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☆ First Republic Bank Taps Lazard for Help With Review of Strategic Options
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( Lauren Thomas | Laura Cooper | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Options for First Republic could include a sale, a capital infusion or asset trimming. First Republic Bank is beefing up its adviser ranks as the troubled lender seeks to stay afloat and plan for a postcrisis future amid a trans-Atlantic crisis of confidence in the banking system. The California bank this week tapped Lazard Ltd. to help with a review of strategic options that could include a sale, a capital infusion or asset trimming, according to people familiar with the matter. It also hired consulting firm McKinsey & Co. to help map out a postcrisis structure for the bank, the people said.

☆ New Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan takes over nearly two weeks earlier than expected
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-20 | by ( Amelia Lucas | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Starbucks on Monday said that Laxman Narasimhan has officially become CEO, nearly two weeks earlier than expected. After being named incoming CEO in September, Narasimhan has spent months learning about Starbucks' business, including training as a barista. Schultz returned nearly a year ago after former CEO Kevin Johnson surprised investors by announcing his retirement. Since Schultz returned April 4, Starbucks stock has risen nearly 8%, bringing its market value to $113 billion. In September, Schultz told CNBC that he's never planning on coming back as Starbucks' chief executive again.

☆ Meet Laxman Narasimhan, a coffee industry outsider who just took over as CEO of Starbucks
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-20 | by ( Avery Hartmans | Nancy Luna | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Laxman Narasimhan officially took over as Starbucks CEO, replacing Howard Schultz. Narasimhan is new to the coffee industry, having started his career in the consulting world before joining PepsiCo, and, later, British consumer goods company Reckitt Benckiser. Narasimhan built his career in the beverage and consumer-goods industriesLaxman Narasimhan at Starbucks Investor Day in September 2022. Starbucks said at the time that Narasimhan would begin as CEO on April 1, taking over for interim CEO Schultz. Of the 365 Starbucks stores that have held votes to unionize, 292 have voted to form a union.

☆ BlackRock's Larry Fink said the last few years have dramatically reshaped supply chains. Data — and experts — disagree.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-17 | by ( Emma Cosgrove | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

From the headlines, it's easy to think that supply chains are making a major shift closer to the consumer. "The repeated shocks of the past few years have also dramatically reshaped supply chains," Fink wrote in his highly-anticipated annual letter to shareholders Wednesday. His statements echo those from other top execs and prognosticators, who looked at the last few years and saw inevitable evolution toward more localized supply chains. Before the pandemic, supply chains were largely built with cost as a guiding principle. Is a "dramatic" redesign of supply chains possible?

☆ Want to invest in companies that empower women? Here's what you need to know
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-17 | by ( Michelle Fox | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +8 min

Known as gender lens or gender equity investing, the idea is to invest for financial return, while promoting gender diversity. Yet those funds represent less than 0.01% of total equity fund assets in the United States, according to the firm. Her women CEO and CFO clients were getting tremendous results, she said. In January, the asset management firm launched the Hypatia Women CEO exchange-traded fund (WCEO). Women in leadership matters, but we need a more robust scorecard to assess gender equity.

☆ Highly successful people use this soft skill, says 'CEO whisperer' Jerry Colonna—avoiding it 'is a prescription' for 'failure'
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-15 | by ( Ashton Jackson | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Highly successful people possess a skill that helps them grow personally and professionally, says leadership coach Jerry Colonna: They excel at adapting to change. Colonna was even dubbed the "CEO whisperer" by Gimlet's "StartUp" podcast in 2015. "You have to meet each individual team member where they are, not drag them to where you are," he added. "Take a deep breath, take stock of the situation, and discuss it candidly" with your boss instead, Brassey and De Smet wrote. 1 best piece of advice for regular investors, do's and don'ts, and three key investing principles into a clear and simple guidebook.

☆ Larry Fink, thrust into political crosshairs, dials back ESG talk in his annual letter
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-15 | by ( Rebecca Ungarino | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink published his widely read annual letter to investors on Wednesday. In a shift, Fink kept his discussion of ESG investing to a minimum after a year of backlash. Fink focused on macroeconomic concerns, notably inflation, and the wider energy transition. It is clear that Fink's stance on ESG investing has not changed. In his letter on Wednesday, Fink talked at length about the transition to a low-carbon economy and BlackRock's role in it.

Starbucks (SBUX.O) warned of a "cautious" recovery in its China sales. "Consumers have become more meticulous in their spending," its chief executive, Xu Lei, said in an earnings call on Thursday. "Now the Chinese tourists are either super rich or very poor," said the owner, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "This suggests that once the initial reopening rebound has happened, we shouldn't expect a further surge in consumer spending," he wrote in a note to clients. ($1 = 6.8780 Chinese yuan renminbi)Editing by Marius Zaharia and Bradley PerrettOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Harvard career expert: The No. 1 'desirable skill' that very few people have—especially men
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( Heidi K. Gardner | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

These people shouldn't just have different knowledge domains. A groundbreaking study by Harvard Business School professor Boris Groysberg found that workers, especially men, often take their professional networks for granted. Communities created through Slack and similar messaging tools are a great way to spur virtual forms of collaboration, knowledge sharing, and knowledge distribution. Previously, she was a professor at Harvard Business School. Heidi earned master's degree from the London School of Economics, and a second PhD from London Business School.

☆ Premarket stocks: The Fed wants to limit wage growth. That's particularly bad for women
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-10 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

What’s happening: Never-married women earned just 92% of what never-married men did last year, according to the Wells Fargo report. Those wage gaps are “persistently disappointing,” ADP’s Chief Economist Nela Richardson told CNN on Thursday. Markets suffer: Companies with smaller gender pay gaps tend to be rewarded by their shareholders. “The gender pay gap is informing investment strategies,” wrote Refinitiv analysts in a recent report. “Our recent analysis shows that [shares of] companies with no gender pay gap outperform companies with pay gaps between male and female employees,” wrote Refinitiv.

☆ Gen Zers are bookworms but say they're shunning e-books because of eye strain, digital detoxing, and their love for libraries
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-10 | by ( Kate Duffy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Three Gen Zers gave their reasons for preferring printed editions over e-books. But when it comes to reading, Gen Zers say they prefer to pick up a printed book over an e-book. Book sales in the US and the UK have boomed in the past two years, the management consultancy McKinsey found. Perhaps the most surprising trend is not Gen Zers' love of books but the way they consume them. She said while e-books were affordable and great for traveling, her preference was printed books.

☆ Almost 30,000 Amazon employees have signed an internal petition to fight the company's return-to-office mandate. Read the full copy here.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-10 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +15 min

New mandate requires most office workers to come into the office at least 3 times a week starting in May. About 3 weeks since the announcement of the new policy, more than 29,200 Amazon employees have signed an internal petition opposing the mandate. Roughly 30,000 Amazon employees have joined that Slack channel, which was created shortly after the RTO announcement. In the petition, Amazon employees added internal data supporting continued remote work and dozens of comments explaining why they oppose the change. A 2013 Stanford University study of Chinese workers found that remote workers are 13% more productive than their in-office counterparts.

☆ Fed’s reluctance to go green will cost the Earth
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-07 | by ( Ben Winck | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +8 min

WASHINGTON, March 7 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Central banks don’t think they can do much about the environment. The U.S. Federal Reserve has done even less, arguing it should not tackle climate change without an explicit order from Congress. In a 2021 survey by Invesco, 63% of responding central banks said addressing climate change fell within their mandate. Central banks aren’t best equipped to lead the green transition, anyway. There’s also a valid concern that focusing on climate change could water down the Fed’s mission to fight inflation.

☆ Schools want to close the Covid learning gap before federal funds run out — here’s how it’s going
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-06 | by ( Jessica Dickler | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

The pandemic disproportionately impacted the lowest-performance schools and students, the McKinsey report also found, putting them further behind their high-performing peers. "The schools that had the greatest need suffered the greatest losses," Baker said. "Each district is so different," said Kusum Sinha, superintendent of Garden City Public Schools in New York, which is considered high performing. With federal funding, the Garden City school district hired more staff, added before- and after-school tutoring in math and reading, and created an in-person and online summer program. "If we run out of money, we're going to have to figure out a way to continue," Sinha said.

☆ Gourmet fish bladder races chicken, beef to profitability in Singapore's lab meat push
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-06 | by ( Chen Lin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

Two years after Singapore greenlighted lab-grown meat for human consumption, mass production has yet to start. The technological, regulatory and scale barriers to entry for cultivated meat are very high compared to plant-based meat, said Didier Toubia, chief executive of Israel's Aleph Farms, which makes cultivated beef steak. "It's too high and it's embarrassing ... We lose money every time someone enjoys our cultivated chicken," Eat Just CEO Josh Tetrick said. Hong Kong-based Avant Meats is more bullish than Eat Just, with ambitions to make a premium food, cultivated fish maw. Fish maw is the swim bladder of a fish, a delicacy prized in China that could fetch up to thousands of dollars per kilogram, depending on its grade.

☆ Biden is set to use his first veto to save what Republicans call a "woke" rule that lets retirement fund managers consider companies' social and environmental records
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Jason Lalljee | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The Senate voted to overturn a Labor Department measure allowing investment managers to make socially and environmentally conscious investing decisions. "Republicans' hypocritical resolution to nullify @USDOL's ESG rule ties investors' hands & would force their extremist views on investors," she wrote on Twitter following the vote. It's the latest back-and-forth in an ESG debate triggered by former President Donald Trump, who prohibited financial managers from making such considerations when he was in office. However, the White House has said that Biden will use his first veto as president to protect ESG considerations. As CNBC's Brian Schwartz reported this week, Trump allies and wealthy donors have funded Republicans' fight against ESG investing.

☆ Walmart to nearly double its U.S. health center locations in 2024
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

NEW YORK, March 2 (Reuters) - U.S. retailer Walmart Inc (WMT.N) said on Thursday it would open 28 new healthcare centers in the United States next year, including its first ones in Missouri and Arizona. By the end of 2024, the nation's largest retailer by revenue will have more than 75 Walmart Health centers across the United States, it said in a statement. Located inside Walmart Supercenters, the new Health centers will cover about 5,750 square feet and offer services including primary care, dental care, behavioral health, labs and X-ray, audiology and telehealth. The company operated 32 Walmart Health care centers at the end of 2022 and plans to open 17 more this year. Walmart will open the first of the new Health centers in the first quarter of 2024, and end the year with 10 locations in Dallas, eight in Houston, six in Phoenix and four in Kansas City, it said.

☆ 42% of IT professionals will quit in the next 6 months. Here's how the right software can help them avoid burnout.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( Sponsor Post | Created Insider Studios With Goto | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

The right software can help businesses who can't find the staff they need. Worldwide the talent shortage could result in unrealized output of $449.70 billion. Alarming numbers underscore the fact that the talent shortage is everywhere. GoTo Resolve can help irrigate the IT desert by providing remote access troubleshooting, support, ticketing, and camera sharing a click away. Essentially, many of the services an enterprise needs to hire for can be procured through Rescue and GoTo Resolve.

☆ A psychology expert shares the 7 toxic signs of 'highly insecure' people—and how to deal with them
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( Stefan Falk | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

And through my research, I've found that insecure people are often the most difficult to deal with. Here are their most common toxic behaviors, according to Harvard career expert Amy Gallo :Insecure types are extremely risk averse and unproductive. While feeling insecure is natural, problematic behaviors can develop when people consistently attempt to conceal or compensate for their self-doubt. Insecure types — whether in the form of a team member or boss — are all around us, so it's important to know how to deal with them efficiently. Count the interactions you've had with the insecure person.

[1/5] An employee prepares online grocery orders in the storage area of Czech online grocer Rohlik Group in Prague, Czech Republic February 1, 2023. HUGE GROWTH POTENTIAL Rohlik, founded in 2014, leads the Czech market by mainly targeting customers in big cities through its string of distribution warehouses. "Competition is still mainly driven by stationary retail but a small number of online grocery players are gearing up in each market to become leading e-grocery platforms." KOSIK TURNS EASTAs Rohlik bets on Germany, Kosik is looking eastward, entering the Slovak market and expanding in Bulgaria. CEO Ivan Utesil said the company would also seek to cut into Czech market share by capitalising on its tie-in with German wholesaler Metro (B4B.DE) in some regional areas.

☆ How to 'layoff-proof' your job, from 6 top recruiters at Netflix, McKinsey, Walmart, and more
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-28 | by ( Aj Eckstein | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

AJ Eckstein hosts a podcast interviewing recruiters from major tech, retail, and finance companies. Recruiters from PwC, Walmart, Lockheed Martin, Netflix, and more share how to safeguard your job. I'm a podcast host and job-search expert who interviews leading recruiters at some of the world's largest companies including Netflix, McKinsey & Company, Accenture, and Walmart. I've interviewed more than 30 recruiters in order to pull back the curtain on the recruitment process and help job seekers. "In a constantly shifting job market, employees shouldn't be stagnant either," he said.

REUTERS/Miguel VidalA CORUNA, Spain/LONDON, Feb 28 (Reuters) - In Spain's A Coruna, two contrasting fashion business models collide - pitching the growing demands for the clothing industry to become more sustainable against the constant need to drive sales. This rainy, windswept, city on the rugged Atlantic coast is the unlikely headquarters of Zara-owner Inditex (ITX.MC) - the world's biggest fast fashion retailer. It also hosts small boutiques offering high quality, durable products that consider themselves an alternative to the fast and affordable fashion propelling Inditex's annual sales of 28 billion euros ($30 billion). "If you release tonnes and tonnes of clothes, textiles, shoes into the market, you will have to collect it," he said. But Circ and its competitors are only capable of producing 1% of the textiles needed to make the 109 million tonnes of clothes per year that the global fashion industry churns out.

☆ Elon Musk calls US media and schools 'racist against whites & Asians'
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-26 | by ( Lora Kolodny | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Tesla Chief Executive Office Elon Musk speaks at his company's factory in Fremont, California. In the video, Adams discussed a poll conducted by right-leaning Rasmussen Reports that said 26% of Black respondents disagreed with the statement "It's OK to be white." In his video, Adams called Black people who rejected that phrase as a "hate group." He then added, "For a *very* long time, US media was racist against non-white people, now they're racist against whites & Asians. Musk claimed that the media coverage is "Very disproportionate to promote a false narrative."

☆ Gary Vaynerchuk compares the rise of AI like ChatGPT to the way the internet revolutionized work: 'AI is coming for our jobs and that's ok'
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( Jason Lalljee | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Gary Vaynerchuk predicts that AI software like ChatGPT will eliminate many jobs. He's optimistic about workers' ability to rally and adapt to AI, or create new roles. That's been true to an extent about previous types of automation, but AI looks likely to impact a broader demographic of workers. Like Vaynerchuk points out, there's some reason to be optimistic long-term about the job shake ups technology can cause. But Vaynerchuk is more convinced that AI represents the status quo for automation.

☆ 'Business is very good, unfortunately': Arms fair spotlights bonanza year ahead for weapons companies
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( Natasha Turak | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +8 min

Mohammed Zarandah | Anadolu Agency | Getty ImagesFew things illustrate the health of the arms industry like a massive defense fair. Indeed, many countries are ramping up their defense spending to unprecedented levels. On top of that, U.S. military spending on Ukraine alone hit nearly $50 billion in the last year. China and Saudi Arabia also set respective records for their own governments' defense spending in 2022, despite inflation, giving no indications of slowing down. France's Caesar self-propelled guns, which have been highly effective in battle for the Ukrainian military, normally take two years to make; the government aims to cut that time in half.

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