If Barbie could talk, Mattel thinks, sales of the perennial teenager will stop sliding at the precipitous rate of 14%, as they did in 2014. Meanwhile, a YouTube spot released last week has the Internet abuzz with praise - mostly - over its message, "If you can dream it, you can do it!"

With a particular focus on "athleisure" wear for women, Nike says it expects to hit annual sales of $50 billion by 2020 as e-commerce helps it extend its global heel strike to everyday strolls on the boulevard. The company's first investor day in two years was led by president and CEO Mark Parker, who is co-founder Phil Knight's choice to succeed him as chairman sometime in the coming year.

As the lights fade on A.G. Lafley's second performance as CEO at Procter & Gamble, he is hearing audible rumblings from the balcony seats occupied by regular shareholders. Lafley, who will hand over day-to-day leadership to David Taylor, the global head of beauty, grooming and health, on Nov. 1 to become executive chairman of the board, presided over his final annual meeting yesterday in Cincinnati.

Belgian-Brazilian brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev, a determined suitor if there ever was one, finally won the hand of London-based SAB Miller this morning - "in principle" - with a $106 billion merger offer that will make the combined entity a behemoth in a consumer market increasingly enamored of craft brews. But if the deal is to be approved by antitrust regulators in several countries, divestments are sure to come.

Dell and data-storage company EMC this morning announced the largest-ever tech deal - a $67-billion takeover of the owner of cloud software maker VMware by the company once known for its personal computers.

Calling for "transfarency," a new Southwest Airlines ad campaign flies squarely into the prevailing winds of its competitors' penchant for squeezing a buck out of just about every passenger touchpoint. "Transfarency means we don't dream up ways we can trick you into paying more," says the voiceover on the first :30. "Low fares. Nothing to hide. That's Transfarency," is the tagline.

Amazon yesterday launched its long-in-the-making homemade-crafts site, Handmade at Amazon, with more than 5,000 artisans from 60 countries peddling over 80,000 items that are guaranteed to be "factory-free." More than 30% "can be personalized by artisans to delight customers," according to Amazon's release.

Portland hipsters, still assumed to be mourning the ripping up of a garish '30s-era carpet from the local airport this summer, were hammered by the news yesterday that Peet's Coffee, which itself was snatched up by a Luxembourg-based conglomerate controlled by a "secretive" German family in 2012, had acquired its beloved Stumptown Coffee.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement faces a grueling battle for approval in Congress - and the legislatures of each participating country - now that the 12 nations involved have hammered out a deal after five years of negotiations led by the United States.

Still bruised from its legal battles with ousted founder Dov Charney and battered by competitors in the fickle teen market, Los Angeles-based American Apparel filed for bankruptcy protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware, early Monday morning.