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☆ Opinion | Private Equity Is Gutting America — and Getting Away With It
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Brendan Ballou | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

In this case, as in nearly every private equity acquisition, private equity firm benefit from a legal double standard: They have effective control over the companies their funds buy, but are rarely held responsible for those companies’ actions. This mismatch helps to explain why private equity firms often make such risky or shortsighted moves that imperil their own businesses. But it isn’t just that firms benefit from the law: They take great pains to shape it, too. The most prominent of these benefits is the carried interest loophole, which allows private equity executives to pay such low tax rates. Instead, Congress approved an amendment that largely exempted small and midsize companies owned by private equity firms from a new corporate minimum tax.

Hong Kong/New York CNN —Temu and Shein are taking off in the United States, topping app stores and creating a frenzy with consumers. Shein was started in China, while Temu was launched by a Chinese company that now bills itself as a multinational firm. Both firms have enjoyed major success in the United States, noted Nicholas Kaufman, a policy analyst for the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Topping the chartsTemu and Shein have taken the world’s largest retail market — the United States — by storm. It has quickly become the most downloaded app in the United States, and continues to expand its user base.

☆ A real estate investor who got started at age 38 explains how he built a 16-unit portfolio worth $2.7 million in just 4 years by adopting a compound growth mindset
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-22 | by ( Lisa Kailai Han | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

Dan Rivers didn't buy his first real estate property until 2019, when he was 38 years old. A late start to real estate investingWhen Rivers was 16 years old, doctors discovered he had a congenital heart murmur. Although he didn't know anybody there and had never sold real estate, Rivers decided that he wanted to capitalize on his newfound confidence by trying his hand at becoming a real estate agent. But his real estate investing journey began picking up steam in 2019, when he met a local real estate flipper. How a compound growth mindset contributed to Rivers' successIn fact, Rivers credits much of his real estate investing success to this compound growth mindset.

☆ JPMorgan is asking senior managers to be in the office five days a week. Here's the latest on return-to-office mandates.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-16 | by ( Matt Turner | Dave Smith | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

On the agenda today:But first: JPMorgan is asking senior managers to be in the office five days a week. The company told senior managers this week that they "have to be visible on the floor" in a memo asking managing directors to be in the office five days a week. Last month, Disney told employees they were expected to be back to the office four days a week. And Amazon said it wants all employees back in the office at least three days a week by next month, setting off both internal opposition and support, and a scramble to get office space ready. A dozen former Kittyhawk employees told Insider that Kittyhawk found itself torn between the conflicting visions and shifting priorities of its billionaire founder and his handpicked CEO.

☆ See the memo detailing JPMorgan's new mandatory office policy for managing directors
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-12 | by ( Carter Johnson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

JPMorgan Chase is abandoning a hybrid attendance policy it adopted during the pandemic and requiring executives to return to the office. On Wednesday, JPMorgan, the nation's largest bank by assets, said it will now mandate that all managing directors come to the office five days a week. In 2021, he wrote in his annual note to shareholders that he envisioned many JPMorgan employees returning to the office full-time, while allowing for exceptions. Tracking attendance is not only important to manage hybrid work schedules but also for real estate, resiliency and security purposes. In the meantime, you can find many useful tools and resources on the Hybrid Working page.

☆ Western countries are speeding up tank deliveries to Ukraine, but tanks aren't what Ukrainian troops need to get around Russian forces
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( Michael Peck | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Western countries are hustling to deliver main battle tanks to Ukraine's military. Tanks will be useful in taking on Russian tanks and fortifications in a counterattack this spring. But Ukraine needs other armored vehicles to counterattack Russia effectively, one expert says. "There is a lot of mechanized infantry and tank brigades in each" corps that Ukraine is forming, Kofman said. Without the ability to build bridges strong enough to bear the weight of armored vehicles, a Ukrainian offensive would stall.

☆ New Corporate Minimum Tax Could Ensnare Some Firms Over One-Time Moves
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Jennifer Williams-Alvarez | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The IRS building in Washington. The 15% corporate minimum tax applies to companies that report income averaging at least $1 billion over three years. A new corporate minimum tax is stoking concern among some companies that one-time activities, such as the sale of a business unit, will push them over the threshold for the levy even though the companies wouldn’t otherwise qualify. The 15% corporate minimum tax that went into effect at the beginning of this year applies to U.S.-based companies that report income to shareholders averaging at least $1 billion over three years. What’s more, once a company is subject to the levy, it remains that way even if profits decline unless certain conditions are met, such as a determination from the government that a company shouldn’t be subject to the minimum tax.

☆ Raiffeisen Bank's Russian branch halts opening of new corporate accounts
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

MOSCOW, March 3 (Reuters) - The Russian branch of Austrian lender Raiffeisen Bank International <RBIV.VI. said on Friday that it was temporarily suspending the opening of accounts for new corporate clients and restricting the opening of new foreign currency for existing corporate clients. In a statement to Reuters, the bank's press service said: "The bank faced a large number of new applications for opening accounts and, in the face of increased requirements, including for checks and currency payments from correspondent banks, decided to concentrate on servicing the existing volume of transactions". The U.S. Department of the Treasury Sanctions Enforcement Office launched an investigation earlier this year against Raiffeisen Bank International in connection with the bank's activities in Russia. Reporting by Reuters; editing by Jason NeelyOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Take a look inside Subway's new corporate HQ, where it has a mock restaurant to test out new menu items
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Grace Dean | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: 1 min

Subway announced on Thursday that it has opened its new corporate headquarters in Miami, just a few minutes' drive from the Florida city's international airport. The exterior of Subway's new Miami HQ. Eileen Escarda via SubwayNews of the opening had been circling since at least 2020, and marks Subway's transformation into a dual-headquartered business. The sandwich chain announced the relocation in 2021, but had up until now shared few details.

One of the plants where children worked, SMART Alabama LLC in rural Luverne, Alabama, is a direct Hyundai subsidiary. STATE AND FEDERAL INVESTIGATIONSFollowing Reuters' first story on child labor at SMART last July, as many as 10 Hyundai suppliers in Alabama have been under investigation by state or federal authorities for child labor violations, Reuters reported in December. In the shareholder letter, Chang reiterated that Hyundai was "discouraging" suppliers from relying on such staffing agencies in the future. He wrote that staffing firms who hired children to work at Hyundai supplier plants had provided false employee documentation. Earlier this month, thirty-three members of Congress urged DOL to seek strong and swift penalties against those responsible for child labor in the Hyundai supply chain.

☆ Banking Group Asks Treasury to Withdraw Ownership Database Proposal
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( Dylan Tokar | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +4 min

The American Bankers Association was one of the biggest proponents of a new corporate ownership registry, saying it hoped the project would help cut regulatory costs for its members. The legislation approved by Congress outlines a range of civil and criminal penalties for individuals or entities that fail to disclose ownership information, or that intentionally disclose inaccurate information. To use the database, banks would have to identify and correct discrepancies, which would require additional staff and resources, the group said. FinCEN’s proposal is its second related to the new ownership database. The Treasury bureau has said it would issue a third rule addressing banks’ due diligence obligations related to the database.

☆ CEO of Penguin Random House U.S., Country’s Largest Book Publisher, Steps Down
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Madeline McIntosh became the chief executive of Penguin Random House’s U.S. division in 2018. Madeline McIntosh said she is stepping down as chief executive of Penguin Random House U.S., the third senior executive to leave the country’s largest consumer book publisher in the past two months. Ms. McIntosh will remain in place until Nihar Malaviya , interim CEO of Bertelsmann SE’s Penguin Random House, establishes a new corporate leadership structure, she said in an interview.

☆ Dubai lender Emirates NBD 2022 net profit up 40%
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-26 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

DUBAI, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Emirates NBD (ENBD.DU), Dubai's biggest lender, reported a 40% jump in 2022 net profit to 13 billion dirhams ($3.5 billion) on Thursday, helped by higher interest rates and transaction volumes which boosted overall income. The bank, majority owned by the government of Dubai, made a profit of 3.9 billion dirhams in the fourth quarter, up 94% from a year earlier. Higher interest rates and increased transaction volumes supported a 36% jump in 2022 total income to 32.5 billion dirhams, boosting profit. Total assets grew 8% to 742 billion dirhams. Total deposits grew 10% in 2022 to 503 billion dirhams.

☆ Goldman Sachs: These 27 stocks have the highest expected returns on equity of up to 49% for the next 12 months as we enter a recessionary environment
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-18 | by ( Laila Maidan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

The bad news is stock returns on equity are expected to continue to decline this year. There's good news: Inflation could hit 3% by the end of this year, according to Goldman Sachs. Declining returns on equity (ROE), a metric that gauges how well a company is using its shareholders' investments, may be a feature of the market in 2023. The Goldman Sachs team led by Chief US Equity Strategist David Kostin has rebalanced its basket of stocks expected to grow their ROE. Below is a list of 27 new contenders added to their list of 50 stocks that have the highest consensus-expected ROE growth for the next 12 months.

Former McDonald's CEO Stephen Easterbrook unveiling the company's new corporate headquarters during a grand opening ceremony on June 4, 2018, in ChicagoThe Securities and Exchange Commission charged former McDonald's CEO Steve Easterbrook on Monday with misrepresenting his November 2019 firing. McDonald's board fired Easterbrook in 2019 for a consensual relationship with an employee, which violated the company's fraternization policy. In December 2021, the two parties settled the lawsuit, and McDonald's successfully clawed back Easterbrook's severance, valued at $105 million. McDonald's has not admitted or denied the SEC's findings. In a statement, the company said that the SEC's actions reinforce what it has previously said about its handling of Easterbrook's misconduct.

☆ Did the market already show its hand in the first week of 2023? What we've learned so far
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-07 | by ( Michael Santoli | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +9 min

Recall that at the start of last year, the popular bet was for a smooth and painless rotation from expensive growth stocks to financials and cyclicals. It didn't last: The S & P financial sector trounced utilities by seven percentage points in just the first week of 2022. Yet the Nasdaq 100 's premium to the overall S & P 500 remains at 25% — higher than at any point in the decade before the Covid pandemic hit. And the broader tape, as measured by the equal-weighted S & P 500, continues to act better than the top-heavy headline index. This egalitarian basket, buyable via the Invesco S & P 500 Equal Weight ETF (RSP) , is up 16% from the autumn low, is down less than 12% from its record high and has broken to a new cycle high against the traditional S & P 500.

☆ Here are the 34 tech companies most likely to be snapped up by private equity firms like Vista and Thoma Bravo in 2023, according to bankers and market data
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-24 | by ( Ben Bergman | Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +22 min

With a stock price down 45% in the last year, though, it may soon find itself on the other side of the table. But it has $732 million in cash on hand, with zero debt, and analysts are projecting 16% revenue growth. This year, though, Varonis has come back to earth — its stock price has sunk over 57% in the last 12 months. However, with strong projected 2023 revenue growth of 18.6%, Zuora remains a strong target for PE firms. Its stock price has been hammered, going down about 40% this year and making it the subject of mergers-and-acquisitions chatter.

☆ Australia's ANZ shareholders approve new holding structure
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-15 | by ( Reuters Staff | ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

FILE PHOTO: A man talks on his phone in front of an ANZ Banking corporation tower in central Sydney, Australia February 20, 2018. REUTERS/Daniel Munoz/File Photo(Reuters) - Australia and New Zealand Banking Group said on Thursday its shareholders voted to establish a new holding company to separate its banking and non-banking businesses into two different groups. The move was initially announced in May, in an effort to prevent non-banking activities from affecting banking customers, a method several global banks have employed. 99.17% of votes were cast in favor of creating the non-operating holding company, ANZ Group Holdings Limited, which is expected to begin trading on the Australian and New Zealand exchanges from Jan. 4, 2023, ANZ said. The new corporate structure will need a court approval before it is implemented, which the bank expects to come by Dec. 19, it added.

☆ Here are the 34 tech companies most likely to be on the holiday shopping lists of private-equity firms after valuations plunged this year, according to bankers and private data
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-15 | by ( Ben Bergman | Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +22 min

☆ New Tax on Buybacks Is Weeks Away, but Finance Chiefs Aren’t Too Worried
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-09 | by ( Jennifer Williams-Alvarez | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +6 min

A new corporate tax on stock buybacks hasn’t worried finance chiefs enough for them to rethink their strategy. For Bolingbrook, Ill.-based Ulta Beauty Inc., a maker of beauty products, the impact of the tax will be minimal, finance chief Scott Settersten said. The company’s board in March authorized a new buyback program that enables Ulta Beauty to repurchase up to $2 billion in shares. It is set to be levied on net buybacks, meaning total shares repurchased minus new shares issued during the year. SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS How will the new tax on stock buybacks affect company repurchase plans in the years ahead?

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Giuseppe Bivona and Marco Taricco, Bluebell's partners, wrote to Fink, saying they want someone else to run the company. Bluebell was founded in 2019 and has taken on companies including GlaxoSmithKline, Glencore, Vivendi and Danone, where it engineered the ouster of former CEO Emmanuel Faber. "Fink clearly has political ambitions because it is not his job as chief executive of BlackRock to dictate energy policy,” Bivona told Reuters in an interview. BlackRock did not support Bluebell's campaign to oust the CEO of chemical company Solvay or at Leonardo SpA (LDOF.MI), where Bluebell wanted to promote a liability action against the CEO. A BlackRock spokesman said it did not "support Bluebell's campaigns as we did not consider them to be in the best economic interests of our clients."

☆ HBO layoffs, cuts, and 'ill will' over show cancellations have damaged its reputation among TV creators
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( Elaine Low | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

"I'm super, super nervous, because HBO has always been my favorite place to do business," said one TV agent. But concerns about new corporate leadership, layoffs, budget cuts, and the future of HBO Max — the streaming home of HBO — kept bubbling to the top. "I'm super, super nervous, because HBO has always been my favorite place to do business," one TV agent said. Aside from the 70 or so layoffs at HBO and HBO Max over the summer amid broader restructuring at WBD, creatives were troubled by the company's decision to pull existing TV shows and films from HBO Max. Read all of Insider's 2022 report here: 14 TV insiders rank the streamers where they want to sell shows: HBO is No.

☆ COP27: France, Spain latest to pledge halt to gasoline-driven vehicle sales
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( Simon Jessop | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

The countries made their pledges at the COP27 climate talks in Egypt's Sharm el-Sheikh, among a group of new signatories to the Zero Emission Vehicles Declaration (ZEVD), launched at last year's conference in Glasgow. [nL1N2S11J6]Signatories, including countries, municipalities and companies, pledged to shift to 100% sales of zero-emission vehicles by 2035 in leading markets and by 2040 across the globe. The total number of signatories to the pledge now stands at 214, from 130 a year earlier. Going forward, the ZEVD would be overseen by a new group, the Accelerating to Zero Coalition, that aims to help signatories implement their commitment. Data released by BloombergNEF showed 2022 would be a record year for sales of zero-emission vehicles with electric vehicles comprising 13.2% of all sales in the first half of the year.

☆ Warner Bros. Discovery layoffs, cuts, and 'ill will' over canceled shows have tarnished HBO with TV creators
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( Elaine Low | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

"I'm super, super nervous, because HBO has always been my favorite place to do business," said one TV agent. But concerns about new corporate leadership, layoffs, budget cuts, and the future of HBO Max — the streaming home of HBO — kept bubbling to the top. "I'm super, super nervous, because HBO has always been my favorite place to do business," one TV agent said. Even original series created just for the streamer, such as "Little Ellen," "Summer Camp Island," and "My Dinner with Hervé," were pulled. Read all of Insider's 2022 report here: 14 TV insiders rank the streamers where they want to sell shows: HBO is No.

☆ No liquidity distress in U.S. bonds: NY Fed economist
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-04 | by ( Shankar Ramakrishnan | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Nov 4 (Reuters) - Cost of new debt for companies may be at a premium but there is no liquidity distress yet in the U.S. corporate bond markets, said Nina Boyarchenko, head of microfinance studies at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a developer of the Corporate Bond Market Distress Index (CMDI). The index, with historical data dating back to 2005, for U.S. investment grade bonds touched a new two-year high of 0.52 on Oct. 21. That level is just 13 points away from the 0.65 level touched at the height of the COVID-19 crisis when the Fed announced a liquidity backstop for corporate credit markets. CMDI for high-yield bonds, meanwhile, stood at 0.24 versus 0.60 at the height of the COVID crisis. "From the perspective of market functioning, it is not really a sign of distress," she said.

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