Business News Roundup, July 21

Elon Musk says he won “verbal” government approval to build the world’s longest tunnel for an ultra-high-speed train line to connect New York and Washington.

[...] an ambitious project would require billions of dollars in funding and extensive approvals from federal, state and local authorities.

Musk began digging in May on a small test tunnel using a secondhand boring machine, called Godot, which he acquired for his speculative new enterprise.

Here’s how Musk described the Boring Co. at a Ted Talk in April: This is basically interns and people doing it part time.

Chief executives of America’s 350 largest companies made an average of $15.6 million in 2016, or 271 times more than what the typical worker made last year, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s annual report on executive compensation released Thursday.

While that’s well below the 376-to-1 ratio EPI calculated in 2000 — the high-water mark for CEO pay — it’s still multiples above where it was in 1989, when the ratio was 59-to-1, or in 1965, when it was 20-to-1.

Visa has reported fiscal third-quarter profit of $2.06 billion, with a profit of 86 cents per share.

The global payments processor posted revenue of $4.57 billion in the period, which also beat Street forecasts.

EBay Inc. on Thursday reported second-quarter net income of $27 million, which works out to a profit of 2 cents a share.

Adjusted for non-recurring costs and stock option expense, the San Jose company’s earnings were 45 cents per share, matching Wall Street expectations.

The e-commerce company posted revenue of $2.33 billion in the period, which beat forecasts.

Earnings, adjusted for non-recurring costs and asset impairment costs, came to 98 cents per share.