Business

Linked media - Connected media Last year, Johnson & Johnson proposed an $8.9 billion settlement to resolve 40,000 suits through a subsidiary created in 2021 to absorb the liability from its talc powder lawsuits. The plan was to have the unit file for bankruptcy protection — turning to the court to then disburse the settlement. Lindsey Simon, a bankruptcy professor at Emory University School of Law, said the reason bankruptcy court was an appealing way to settle mass litigation was that it allowed a company to end cases from claimants who did not agree to its offer, and also from future claimants. “The ability of bankruptcy law to force that 25 percent to accept a deal impacting their rights — current and future claimants — that’s strong medicine,” she said. “That’s a heavy benefit ...

Linked media - Associated media Hiive bought $50 million of Anthropic stock and is letting investors buy chunks as small as $25,000, said Sim Desai, the company’s chief executive. The site oversees an average of around $20 million in deals a week. At Augment, which opened last year, investors interested in owning shares in Stripe can peruse four “sell orders,” or people trying to sell Stripe shares. Augment did more than $20 million of transactions in March, Mr. Moldvai said. Some investment funds — including Stack Capital, Fundrise, Private Shares Fund and ARK Invest’s ARK Venture Fund — are also pitching the ability to own a piece of private start-ups. Destiny, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange and contains shares in 23 start-ups worth around $53 million, is one of a few op...

Linked media - Connected media Beijing is buying up gold to diversify its reserve funds and reduce its dependence on the U.S. dollar, long considered the most important currency to hold in reserve. China has been reducing its U.S. Treasury holdings for more than a decade. As of March, China had about $775 billion worth of U.S. debt, down from about $1.1 trillion in 2021. When China increased its gold holdings in the past, it bought domestically using renminbi, said Guan Tao, global chief economist at BOC International in Beijing. But this time, he said, the bank is using foreign currencies to buy gold — effectively reducing its exposure to the U.S. dollar and other currencies. Many central banks, including China, starting acquiring gold after the U.S. Treasury Department took the rare ...

Connected media - Linked media Edens isn’t daunted. Over dinner one night, he told me about a hotel that he recently built in Jackson Hole, Wyo. The project included a club where members could store skis and have their cars parked by valets. Everyone, including partners, told him it wouldn’t work. “A lot of the locals said, ‘That’s not Jackson Hole, that’s not true to our heritage,’” Edens said. “ ‘We’re not Vail. We carry our own stuff.’” He disagreed. “Who thinks carrying your three young kids’ ski stuff through a parking lot is a good idea?” Edens proceeded with the ski club. “And people love it,” he said. “It’s completely sold out. And that’s how I feel about some of the other things that we’re doing now.” While he said that he is respectful of the club’s long history, he added tha...

Connected media - Associated media Edward Dwight is going to space, finally. In the coming weeks, as conditions allow, Mr. Dwight is expected to be part of a six-person crew heading into space on the latest mission of Blue Origin, the space company founded by Jeff Bezos. Blue Origin’s seventh human flight will carry an array of adventurers including a venture capitalist, a craft-beer entrepreneur from France, a retired accountant who has been told by doctors that she is going blind, and Mr. Dwight, a retired Air Force captain who 60 years ago was chosen, and then passed over, to be the first Black man to orbit Earth. Mr. Dwight wound up in the astronaut training program at Edwards Air Force Base in California in the early 1960s under the command of Chuck Yeager. (In 1947 General Yeager...

Associated media - Associated media That was clear on Tuesday, when new data showed that economic output of the euro currency bloc grew 0.3 percent in the first quarter this year from the previous quarter, according to the European Union’s statistics agency, Eurostat. The eurozone economy shrank by 0.1 percent in both the third and fourth quarters of last year, a technical recession. Germany, which accounts for one-quarter of the bloc’s economy, barely avoided a recession in the first quarter of 2024, growing 0.2 percent. Spain and Portugal expanded more than three times that pace, showing that Europe’s economy continues to grow at two speeds. How have Greece, Spain and Portugal pulled ahead? After years of international bailouts and harsh austerity programs, southern European countrie...

Associated media - Connected media TikTok takes its fight to court TikTok fired the latest broadside in its battle with Washington, suing to block a law that could force the company to split from ByteDance, its Chinese owner, or face a ban in the U.S. The company argues that the law violates the First Amendment by effectively killing an app in the U.S. that millions of Americans use to share their views. Another problem: a divestiture within 270 days is practically impossible, Sapna Maheshwari and David McCabe report for The Times. DealBook spoke with Maheshwari about the lawsuit filed yesterday and what happens next. Do legal experts think TikTok has a chance at winning? It could go either way. Alan Rozenshtein, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, says t...

Linked media - Related media When Disney reported robust earnings in February, the activist investors then circling the company essentially called it a stunt — a temporary, heat-of-battle effort to fend them off and not, as Robert A. Iger maintained, proof that a struggling Disney had finally “turned the corner.” The Disney chief’s argument just got a lot stronger. Disney blew past Wall Street’s expectations for a second consecutive quarter on Tuesday, in part because its flagship streaming service made money — a first. Disney+ had been expected to lose more than $100 million in the most recent quarter, widening losses since its 2019 arrival to roughly $12 billion. Instead, it swung to a $47 million profit. “Two quarters earlier than expected,” Hugh Johnston, Disney’s chief financial ...

Related media - Linked media Lois Wolobah, Harris’s mother, declined to comment on the report on Thursday. She has said previously that she believed that the single Paqui brand tortilla chip that her son ate hours before he died jeopardized his health. The chip, dusted with two very hot peppers, the Carolina Reaper and the Naga Viper, had a label on the box that read, “One Chip Challenge” and carried a warning — “Inside: One Extremely Hot Chip.” It came in a coffin-shaped box that bore an image of a skull with a snake coiled around it. Marketing materials for the chip dared customers to wait as long as possible after eating the chip before eating or drinking anything, and then to post their reactions on social media. In an interview in September, Ms. Wolobah said that her son’s school ...

Connected media - Related media Mr. Biden emphasized that the United States would continue to take necessary actions to prevent advanced American technologies from being used to undermine its own national security, without unduly limiting trade and investment, according to the White House. Mr. Xi said that putting new sanctions on China was not “de-risking,” but creating risks. If the United States was bent on “containing China’s hi-tech development and depriving China of its legitimate right to development, China is not going to sit back and watch,” he said, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. U.S. officials say their restrictions are necessary given China’s authoritarian government and statist economic model. But the moves have rankled Chinese leaders and pushed tensions ov...