The giant Mystic power plant in Everett has changed names and corporate owners yet again. Formerly known as an Exelon plant, it is now part of Constellation, a newly spun out business based in Baltimore. In Massachusetts, the new Constellation spinoff also owns the LNG marine terminal next door in Everett, as well as power plants in West Medway and Framingham. However, this isn’t the first time the Mystic Generating Station was a Constellation plant: It briefly flew that corporate flag until Exelon acquired the Constellation portfolio a decade ago. That 2012 acquisition also made it the second time the plant had been owned by Exelon, after a short spell in the early 2000s. Over the years, the station in its varying forms has also been owned by Boston Edison, Sithe Energies, BNP Paribas, and Boston Generating. Two natural gas-fired turbines are still operating there, known as Mystic 8 and 9, but they are expected to be shut down in mid-2024. — JON CHESTO
EMPLOYMENT
Payrolls took a hit last month due to Omicron
Employment at US companies declined in January by the most since the early days of the pandemic as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus registered a swift yet likely temporary blow to the nation’s labor market. Businesses’ payrolls fell by 301,000 last month in a broad-based decline, according to ADP Research Institute data released Wednesday. The decrease in employment, due to a surge in Covid-19 infections that led to some business closures and restrained activity, exacerbates tightness in the job market. Still, employment growth is seen picking up as the spread of the variant wanes. The data precede Friday’s monthly employment report from the Labor Department, which is currently forecast to show that private payrolls increased by 113,000 in January. The ADP figures don’t always follow the same pattern as the Labor Department’s data. BLOOMBERG NEWS
PERSONAL FINANCE
Charge! Borrowers snap up record number of credit cards
US lenders issued more credit cards than ever last year, with a growing share of them going to consumers with lower credit scores. A record 196 million Americans held cards at the end of 2021, according to a report by credit-data agency TransUnion. In the third quarter, the latest for which detailed numbers are available, the number of new cards issued hit an all-time high of 20.1 million, it said. Some 9 million of them went to non-prime borrowers — those with poor or fair credit. BLOOMBERG NEWS
ONLINE PAYMENTS
PayPal closes millions of accounts opened by “bots”
PayPal said it closed 4.5 million accounts and lowered its forecast for new customers after finding ‘’bad actors’' were taking advantage of its incentives and rewards programs. Shares of the company fell by the most on record. The payments giant, which is also overhauling its marketing strategy, said it no longer expects to achieve 750 million active accounts by 2025, abandoning a goal that contributed to a jump in spending last year on sales campaigns. PayPal last year began offering its first sign-up incentives, handing out as much as $10 to encourage new customers to open an account. But the firm’s risk-management team discovered that many of the accounts were being created by bot farms, a system fraudsters use to manipulate Internet activity, said a spokesman for the company, which is based in San Jose, Calif. BLOOMBERG NEWS
AVIATION
American Airlines to buy more Boeing 737 Max jets
FORT WORTH, Texas — American Airlines said Wednesday it plans to exercise options to buy 30 more Boeing 737 Max jets while delaying delivery of Boeing 787s, larger jets that are being plagued by production flaws. The airline expects to receive half the 737 Max 8 jets next year and the other half in 2024, as it seeks to rebuild from the pandemic. For Boeing, the orders from a major customer builds on a huge order for passenger and cargo planes that Qatar Airways announced earlier this week. ASSOCIATED PRESS
ELECTRIC CARS
Musk said there was a plan to take Tesla private
Elon Musk said that his 2018 tweet about planning to take Tesla private was “entirely truthful” and that investors who claim the missive was fraudulent are wrong. Lawyers for the billionaire chief executive officer of the electric-car maker said in a court filing Tuesday that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund had indeed agreed to support his attempt to take the company private. “Elon Musk’s August 7, 2018 tweet informing the public that he was considering taking Tesla private was entirely truthful,” the CEO’s attorney Alex Spiro said in a heavily redacted filing. “Mr. Musk was considering taking Tesla private at $420 a share. Funding was secured. There was investor support.” The tweet roiled Tesla’s shares and led the US Securities and Exchange Commission to sue Musk for fraud. BLOOMBERG NEWS
MEDIA
New York Times reaches 10 million subscription milestone early
The New York Times Co. reached its goal of 10 million subscriptions ahead of schedule, the company said Wednesday, aided substantially by the 1.2 million it gained by buying the sports news website The Athletic. The $550 million deal for The Athletic, which was announced last month, was completed on Tuesday, the company said. In the final three months of 2021, before the Athletic acquisition, the Times added 375,000 digital subscriptions, the company said in its quarterly earnings report. By the last week of December, the Times had almost 8.8 million subscriptions. Nearly 5.9 million were for digital news, more than 2 million were for the other digital products, and a shade under 800,000 were for the print newspaper. The Times also announced a new goal on Wednesday: It will aim, it said, to have at least 15 million subscribers by the end of 2027. NEW YORK TIMES
AUTOMOTIVE
GM’S says chip shortage is easing
General Motors is seeing signs of an easing in the semiconductor shortage that curbed vehicle output last year but cautioned that a shift to producing lower-margin models and rises in materials prices will cap profit this year. Like most automakers, GM dealt with the unprecedented supply crunch by prioritizing its most profitable vehicles at the expense of higher-volume models with lower margins. The manufacturer was hit among the hardest in the fourth quarter, when a 43 percent drop in domestic sales forced the company to relinquish its crown as top US automaker for the first time since 1931. BLOOMBERG NEWS
BANKING
Santander to revamp operations in the US
Santander is planning to simplify the structure of its US operations by discontinuing businesses such as home loans and focusing on consumer lending. Spain’s biggest bank, whose US headquarters are in Boston, may also review some of its commercial and industrial business lending, it said in a presentation Wednesday. Santander has been pivoting toward areas with scope for more profitable growth in the US, announcing a buy-out last year of minority investors at its consumer finance division. It also agreed to purchase Amherst Pierpont Securities, an independent US broker dealer, as part of a push into fixed-income trading. BLOOMBERG NEWS