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☆ Spooked dealmakers scurry back into their foxholes
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( Jeffrey Goldfarb | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +8 min

NEW YORK, March 23 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Jonathan Kanter, a lawyer by training, has become something of a magician. Pay closer attention, however, and Kanter is methodically rewriting a decades-old regulatory playbook. Last year, these breakup charges reached their highest level in a decade, at an average 4.5% of deal prices. The Department of Agriculture partnered with the DOJ on the case, another feature of Kanter’s plan of attack. As legal weaknesses emerge, dealmakers should be in position to better structure transactions and defend themselves at trial.

"There is a brick wall in front of M&A activity," said Anu Aiyengar, global head of M&A at JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N). "We are in for choppiness," said Scott Barshay, chair of the corporate department at law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. And it's a giant struggle because there's a lot of dry powder for the equity part of private equity deals. Dealmakers, however, said they expect the impact from the banking crisis on broader M&A activity to be contained, as most of the worst affected regional banks are not major advisers or lenders on deals. The technology sector remains the best hunting ground for corporate acquirers or private equity financiers, deal advisors said.

☆ JPMorgan Chase buys data platform for startups in push to serve venture capital investors
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( Hugh Son | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesDisrupting ExcelJPMorgan decided to buy Aumni after leading its 2021 investment round, said Elanjian. Founded in 2018 by Tony Lewis, a former corporate lawyer, Aumni is a data platform that helps users analyze and understand their holdings via a simple dashboard. That's because contracts underpinning a single equity round can exceed 600 pages of dense legal writing, he said. "This is a problem for anyone investing in any private alternative asset; it is based on a private contract, that's where your economics and legal rights reside," he added. In other instances, VC investors can use Aumni to avoid errors tied to missing key details buried in legal documents.

Companies Trump Organization Inc FollowNEW YORK, March 21 (Reuters) - A New York judge on Tuesday rejected former U.S. President Donald Trump's bid to delay the scheduled Oct. 2 trial in state Attorney General Letitia James' civil fraud lawsuit, calling the date "written in stone." Among the other defendants are Trump's adult children Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka, and the jailed former Trump Organization chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg. Christopher Kise, a lawyer for Trump, said the defendants' confidence is growing as they learn more about James' case. "Once everybody knows exactly what happened, then they're going to see that President Trump has done absolutely nothing wrong," he said. Asked later by a Reuters reporter about the trial date being set in stone, Kise said: "For now, it is."

☆ Head Peloton instructor Robin Arzón shares the 5-point self-audit she uses before making big career moves
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( Renée Onque | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

It takes a lot of courage to walk away from your job and enter an entirely different field. "It is absolutely possible to turn our passion into our daily purpose and into our job," says Arzón. Her newfound interests inspired her to become a running coach, personal trainer, Pilates instructor and more. Arzón's path inevitably led her to her current role as Vice President of Fitness Programming and Head Instructor at Peloton. The thought-provoking questions she asked herself before making the big career change — what Arzón calls an audit — are included in her new book, "Welcome, Hustler: An Empowerment Journal," which releases this September.

☆ UBS to take over Credit Suisse, central banks act on liquidity
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-19 | by ( Reuters Staff | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +13 min

LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) -UBS sealed a deal to buy rival Swiss bank Credit Suisse in an effort to avoid further market-shaking turmoil in global banking, Swiss authorities said on Sunday. FILE PHOTO: The logo of Credit Suisse is pictured in front of the Swiss Parliament Building, in Bern, Switzerland, March 19, 2023. The reports that UBS is acquiring Credit Suisse will likely magnify Credit Suisse’s problems by moving them to UBS... The Credit Suisse issues are not new and needed to be resolved years ago. A legal challenge by Credit Suisse shareholders, who will claim that their property has been illegally confiscated, is guaranteed.

☆ ChatGPT and generative AI could be stopped in their tracks by copyright law. Here's how it could play out.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-07 | by ( John Eden | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

Copyright rules could derail the technology of generative AI, writes copyright law expert John Eden. Copyright holders do not understand how their protected works are used by generative AI platforms — so they assume the worst. In both of these cases, copyright law may not provide human creators with the protection they want or need. Still, fair learning alone probably won't resolve all conflicts between copyright holders and generative AI platforms. An expert on copyright law, John also advises clients on how to protect their copyrighted works in an ever-changing commercial ecosystem.

☆ Rupert Murdoch testified that Fox News hosts lied about the 2020 election. Here's why it wasn't a misstep.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-06 | by ( Jacob Shamsian | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

Rupert Murdoch admitted Fox News hosts endorsed falsehoods about the 2020 election. Murdoch chairs Fox Corporation, which argues it isn't responsible for claims made on subsidiary Fox News. Here was the chair of Fox Corporation, a 91-year-old mogul atop a conservative media empire, admitting to lies that damaged democracy. When asked by Dominion's lawyers in a January deposition whether he thought Fox hosts were truthful about the election, Murdoch was candid. Fox Corporation also manages subsidiaries like Fox Sports, a large number of local TV stations, TMZ, Tubi, and a blockchain company.

☆ Salesforce CEO asks if tech execs should 'unleash' their inner Elon Musk. Experts say that's an awful idea.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-05 | by ( Grace Kay | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Scott Latham, a strategic management professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, called Musk's leadership "incredibly dysfunctional." He said he's never seen a company recover from the type of drastic cuts Musk initiated at Twitter. "Every CEO in Silicon Valley has looked at what Elon Musk has done and has asked themselves, 'Do they need to unleash their own Elon within them?'" If you're going to have a successful company, you need good employees and good employees typically have options. "If more companies start treating their employees like Musk has, that would be a very grim future," Alon-Beck said.

Bill Gates, the cofounder of Microsoft, is thought to have a net worth of about $106 billion. Gates' own father was a high-powered attorney who became a name partner at the law firm K&L Gates. He's cultivated his brand of philanthropy with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, his endeavor with Melinda French Gates, now his ex-wife. (Brock Adams, who went on to become the transportation secretary in the Carter administration, is said to have introduced Gates' parents.) Bill Gates' mother, Mary Gates, came from a line of successful bankers and sat on the boards of important financial and social institutions including the nonprofit United Way.

☆ ‘Unscripted’ Review: Sex, Lies and Viacom
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( Edward Kosner | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

Sumner Redstone, who died in 2020 at the age of 97, was one of the killer whales thriving in the swirling currents of the modern media. A hulking old man with dyed red hair and a maimed right hand, he was a mega-billionaire with a ravenous appetite for power, riches—and sex. At his peak at the turn of the century, he controlled Viacom; Paramount Pictures; the National Amusements movie-theater chain; the CBS network, MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon; and the Simon & Schuster publishing house. Then the end came in a crescendo of recrimination, litigation and family turmoil. Imagine a mash-up of “King Lear” and “Weekend at Bernie’s,” the 1989 movie comedy about two scamps who prop up a cadaver so they can enjoy a weekend at his beach house, with Redstone starring in both title roles.

☆ Check out the bare-bones pitch deck that AI-powered text editor Macro used to raise $9.3 million from Andreessen Horowitz
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-08 | by ( Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

It raised $9.3 million in a round of seed funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz. Investors have bought into the idea with a $9.3 million seed round, led by Andreessen Horowitz's Kristina Shen and Zeya Yang. When Macro set out to raise a seed round, Andreessen Horowitz's name floated to the top of the list of dream investors. Macro wants to become the "default" app for handling documents, Beckerman said, without scrambling the Microsoft file format on which millions of people rely. Read the pitch deck that Macro used to convince Andreessen Horowitz to leads its $9.3 million seed round.

Musk is likely to "double down" on his communication tactics after the verdict, said Minor Myers, a professor of corporate law at the University of Connecticut. Musk ultimately abandoned his effort to take Tesla private, but told jurors early in the three-week trial that he had believed what he wrote in tweets. "I expect Elon is going to write anything he wants,"Musk himself thanked the jury on Twitter -- which he bought in October for $44 billion. The tweets led to Musk and Tesla paying $40 million to resolve U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission civil charges under a consent agreement that Musk has fought unsuccessfully to lift. Still, many analysts said Musk, who has tweeted more than 22,000 times and has about 128 million Twitter followers, has no reason to slow down now.

[1/3] Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his security detail depart the company’s local office in Washington, U.S. January 27, 2023. Ives added that some Tesla investors feared Musk might have to sell more Tesla stock if he lost. Tesla investors have expressed concerns that running the social media company has taken up too much of his focus. During the three-week trial, Musk spent nearly nine hours on the witness stand, telling jurors he believed the tweets were truthful. He said his tweets in general did not always affect Tesla stock the way he expects.

A lawyer for Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary said in a statement that the company would seek a rehearing of the panel’s decision by the full 3rd Circuit court. Gordon’s strategy worked in bankruptcy court but set up J&J for failure when it faced the 3rd Circuit appeals panel. Gordon, at the bankruptcy conference, described the lawsuits as “completely unmanageable” and a dire threat to J&J that could go on for decades. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to hear arguments in coming months on a challenge to the 3M subsidiary’s bankruptcy. The litigation, they asserted, should be allowed to proceed against Georgia-Pacific because the parent company did not file for bankruptcy.

☆ Crypto's core technology has a legitimacy problem. The founder of VC firm Dao5 is seeking to shore up its cred by working with university researchers.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-02 | by ( April Joyner | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Tekin Salimi, the founder of the VC firm Dao5, sources many of his deals through academic research. Salimi's venture capital firm, Dao5, counts several university professors among its advisors and has backed several startups founded by academics. His budding interest in crypto eventually brought him to Silicon Valley, where he joined the crypto VC firm Polychain Capital in 2018. When he left Polychain to launch Dao5 last year, Salimi sought to build academic research into the firm's deal-sourcing process. Dao5 cut ties with Kwon after the collapse, and he never had any financial involvement in the firm, Salimi said.

☆ Microsoft warns employees not to share 'sensitive data' with ChatGPT
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Microsoft's CTO office told staff they can use ChatGPT at work as long as they don't share "sensitive data." In response, a senior engineer from Microsoft's CTO office wrote that they were allowed, as long as employees don't share confidential information with the AI tool. "Human beings sign NDAs and consequently have incentives to be careful in how they share information. While employees are on the hook for protecting confidential data, it's not clear what exactly Microsoft or OpenAI are doing to address the issue. Is the responsibility on employees to not share sensitive information, or is the responsibility on OpenAI to use information carefully, or some combination?"

☆ Amazon warns employees not to share confidential information with ChatGPT after seeing cases where its answer 'closely matches existing material' from inside the company
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

An Amazon lawyer warned employees about sharing confidential company information with ChatGPT. Others wondered if they were even allowed to use the AI tool for work. She warned employees not to provide ChatGPT with "any Amazon confidential information (including Amazon code you are working on)," according to a screenshot of the message seen by Insider. Overall, Amazon employees in the Slack channel were excited about the potential of ChatGPT, and wondered if Amazon was working on a competing product. For Amazon employees, data privacy seems to be the least of their concerns.

Opening arguments kick off Wednesday in a trial that will see Tesla face off against shareholders who are accusing the company of misleading them over a tweet by Elon Musk that stated funding had been "secured" to take the electric car company private. Lead shareholder plaintiff Glen Littleton is seeking billions of dollars in damages over the August 2018 tweet, which prompted a brief rise in Tesla's stock price. Shares of company stock began a steady decline that continued into the following year. Musk and Tesla were separately fined $20 million and Musk was forced to step down as Tesla's chairman. He also agreed to a requirement to have lawyers review his statements about Tesla before publishing them on social media.

☆ I asked 300,000 people to share the tiny habits that changed their lives. Here are the 4 most popular answers
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Julian Sarafian | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Recently, I asked them: "What small, non-negotiable habit has changed your life the most?" Deeply inhale as you curl your spine, tilting your pelvis up in "cow" position. Then deeply exhale as you arch your spine, tilting your pelvis down in "cat." Deeply inhale as you curl your spine, tilting your pelvis up in "cow" position. Then deeply exhale as you arch your spine, tilting your pelvis down in "cat."

An attorney for Musk, as well as Tesla and several directors who are also defendants, declined to comment. Musk surrendered the Tesla chairman position and agreed to let a company lawyer vet some of his tweets. He won a bench trial in Delaware's Court of Chancery last year over claims by Tesla shareholders that he allegedly coerced the Tesla board into buying SolarCity, a rooftop solar panel maker. Tesla shareholders had sought billions in damages and they have appealed. Around half are dismissed for failing to comply with securities law and most of the rest are settled.

☆ Doorbell cameras are changing the legal profession by capturing crime, alibis, and cheating spouses
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-28 | by ( Laura Italiano | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Doorbell cameras are changing the legal profession as their numbers surge, lawyers say. "They know she's home, but she has a doorbell camera and never opens the door," Bracker told Insider recently. "Damn doorbell cameras!" No matter their specialty — family law, criminal law, corporate law, and beyond — lawyers know they must move quickly to secure doorbell camera footage. He also agreed that doorbell cameras make it harder for process servers to hand-deliver important legal documents.

☆ Meet 41-year old Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump-nominated Floridian who will pick the special master to weed through the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-13 | by ( Kimberly Leonard | Azmi Haroun | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

Judge Aileen Cannon recently reversed a big win that she had handed Trump's defense team. Judge Aileen Cannon gave her confirmation testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee over Zoom on July 29, 2020. There, she prosecuted cases involving narcotics, fraud, firearms, and immigration cases, according to her Senate confirmation document. Cannon during her confirmation hearing thanked Rubio as well as fellow Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida for their "continued support." "Judge Cannon is a great judge who I am very proud to have enthusiastically supported," Rubio told Insider through his office when asked about the connection.

[1/2] Police walk through the parking lot after a mass shooting at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia, U.S. November 23, 2022. REUTERS/Jay Paul/File PhotoCompanies Walmart Inc FollowNov 29 (Reuters) - An employee at the Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia, where a supervisor fatally shot six people last week, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the company, claiming she and others had warned management about the shooter’s behavior and that nothing was done. A Walmart spokesperson said the company is reviewing the complaint and will respond in court. Prior to the shooting, Prioleau said Bing had asked her if she liked guns, and asked coworkers if they received their active shooter training. Walmart continued to employ Bing, despite complaints from Prioleau and others, the lawsuit claims.

Kaplan did not rule on Carroll's request to hold one trial combining the lawsuit, which the former longtime Elle magazine columnist filed in November 2019, with a second lawsuit she filed last week accusing Trump of battery. Trump, 76, opposed combining the lawsuits, with his lawyers saying they did not know who would represent him in the second lawsuit. Carroll's lawyer Roberta Kaplan said she was pleased with the new trial date, and understood the decision to defer rulings in the second case. Carroll made the rape accusation in her memoir, and sued Trump after he claimed in June 2019 not to know her and said she was "not my type." Her first lawsuit has been delayed as appeals courts consider whether Trump was acting as president when he scoffed at the rape claim.

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