At 78 years old, Saul Sanchez took pride in his routine: showing up before 5 a.m. at a Greeley, Colo., beef processing plant to snag a good parking space and read the Bible before his shift. After work he would shower, eat dinner and go to sleep.

On March 19, Mr. Sanchez came home, showered and went straight to bed, his daughter said. He told family members he was tired but went to work the next day at the plant owned by JBS USA Holdings Inc. It turned out to be his last day on the processing line where he had cut meat for...

Food makers are designing value packs, and supermarkets are restoring promotions, aiming to offset disruptions wrought by the coronavirus pandemic that have led to the fastest rise in food prices in more than four decades.

While food companies and supermarkets say they have reopened plants and resolved supply constraints that contributed to higher prices, they also expect prices to remain elevated because of increased costs for labor and transportation. Companies are buying equipment and reconfiguring factories and stores...

As the American shale-drilling industry slowly recovers from a historic crash in oil prices, it is poised to grow in fewer places than before.

Even before U.S. benchmark prices fell into negative territory in April, investment in once-booming oil fields in North Dakota and South Texas was waning while producers drilled through many of their sweetest spots.

Now,...

A growing number of first-time buyers are boosting RV maker Thor Industries Inc. during the coronavirus pandemic, the company said Monday, as consumers look to use recreational vehicles for socially distant travel and as mobile offices.

“Every North American dealer I have spoken to in the last few weeks has been very excited about the pace at which sales are picking up,” Chief Executive Bob Martin said. “Many of our dealers are reporting a significant improvement in sales from April to May and are excited about the sales potential...

SYDNEY—As the coronavirus pandemic stifles air travel, major airports around the world are rethinking plans to spend billions of dollars on new terminals, runways and hotels that could sit empty if demand doesn’t return.

San Francisco International Airport is postponing by at least six months a $1 billion terminal renovation formerly slated to start in June. In Florida, Orlando’s airport authority scaled back an expansion to 15 gates from 19. In London, executives at Heathrow Airport say building a third runway isn’t a priority...

Yael Aflalo dedicated her high-end fashion company Reformation to making masks during the coronavirus pandemic, to help meet what she thought would be a temporary need.

Instead, she found a popular new accessory for her brand’s latest collection: masks in colorful and fashionable patterns for sale on Reformation’s website for $10 each.

“The...

IKEA has long frustrated some shoppers by selling furniture designed to be assembled with a tiny wrench. But the company’s struggles during the coronavirus pandemic to complete online orders has brought customers a whole new kind of misery.

In many ways, this spring should have been a great moment for the flat-pack furniture giant as shelter-in-place orders prompted millions of workers to quickly set up makeshift workspaces at home. But IKEA’s slow embrace of e-commerce before the pandemic has left customers across the U.S....

Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said Friday that the company will review existing policies on how it handles content related to civil unrest or violence, as the company faces criticism over its decision to not moderate or take down some posts.

Facebook said it will review its policies on content concerning threats of state use of force as well as content in countries with civil unrest or violent conflicts. While the company has some policies in place that call for greater restrictions during emergencies and...

Huawei Technologies Co. founder Ren Zhengfei was preparing to gather his top executives in Argentina in December 2018 to discuss a sweeping reorganization of the Chinese technology giant when he learned his daughter had been detained during a stopover in Vancouver.

Meng Wanzhou, who also serves as the company’s chief financial officer, was wanted by the U.S. for allegedly helping Huawei dodge sanctions on Iran. She urged her father to call off his trip.

Executives at big U.S. companies have been speaking out publicly about the killing of George Floyd while in custody of Minneapolis police. Most messages call for unity and condemn racism, but not every company has been using the same language to make its point.

The Wall Street Journal analyzed the text on 35 statements and internal memos issued by executives in the past week to see how each company is addressing the unrest that started in Minneapolis and spread to the rest of the U.S.

AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. said its ability to stay in business is in jeopardy if it can’t raise enough cash to fund operations during the prolonged closure of its theaters due to the coronavirus pandemic.

AMC said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday that its cash balance as of April 30 was $718.3 million, enough to fund its expected resumption of operations in the summer or later. But it warned its liquidity would depend on when its operations can fully resume, as well as the timing of movie releases and its ability...

The Trump administration threatened Wednesday to bar mainland Chinese airlines from flying to and from the U.S. starting June 16, saying Beijing has failed to approve resumption of these routes by U.S. carriers.

Some U.S. airlines have sought to resume service to China this month, after suspending flying there earlier this year as the coronavirus pandemic took hold.

The...

Hundreds of U.S. companies reduced salaries for their chief executives as the coronavirus pandemic swept across American business, a reversal for a group of leaders that until this year has ridden a bull market to record compensation.

Big-company CEOs had their richest paydays ever in 2019, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows. But in March and April many took large cuts to their salaries after the deadly virus crippled global commerce. For 2020, few so far changed the equity awards that make up the bulk of executive compensation...

Even as protesters have filled streets, parks and TV screens amid outrage since the death of George Floyd, Brigette Lumpkins has kept putting on makeup in the morning and smiling through virtual meetings with clients. “I’m still having to dial in and perform as though nothing is wrong,” she says.

“This is my day job, and being black is like my other job,” says Ms. Lumpkins, a Miami-based director of business development at professional-services firm EisnerAmper. The 46-year-old has been staying up at night to watch the news....

The CEO of one of the country’s biggest chicken producers and three other industry executives were indicted Wednesday for allegedly conspiring to fix prices on chickens sold to restaurants and grocery stores, the Justice Department’s first charges in a continuing criminal antitrust probe.

The one-count indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Colorado, allege current and former senior executives at Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. and Claxton Poultry Farms fixed prices and rigged bids from 2012 to 2017.

Shares of Warner Music Group Corp. rose more than 15% following the company’s trading debut Wednesday morning, a stock sale that marked the largest U.S. initial public offering of the year so far.

After opening at $27 a share, the stock rose to $28.83 on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol WMG.

Using the company’s opening price, Warner...

As the U.S. auto business restarts, car buyers returning to showrooms are likely to confront a frustrating reality: slimmer pickings and fewer deals on the new-car lot.

Many dealerships are running low on some of their most popular vehicles, after sales of cars in some parts of the country fared better than expected amid Covid-19 lockdowns, say industry executives, analysts and auto retailers, and that is leading to fewer vehicles to sell and less need to discount them.

Surging e-commerce volumes during the coronavirus pandemic are straining the U.S. Postal Service’s parcel network as staffing shortages and backlogs in hard-hit areas slow deliveries.

The problems have delayed some packages for days and even weeks, shippers and consumers say, holding up orders at a time when many people are shopping more online to avoid infection with the virus.

What do you do when a sudden break from past trends profoundly reorders the way the world works? If you’re a business, one thing you probably can’t do is turn to existing artificial intelligence.

To carry out one of its primary applications, predictive analytics, today’s AI requires vast quantities of relevant data. When things change this quickly, there’s no time to gather enough. Many pre-pandemic models for many business functions are no longer useful; some might even point businesses in the wrong direction.