The purpose of the article is to investigate manipulative strategies in public business media discourse. Relevance of this issue is predetermined by the linguopragamitic potential of public business speech. It is necessary to reconise and counteract manipulative techniques which leads to the need for linguistic research into manipulative tactics and most vulnerable targets of manipulation. The paper makes a contribution to pragmatic studies of verbal manipulation and highlights specific manipulative traits of public business lectures: different degrees of preparation of the audience and the presenter, expectation as an important cognitive factor, and applying manipulation models (gradation model, background model, evaluative model, and indirect model).