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☆ The inside story of how Microsoft caught up with Google on AI, and the unlikely executive who made it happen
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-10 | by ( Ashley Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

With OpenAI technology, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is challenging Google's online search monopoly. "Who'd have thought, even just a few months ago, that Google would be on their back foot," said Soma Somasegar, a former Microsoft executive. Google was also busy incorporating machine-learning and other AI technology into popular products such as Google Photos, Google Translate, and its search engine. Microsoft's new Bing search engine uses a newer version of GPT-3 to answer complex questions. Microsoft's positive feedback loopThe OpenAI deal laid the foundation for Microsoft to catch Google in the AI race.

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. has secured investor backing for a more than $1 billion capital raise to stave off bankruptcy and try to turn around its flagging business, people familiar with the matter said. The offering of convertible stock and warrants, coupled with a $100 million additional credit line from one of its lenders, is expected to save the troubled retailer from the near-term chapter 11 filing it has warned about for weeks. Bed Bath & Beyond has received investor commitments to raise $225 million of equity capital initially and the rest of the more than $1 billion offering over time, according to people familiar with the matter.

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. will try to raise more than $1 billion by selling stock, hoping investors who have propelled its stock higher despite its financial troubles can save it from bankruptcy. The offering of stock and warrants, coupled with a $100 million additional credit line from one of its lenders, could help the troubled retailer raise enough cash to avoid the chapter 11 filing it has warned about for weeks. Bed Bath said Monday that it can’t give any assurances it will receive any or all of the proceeds of the equity offering, which is subject to market conditions and not guaranteed to be completed.

☆ Bed Bath & Beyond Misses Interest Payments as It Weighs Chapter 11
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-01 | by ( Soma Biswas | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

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☆ Bed Bath & Beyond Misses Interest Payments Ahead of Possible Chapter 11
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-01 | by ( Soma Biswas | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. said Friday it was closing an additional 87 of its flagship stores and its entire Harmon chain of drugstores, as the retailer struggles to find financial support to keep its operations funded. The latest closings are in addition to a plan announced in August to shut 150 lower-performing Bed Bath & Beyond locations, a spokeswoman said. The company said Friday it is also closing five of its Buybuy Baby stores. The company had about 50 Harmon stores as of February 2022.

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc.’s path to restructure its business in bankruptcy is narrowing, as the home-goods retailer struggles to find financial support to keep its operations funded and avoid liquidation, people familiar with the matter said. The company, which is expected to file for bankruptcy soon, faces limited options to reorganize as a going concern, these people said: Its lenders have cut off credit, it hasn’t secured a buyer to acquire its business, it is struggling to raise financing to survive chapter 11 even in shrunken form and many vendors have stopped shipping goods to the retailer. Discussions are continuing and a financing deal could still materialize, these people said.

☆ Bed Bath & Beyond Says Banks Have Cut Off Its Credit Lines
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-27 | by ( Soma Biswas | Suzanne Kapner | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +2 min

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. said it doesn’t have the funds to repay its banks after they determined the retailer has defaulted on its credit lines. The banks are calling for an immediate repayment of all outstanding loans under the credit agreement. The company has $186 million in outstanding letters of credit. The filing indicates the growing financial constraints the retailer is under to operate normally, a month after it warned of a possible bankruptcy filing. Bed Bath & Beyond recently warned it may be filing for bankruptcy in just a few weeks.

The unraveling of Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. could unlock one of the company’s strongest businesses: the Buybuy Baby chain of stores selling strollers, cribs and other infant gear. Bed Bath, which is preparing for a bankruptcy filing, has been in discussions with private-equity firm Sycamore Partners and another suitor about a deal to sell the baby chain as part of its chapter 11 restructuring, according to people familiar with the matter. The New York Times earlier reported on the discussions.

Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. is preparing to file for bankruptcy within weeks after the home-goods retailer came up short on sales during the critical holiday season, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The retailer is in the early stages of planning for a chapter 11 bankruptcy filing and the discussions could extend into February, these people said. Bed Bath & Beyond warned earlier Thursday that it might file for bankruptcy protection and that it has substantial doubt it can stay in business after enduring another quarter of deep losses and slumping sales.

☆ FTX Creditors Committee Brings On Jefferies and FTI as Financial Advisers
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-30 | by ( Soma Biswas | Jonathan Randles | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The committee of FTX customers chosen to represent the interests of all exchange users in its chapter 11 case hired Jefferies and FTI Consulting Inc. as financial advisers, according to people familiar with the matter. Last week, the official committee brought on the law firm Paul Hastings LLP. Made up of nine members, the official committee is the sole customer group that can currently bill its legal and advisory fees to FTX.

☆ 9 tech companies that have ditched San Francisco offices in 2022 are a warning sign for cities to rethink their reliance on big firms
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-28 | by ( Robert Davis | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

San Francisco should be a cautionary tale for cities that rely on tech firms to fill office space. At least nine companies have exited office space in the city, . Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told Bloomberg that San Francisco needed "more diversity" in its economic and tax base, as well as more residential homes and cultural attractions downtown. Meta is planning to leave some of its office space in San Francisco. PayPal left its office in San Francisco this summer.

☆ DOJ Watchdog Calls for Independent FTX Probe in Bankruptcy
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Jonathan Randles | Soma Biswas | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

☆ Doan to start for Japan, Costa Rica make two changes
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-27 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

[1/2] Soccer Football - FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 - Group E - Japan v Costa Rica - Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium, Al Rayyan, Qatar - November 27, 2022 Japan's Ritsu Doan and Takumi Minamino walk on the pitch before the match REUTERS/Issei KatoDOHA, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Coach Hajime Moriyasu has rewarded Ritsu Doan with a start in Japan's second Group E game against Costa Rica on Sunday after he scored as a substitute in Wednesday's stunning World Cup upset of Germany. Doan's promotion was one of five changes to the starting line-up from the Germany match, with Miki Yamane coming into the defence in place of Hiroki Sakai. Hidemasa Morita, Yuki Soma and Doan come into midfield with Ao Tanaka, Takefusa Kubo and Junya Ito dropping out, while Ayase Ueda will start up front in place of Daizen Maeda. Costa Rica coach Luis Suarez largely kept faith with the team that suffered a humiliating 7-0 loss at the hands of Spain in their group opener. Gerson Torres comes in for Jewisson Bennette in midfield, while Kendall Waston will line-up in a five-man defence in place of Carlos Martinez.

☆ Celsius Failed to Set Up Controls to Track Customer Funds in Some Accounts, Examiner Says
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-20 | by ( Soma Biswas | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

Customers of Celsius now face uncertainty over which assets belong to them as of the date of the cryptocurrency firm’s bankruptcy filing. Bankrupt cryptocurrency firm Celsius Network LLC failed to set up proper accounting and operational controls to ensure that customer funds in certain deposit accounts were set aside from the rest of its crypto holdings, according to an independent examiner appointed in the company’s chapter 11 case. In a report released Saturday, examiner Shoba Pillay found that since Celsius hadn’t developed separate infrastructure for the so-called custody program it started offering in April, the firm had to take steps to transfer funds into the custody accounts from the rest of its holdings to address frequent shortfalls. Moreover, Celsius continued to mix deposits in so-called withhold accounts, the second type of account it created in response to regulatory pressure, with the rest of its funds, according to Ms. Pillay’s report.

☆ FTX’s Fight With Bahamas Puts Customers’ Crypto in Limbo
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-19 | by ( Alexander Saeedy | Soma Biswas | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The collapse of FTX has put its new management at odds with regulators in the Bahamas over who should control billions in sparsely documented cash and cryptocurrency assets that are presently out of customers’ reach. The Securities Commission of the Bahamas last week installed liquidators at the exchange’s Bahamas-based unit FTX Digital Markets Ltd. to recover its assets and deposits from other FTX entities after they ruled it was insolvent. Bahamas regulators said on Thursday they had swept the local subsidiary’s assets to a government-controlled wallet “for safekeeping” and to protect the interests of clients and creditors.

☆ FTX’s New CEO Faults Lax Oversight in Bankruptcy Filing
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Alexander Saeedy | Soma Biswas | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

FTX’s new chief executive said lax controls over the company’s billions of cash and cryptocurrency assets under the leadership of Sam Bankman-Fried has left current management scrambling to establish just how much money the bankrupt crypto platform has today. The declaration made in a Delaware bankruptcy court on Thursday marks the first attempt by FTX’s new chief executive, appointed shortly before the company filed for bankruptcy, to explain what went wrong at the company. John J. Ray, who led the liquidation of Enron Corp.’s assets in the years after the company collapsed, took over as CEO last week and his first official act was to authorize the company’s bankruptcy filing, he said.

☆ FTX’s New CEO Says Lack of Oversight Helped Lead to Bankruptcy
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Alexander Saeedy | Soma Biswas | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

FTX suffered a “complete failure of corporate controls” that culminated in an “unprecedented debacle,” its new chief executive officer said Thursday. John J. Ray , who has helped oversee some of the biggest bankruptcies ever, including Enron’s, said in a filing to federal bankruptcy court that he has never seen anything as bad in 40 years of restructuring firms.

FTX suffered a “complete failure of corporate controls” that culminated in an “unprecedented” debacle, its new chief executive said Thursday. John J. Ray , who has helped oversee some of the biggest bankruptcies ever, including Enron’s, said in a filing to federal bankruptcy court that he’s never seen anything as bad in 40 years of restructuring firms.

☆ FTX Collapses Into Bankruptcy System That Still Hasn’t Figured Out Crypto
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( Andrew Scurria | Soma Biswas | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The U.S. bankruptcy system will hash out the largest-ever collapse of a cryptocurrency exchange through a legal process that has barely begun to answer how holders of digital currencies will fare in an insolvency. Bankruptcy courts haven’t had the chance to decide complex legal questions around crypto ownership when an exchange or lender goes bust. As FTX’s chapter 11 case gets under way, the question of who even owns digital currencies—the exchanges or the customers who made the deposit—remains unsettled.

Cryptocurrency lender BlockFi Inc. is preparing a potential bankruptcy filing after halting withdrawals of customer deposits and acknowledging it has “significant exposure” to bankrupt exchange FTX, people familiar with the matter said. BlockFi paused withdrawals and limited activity on its platform last week, saying it couldn’t operate business as usual given the uncertainty about FTX. BlockFi is now planning to lay off some of its workers while the troubled firm prepares for a possible chapter 11 itself, people familiar with the matter said.

FTX’s fall into bankruptcy with a chapter 11 filing that offered few details about its creditors and assets indicates a rush by the cryptocurrency platform to seek legal protection shortly after it had disclosed a huge financing gap. FTX’s bankruptcy filing will put independent managers in charge and give them the power to investigate and potentially recover funds from founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who in recent days admitted to investors that customer funds were used for proprietary trading. Mr. Bankman-Fried also told investors...

☆ Every World Cup 2022 squad announced: USMNT, Germany, Belgium and more
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-10 | by ( Ben Morse | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +13 min

CNN —‘Tis the season for wall charts and fans gathering around to pick their starting teams for the 2022 Qatar World Cup. “It’s always difficult when a guy helps you get to the World Cup, he scores three goals in World Cup qualifying and isn’t going to be a part of the program. Again, it’s more about who we did add that we felt good about.”All but one of the 26 will be making their World Cup debut at this year’s tournament and, according to the USMNT, it will be the youngest team to qualify for the World Cup. Octavio Passos/Getty Images Europe/Getty ImagesGhanaManager: Otto AddoThe final squad has not been announced yet. READ: Meet Otto Addo, the coach responsible for guiding some of Europe’s brightest young talents (2021)—–PortugalManager: Fernando SantosThe final squad has not been announced yet.

☆ Analysis: Nagging U.S. Treasury liquidity problems raise Fed balance sheet predicament
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-08 | by ( Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

The Fed's balance sheet though remains at a lofty $8.7 trillion, down modestly from a peak of nearly $9 trillion. Fed' balance sheetHowever, there are underlying liquidity and volatility problems in U.S. Treasuries amid the Fed's aggressive rate hike cycle. While the Fed is determined to reduce its balance sheet, if the problems facing investors get out of control, some analysts said the Fed may just halt or suspend it. UBS economists said last month the Fed's balance sheet runoff will face several complications through 2023, prompting the Fed to sharply slow or fully stop balance sheet reduction sometime around June 2023. BCA's Swift said while the Treasury market has grown dramatically since 2008, dealer intermediation, has remained low, noting that regulations made it less appealing for dealers to undertake such activity in the Treasury market.

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