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☆ 4 Americans charged with ammunition offenses in Turks and Caicos
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-02 | by ( Amanda Musa | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

CNN —Four Americans are charged with possession of ammunition offenses in the tropical Atlantic getaway of Turks and Caicos, according to a post from the Turks and Caicos Islands Government. Carrying firearms in Turks and Caicos is prohibited, according to the TCI Government. Another man visiting Turks and Caicos from Pennsylvania is set to appear before a TCI court Friday on similar charges, according to CNN affiliate WPXI. Two additional Americans – a 31-year-old from Virginia and a 72-year-old from Texas – are also facing lengthy prison sentences for possessing ammunition, according to the TCI Government. Firearms, ammunition (including stray bullets), and other weapons are not permitted in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI).

Persons: Ryan Watson, Watson, Valerie, “, Valerie Watson, ”, Bryan Hagerich, Hagerich, Ashley, ” Ashley, WPXI, ” Hagerich, CNN’s Michael Rios, Tanika Gray, Forrest Brown Organizations: CNN, Turks, Caicos, Caicos Islands Government, TCI Government, British Overseas Territory, Embassy, Howard Hamilton International Airport, TCI, TSA, Will Rogers, Airport, WPXI, “, Transportation Security Administration, US State Department, British Overseas, State Department, United States, Firearms, Caicos Islands Locations: Caicos, Caicos Islands, Bahamas, Providenciales, Oklahoma, America, Oklahoma City, Turks, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Texas, United States, United

☆ An Oklahoma tourist says he faces 12 years in prison in the Caribbean after he mistakenly left 4 bullets from a hunting trip in his carry-on duffel bag
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-26 | by ( Matthew Loh | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

He and his wife, Valerie, say the four bullets in their duffel bag were unknowingly left there from a hunting trip. Watson now faces 12 years in prison, alongside several US tourists who say they made the same mistake. Valerie Watson was released from the charges on Tuesday and flew back to Oklahoma to reunite with her children. He now faces 12 years in prison, which is the minimum custodial sentence for bringing firearms or ammunition into Turks and Caicos. Related stories"We were trying to pack board shorts and flip flops," Valerie Watson told CBS News.

Persons: Ryan Watson, Valerie, Watson, —, Valerie Watson, GoFundMe, Tyler Wenrich, Wenrich, wouldn't Organizations: Service, NBC Boston, NBC, CBS News, Business, US State Department, TCI, Tourism, Turks, Commonwealth Chamber of Commerce, United Nations World Tourism Organization Locations: Caicos, An Oklahoma, Caribbean, Turks, Oklahoma

☆ Activist Ancora may turn to a reliable tactic to enhance value at Norfolk Southern
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-10 | by ( Kenneth Squire | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

When you see that in a railroad company, there is one key metric to look at, which drives railroad profitability and shareholder return: It's the operating ratio. The operating ratio is the company's operating expenses as a percentage of revenue. NSC's operating ratio is almost 69% and the right management team with the right strategy should easily be able to get the operating ratio down close to 60%. There is no need to reinvent the wheel here; the roadmap has already been drawn at Canadian Pacific and CSX. Inside the activist world, and among investors who were shareholders of Canadian Pacific and CSX, this is as sure of an activist strategy as there is.

Persons: Ancora, James Chadwick, Mantle, Hunter Harrison, Harrison, John Kasich, Sameh Fahmy, Jim Chadwick, Ken Squire Organizations: Norfolk Southern, Railroads, TCI, CSX, Pershing, Canadian Pacific, Canadian National, CP, PSR, Kansas City Southern, 13D Locations: United States, Ancora, Ohio

☆ World's largest hedge funds record bumper year of profits, research shows
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-23 | by ( Karen Gilchrist | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Signage for Citadel Investment Group LLC hangs outside their office in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. The world's top hedge funds raked in record profits last year amid a resurgence in stock markets, new analysis showed. The 20 leading fund managers made $67 billion in investor profits in 2023, up from the $65 billion recorded during the pandemic-era rally of 2021, according research Monday from LCH Investments, a fund of hedge funds. Overall, the fund management industry recorded gains of $218 billion after fees, according to LCH Investments estimates. Included among the best performers were Christopher Hohn's TCI, Ken Griffin's Citadel and Andreas Halvorsen's Viking.

Persons: Christopher Hohn's, Ken Griffin's, Andreas Halvorsen's Viking Organizations: Citadel Investment Group, LCH Investments, Christopher Hohn's TCI, Ken Locations: Chicago , Illinois, U.S

☆ Alphabet moonshots are ready for launch
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-29 | by ( Anita Ramaswamy | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Alphabet logo and AI Artificial Intelligence words are seen in this illustration taken, May 4, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration Acquire Licensing RightsNEW YORK, Aug 29 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Alphabet (GOOGL.O) is poised to welcome the autumn harvest. Verily boss Stephen Gillett told employees this month that it will cut its ties to several of Alphabet’s services next year. Such a financial services business strays from Alphabet’s wheelhouse, and with artificial intelligence demanding fresh attention, it’s wise to be prudent about capital allocation. Waymo, the autonomous vehicle technology business, secured a vote of approval this month from San Francisco to operate driverless rideshares in the city.

Persons: Dado Ruvic, Ruth Porat, Morgan Stanley, ”, Stephen Gillett, wheelhouse, Chris Hohn’s, Ford, Porat, Verily, Jeffrey Goldfarb, Aditya Sriwatsav Organizations: REUTERS, Reuters, Life Sciences, Wall Street Journal, Temasek, TCI Fund Investments, Google, Sciences, Wall, Thomson Locations: San Francisco

☆ Why value investor Bill Nygren calls this media spinoff the best trade of his career
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-07 | by ( Samantha Subin | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

More than three decades after the money-winning trade, Bill Nygren still calls buying up shares of Liberty Media as it was spun off from Tele-Communications Inc. one of the best stock moves of his career. When the spinoff occurred in 1991, the deal itself was complicated for investors to break down and analyze, Nygren explained. So they looked at an asset-by-asset valuation and determined that the assets inside Liberty were worth three times the cost of purchasing the TCI shares. The deal was structured so that TCI shareholders received the right to buy Liberty stock based on how much they owned. And, because Liberty came out a more levered company, the firm ended up owning about 15% of it, Nygren said.

☆ Cellnex may flip from buyer to seller with new CEO
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

LONDON, April 28 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Cellnex's (CLNX.MC) decision to pick former Telecom Italia (TLIT.MI) CEO Marco Patuano as its new boss increases the odds of seeing the 27 billion euro mobile phone tower operator returning to the M&A negotiating table – as a seller. The appointment ends months of boardroom infighting that culminated with the departure of former Chairman Bertrand Kan on April 4. He is a former CEO of the Benettons' holding company Edizione and previously led Telecom Italia between 2013 and 2016. His track record of carving out the former monopoly's mobile tower business INWIT may be significant. But while tackling the company's turnaround, Patuano may also be lured into takeover negotiations with heavyweight investors as industry consolidation is underway.

☆ Another cultish cost-saving formula gets off-track
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Jeffrey Goldfarb | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +9 min

Despite its multiple interpretations and approaches, success is widely gauged by a railway’s operating ratio, a simple measure of how much it spends to make a buck. Union Pacific’s peers improved similarly, indicative of the antiquated ways the industry had been deploying resources. Union Pacific also found itself unable to bring back enough furloughed workers in areas where they were most needed. “In a significant departure from the railroad industry's recent past, we deliberately moved away from a singular focus on operating ratio,” he told lawmakers. “If we wanted to drive [operating ratio] lower over time, we could,” the board wrote in a letter to shareholders in late 2021.

Hohn, who runs hedge fund TCI Fund Management, owns 3.1% of Cellnex's shares and 5.9% in derivatives, corporate records show. However, Hohn last month wrote to Airbus, in which TCI has a 3% stake, demanding it drop a deal. "We believe that the subsequent hiring process for a new CEO has been mishandled by the board and resulted in insufficient progress to recruiting a suitable replacement," Hohn wrote in the letter, published on TCI's website. "We intend to exercise our shareholder rights to request certain shareholder resolutions be added to the next AGM," the letter said. Kan was named Cellnex's chairman in 2021 and has been an independent member of the board since 2015.

☆ Alphabet's Waymo cuts 137 jobs in second round of layoffs this year
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

March 1 (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) self-driving technology unit, Waymo, laid off 137 employees in its second round of layoffs in 2023, the firm told Reuters on Wednesday. Including the latest job cuts, the division has let go of 8% of its workforce, or 209 employees, this year. Investors and industry watchers have been concerned as to how billions of dollars have been poured in the self-driving technology sector in a short span of time to commercialize it. Alphabet said in January it would slash 12,000 jobs, which will affect a large number of employees who support experimental projects. Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru and Abhirup Roy in San Francisco and David Shepardson; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Shinjini GanguliOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Hedge fund manager Chris Hohn demands Airbus drop Atos deal - letter
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-20 | by ( Nell Mackenzie | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

LONDON, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Hedge fund manager Christopher Hohn has written to Airbus (AIR.PA) demanding it drop a deal to purchase a minority stake in French IT consulting firm Atos' (ATOS.PA) soon-to-be spun-off division Evidian. Hohn, who runs hedge fund TCI Fund Management, owns over 3% of Airbus' shares worth more than 4 billion euros ($4.3 billion), the letter said. If successful, the deal would give Airbus some say over Evidian, which groups Atos' most coveted assets such as cybersecurity division BDS and supercomputers. Hohn, in the letter, said if the deal goes through Airbus should disclose what it would spend to pay down any debt or other liabilities of Atos. Airbus shares were down 2% in afternoon trading, while Atos' shares were down 0.3%.

☆ Google contractors who rate how effective its search is will visit its headquarters this week to protest 'poverty wages'
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Google "raters" who test and evaluate search quality say they aren't fairly compensated. This means the raters are not technically Google employees, even though they are tasked with improving its services. In this latest action, workers in the Alphabet Workers Union have organized a visit to Google's headquarters to deliver a petition addressed to Prabhakar Raghavan, the senior vice president at Google overseeing search. Now many tech workers have considered joining unions as mass layoffs have swept the industry in recent months. In 2021, tech workers at The New York Times formed a union.

☆ A major Alphabet investor said the company should cut even more jobs and address 'excessive' pay in the wake of mass layoffs
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-25 | by ( Beatrice Nolan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Alphabet investor TCI is urging the company to "go further" in cutting jobs and reducing spend. A letter from TCI to CEO Sundar Pichai said "excessive employee compensation" should be addressed. The Children's Investment Fund Management wrote a letter to Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai on January 20 — the day Google announced mass layoffs affecting roughly 6% of its workforce — asking him to address "excessive employee compensation." The November letter, also signed by Hohn, said its shares in the company were worth more than $6 billion. Representatives for Alphabet and TCI Fund Management did not respond to Insider's request for comment.

Insider obtained recordings of the Google all-hands meeting, along with screenshots of employee comments, questions, and other reactions. Why weren't Google managers warned? During Monday's townhall meeting, employees asked why so many managers were left in the dark about the job cuts. Read more about Google's responses here: Google employees pressed leadership about why managers weren't informed before announcing layoffs of 12,000 workersWas a big activist hedge fund involved? Do you work at another Big Tech company?

☆ In a town hall meeting, Googlers demanded to know if activist hedge fund TCI was behind mass layoffs this month
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-23 | by ( Thomas Maxwell | Rosalie Chan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Google's parent company Alphabet announced layoffs of 12,000 employees last week. TCI Fund Management previously called for Alphabet to trim headcount following "excessive" growth. Pressure from investors did not drive the decision for last week's announced layoffs of 12,000 employees, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and CFO Ruth Porat said in an all-hands meeting on Monday. Pichai responded by saying that Alphabet communicates with investors throughout the year and has done so consistently over time. While the company may deny that a hedge fund drives its decision-making, Alphabet nonetheless appears to be fulfilling many of TCI's requests with the layoffs.

☆ Clash of the titans: Billionaire activist investors are putting pressure on top CEOs who were once thought untouchable
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-23 | by ( Matthew Fox | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

The bear market in stocks last year has opened up a new window for aggressive activist investors. Once high-flying tech stocks and beloved brand names are subject to unfamiliar pressure from billionaire activists. Marc Benioff of Salesforce and Bob Iger of Disney are the latest high-profile CEOs to face pressure. Nelson Peltz of the Trian Fund and Paul Singer of Elliott Management recently launched activist investor campaigns against Disney and Salesforce, respectively. Activist campaigns targeting firms of this size and caliber are uncommon, but their struggling share price has painted a target on management's back.

☆ Google's moonshot factory is coming down to Earth
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( Hugh Langley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

The project, known internally by its codename, "Valkyrie," was the typical science-fiction-sounding idea that Google's self-described "moonshot factory" was designed to dream up. But amid a lack of successful launches and a tech industry facing economic headwinds, insiders say the lab is now hitting the hard-reset button and rethinking its purpose within Alphabet, Google's parent company. X swapped standard corporate titles like "Communications Lead" and "Manager" for grander and more-nebulous names like "Factory Whisperer" and "Firestarter." Its internet-balloon unit, Google Loon, meant to bring people in rural areas online, was shuttered in January 2021. "I think the infusion of VC people is a good thing," one former senior X employee said.

Carl Icahn had a textbook strategy for the Nevada-based energy utility Southwest Gas Holdings. In August, Southwest Gas' board decided against a divestiture, and the sale of subsidiaries that Icahn had urged remains uncertain. "Shareholders don't want to hear it, but you really have great difficulty selling a company at a good price today," the widely followed activist investor Icahn told Insider. via CNBCBut, like Icahn in the case of Southwest Gas, participants in this new onslaught may find themselves confounded by an increasingly complex and fraught business environment. According to Lazard, 37% of activist campaigns this year were launched by first-timers, the highest proportion since the company started tracking these figures in 2015.

Carl Icahn had a textbook strategy for the Nevada-based energy utility Southwest Gas Holdings. In August, Southwest Gas' board decided against a divestiture, and the sale of subsidiaries that Icahn had urged remains uncertain. That means that the sale of companies like Southwest Gas is off the table for the time being — or will get done at prices far lower than before. via CNBCBut, like Icahn in the case of Southwest Gas, participants in this new onslaught may find themselves confounded by an increasingly complex and fraught business environment. According to Lazard, 37% of activist campaigns this year were launched by first-timers, the highest proportion since the company started tracking these figures in 2015.

☆ It's not just Elon Musk. Tech CEOs everywhere are quietly asking their employees to step it up or risk getting fired.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-03 | by ( Diamond Naga Siu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Tech CEOs are turning up the heat, even if it's not as blatantly "hardcore" as Elon Musk's verbiage. Major tech CEOs have been asking employees to step up throughout this year's stingier economy. Employees at Google, Amazon and others have all been asked to work harder or risk their jobs. Sign up for our newsletter for the latest tech news and scoops — delivered daily to your inbox. In October, Meta told managers to mark 15% of its employees as "needs support" in what workers dubbed "quiet layoffs," Insider previously reported.

☆ These favored stocks are down by more than 20% and are poised to pop soon, says Morgan Stanley
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-26 | by ( Darla Mercado | Cfp | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Morgan Stanley highlighted stocks that may be good contenders that are "ripe for repurchase" after investors have realized their tax losses. Morgan Stanley's Brian Nowak cut his price target on Alphabet last month to $125 from $135. Meanwhile, Disney , which whiffed on Wall Street's expectations for top and bottom lines , is also on Morgan Stanley's list. Advanced Micro Devices also caught Morgan Stanley's attention. Shares have taken a beating in 2022, toppling over by 47%, but Morgan Stanley remains positive.

☆ Tech's reality check: How the industry lost $7.4 trillion in one year
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-25 | by ( Rohan Goswami | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +14 min

Not one of the 15 most valuable U.S. tech companies has generated positive returns in 2021. In total, investors have lost roughly $7.4 trillion, based on the 12-month drop in the Nasdaq. In the war for talent and the free flow of capital, tech pay reached new heights. Loading chart...SPACs allowed companies that didn't quite have the profile to satisfy traditional IPO investors to backdoor their way onto the public market. A slowing IPO market informs how earlier-stage investors behave, said David Golden, managing partner at Revolution Ventures in San Francisco.

☆ Wall Street activism is proving its influence on corporations. Just look at Disney's Bob Iger.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-22 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Investors are still digesting the news that Bob Iger will reprise his role as the chief executive of Disney. Bob Iger, CEO of Disney Charley Gallay/Stringer/Getty Images1. On Sunday, Disney announced legendary leader Bob Iger would return to his post as CEO and replace Bob Chapek, even though Chapek just months ago signed a contract extension. Disney stock had plunged 21% since Chapek's appointment in February 2020. As long as these headwinds batter the stock market, investors are likely not going to sit idly by and watch what they believe to be mismanagement by corporate leaders.

☆ Disney's Bob Iger shocker is the latest sign that Wall Street is calling the shots at major companies. Here are 3 other titans that have felt activist pressure this year.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-21 | by ( Matthew Fox | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Wall Street has increased its pressure on companies to get more efficient amid the ongoing stock market decline. Bob Iger's abrupt return to Disney as CEO this week is the latest example that investors are calling the shots. Corporate titans like Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet's Sundar Pichai have not been immune to the pressure from Wall Street. Now, Disney is facing new pressure from Trian Fund Management's Nelson Peltz, according to the Wall Street Journal. These are three other companies that have faced pressure from investors recently as their stock prices suffer.

More than 10,000 Google employees could be set to receive bad performance reviews. More than 10,000 Google employees could be in line for low performance reviews, potentially giving the company an excuse to trim its headcount. Google introduced a new performance review tool earlier this year, named GRAD, which changes how employees are rated on their work. Under the new system, 6% of employees could receive a bad rating, up from 2% in the previous rating system. These low scores could give the company cause to put employees on performance review plans, before showing them the door.

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