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Dating app Tinder is being sued for sexual harassment and discrimination by the company’s former marketing vice president Whitney Wolfe.
Justin Mateen, Jonathan Badeen, Sean Rad, and Whitney Wolfe of Tinder attend a party to celebrate Glamour Hearts Tinder hosted by Glamour Magazine and Tinder at Chateau Marmont's Bar Marmont on February 3, 2014 in Hollywood, California.
Photo by Michael Buckner / Getty Images for Glamour
Sean Rad and Justin Mateen
IAC owns a majority stake in Tinder as well as College Humor, Match.com, and other dating sites.
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While an American Apparel employee, I spoke out publicly against the company’s ethics and employment practices. Then I got a call from Charney.
Bloomberg / Via Bloomberg
American Apparel CEO Dov Charney was slapping himself in the face. After every third or fourth slap, he fixed his eyes on mine, pointed his finger at me, and yelled, "This is what you did to me!" This was the first time Charney and I had met.
In 2009, during my sophomore year in college, I got a job at an American Apparel store in Chicago. That year Charney was a finalist for Time's "Most Influential People in the World." American Apparel had received accolades for being one of few clothing manufacturers that held decent labor standards in an infamously abusive industry. Through the business, Charney had also supported progressive causes like immigration reform, environmentalism, and gay rights.
At the same time, the company had more than its share of critics. Many took issue with Charney's hypersexualized advertising, earning him a reputation as a chauvinist. Countless stories of his exhibitionism and inappropriate sexual conduct with employees abounded, and there was a long history of lawsuits against Charney himself and the company for sexual harassment and abuse.
When I was hired, Charney was under fire for his new store policies. It was well-known that before hiring any employee, managers had to send photos of job applicants to the L.A. headquarters for approval, but the company was taking this further. An employee tipster told Gawker about the "class photo," when headquarters demanded a photo of all staff on duty within five minutes. The employee claimed that executives pressured managers to fire their employees based on the class photo, calling it an effort to weed out "uglies." Charney said they were judging fashion sense, but critics, including many employees, said it amounted to "beauty profiling."
I was one of those employees. Hearing stories of abrupt firings and complaints from female employees who felt unfairly targeted, I spoke out online. I harshly denounced the company's policies on an internal forum meant for work discussion. I also went public with my critique in the comments section of a Gothamist post. Identifying myself as an employee, I wrote that the post "doesn't even grasp the magnitude of the company's dehumanizing policies and actions" and that "I have serious issues with the company's ethics — especially when you compare them to the way the company tries to present itself as 'progressive' and 'ethical.'"
Gothamist / Via gothamist.com
While folding clothes in the stockroom back at work the next day, I received a phone call.
"Hi, Jonathan, it's Dov."
He was calling, he said, because he saw what I had written online. He accused me of damaging the company. Yelling into the phone, he said that he was tightening the dress code only because he saw employees who weren't representing his brand well. It was about style, he said, not looks, and he hadn't fired anyone based on photos. I'm as good as gone, I thought, so I might as well speak my piece. I said I didn't believe him, and I saw it as part of a pattern of unfair policies that created an uncomfortable working environment, especially for women.
Our conversation lasted more than an hour, with Charney ending it by saying that although he respected my boldness, I had him wrong. "You think I'm some corporate fat cat, but I'm over here eating out of a can, OK?" he quipped. "I'm just trying to run a good company." If I saw for myself how he worked, he said more than once, I would understand.
"I'll tell you what, I'm going to fly you to the factory. I'll pay for your flight. I'll pay for your hotel," said Charney, giving me his phone number in the process. "Just do one thing for me, and take down that comment."
My idealism was no match for the intrigue. I hadn't changed my mind about his policies, but I had been dazzled. While it was easy to paint Charney as a soulless profiteer from behind a computer screen, it was much harder to do so with him on the other end of the phone. His excitement is contagious. Even when he says ridiculous things, you can see that he believes them, and you almost want to believe them too. He talks a mile a minute, pausing only after making a bold statement and punctuating it with an expansive hand gesture and a big smile.
Charney persuaded me that his request to take down my Gothamist comment was fair, but since that was out of my control, I did the next best thing: I went online and backpedaled hard. "I'd like to take back what I said and I am going to do more research to obtain accurate information about this issue," I wrote, "suspending my judgment for now."
Late one night a few weeks after our initial conversation, Charney called me again and, without even saying hello, asked, "Can you get on a plane tomorrow morning?"
By Yahoo. By Yahoo?
Sony
Though NBC didn't renew Community for a sixth season (much to the internet's dismay), the comedy has gotten a reprieve from an unexpected place — Yahoo.
The show will return in the fall for 13 episodes during its sixth season, fulfilling half of its #sixseasonsandamovie promise.
Sony, Community's producer, shopped the cult comedy actively, but found no buyers on cable or at Netflix or Hulu. With the hold on the show's cast expiring today, June 30, Yahoo swooped in. According to Vulture's Josef Adalian, talks with Hulu fell apart over the show's budget, but cash-rich Yahoo made it work.
For its part, Yahoo, under its video umbrella, Yahoo Screen, has recently committed to trying to challenge the streaming services (which also include Amazon). In April, Yahoo's CEO Marissa Mayer announced that the company had picked up two new full-length comedy series for eight-episode seasons. They will be ad-supported like Hulu, not a subscription service such as Netflix or Amazon Prime.
In addition to the cast, Community creator Dan Harmon will also be back. In the press release announcing the Season 6 renewal, he was quoted: "I look forward to bringing our beloved NBC sitcom to a larger audience by moving it online. I vow to dominate our new competition. Rest easy, Big Bang Theory. Look out, Bang Bus!"
Attorney General Eric Holder said the bank was “conspiring with other entities to deliberately and repeatedly violated longstanding U.S. sanctions against Sudan, Cuba, and Iran.”
Charles Platiau / Reuters / Reuters
BNP Paribas, the largest bank in France, has pled guilty in New York state court to falsifying businesses records and conspiracy, bringing an end to an investigation of the bank's transferring money for Sudan and other countries sanctioned by the U.S. This is the second criminal charge that a large bank, albeit foreign, has pled guilty to this year, part of prosecutors' efforts to show that financial institutions are not "too big to jail."
The total penalty is $9 billion paid to U.S. authorities.
Attorney General Eric Holder said today in a press conference that BNP Paribas was "conspiring with other entities to deliberately and repeatedly violate longstanding U.S. sanctions against Sudan, Cuba, and Iran."
Holder said that BNP had helped transfer more than $500 million for an Iranian energy company, over $1.7 billion in transactions in Cuba, and "many billions" for Sudan while it was under U.S. sanctions for human rights violations. U.S Attorney Preet Bharara, whose Southern District U.S. Attorney Office helped investigate BNP, described the bank's actions as a "tour de fraud." The Justice Department said that BNP was helping sanctioned countries and companies transact in U.S. dollars from from 2004 to 2012.
BNP Paribas "acted as a de facto central bank for the government of Sudan," Deputy Attorney General James Cole said in a press conference. The New York State Department of Financial Services said that BNP Paribas ultimately helped conceal $190 billion worth of transactions, and the Justice Department said the $8.83 billion reflected what was "probably" criminal.
DFS said that BNP would have to suspend its dollar clearing — processing international transactions in dollars through New York — for a year starting in the beginning of 2015. An independent monitor will be appointed to oversee the implementation of the penalties, DFS said.
The months of negotiations over the guilty plea have dragged on BNP's stock price, which has fallen 12% this year to just over €49. Large banks across Europe have been nursing losses from the financial crisis and are still mired in investigations for interest rate and currency market manipulation — Credit Suisse in June estimated that the European banking sector was facing just over $100 billion in litigation costs, nearly doubling a February estimate of $58 billion.
Analysts at Nomura said in a note today before the announcement that a temporary ban on dollar clearing, while hard to game-out precisely, would at worst lead to a "low-mid single digit" percentage point impact on the bank's earnings. While the fine BNP is paying is well above what other European banks have faced, it is also significantly better capitalized than its European peers like UBS, Barclays, or HSBC who have also reached large settlements with U.S. regulators. BNP is €10 billion above its regulatory capital minimum before paying the penalty.
The Justice Department's investigation and push for a large fine raised the ire of several high franking French officials, including the French president Francois Hollande who wrote a letter to President Obama pleading that any penalty for BNP not be "unfair and disproportionate."
$2.24 billion of the nearly $9 billion penalty will be paid to the New York State Department of Financial Services. DFS also said that 13 BNP employees will leave the bank, including its chief operating officer George Chodron de Courcel. BNP said earlier this month that Chodron de Courcel would leave by the end of the month.
The DFS head, Ben Lawsky, has made extracting huge fines, departure of executives, and monitor-enforced changes of behavior for foreign banks with New York charters a hallmark of his just more than three year tenure at the head of the newly-created financial regulatory agency. While a deal was reached specifically to allow BNP Paribas to plead guilty without endangering its existence in the United States, Lawsky was still able to win additional penalties.
"As a civil regulator, we are taking action today not only to penalize the bank, but also expose and sanction individual BNP employees for wrongdoing," Lawsky said in a statement. "In order to deter future offenses, it is important to remember that banks do not commit misconduct – bankers do."
Mike Segar / Reuters
The company said it was acquiring TapCommerce, in addition to rolling out its mobile app install ads product. Re/code reported the deal price to be $100 million.
Robert Galbraith / Reuters / Reuters
The mobile app install ad is not a new idea, but as Facebook has quickly built a billion-dollar mobile advertising business out of it, Twitter has been hot on its heels.
Twitter's mobile app ad presence saw two major updates today: first, it said it would end beta test of its own mobile app install ad program today and open it up to the general ad ecosystem; and it also acquired Tap Commerce, a firm that specializes in re-engagement, for a reported $100 million.
"Re-engagement" is, essentially industry parlance for getting a user who has already installed an app to go back to that app. It works by showing an ad in Twitter timelines that is targeted using Twitter's user information. For example, a user might see an ad to go play new Candy Crush Saga levels once they are released by parent company King.com. Tap Commerce's ad service is used by 50,000 applications across many exchanges, which Twitter said in its announcement would not change.
By introducing new advertising products and improving targeting, Twitter can build its advertising business. The company has had trouble keeping up with Wall Street's expectations for user growth, but it can make the case to investors that its ad targeting is improving and is competitive with larger platforms like Facebook. Twitter says its advertising network, powered by an advertising company called MoPub it acquired in September last year, reaches more than 1 billion mobile devices.
Facebook rolled out its own re-engagement advertisements for mobile devices in October last year, and already some startups are looking beyond even re-engagement for new mobile app advertising businesses. One such example is Chartboost, which helps app publishers set up deals directly with each other without the use of an exchange to sell and share installs.
Tap Commerce raised $10.5 million from venture capitalists in November last year. The deal price, which Twitter did not disclose, and acquisition news was first reported by Ina Fried at Re/code.
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Investor discontent for executive compensation packages has caught many corporate boards off guard, particularly since stock prices are generally up, experts say.
JaysonPhotography/JaysonPhotography
At the midway point of the year, the most hotly contested issue to emerge in proxy battles is one many companies weren't anticipating: CEO pay.
Over the last two months, disenchanted shareholders have used corporate annual meetings as a battlefield to wage war over executive compensation, despite the fact that the market was up more than 30% last year and shareholder returns were generally higher than expected.
"This year saw a pay revolt that no one expected," said Michael Pryce-Jones, senior government policy analyst at CtW Investment Group, a firm that represents unionized shareholders in proxy fights with companies. "I think a lot of companies went into this year not believing that pay was going to be an issue because the stock market was up. Most boards think it doesn't matter as long as the stock is performing, and a lot of people were thinking there wouldn't be high profile pay revolts this year."
But such fights have so far been rampant. Perhaps the most glaring among them was at casual dining chain Chipotle, where 77% of shareholders voted down its compensation plan, which would have granted its co-CEOs the opportunity to make up to $285 million over three years. The pay package plan was voted down even after Chipotle's stock has climbed from $376 per share to more than $600 per share in just the last year.
Other companies that faced compensation challenges from shareholders include Domino's Pizza, McDonald's, Nabors Industries, Wal-Mart, Starwood, Burger King, and Sensient Technologies, to name a few.
Pryce-Jones said one of the leading indicators that shareholders are seriously dissatisfied with executive compensation is the fact that typically quiet large institutional investors, namely public pension plans, have voiced their opposition in a number of these battles, among them Chipotle, McDonald's and Domino's.
The California Public Employees' Retirement System, the California State Teachers' Retirement System and the New York City Public Pension Funds all publicly voiced their discontent with these companies pay packages recently, a relatively uncommon practice.
"When CalSTRS and CalPERS go public with their issues," Pryce-Jones said, "I think that speaks to the extent of their concern."
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Corporate boards will typically tolerate a founder’s eccentricities, and even bad behavior, as long as the business is performing well. But as performance declines, so too does tolerance.
Bloomberg/Bloomberg
The American Apparel board's abrupt firing last week of Dov Charney, who founded and brought the retailer to mainstream recognition, underscores an unspoken corporate truth: as business performance declines, so does tolerance for the antics of even visionary leaders.
At American Apparel, for instance, accusations and lawsuits charging sexual harassment against Charney are not at all new. What's new is that the company, which went public in 2006 by way of a shell firm and by 2008 was booking sales of $545 million a year, has lost money in 16 of the last 17 quarters and its stock price has been trading under $1.00 per share for the last four months. Not coincidentally, Charney's handpicked board first started talking about firing him three months ago, though Allan Mayer, who was elevated to board co-chairman as a result of Charney's firing, has said his removal stemmed from conduct issues and not business performance.
Charney's bad behavior has been well-documented for years — he's still dogged by a 2004 Jane magazine profile in which he masturbated in front of the reporter. American Apparel's CFO resigned after Charney called him "a complete loser" in The Wall Street Journal. Former employees have brought so many sexual harassment complaints against Charney and American Apparel that Charney's own cousin wrote a play based on them. The only difference between then and now is the performance of American Apparel's business and certain unspecified "new evidence" the board claims came to light recently regarding Charney's conduct.
Charney is not alone in the realm of retail company founders with an intense vision and outsized personality to lose board support recently. In the last year, Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries, who is considered the modern-day founder of the brand, Lululemon's Chip Wilson and George Zimmer of Men's Wearhouse, among others, have either been ousted or had their authority and responsibilities severely curtailed in the face of poor business performance.
"There has to be some separation between their personality and their influence and the actual company and it's products, and when that's too blurred for too long, that can be problematic," Dave Eaton, vice president of proxy research at Glass Lewis, said of retail company founders.
Abercrombie's Jeffries and Lululemon's Wilson, like Charney, are familiar with controversy. A comment Jeffries made in a 2006 interview with Salon about how Abercrombie is exclusionary and only markets to "cool, good-looking people" went viral last year. And Wilson drew fire for saying on TV that Lululemon's yoga pants "don't work" for all women's bodies, and that some of the problem is "about the rubbing through the thighs."
Those events not only opened the door for the boards of both companies to take action, but also came at a time when their businesses where struggling.
Lululemon's growth skyrocketed after its IPO in 2007, going from $270 million in sales in 2008 to $1 billion just four years later. But the business has been far less stellar ever since last year's sheer-pant fiasco — the company just cut its full-year earnings forecast and reported a decline in same-store sales. Abercrombie went public in the 90s — it was making $1 billion in sales in 2000; that doubled to $2 billion five years later, and most recently came in at $4.1 billion. But while Abercrombie and Hollister were hits, Jeffries has failed to introduce another successful standalone chain, costing the company a lot of money with both Ruehl and Gilly Hicks. The company has seen U.S. sales struggle in recent years and is relying on growth in Asia and other international locations to bolster earnings. Men's Wearhouse, while growing, needed to acquire Jos. A. Bank to truly increase its weight in the menswear market. And American Apparel's financial struggles have been well-documented — the company hasn't posted an annual profit since 2009, it's flirted with bankruptcy and it was so shoddy with its finances that its auditor resigned a few years ago.
Lululemon's Wilson.
Though each of these founders were felled by unique circumstances, they are all united by one common bond: none of them had voting control of their companies. None of these retailers had a dual class stock structure, which usually assigns more votes per share held by founders and other executives as a mechanism for them to maintain control after going public. The practice is commonplace in the media and technology industries, allowing founders or family dynasties such as News Corp's Rupert Murdoch, Viacom's Sumner Redstone, Comcast's Brian Roberts, and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to have their authority go virtually unchallenged from a corporate governance perspective.
Still, even without a dual class share structure, board directors are often initially sympathetic to management.
Abercrombie's board, for instance, was slow to act against Jeffries despite years of revelations about questionable behavior. When he drew criticism in 2010 for excessive use of the company jet, the board's so-called punishment was to "limit" his personal travel on the airplane to $200,000 a year and pay him a $4 million lump sum for agreeing to the deal. As more and more information leaked about the way Jeffries was running the company, from his partner's unorthodox involvement to an impossibly-detailed 40-plus page manual for staff on the corporate jet, the board still didn't act.
It was only in recent months — after repeated comparable sales declines in the U.S. and the involvement of activist shareholders — that the board removed Jeffries as its chairman, added more directors, and entered a shorter employment contract with him.
Boards are reluctant to take action against visionary founders because in many ways they are the face of the brands. They've cultivated them almost obsessively, created the initial vision for them, and are responsible for drawing loyal fans to the company in the first place.
Charney's life since 1998 has been all about American Apparel. It's hard to tell where he stops and the brand begins. It's the same with Jeffries, whose entire world seems to be a page out of the old A&F Quarterly, and Lululemon's Wilson, who last year told Fortune that "Lululemon is a culmination of everything I've ever done in my life." Indeed, despite his ouster, The Wall Street Journal recently reported the Wilson hired Goldman Sachs to figure out how to gain more control over Lululemon's operations.
Problems brew when "people impose their personal idiosyncrasies and their ego on the business," says Allan Ellinger, a senior managing partner at investment bank and restructuring advisor MMG, which advises the fashion and retail industries.
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A move by the New York and New York City comptrollers to impact international LGBT rights. Letters ask for information from Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and others.
Letter
WASHINGTON — On the eve of New York City's LGBT pride weekend, state and city officials are making a move to use their pension funds' investments to advance LGBT rights internationally.
New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer are sending letters Friday to 20 major U.S. companies — including Coca-Cola and McDonald's — asking about "the international application of your equal employment opportunity (EEO) policies as they relate to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community."
DiNapoli and Stringer manage combined investments of $13 billion in the 20 companies and are asking them to explain "how [they] apply and enforce [their] anti-discrimination policies to LGBT employees in [their] international operations, especially in those countries where discriminatory legislation is in place or being considered." Specifically, in the letter, they note recent anti-LGBT laws passed in Russia and some African counties.
In addition to Coca-Cola and McDonald's, the letter also was sent to Accenture, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Corning, Dow Chemical, General Electric, GlaxoSmithKline, Goldman Sachs, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase, Marriott, Morgan Stanley, Pepsico, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, 3M, and Yum! Brands.
A second letter was sent to the Russian internet firm, Mail.RU. According to the letter, "Mail.RU currently holds a 52% interest in the Russian company, VKontakte (VK.com), a social network service provider in Europe." The letter goes on to detail the "growing controversy surrounding VK.com's hosting of sites advocating and depicting violence against members of the Russian gay community."
Noting that the funds managed by DiNapoli and Stringer hold more than $9.2 million in Mail.RU, they ask the company to "inform us of the efforts [their] company has undertaken, or will undertake, to investigate public reports of the conduct described above and, if such reports are accurate, to mitigate risks arising from [their] association with and majority ownership of VK.com.
Then awkwardly backtracks: “Oh dear, was that an error?”
New York Times columnist James R. Stewart appeared as a guest to discuss his column about former BP CEO John Browne. "There are gay CEOs in major companies, and I reached out to many of them," Stewart said. "I got an extremely cool reception, not one would allow to be named at all."
CNBC
CNBC
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Overdraft fees, which amount to around $32 billion a year, generate massive revenue for banks but confuse and anger many consumers. New rules mandate that consumers opt-in to overdraft programs.
Chris Goldberg / Via flic.kr
Despite new rules that are supposed to increase transparency and consumer awareness of withdrawal fees on overdraft ATM and debit charges, a majority of consumers who pay them are not aware of opting in to overdraft coverage, according to a new study by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Banks collected around $32 billion in overdraft fees in 2012, according to research by Moebs Services, with a median charge of $35, according to Pew. This is despite the fact that many overdraft amounts are much smaller than the typical fee — 39% of withdrawals incurring an overdraft fee were for $20 or less. They are essentially very high interest rate loans with little risk of failure to repay.
The Pew survey says that more than half of overdrafts end up costing consumers between $30 and $99.99, and on average the fees, including the initial fee and extended fees for not paying the initial fee and getting the balance back to positive, amount to $69. The study found that more than two-thirds of people who pay overdraft fees, pay transfer fees, have transactions declined, or never go into a negative balance would prefer a declined transaction instead of paying a $35 fee.
Since 2010, banks have been required to get their consumers to opt-in to overdraft protection programs, where the overdrawn transaction will go through and then be charged a fee or have an amount transferred from another linked account like a credit card or savings account. Despite these rules, however, the Pew survey found that last year 52% of consumers charged overdraft fees did not know they opted into the protection program, down only 2 percentage points from 2012. 10% of Americans said they paid at least one overdraft penalty fee while 5% said they paid a transfer fee.
"Checking accounts are the most widely used financial product in the country, yet many consumers are still concerned and puzzled by bank overdraft practices," said Pew's director of consumer banking research Susan Weinstock.
While overdrafts have decreased slightly from 2013 to 2012, according to the Pew Survey, from 12% of respondents saying they paid an overdraft fee on a debit card transaction in 2012 to 10% in 2013, they are a steady revenue stream for banks, whose consumer banking operations especially have been hemmed in by low interest rates and increased regulatory scrutiny.
Since many checking accounts aren't profitable for banks — StrategyCorps says almost 40% of them are unprofitable — they have to generate sizable fee income to subsidize the more quiet accounts. As bank income has gotten squeezed, fewer and fewer banks offer free checking: 82% in 2009, and only 59% in 2014, according to Moebs. Some large consumer banks, including Chase, don't allow for overdrafts at ATMs (they simply decline the transactions) or won't charge fees if the account is overdrawn by $5 or less.
Weinstock said that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which regulates consumer financial products, should have new rules on overdraft fees by early 2015.
"This data should help lay the groundwork for these rules," Weinstock said. "They demonstrate the need for new rules for this product."
The Pew Charitable Trusts
The Pew Charitable Trusts
Want to know why Aereo is dead? Follow the money.
Peter Lauria/BuzzFeed
LINK: TV Networks Succeed In Killing Aereo In Supreme Court
LINK: Why Big Media Won’t Stand Up To Comcast
Business news organizations see steep drop-offs.
Robert Galbraith / Reuters / Via Reuters
In its bid to become a content platform in its own right, LinkedIn seems to have cut out some of the big publishers that rely on it for referral traffic.
"It's dried up to almost nothing," a source at one of the social network's 15 biggest publishers told BuzzFeed, noting that referral traffic from LinkedIn began to lessen back in January and then plunged steeply in March. Another one of LinkedIn's top publishers backed up those claims while a source familiar with traffic stats at a popular business website told BuzzFeed they'd seen the same pattern in recent months.
Internal BuzzFeed traffic data also shows a similar trend. In January, incoming traffic from LinkedIn started to falter and then in March it took a swift dive and has not recovered. LinkedIn, however, has never been a top traffic referrer for BuzzFeed.
BuzzFeed
"While I can't say for sure that this is universal or even typical, it's not surprising that it's happening to some publishers," said Hani Durzy, the director of corporate communications for LinkedIn.
LinkedIn has spent the past few years attempting to become the "definitive professional publishing platform" for business content, starting with the hire of hire of ex-Fortune editor Daniel Roth in 2011.
The changes seem to have started in November when LinkedIn began to implement features of Pulse, a newsreader company it purchased in April 2013 for $90 million. With Pulse, a list of LinkedIn posts written by "influencers" — popular LinkedIn bloggers — are recommended and displayed prominently at the top of every user's feed, replacing the network's "LinkedIn Today" curation feature, which angered some users.
And in March, the same month some publishers saw a bigger traffic dip, LinkedIn opened up its influencers program to all of its 300 million registered users. It was previously only available to high profile users like Richard Branson and Arianna Huffington. Durzy said the feature has taken off quickly and although more content produced on LinkedIn is being shown users, the site is still committed to "getting the right, relevant content" to its members, no matter what the source is.
But in doing so, LinkedIn risks alienating top publishers in the world of business news, some of whom used to rely on the social network for a healthy chunk of their traffic. LinkedIn wants to be an every day destination for its users, not just a place they come to check out resumes. But going forward, the true test won't be whether it can get people to read its content, it will whether its content is strong enough to keep users coming back for more.
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The company says it serves “Food With Integrity.” What does that mean?
Chipotle's website says its "fresh cooking" is done "using classic culinary techniques — no shortcuts." But Chipotle doesn't do all of its own cooking: Two outside processing companies in Chicago, OSI and Miniat Holdings, braise the carnitas and barbacoa, trim the steaks, cook the beans, and make the bases for the restaurant's green and red tomatillo salsas, all according to Chipotle's specifications. (Everything else, said Chris Arnold, Chipotle's Communications Director, "is made entirely in the restaurants.")
OSI, a global meat processing corporation with facilities in 17 countries, also supplies McDonald's with its burgers, nuggets, and other "value-added protein items" on its menu.
"The less distance food has to travel," Chipotle's website says, "the better." Sourcing locally — defined by the company as within 350 miles from the restaurant — has long been part of the Chipotle mantra. It's good for local economies, the environment, and the consumers, who get to enjoy the freshest foods.
But the ingredients for the carnitas, barbacoa, beans, and salsa bases, even when raised or grown just a short distance away from the restaurants serving them, have all traveled through Chicago, either through OSI or Miniat facilities. This is for consistency purposes, even if it has the potential to add thousands of food miles to your burrito. "You get cuts delivered and packaged to our specifications," Arnold said. "It's prepared in a really efficient and consistent way by having that done in fewer places than you would doing it in multiple places."
A big part of Chipotle's "Food With Integrity" philosophy is sourcing what it calls "responsibly raised" meat (originally called "naturally raised"). However, "responsibly" and "naturally raised" are not terms regulated by the government, and Chipotle does not require producers to have a third party certification, such as Certified Organic or Certified Humane. "'Natural' is on the honor system," wrote food expert Dr. Marion Nestle in her book What To Eat . "Some producers of 'natural' meats may be honorable, but you have to take what they say on faith."
Chipotle's version of responsibly raised meat has three main requirements: animals have received no added hormones, no antibiotics ever, and were humanely raised. BuzzFeed asked to see the full definition of the responsibly raised standards, but the company declined to share them. "We struggle with getting people to understand the most basic elements," said Arnold, "and adding details really runs the risk of muddying that understanding further."
When the company can't meet its needs with responsibly raised meat, they use conventionally sourced meat — meaning it's from animals that were raised with growth hormones, sub-therapeutic antibiotics, and in conditions generally not considered humane — to fill the gap. In 2013, that came out to 7.8 million pounds of its beef (15% of its beef) and 88 million pounds of its chicken (less than 1% of its chicken). (All of the pork served fit their standards of responsibly raised.)
Several food and animal welfare experts recognize Chipotle for its efforts. "My reading of this is that they would like to be sourcing all of their meat from natural, sustainable, antibiotic-free, and cage-free farmers but can’t always get it," said Nestle.
Last month, Chipotle CEO Steve Ells announced that the company was sourcing grass-fed beef from Australia, saying "the U.S. supply isn't growing quickly enough to match our demand."
Many American producers, though, disagree. "We firmly believe that [Chipotle] could find domestic sources for all of their beef," said Marilyn Noble, the American Grassfed Association's Communications Director.
The Texas Agriculture Commissioner also wants in. "Texas ranchers want to be successful," Bryan Black, Director of Communications for the Texas Department of Agriculture told BuzzFeed. "If there is a major market for grass-fed beef, then you can be sure many Texas ranchers would jump at the opportunity."
But Chipotle did not contact these organizations before the announcement, nor did it respond to AGA's email offering more domestic suppliers afterwards. "The price premium on grass-fed beef in the United States makes it a less viable solution unless we're willing to raise prices," Arnold said in explanation of the company's decision.
Environmentalists would like Chipotle to find a way to source domestically. "We hope that importing from abroad is a temporary measure while they work to improve and transform the U.S. supply chain," said Doug Sims at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Clearly, the best option is to minimize transport costs and impacts and have more U.S. sources of better beef."
In the meantime, the savings on Australian beef may not last. Thanks to increased global demand for it, prices for Australian beef will go up in the second half of 2014 according to The Daily Livestock Report notes, "implying higher costs for beef processors and ultimately US consumers."
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The New York State Attorney General’s lawsuit suit will also include allegations that Barclays misrepresented to clients how their trades would be routed and what protections they would have.
New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's civil suit against Barclays will include allegations that the giant British bank routed more trades through its "dark pool" — a stock-trading venue outside major exchanges — than it told clients, according to a person familiar with the planned lawsuit.
The suit will allege that Barclays' stock trading clients, who traded through the bank, had their trades routed through its dark pool, despite the bank's telling the clients that it would route the trades to wherever they could be best executed, the person said.
The suit will also allege, as Bloomberg first reported Wednesday, that clients of Barclays' dark pool were told they would be protected from high-frequency traders, and actually gave preferences and advantages to those traders, the person said.
Schneiderman will sue under the Martin Act, the wide-ranging New York state law that has allowed many New York Attorneys General, most notably Eliot Spitzer, go after Wall Street for misrepresentations.
A Barclays "dark pool" — an alternative stock trading venue where bids for stocks aren't publicly available — had the second largest share trading volume of any of the over 40 dark pools that trade stocks in the U.S, with over 282 million shares traded in the week ending June 2, according to data collected by FINRA, the securities industry self-regulator. At times, it's been the largest dark pool in the country. Dark pools account for nearly 40% of all U.S. equities trading.
The increasingly fractured market structure for trading stocks has come under regulatory scrutiny, with the Justice Department investigating some high-speed traders and the Securities and Exchange Commission chair Mary Jo White said while announcing a set of market structure in a speech earlier this month that that she is "concerned by the lack of [transparency] in these dark venues." Schneiderman's office has also reportedly subpoenaed several high speed traders and requested information from some banks that run dark pools.
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Part of Senate Democrat Tom Harkin’s new Higher Education Affordability Act, released today. The measure could have an outsize impact on those with high levels of debt.
Senator Tom Harkin
Joshua Roberts / Reuters / Reuters
Legislation proposed Wednesday by Democratic senator Tom Harkin would allow student loans made by private lenders such as Sallie Mae and Wells Fargo to be discharged in bankruptcy proceedings.
In bankruptcy, borrowers can discharge everything from credit card to gambling debts, but it is currently all but impossible to discharge student loans. That could change as part of Harkin's proposal for the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which would strike language from the US bankruptcy code, added in the mid-2000s, that prohibits discharging student loan debt from private loans.
Federal loans, which make up the bulk of outstanding student loan debt, would still be excluded from bankruptcy proceedings. But because private loans like those made by Sallie Mae often carry higher interest rates and other less favorable terms compared to their federal counterparts, the measure could have an outsize impact on those with high levels of debt.
Harkin's proposal could potentially impact the businesses of Sallie Mae and Wells Fargo, who currently hold between 10 and 15% of the $1.1 trillion in student loan debt in the United States.
The Higher Education Act reauthorization also tackles several other college affordability issues, calling for year-round Pell Grants and increasing investments in public higher education with an eye towards lowering tuition.
The 6-3 decision said the startup service has to pay broadcasters when it takes their programs and streams them to paid subscribers. Broadcasters painted the ruling as a win for consumers. But that claim is dubious.
Aereo captures broadcast TV and provides programs to subscribers via tiny antennas.
A little more than two years after it was born, Aereo is basically dead.
In a case watched by more people than Aereo has subscribers, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the Barry Diller-backed company violates the copyrights of broadcasters when it captures their signals and delivers them to subscribers for a fee. Aereo works by using thousands of tiny, dime-sized antennas to capture local broadcast TV signals and redistribute them to its subscribers, who can then stream or record shows for viewing.
The big four broadcast TV networks — ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC — along with Spanish-language network Univision and PBS jointly sued Aereo shortly after its launch, claiming that the service was stealing their programming by redistributing it for "public performance." Aereo countered by arguing that its technology was little more than an updated version of a TV antenna consumers could freely purchase in stores like Radio Shack and that since it only distributed signals to consumers individually it was simply providing a private performance.
The Supreme Court sided with the broadcasters in a 6-3 decision. Justice Stephen Breyer, in writing the majority opinion, said the court concluded that "Aereo is not just an equipment supplier." Essentially, the court ruled that Aereo's technology is less like a TV antenna and more akin to the way a cable or satellite TV provider distributes programming. And since those distributors pay to retransmit the programming signals of broadcast TV networks, so should Aereo.
Conscious of potentially stifling technological innovation, particularly as it surrounds cloud-based storage companies such as Dropbox, Breyer kept the decision narrow. Still, Justice Antonin Scalia, who was joined in the minority by Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito, in writing the dissenting opinion said the court's ruling was "built on the shakiest of foundations."
"In sum, Aereo does not "perform" for the sole and simple reason that it does not make the choice of content," Scalia wrote. "And because Aereo does not perform, it cannot be held directly liable for infringing the Networks' public-performance right."
Both Diller and Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia have previously said that the service had "no Plan B" and that a loss in the Supreme Court would likely result in the shuttering of the company.
"It's not a big (financial) loss for us, but I do believe blocking this technology is a big loss for consumers," Diller said in a statement. "Beyond that I only salute Chet Kanojia and his band of Aereo'lers for fighting the good fight."
For his part, Kanojia painted the decision as a setback for both consumers and the tech industry writ large. Noting that more than 60 million U.S. households still use an antenna for TV service, Kanojia said in a statement that the court's decision "is a massive setback" and that "consumer access to free-to-air broadcast television is an essential part of our country's fabric." He also said that the ruling "sends a chilling message to the technology industry."
The broadcast TV industry, of course, had a different reading of the ruling. To a network, they all claimed it as a win for either consumer, content creators, or copyright law. It certainly was a win for their stock prices, all of which shot up on the news. CBS shares were up the most in mid-afternoon trading Wednesday, gaining $2.69. Disney shares were up $1.28, while 21st Century Fox and Comcast were up 42 cents and 57 cents, respectively.
"[This] is a win for consumers that affirms important copyright protections and ensures that real innovation in over-the-top video will continue to support what is already a vibrant and growing television landscape," said Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox in a statement.
CBS, whose Chief Executive Les Moonves was the loudest critic of Aereo, going so far as the claim that he would convert his network into a cable channel if the Supreme Court ruled in Aereo's favor, said in statement that, "We are pleased with today's decision which is great news for content creators and their audiences."
Of course, both sides are basically staking out opposite ends of the spectrum in a bid to reach some middle ground. As Moonves said on CNBC Wednesday shortly after the ruling, "We're not against something going on the cloud, just against not getting paid for it."
Indeed, the entire battle is less about copyright law and more about retransmission fees, or the money cable and satellite distributors pay broadcast network owners like CBS to repatriate their signal. In recent years, these fees have become a lucrative second revenue stream to go along with advertising revenue for network owners, totaling billions of dollars.
Aereo's technology allows the company to take a populist stance in part because it provides a clever workaround to having to pay retransmission fees and pass along the cost to the consumer, which is what cable and satellite distributors do. And not getting paid is what the network owners dislike the most about Aereo.
Further, the framing of the battle as a tech startup innovator against greedy big media companies is inaccurate. Aereo is not exactly a helplessly small or poor company. In addition to Diller, Aereo has raised roughly $100 million in venture capital funding from such heavyweights as First Round Capital, Highland Capital Partners, Lauder Partners and others. It just doesn't want to buy content wholesale.
Aereo currently operates in 11 cities, including Boston, New York, Miami, and Austin, offering its service for a Netflix-like price of $8 per month. Prior to Wednesday's ruling it had plans to launch in 16 more cities, among them Chicago, Philadelphia, and Denver.
Should the company change its mind and decide to use some of that venture capital money to negotiate retransmission deals with the broadcast network owners, it could become a legitimate, legally compliant company.
Some are skeptical Aereo would undertake such a radical transformation of its business. In a report last week, BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield wrote that: "The whole purpose of Aereo is to leverage what consumers can legally do by themselves through equipment purchase and shift that upfront investment to a leasing model. If Aereo has to license local broadcast television content, the unique consumer value proposition afforded by free-over-the-air television evaporates."
But it seems as if Kanojia left the door about to such a plausible Plan B in his statement on the ruling.
"We are disappointed in the outcome, but our work is not done," Kanojia wrote. "We will continue to fight for our consumers and fight to create innovative technologies that have a meaningful and positive impact on our world."
