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☆ CNN is making big cuts, axing about 400 positions including open roles, insiders say
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Claire Atkinson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Staff cuts are being felt at CNN operations around the world. CNN is eliminating some 400 positions around the world, including open roles, equating to about 10% of staff, according to two people familiar with the company. HLN has been run by Ken Jautz, one of the three executives who had run CNN temporarily after CEO Jeff Zucker stepped down earlier this year. A second acting head of CNN, EVP programming Michael Bass, stepped down late last month. CNN International is also expected to experience a rejig of teams and bureau, according to the exec familiar with internal conversations.

☆ HBO is No. 1 as 14 TV insiders rank the streamers where they want to sell shows: Apple's a big spender and 'there's a sheen when you're a Hulu show,' but there's 'fear in the air' at Netflix
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-28 | by ( Elaine Low | Lucia Moses | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +19 min

"It's definitely been not the most exciting and robust year," said one TV agent at a major agency. Around 70 people at HBO and HBO Max have been let go this year, and their comedy development teams have merged. While WBD doesn't break out streamer-specific figures, it said on Thursday's earnings call that HBO Max, HBO, and Discovery+ have a combined 94.9 million subscribers, ensuring that any show on HBO Max has the chance to get a lot of eyeballs. They'll also take smaller swings in the genre department, do things at a lower budget," said the second TV agent. Echoed the first TV agent: "You pitch and sell to them if no one else wants it."

☆ Trump rips the Supreme Court as 'nothing more than a political body' after they ruled against him, even though he appointed 3 justices of the conservative majority
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-24 | by ( Kelsey Vlamis | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

"Why would anybody be surprised that the Supreme Court has ruled against me, they always do! "The Supreme Court has lost its honor, prestige, and standing, & has become nothing more than a political body, with our Country paying the price." In follow-up posts, Trump rehashed complaints over the court's handling of the 2020 election and referenced reports of leaked opinions. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court dismissed Trump's bid to block his tax returns from being released to Congress. In his one term as president, Trump appointed three justices — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — cementing the court's 6-3 conservative majority likely for years to come.

☆ Here's what Bob Iger's return as Disney CEO means for the company's theme parks
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-21 | by ( Samantha Delouya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Bob Chapek's tenure as Disney CEO abruptly ended, and Bob Iger will resume the role. A former Parks exec, Chapek angered many theme park fans by jacking up prices and axing free services. Chapek's time at Disney was marked by criticism of his handling of Disney's theme parks and park employees, and many Disney fans took to social media to celebrate Iger's return. He expanded the company's theme park offerings – opening an Avatar world, Toy Story Land, Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, and Shanghai Disneyland – all while keeping many services comparatively low-cost or free. Not all Disney watchers believe Iger will radically change the direction Chapek had led Disney's theme parks, though.

☆ Musk needs a third of America to pay for Twitter
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( Jonathan Guilford | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Squeezed by sky-high interest payments, even steep cost-cuts leave a big hole to fill if Twitter doesn't grow into its debt. Advertising revenue across the industry has fallen since Twitter last reported public results. A Twitter Blue subscription isn’t like Spotify Technology (SPOT.N) or Netflix (NFLX.O), perhaps. Those platforms bear the cost of licensing content whereas Musk is trying to get Twitter users to pay for the privilege of providing content. If the cost of providing each extra subscription is zero, Musk needs only about a tenth as many subscribers to sign up.

☆ Amidst the layoffs at Amazon, the company's ultra-secretive research lab is at risk of being shut. It's a sign things are changing 'dramatically' at the company.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +14 min

Early last month, members of Amazon's secretive in-house research lab, Grand Challenge, were called into an unexpected video meeting. Weibel announced 3 of the 5 projects Grand Challenge was working on would shut down, effective immediately. When other team employees wanted to collaborate with the team, they needed additional approvals from its leadership. Amazon Glow was among the Grand Challenge projects to be discontinued at the end of this year. Getting support promoting Grand Challenge projects was a challenge too.

☆ ‘Sad, hurt, uncertain, disappointed, and now jobless’: Meta employees react to being laid off
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-09 | by ( Jyoti Mann | Grace Kay | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

The Meta CEO said he "got this wrong" and apologized to staff for over-investing in the company, calling the layoffs a "last resort." Much of Meta's recruiting team was impacted by the layoffs, as Zuckerberg said the company plans to freeze hiring. One former Meta recruiter, Brianna Sgro, took to LinkedIn to announce she was fired and wrote: "I'm sad, hurt, uncertain, disappointed, and now jobless." Many employees expressed their gratitude for being able to work at a company like Meta even as they faced broad layoffs. Below is a selection of LinkedIn posts and tweets from employees who were laid off from Meta:

☆ Meta to lay off 11,000 employees, as Zuckerberg says he is 'accountable for missteps'
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-09 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

New York CNN Business —Facebook parent company Meta on Wednesday said it is laying off 11,000 employees, marking the most significant job cuts in the tech giant’s history. The job cuts come as Meta confronts a range of challenges to its core business and makes an uncertain and costly bet on pivoting to the metaverse. “Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post to employees. “I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here,” Zuckerberg wrote in his post Wednesday. “At the start of Covid, the world rapidly moved online and the surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth,” Zuckerberg wrote Wednesday.

☆ Telecom Italia profit falls, net debt rises
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-09 | by ( Elvira Pollina | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Italy's biggest phone company on Wednesday said earnings after interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and lease (EBITDA-AL) were 1.31 billion euros in July-September. That is in line with an analyst consensus provided by the company and down from 1.48 billion euros a year ago. Revenue in Italy, where the former phone monopoly makes the bulk of its turnover, fell by 5.3% to 2.92 billion euros, also matching expectations. As a consequence, it wrote off deferred tax assets for a net 1.96 billion euros. Adjusted net debt was up 15% year-on-year to 25.5 billion euros at the end of September.

☆ Wall Street Journal: Mark Zuckerberg tells employees layoffs coming Wednesday
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-08 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

CNN Business —Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told company executives that major layoffs at the tech giant will begin on Wednesday morning, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday afternoon. Citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, the Journal reported that the upcoming job cuts will likely impact many thousands of employees and mark the first broad headcount reductions in the company’s history. The reports of significant layoffs at Meta come as other tech companies have announced major job cuts. Last week, rideshare company Lyft said it was axing 13% of employees, and payment-processing firm Stripe said it was cutting 14% of its staff. Also last week, Twitter announced sweeping job cuts across the company after Elon Musk took the helm following his acquisition of the company for $44 billion, which required taking on significant debt.

☆ 14 TV insiders rank the streamers where they want to sell shows now as Apple TV+ closes in on HBO Max amid turmoil at Warner Bros. Discovery
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-08 | by ( Elaine Low | Lucia Moses | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +19 min

☆ Meta said to be planning significant layoffs
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-07 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

CNN Business —Facebook-parent Meta is said to be planning the first significant layoffs in its history as the company grapples with a shrinking business and fears of a looming recession. Meta has a headcount of more than 87,000, according to a September SEC filing. Once boasting a market capitalization of more than $1 trillion last year, Meta is now valued at about $250 billion. (After reports of the job cuts, Meta’s stock opened more than 5% higher on Monday morning.) Meta is far from the only tech company said to be rethinking staffing.

☆ Elon Musk is a ‘brutalist decision-maker’: Twitter employees are flooding Blind with bad reviews
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-06 | by ( Jyoti Mann | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Twitter employees are posting bad reviews about the company and Elon Musk on anonymous forum Blind. Insider trawled through the community app where employees can anonymously write reviews and post about their workplaces, to see what Twitter staff are saying about the company. Twitter laid off thousands of employees on Friday when Elon Musk completed his $44 billion takeover of the platform. Blind requires that users give their work email address, the company they work for and their job title when they sign up. A total of 953 Twitter reviews since 2020 have been posted to the site and the company has an overall star rating of 3.8 out of 5 stars.

☆ Bain gives India’s banking ball a time check
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Bain Capital on Tuesday pocketed some $400 million from selling just under a third of the more than 4% stake it bought in Axis Bank (AXBK.NS) in 2017. Back then, the private equity firm and Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIFI.NS) injected cash as the country’s third-largest non-state-controlled lender was grappling with a slew of bad loans. Axis now oozes confidence under ex-HDFC Life Insurance executive Amitabh Chaudhry, who joined as boss in 2019. Gross bad loans account for 2.5% of total assets, less than half the level when Bain bought in. With Bain currently sitting on 1.6 times its money, excluding dividends, it’s a good time to send some in its party home.

☆ Instagram is expanding subscriptions and NFT tools. Here are 9 ways creators can make money on the platform.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( Sydney Bradley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Meta's not giving up on its fight to woo creators with more ways to earn money. Instagram's NFT feature, digital collectibles , will add several new tools including ways to mint, buy, and sell NFTs on Instagram. The features announced today are part of Meta's constantly changing suite of monetization tools for creators. From "Creator Incentive Programs" that reward creators for posting to Instagram, to NFT tools, to a growing creator-brand marketplace now equipped with media kits. Here's a breakdown of the various money-making tools Instagram is testing or has rolled out for creators:

☆ Maersk recession pain could yet get more acute
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Moller Maersk (MAERSKb.CO) is experiencing the dark side of relief in the world’s recovering supply chains. They have now fallen below $4,000, and a recession could drive them down further. Falling freight rates and volumes could encourage Maersk’s clients, who have flexible contracts, to scale back on their shipping orders. The clients can then buy up freight contracts in the open market, which are cheaper than contracts signed months ago. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.

☆ DuPont takes welcome M&A break
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

NEW YORK, Nov 2 (Reuters Breakingviews) - The seemingly eternal makeover at DuPont de Nemours (DD.N) has been forced into a welcome pause. The chemicals giant just scrapped its $5.2 billion acquisition of engineered materials manufacturer Rogers (ROG.N) after failing to secure clearance from Chinese authorities. Under boss Ed Breen, DuPont has undertaken a series of mergers and spinoffs. To pay for the deal, DuPont sold most of its so-called Mobility & Materials division to Celanese (CE.N) for $11 billion. The problem is that DuPont ditched old businesses at lower valuation multiples to fund purchases at much higher ones.

☆ Geely’s pricey cars can hope for some premium spin
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-01 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

HONG KONG, Nov 1 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Geely Automobile (0175.HK) is hiving off its young electric vehicle brand, Zeekr. The Hong Kong-listed group’s chairman and founder Li Shufu has a lot riding on how the deal is positioned as the valuations of its homegrown rivals crash. Parent Zhejiang Geely’s extensive experience building battery-powered models and the Volvo Car (VOLCARb.ST) owner’s track record overseas suggests the upstart can scale rapidly. So far so good: Zeekr, which launched only last year, sold nearly 40,000 premium cars in the first nine months. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.

☆ Ocado’s South Korean deal is valuation rocket fuel
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-01 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Shares in the 5.4 billion pound ($6.2 billion) online grocer surged almost 40% on Tuesday after it inked a new deal with South Korea’s Lotte Shopping (023530.KS). The warehouses could bring in about 2.1 billion pounds of annual sales when operating at full capacity, Numis analysts reckon. That implies about 100 million pounds of annual revenue, equivalent to 4% of sales in the last financial year. Most significantly, it shows that Steiner’s strategy of building warehouses for supermarkets worldwide may have legs. Steiner’s South Korean deal offers his company some valuation rocket fuel.

☆ Credit Suisse begins perilous ride to right place
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-27 | by ( Liam Proud | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

LONDON, Oct 27 (Reuters Breakingviews) - After years of botched strategies, Credit Suisse (CSGN.S) has finally hit the nail on the head. He’s also in exclusive talks with Apollo Global Management (APO.N) and PIMCO about selling the securitisation business, which bundles and slices mortgages for credit investors. It could fall even further if Credit Suisse eventually hives off the carved-out dealmaking business it is rebranding as CS First Boston, under former Citigroup (C.N) rainmaker Michael Klein. Those moves solve the central problem that has plagued Credit Suisse for years, and which former CEOs Thomas Gottstein and Tidjane Thiam failed to answer. The deposit outflow saw Credit Suisse breach liquidity requirements set by regulators of its legal subsidiaries.

☆ UK Prime Minister Liz Truss faces serious pressure to resign after failed budget
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( Hannah Ward-Glenton | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

LONDON — U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss is facing calls to resign from within her own Conservative Party just six weeks after entering Downing Street. Truss and her former Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng announced a fiscal package – a so-called "mini-budget" – on Sept. 23. The latest plans were announced Monday by Jeremy Hunt, just three days into his tenure as finance minister. Angela Richardson, Conservative MP for Guildford, said it was "no longer tenable" for Truss to remain as prime minister, speaking on Times Radio on Monday, while Jamie Wallis, Conservative MP for Bridgend, wrote to the prime minister telling her to resign. "I ask you to stand down as Prime Minister as I believe you no longer hold the confidence of the country or the parliamentary party," Wallis' letter said.

☆ Insiders cast doubt on Warner Bros. Discovery's plans after it axed, then reinstated, a revered TV writers' workshop. It highlights a 'huge crisis' facing Hollywood creatives.
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-17 | by ( Elaine Low | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

Discovery abruptly axed, then reinstated, its longstanding TV writers' training program. Numerous TV writers told Insider they would not have been able to establish their careers without the TV workshop. The WBTV workshops not only developed emerging talents, but also helped ease their way into paid work in Hollywood. But even with Zaslav examining every asset across the company to find a promised $3 billion in synergies, the WBTV writers' and directors' workshops seemed unlikely targets. "The training is just phenomenal," a third alum of the writers' workshop told Insider.

☆ How to Cancel a Credit Card
▼ + stars: | 2022-08-24 | by ( ) www.wsj.com time to read: +9 min

If you have a metal credit card, return it by mail to the credit card issuer—your bank can send you a prepaid envelope at your request. According to popular credit advice, cancelling a credit card is a bad idea since it can hurt your credit. Say, you have two credit cards with a $2,000 credit limit and a total of $500 in credit card debt. First, if you have another credit card, you can try to request a credit limit increase to make up for the loss of available credit. Keep in mind, however, that a credit card application triggers a hard inquiry on your credit report, which can cost you some credit points.

Patient advocates were disappointed with Sunday’s vote — Republican senators blocked the $35 insulin cap for private insurers — and expressed hope that federal and state measures could be included in legislation down the road. Clayton McCook of Edmond, Oklahoma, is among those who support capping the cost of insulin for people with private health insurance. A federal insulin cap for private insurance would have made “a huge difference to our family,” he said. “This year, with an evenly divided Senate, the insulin cap for people with private insurance didn’t secure enough votes,” Neuman said. McCook also advocated for changes besides a cap on insulin costs, saying Congress pass legislation that would lower the list price.

☆ Factbox: How governments are trying to ease inflation pain
▼ + stars: | 2022-08-08 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

* Mexico will raise the minimum wage by 20% next year after an agreement was reached between employers, labour representatives and the government. EUROPE:* European Union countries are racing to reach a deal on a gas price cap by Dec. 13. The bloc's members are considering a slightly lower gas price cap than the one proposed by the European Commission, documents seen by Reuters showed. * Slovakia will spend 6 billion euros to cap energy prices for households next year. * Tunisia's government in September signed a deal with a major labour union to raise public sector pay and the minimum wage.

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