands and rides a huge surge in business, thanks to the coronavirus.
Papa John’s International will relocate development, human resources, menu innovation and other departments to the Atlanta area from its hometown of Louisville. The company’s IT and logistics departments will remain in Louisville.
Company president and CEO Rob Lynch told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution the COVID-19 pandemic has helped Papa John’s have the best year in its history. As people work and attend school from home, sales have soared.
That makes it a good time for Papa John’s to expand and adopt a new headquarters in a location with a deeper talent pool and more options for executives to travel, he said.
“We think that Atlanta can help us get the talent we need,” said Lynch, who was named Papa John’s CEO a year ago.
Mortgage rates hover near historic lows
U.S. average rates on long-term mortgages changed little this week as they hover at historically low levels.
Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac reported Thursday that the average rate on the 30-year home loan edged up to 2.87% from 2.86% last week. By contrast, the rate averaged 3.73% a year ago.
The average rate on the 15-year fixed-rate mortgage slipped to 2.35% from 2.37% from last week.
Housing demand continues as one of few bright spots in the pandemic-hobbled economy. Spurred by the low loan rates, first-time home purchases jumped 19% in August from July, to the highest monthly level ever tracked, according to Freddie Mac. Still, the lack of available homes for sale is a constraint.
China accepts TikTok deal
The Chinese company that owns TikTok has accepted the Trump administration’s changes to a deal designed to mitigate the White House’s concerns that the popular app poses a national security threat, two people with knowledge of the talks said.
The Treasury Department, which leads a group reviewing the deal for national security purposes, provided TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, with revisions to its proposal Wednesday, one of the people said. Some of the revisions were intended to address how TikTok’s data and source code would be handled and secured, one of the people said. The two sides have agreed in principle but are still discussing some technical details, the other person said.
The exact ownership structure of TikTok under the proposed deal is unclear. President Donald Trump and some members of his administration have said that ByteDance cannot retain a majority stake in TikTok if their concerns are to be satisfied. Oracle, the Silicon Valley business software-maker, is set to be a technology partner for TikTok while taking an ownership stake in the app but would not own it outright.