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In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Snapchat revealed it has raised nearly half a billion dollars.
The Snapchat logo is seen on the door of their headquarters in Venice, Los Angeles.
Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
With just a few hours left in 2014, Snapchat has confirmed it raised a massive funding round.
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Snapchat reported it raised just over $485 million. Mitch Lasky, a partner at Benchmark, and Michael Lynton, the CEO of Sony, are listed as "related persons" in the filing, which also revealed 23 investors participated in the funding round.
For some time now, Snapchat has been reported to be raising funding that would value the company at around $10 billion. Indeed, several emails that were leaked as part of the massive Sony hack showed correspondence between Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel, Lynton and Lasky indicating the company had plans to raise north of a half billion dollars.
A Form D doesn't necessarily indicate the company has raised all of the money it plans to raise, but it does confirm a massive funding round. Snapchat recently began selling its first advertisements that run as Snapchat Stories, and several small acquisitions were also revealed as part of the Sony email leaks.
Such a large funding round by a company like Snapchat suggests big expansion plans, and the desire for a war chest that enables to the company to quickly acquire smaller startups.
A representative from Snapchat did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In the mean time, happy new year!
“To borrow a millennial phrase, we’re on cleek,” said Taco Bell’s incoming CEO. Not everybody know’s what I’m talking about right now. That means you’re on point.”
A new Twitter account, @BrandsSayingBae, delighted the Internet this week, calling out chains from IHOP to Taco Bell for imitating teen vernacular on social media as part of their earnest pursuit for consumer engagement — a holy grail sought through "baes" and "on fleeks."
The screenshots are entertaining, poking fun at Jimmy John's for replies like "whatcha waitin for bae," or Applebee's for tweeting "#WontonTacos on fleek." The account's bio reads, sarcastically: "It's cool when a corporation tweets like a teenager. It makes me want to buy the corporation's products."
@BrandsSayingBae's current location, according to its bio: Hell.
More people on holiday, fewer people paying attention. It’s a perfect recipe for a corporate disclosure to fly beneath the radar.
The California-based legal publisher is also big shareholder in many US banks, thanks to the leadership of its chairman and Berkshire Hathaway number two Charlie Munger. On Monday it said that one of its quarterly earnings statements "should no longer be relied on."
The problem is an expected change in how some deferred revenue will be taxed. The company said it reached this decision on December 29 — Monday — after discussing it with its new auditor, BDO.
Daily Journal had removed its prior auditor, "Big Four" member EY, in June after a dispute over its internal controls. Daily Journal also said it had notified the NASDAQ on Tuesday that it won't be able to file a timely annual report, which violates the exchange's listing rules. The company also disclosed that it "it will not provide preliminary, unaudited results for fiscal 2014 until it has more certainty regarding BDO's position on the income tax accounting."
Denis Balibouse / Reuters
Homeless guy gets arrested for offensive sign.
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IBM is an icon of the technology industry. Or at least it was.
Paul Morigi / Getty Images for FORTUNE
IBM once stood alongside Microsoft and Intel as icons at the forefront of the technology industry. But now, it's on its way to making history — and not in the good way.
The technology company is sent to end 2014 as the worst performing stock among the 30 companies that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average. And this would be the second consecutive year the company finished last among the blue chip stocks of the Dow -- an achievement that, according to the Wall Street Journal, was last pulled off by Bethlehem Steel in 1995 and 1996.
For those paying attention to the technology industry, this doesn't come as a huge surprise: IBM has long been playing a desperate game of catch-up. In 2014 alone, IBM lost more than $25 billion in value, despite IBM's aggressive share buyback programs, which typically raises the value of outstanding shares.
Just how bad is that decline? Let's put it in perspective:
Stephen Lam / Reuters
Since going public in 2012, Facebook has quickly found its footing as a mobile advertising company, creating several lucrative lines of business. It also recently launched Atlas, a new flagship advertising product, that should expand its advertising footprint even further. Already, Facebook has surpassed many of the old guard technology companies and is well on its way to being among the highest-valued technology companies in the world.
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The Federal Trade Commission is preparing for a New Year’s spike in weight-loss scams. This year’s highlights included a cream inspired by lobster hormones, and a magical pill that claimed to strip the calories from a plate of spaghetti.
As Americans resolve to lose weight and diet this year, scammers are at the ready to collect what amounts to hundreds of millions each year in products that swear to trim inches and cut pounds, usually without any exercise. The Federal Trade Commission is preparing for the annual spike in weight-loss product fraud that tends to occur this time of year, as consumers search for a "magic bullet," said Richard Cleland, assistant director for the FTC's division of advertising practices.
"In terms of advertising issues, weight loss fraud is one of the top priorities for the Federal Trade Commission," Cleland said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. "It's very lucrative for scammers...you've got an audience that is susceptible to being scammed and a fairly sophisticated group of marketers that are very adept of taking advantage of them."
In the FTC's most recent consumer fraud survey, back in 2011, more consumers fell prey to fraudulent weight-loss products than any other fraud; an estimated 2.15% of consumers, or 5.1 million American adults, bought and used such goods that year. Despite that, companies typically can't pay the full fines demanded by the FTC as they've run out of money at that point. A tally by BuzzFeed News found that those accused of making fraudulent weight-loss claims paid less than $100 million in consumer refunds and penalties this year.
"Even in the best cases, it doesn't compare to the amount of money that consumers actually lose on the products," Cleland said. "The companies have generally spent the money either on advertising or laundered the money to their own bank accounts or something, so there's usually very little money left over for consumers. That suggests that consumer education is probably a more effective tool at protecting consumers than law enforcement."
Cleland notes that consumers should remember "there is no miracle out there." Below, nine scams that the FTC ruled on this year.
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From Manhattan’s unique love affair with the Shackburger to concerns about the fate of Moscow’s Shake Shacks amid Western sanctions, there was plenty to learn in the company’s SEC filing.
M. Bitter / Via flic.kr
Danny Meyer, chief founder of the Union Square Hospitality Group and Shake Shack.
AFP / Getty Images NICHOLAS KAMM
That's equivalent to about 1.5 million of their $4.95 Shackburgers, which would equal more than 4,000 burgers sold each day, per location. Manhattan is the star market for the chain, with average store sales about 50% higher than non-Manhattan outlets.
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Not great, but definitely better. Here’s some good economic news for the yuletide.
Ricardo Moraes / Reuters
Department of Commerce
Yuya Shino / Reuters
A report by Solve Media says that 34% of the traffic on retail-specific websites came from bots, and more than half was “suspicious.”
Solve Media
America's retailers are pouring billions into digital advertising this year as e-commerce grows and sets the tone of a highly competitive holiday shopping season. But a big chunk of their resources may be wasted on scams.
About 34% of U.S. web traffic on retail sites in the third quarter was determined to be from bots, while 55% was deemed suspicious, Solve Media said in a release yesterday. That bodes poorly for the fourth quarter, which accounts for a major part of the industry's estimated $11 billion in digital ad spending this year, as per eMarketer projections.
Fraudsters create bot traffic to fool marketers into paying more for Internet ads. Payments are typically made when an ad loads; the advertiser will end up paying for that even if a real person hasn't visited the site.
The Wall Street Journal reported on the phenomenon in March, writing: "The fraudsters erect sites with phony traffic and collect payments from advertisers through the middlemen who aggregate space across many sites and resell the space for most Web publishers." The identity of people profiting from this behavior is unclear, the newspaper wrote.
Retailers this holiday season "need to be the most proactive in protecting their budgets," Solve Media said. That could mean anything from hiring firms to audit online traffic to rewording media contracts to cutting deals that require payment only once users engage with an ad.
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At a presentation for would-be Uber drivers attended by BuzzFeed News, a company representative advised getting less-expensive “personal” insurance that can leave drivers uncovered and in some cases lead them to incorrectly register their cars in violation of the law.
Sergio Perez / Reuters
Uber is steering drivers to purchase auto insurance that leaves them uncovered when they're trolling for fares and that often forces them to flout the law by lying when they register their automobiles, according to documents, interviews, and an Uber presentation attended by a BuzzFeed News reporter.
The transit giant has been advising California drivers interested in its low-cost UberX service that personal, rather than commercial, insurance is sufficient to fully cover them and their vehicles. But insurance companies insist that's not the case, and they have refused to pay when Uber drivers have gotten into accidents while on the job. In some instances, Uber's secondary insurance doesn't cover drivers either, effectively leaving them on the hook for medical bills and car repairs.
There's another problem: To qualify for a personal insurance policy in California, a car must be registered with the Department of Motor Vehicles as being for personal use, not commercial use. To get personal insurance, drivers purchasing new vehicles they plan to use for UberX often lie on official state forms that ask whether the vehicle will be driven commercially, according to registration documents, drivers, and auto dealers. Working with lenders, Uber has developed leasing and loan programs that have guided drivers to register Uber vehicles for personal use only.
The DMV says that is improper. "There's not a shade of gray on it," said Andrew Conway, branch chief of registration policy at the DMV. "If you use the vehicle for commercial purposes, even occasionally, it has to be registered as commercial."
He added that anyone who registers Uber cars as personal vehicles is "making a false statement on the report of sale, knowingly."
Insurance is one of the biggest issues at play in the ballooning ridesharing business. Uber, the industry leader, now operates in 53 countries and more than 120 U.S. cities, providing upwards of a million rides per day as it competes with traditional taxi and limousine services, as well as other mobile-app-based services such as Lyft.
As Uber and competing services grow, the San Francisco Chronicle , Forbes , The New Yorker , and other publications have written about the industry's insurance problems. While most of the focus has been on drivers acting alone to conceal their activities from insurers, BuzzFeed News has found that Uber steers some drivers to purchase policies that put them at risk, and that leads them to register their vehicles incorrectly.
While Uber offers limousine services that carry commercial insurance, much of its growth has been fueled by the UberX program, which allows virtually anyone to use their own car for hire. Some drivers have little experience with passenger transportation and rely on Uber to direct them on critical issues including insurance.
On a recent rainy Friday morning, Uber drew current and would-be UberX drivers to a Los Angeles auto dealership with the promise of free pizza and the opportunity to get a new car through its financing programs. (In fact, no pizza was provided.) More than a dozen men and women attended the session, one of many that the company has been holding around the country in recent months.
As Uber employee Alanna Nass clicked through a PowerPoint, a would-be driver asked what insurance is required for UberX. Nass was unequivocal. "You don't need commercial insurance," she said. "When you're on an Uber trip, you're covered by us."
In fact, while Uber has expanded the scope of its own insurance policies over the past year and now carries $1 million in liability protection, there are still significant holes in its coverage.
Uber's policy covers drivers once they have been matched with a fare and when they are carrying paying passengers.
But there's a period of time when Uber's insurance may cover third parties but does not cover its drivers at all: when they are logged into the Uber app, waiting to be matched with a fare. During this trolling period, Uber leaves drivers in the lurch.
Uber maintains that isn't a problem, because drivers' personal insurance will cover the trolling period. The company's website claims that "during the time that a ridesharing partner is available but between trips, most personal auto insurance will provide coverage." In response to queries last week, Uber maintained that "when the app is on but no ride has been accepted, many personal policies provide coverage."
Not so, say Allstate, State Farm, Progressive, and Geico. Those companies insist that their policies do not cover ridesharing activities of any type, including when the driver is logged in to the app but has not been matched with a fare. Indeed, they have denied such claims, and some have begun canceling policies of people found to be driving for rideshare services.
If an insurance company determined that a driver got in an accident while trolling for a fare, it could decline to pay, leaving the Uber driver entirely responsible for any medical treatment that he might need. The driver would also have to pay for any damage to his or her own car.
What's more, anyone not in the Uber car injured during such an accident could also be at financial risk. That's because Uber's third-party bodily injury liability insurance for the trolling period, which kicks in if the driver's policy won't pay, is capped at $50,000 per person — far less than what a serious injury might cost in medical bills.
Lyft carries insurance that is very similar to Uber's, the company said, including a secondary policy in the trolling period with medical liability up to just $50,000 per person.
In online forums, UberX drivers involved in accidents during the trolling period frequently seek advice on their insurance. In many cases, other Uber drivers advise them to lie to their insurers to avoid losing their personal policies altogether. And some drivers have said they concealed their commercial activities when applying for insurance in the first place.
Chris Shultz, deputy commissioner of the California Department of Insurance, said law enforcement officials are increasingly concerned that the way rideshare companies advise their drivers to handle insurance could "force otherwise law-abiding people to commit insurance fraud."
The state has been encouraging carriers to develop special "hybrid" policies that would explicitly cover rideshare activities, but so far only one policy is available nationwide, and none in California.
Of course, there is already a product on the market that would put all insurance concerns to rest: commercial livery insurance. Required for taxis and limousines, as well as the limo-style UberBlack service, it provides round-the-clock protection — including collision, uninsured motorist, and medical. But because it costs between 3 and 10 times more than personal auto coverage, many drivers say it's unaffordable under UberX's current rate structure.
The high cost of commercial insurance creates a dilemma for Uber, which has been aggressively recruiting UberX drivers in order to flood markets with thousands of drivers and win market share from competitors. Simply put, advising drivers to purchase commercial insurance could lead many of them to decide against working for Uber in the first place.
In the past year, Uber has begun expanding its recruiting push by partnering with lenders to provide loan and lease programs to help drivers with bad credit get new cars. But some of those programs encourage drivers to register their cars for personal use and obtain personal insurance, documents and interviews show.
In July, Scott Eddy of San Diego acquired a 2014 Toyota Avalon Hybrid through the leasing program Uber runs with lender Santander Consumer USA. Laid off from his IT job five years ago, his credit had been severely damaged, and he'd previously had a car repossessed.
The Uber program requires no credit check. Eddy, eager to work, signed a lease obligating him to pay more than $1,200 a month for 52 months, or a total of more than $66,000 for a car with a sticker price of $41,000. The lease contract requires him to use the car "exclusively for business and commercial purposes as a livery vehicle to meet riders' requests conveyed through Uber during the term of the lease."
New data shows the economy is growing at its fastest pace in a decade.
Commerce Department
The U.S. economy was expanding even faster than we thought.
The Commerce Department Tuesday reported that US gross domestic product grew at a 5% annual rate in the third quarter of this year, up from 4.6% in the second quarter. An earlier version of the third quarter data showed the economy growing at a 3.9% annual rate. The quarterly growth rate had only hit 4.6% once in the last three years, and the 5% annual clip is the fastest the US economy has grown in a quarter since 2003, according to data collected by Bloomberg.
The Commerce Department credited consumer purchases, business investment, spending by the federal government, and more exports for the quick growth seen in the second half of the year.
Despite sluggish growth in the rest of the developed world, especially Europe, the US has numerous economic tailwinds, including gas prices dropping 27% in the last year and defense spending increasing at a 16% annual rate in the last quarter after falling for most of the last three years.
Those low gas prices helped buoy personal consumption, which makes up for about 70% of gross domestic product — personal consumption grew 3.2 percent in the third quarter, up from 2.5% in the second quarter.
The strong growth isn't just seen in the gross domestic product statistics, it's also seen in an resurgent labor market. The economy added 321,000 new jobs in November and in the last three months has averaged 278,000 new jobs added. In 2013, some 194,000 were created each month on average, while this year about 241,000 jobs have been added every month on average.
Dov Charney, the founder of American Apparel, told Bloomberg News that he’s down to his last $100,000 and sleeping on a friend’s couch. How is that possible?
Charney was fired last week from his position as a paid consultant. He was suspended as president and CEO by the board on June 18 for “alleged misconduct and violations of company policy" and has been the subject of an internal investigation since July 9.
Bloomberg/Bloomberg
American Apparel / Via americanapparel.net
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The rumor mill that Dick Costolo’s time is running out continues to churn.
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo with Cameron Diaz.
Stephen Lam / Reuters
Another week, another rumor that Dick Costolo is losing his job.
This time, the mention comes from Robert Peck, an analyst at SunTrust who said "there's a good chance he's not there in a year." Peck made the call on CNBC earlier today.
Indeed, the whispers that Costolo's time is running out have been getting louder. Twitter has gone through three heads of product in a year, not to mention the ouster of COO Ali Rowghani. In recent weeks, the rumor mill turned to Costolo, suggesting he may be the next one to be shown the door. Shortly after Peck made the call on CNBC, Twitter's shares rose by around 3%.
While Twitter's business continues to churn along — monetizing the service has never been Twitter's big problem — the company hasn't yet found a way to re-ignite user growth. Earlier, BuzzFeed News reported that after Rowghani's ouster, Twitter's growth team was re-organized into a central unit. Meanwhile, Daniel Graf — a Google alumni — was given the job as head of product. He promptly lost his job, with Kevin Weil, a longtime Twitter employee, getting the role.
Many observers and people close to the company attribute the shortfall to Costolo, who is seen largely as an operational CEO and not a product visionary — hence the revolving door at the product role. Costolo, however, is savvy and thus far has been able to navigate turmoil at the company. Still, investor patience is waning: earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal wrote a scathing story that demonstrated some of the community's frustration with Costolo, which sources close to the company described as "spot on."
Costolo is beloved by a segment of employees at the company, and it's possible that his upper-management changes have bought him enough time to see the company through the Super Bowl — an event where Twitter will no doubt see a frenzy of activity.
Still, as often the case in technology, rumors have some element of truth behind them, and the truth seems clear to both observers and investors: Costolo is running out of time.
Ousted CEO Dov Charney told Bloomberg News that he’s been living on the Lower East Side on a friend’s couch. He also plans to “sue everyone,” as per the report.
Bloomberg Television / Via bloomberg.com
American Apparel founder Dov Charney, who was booted from the company last week, says he's down to his last $100,000, according to an interview with Bloomberg News.
The ousted executive told Bloomberg reporter Trish Regan that he's living on a friend's couch on New York's Lower East Side, aiming to muster support to take his company private, she said on Bloomberg Television today. Regan was reporting on a conversation she had with Charney last Thursday afternoon which was not televised.
Charney, who pledged 43% of his stake in the company to hedge fund Standard General this summer during an internal investigation, is apparently "very upset" at the firm and has accused them of conspiring with a board member to oust him, she said.
She quoted Charney as saying: "I gave them my entire life's work and they agreed to put me back in, but instead they used this investigation to fire me. They betrayed me. I gave them my heart. My shares. They teamed up with Allan and worked against me." (Charney is referring to Allan Mayer, co-chairman of the board.)
"He would like to see this company taken private," Regan said of Charney. "He's suing everyone, by the way."
American Apparel fired Charney last Tuesday and named his successor, retail veteran Paula Schneider. Charney was working as a paid consultant for the company during an internal investigation that began in July; he was suspended as CEO and chairman for "alleged misconduct and violations of company policy" in June.
It's unclear how Charney is down to his last $100,000, given he was still earning his base CEO salary of around $800,000 in the consultant role. He is technically still the company's biggest shareholder.
A group of at least 30 executives wrote a letter to the board hours after Charney's dismissal last week, urging the company to bring him back in some leadership capacity. They wrote that he "makes this thing tick."
Charney was served with a termination letter in June for a long list of reasons including: breaching his fiduciary duty, violating company policy, sexual harassment, and misusing corporate assets, according to the letter, which was obtained by BuzzFeed News. In news reports following his dismissal, Charney proclaimed his innocence and called the board's accusations baseless.
Trust Bank, a small Russian lender, was bailed out by the country’s central bank on Monday. It is the first financial institution to be rescued since the collapse of the ruble, and the only to offer a Bruce Willis MasterCard.
The front page of Trust Bank's website has three Bruce Willises.
Via http://trust.ru
"Russian mid-sized lender Trust Bank is to receive up to 30 billion rubles ($530 million) from the central bank to stop it going bankrupt in the first bailout of its kind during the current rouble crisis.
The central bank said its Deposit Insurance Agency, responsible for managing crisis-hit lenders, would take over interim supervision of Trust Bank as of Monday."
The Russian financial sector is being hit on multiple fronts. Financial sanctions, imposed in the wake of the country's annexation of Crimea, limit the ability of the banks to borrow in international markets. Meanwhile, the value of the ruble has halved in recent months, and the country's economy is sliding into a recession.
Any of these factors alone would stress a banking system, but in combination, they could be devastating. "Today, I can say that we have entered or are entering a real, full-fledged economic crisis," said former finance minister Alexei Kudrin in a press conference on Monday.
The government is already preparing to inject funds into the banking system, and on Friday the lower house of parliament rushed through a draft law that would direct up to 1 trillion rubles ($16.5 billion) into the banking sector.
So many Bruce Willis pictures.
A year after Rosneft announced it was going to buy Morgan Stanley’s physical oil-trading assets, the deal collapsed thanks to regulatory pressures.
The logo of Rosneft, Russia's top crude producer, is seen on a gasoline station in Moscow, Oct. 29, 2014.
Maxim Shemetov / Reuters
The state-controlled Russian oil giant Rosneft said Monday that it would not buy the American investment bank Morgan Stanley's physical oil-trading business "due to an objective impossibility to complete the deal that has arisen as a result of regulatory clearances being refused," the company said in a statement.
The deal was initially announced a year ago, before Russia annexed Crimea and prompted American sanctions targeted against its corporate and financial sector — including personal sanctions against Putin ally and Rosneft head Igor Sechin that were announced in April. The deal had been submitted for review from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which approves foreign acquisitions of U.S. businesses for national security risks.
Rosneft did not say specifically that CFIUS scuttled the deal; when asked by BuzzFeed News, Mark Lake, a Morgan Stanley spokesman, pointed to the company's statement on the deal. U.S. Treasury spokeswoman Holly Shulman declined to comment, citing a policy of not commenting on specific CFIUS reviews or even whether deals had been submitted to CFIUS.
Morgan Stanley has been saying for months that the deal was unlikely to close. In October, the investment bank's chief financial officer, Ruth Porat, said during the company's quarterly earnings call, "We're considering alternatives if [the deal] doesn't close," and had said a week before that there were "no assurances" the deal would close.
The deal would have moved about 100 oil traders in the US, UK, and Singapore to Rosneft, as well as oil supplies and contracts to buy, sell, store, and ship oil. The business also holds a 49% stake in a fleet of oil tankers. "Whatever happens, we're going to sell that business," Colm Kelleher, Morgan Stanley's head of securities said at a conference in November. "The company will now consider a variety of options for the unit that take into account the interests of the Firm's shareholders, clients and employees," Morgan Stanley said in a statement today.
Morgan Stanley is shedding the oil business along with other commodities businesses amid efforts to reduce businesses that are asset-intensive, risky, and not always especially profitable. Both the Federal Reserve and the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations have critically looked at the physical commodities businesses of large banks, including Morgan Stanley.
Rosneft, one of the world's largest producers of oil, has been hammered both by a massive fall in the price of crude oil and by sanctions that limit its ability to get financing in dollars. The oil giant had to cancel joint projects with Exxon in the Arctic thanks to U.S. sanctions.
The teen retailer has been terrible at identifying its core customer. And as dELiA*s and DEB Shops liquidate, it doesn’t have much time left to get it right.
On Wet Seal's website, there's a model in a Pikachu "muscle tank," gazing to her left as her blonde hair flies across her face, one hand in the pocket of her bizarrely-folded jeans. Are they bell bottoms? What's with the cat-ear tiara on her head? Pikachu beams.
The graphic t-shirts featuring Pikachu, Frozen's Elsa, Barbie and the Lion King, at a retailer targeting sophisticated 20-year olds, perfectly illustrate Wet Seal's decade-long struggle to figure out who its core customer is. It's a struggle that could soon end in the company's bankruptcy.
Wet Seal, which was among the hottest teen retailers in the 90s and early 2000s, is the latest chain running out of reasons to exist. It announced in a quarterly filing this month that based on recent losses, "there is substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern." Its stock closed Friday at 5 cents a share, after announcing late Thursday that its executive overseeing stores and operations will resign on Jan. 2. Its lender, Bank of America, has tightened the reins, keeping a close eye on its cash levels.
Wet Seal, which brought back its old CEO this past September in a last-ditch turnaround attempt, has been bleeding cash and losing customers in recent years as executives keep changing their mind about who they're selling to. Management has struggled to prove they understand the changing face of the American teen market, a fact highlighted by a troubling lawsuit, settled last year, that alleged the company sought to hire more white retail staff to achieve the "diversity" needed to reach its target market.
The retailer's newly-installed executive team says it finally has it right: earlier this month, Wet Seal's CEO said it wants to become "sexy" and "edgy" again, market to 18- to 24-year-olds rather than 13- to 23-year olds, bring back the old Contempo Casuals label and get out of "juvenile" graphic T-s.
But those changes won't really hit until this spring, and Wet Seal is in extremely tight financial straits during a sluggish holiday shopping season. Adding to that, the liquidations of rivals DEB and Delia's are intensifying mall competition this month, as those retailers clear out dirt-cheap inventory and lure customers in with giant "Going out of Business" signs.
"It sounds like the current management team, which was the old management team, really believes in this sexy, more sophisticated look and believes the customer target got too young and too basic," Liz Dunn, founder and CEO of retail consulting firm Talmage Advisors, tells BuzzFeed News. "They want to interject more fashion as quickly as they can, and raise the level of sophistication. I just don't know if they have enough time, and with the stock at 5 cents the market's kind of goading."
Wet Seal's spokesperson and CFO, both contacts on recent press releases, are no longer with the company. A message left at interim CFO Thomas Hillebrandt's office was not immediately returned. The company's receptionist wouldn't give provide an e-mail address to send questions to.
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A complaint from the National Labor Relations Board argues McDonald’s can be held responsible for the treatment of workers at its restaurants, even if they are owned by franchisees. An industry group called it the “nightmare before Christmas.”
Mike Blake / Reuters
They wear the company's logo on their shirt, but does a worker at a franchised McDonald's restaurant really work for the McDonald's corporation?
It's a big, important legal question with huge ramifications for the company and its industry, and today rhe National Labor Relations Board dived further into thet debate, releasing a complaint against McDonald's that declared the company a "joint employer" of the workers in its franchises, and at least partially responsible for their treatment.
An administrative judge's ruling on the complaint in the weeks to come will likely set a precedent for companies that operate under the franchise model, and determine their level of responsibility when it comes to their employees. Franchisees own about 90% of the 14,000 McDonald's restaurants in the U.S.
The decision, if it affirms the NLRB's claim, would hit home particularly hard in the restaurant industry, which employs nearly 10% of the U.S. workforce. Restaurants are the country's second largest private sector employer, and have been one of the largest creators of new jobs since the recession.
The NLRB believes that McDonald's as a corporation and its franchisees are joint employers of the people who work at the fast food chain, and should therefore both be held accountable for any employee rights violations. The complaint released today alleges certain employees were persecuted for advocating for higher wages.
Some McDonald's employees have been at the forefront of a national campaign to raise the minimum wage, and the NLRB complaint says they experienced retaliation from their employers over the activism.
In a statement, the NLRB said its complaint alleges "that McDonald's USA, LLC and certain franchisees violated the rights of employees working at McDonald's restaurants at various locations around the country by, among other things, making statements and taking actions against them for engaging in activities aimed at improving their wages and working conditions, including participating in nationwide fast food worker protests about their terms and conditions of employment during the past two years."
Of course, not everyone sees things this way, with the most vocal opposition to the NLRB coming from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Restaurant Association, the National Retail Federation, and the International Franchise Association, which held a joint call shortly after the complaint's release to express their objection to the NLRB's claim that McDonald's can be seen as an employer of workers in its franchises.
"It's a sad day," Angelo Amador, Vice President & Regulatory Counsel at the National Restaurant Association said on the call. "It's going to upend the franchise model and resolutions to do business in the economy."
The IFA's Executive Vice President, Government Relations & Public Policy Robert Cresanti was the most critical of the NLRB's statement, as well as the timing of the move.
"For us this is the nightmare before Christmas," Cresanti said. "A group of non-elected bureaucrats have joined up with the unions while Congress has left for the holidays, it's a devastating blow."
When pressed by media listening in on the call for specific examples of how the NLRB's complaint would negatively affect franchisees, as Cresanti also alleged over the course of the 45-minute call, Cresanti said it would limit their control of employees.
"This pierces the corporate entity of the small business owner in an attempt to go into a national chain," Cresant said. "It creates uncertainty and increased risk for franchisors. There are significant threats that pile on as a result of that. It takes away franchisees' control to operate independently."
The IFA's Labor Counsel, Michael Lotito, added it is prohibitively expensive for franchisees to do battle with the NLRB in court, and said today's complaint "is part of a corporate campaign to put pressure on the franchisor by constantly attacking the franchisees"
Franchisees "have to hire counsel when faced with a complaint and do not have the resources to undertake this kind of fight," he said. "The franchisees are at a tremendous disadvantage to figure out these complex rules and regulations."
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The controversial plan has been more than a year and a half in the making.
The Associated Press
The Obama administration Friday released a detailed draft of its plan to rate colleges nationwide, an initiative that has been hotly debated — and sharply criticized — for more than a year and a half.
The most significant part of today's draft is the release of the broad criteria that the administration says it plans to use to rate both public and private colleges. The suggested metrics include how many low-income and first-generation college students schools serve, the school's net costs — how much students actually pay after financial aid and scholarships, and how much debt they graduate with — and student outcomes.
Based on those metrics, the framework suggests, colleges would be sorted into three categories, from high-performing to low-performing. Rather than allowing prospective students and parents to judge and compare colleges bases, as rankings like US News and World Report do, the draft rules appear to instead focus on setting minimums for schools to meet in order to serve students well.
The administration says it hopes to have the final ratings system ready for the 2015–2016 school year, some nine months away.
How exactly college graduates' outcomes should be measured has been the subject of controversy, with critics, including many college officials, saying that outcomes are subjective and difficult to measure and that a focus on students' earnings is misplaced. The draft framework suggests using graduation rates alongside measurements of "labor market success," such as long-term earnings or a minimum threshold of "substantial employment."
College officials have also worried publicly about problems that come in rating institutions that serve vastly different populations — community colleges that serve transient populations of low-income students, for example, rated on the same scale as Ivy League schools.
Republicans have also been critical of the ratings system, saying it amounts to government overreach and that the administration should not be involved in such a project.
But the administration insists the ratings plan is an important step toward improving college completion rates and addressing problems with high levels of student debt.
"Designing a new college ratings system is an important step in improving transparency, accountability, and equity in higher education," said Undersecretary Ted Mitchell in a statement.
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New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office has sent cease-and-desist letters to retailers including Wal-Mart, Amazon and Sears for allegedly selling prohibited toy guns to New York residents.
Sears toy gun.
Provided by NY AG office.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has sent cease-and-desist letters to retailers including Walmart, Amazon and Sears for allegedly using the internet to sell prohibited, excessively realistic-looking toy guns to state residents.
The AG's office, as part of the ongoing investigation, said it also discovered a Kmart in suburban Rochester, New York, that was selling illegal toy guns. (Kmart is owned by Sears.) The office announced its findings in a statement Thursday morning, adding that it also sent a cease-and-desist letter to ToyArsenal.com.
Retailers, as per New York state law, aren't allowed to sell imitation guns in "realistic colors," like black, silver or aluminum, unless they have a non-removable one-inch-wide orange stripe running down each side of the barrel. The idea behind the rule is to ensure residents can distinguish toy guns from the real thing. While toy sellers have largely complied in brick-and-mortar stores, others have allegedly taken to the web to ship prohibited toy guns to New York residents in clear violation of state law, the AG's office said. And in Kmart's case, the rule has allegedly been flouted in a physical store.
Walmart was already investigated by the AG's office for selling prohibited toy guns in stores, and ordered by a court from selling any more in the state, the office said. New York has been working for years to eradicate sales of toy guns that could be confused for actual firearms.
"Some of the toy guns discovered during the investigation are advertised as 'realistic looking' and 'full size," the AG's office said. Without the orange striping, "these imitation assault rifles, shotguns, and pistols closely resemble dangerous weapons, and could be easily mistaken for real weapons by law enforcement and civilians alike."
The AG's announcement comes on the heels of a national outcry over the fatal shooting of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black boy, by a Cleveland police officer. A caller told dispatchers the boy was playing with a gun that's "probably fake, but it's scaring the shit out of me." The white officer responding to the call shot Rice just seconds after confronting the boy. Rice was holding a toy pellet gun, investigators later found.
The AG's office says that in New York, since 1997, at least four people have been killed and one child seriously injured because of law enforcement officers mistaking toy guns for real guns.
"When toy guns are mistaken for real guns, there can be tragic consequences," Schneiderman said. "New York State law is clear: retailers cannot put children and law enforcement at risk by selling toy guns that are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing."
Toy gun from Amazon.com.
Provided by NY AG office.
Toy gun from Walmart.
Provided by NY AG office.
There were more than 300 IPOs on the books this year—up nearly 25% over 2013 The Nasdaq had the most IPOs, but the New York Stock Exchange, which raised $70 billion along the way, landed the biggest fish.
Brendan Mcdermid / Reuters
From Alibaba to GrubHub and 127 other initial public offerings in between, it was a banner year for IPOs on the New York Stock Exchange, according to newly released data from the market.
The NASDAQ, its main competitor, led in total IPO numbers, with 186 and counting in 2014. But it raised less than a third of the $70 billion in capital that infused NYSE IPOs, which included big fish like Chinese internet giant Alibaba and the $2.3 billion raised by Paramount Group in the biggest-ever IPO of a real estate investment trust (REIT). In total, the NYSE hosted 8 of the 10 biggest IPOs in 2014.
It also won the majority of technology IPOs, with a little more than half of all tech companies choosing to list on the NYSE. Those 32 listings, which included GrubHub, LendingClub and On Deck Capital, accounted for nearly 90% of capital raised this year by all newly-public tech companies, according to the NYSE.
It was a busy year all-round for IPOs, which are commonly seen as a measure of underlying economic confidence -- and bullishness in financial markets. In total, the 315 IPOs on the country's two largest markets in 2014 helped break an all time record previously set in 2000.
"Our continued focus on and investment in NYSE's core value proposition – from our proven market model and trading floor to our unparalleled visibility platform and focus on our customers – has consistently earned the confidence of our issuer community and their shareholders," said Scott Cutler, executive VP and head of global listings at the NYSE. "We continue to build on our network of the world's leading businesses while delivering the market tools and access to capital they require."
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A video surfaced of a Herbalife employee sharing some troubling thoughts and facts about the embattled nutritional supplement company. If you can’t say something nice…
Lucy Nicholson / Reuters / Reuters
As we approach the two-year mark in Bill Ackman's crusade to bring down nutritional products maker Herbalife, the activist investor has given the market quite the anniversary present.
Herbalife uses a direct sales method involving thousands of distributors to sell its nutritional drinks to their friends, families and neighbors. But Ackman insists the whole thing is a classic pyramid scheme, with distributors relying less on selling product and more on the money they make convincing new people to join the multi-level sales system.
Early Wednesday, Ackman's hedge fund released a three-hour video of an alleged Herbalife distributors meeting from 2005, the year after the company went public. The video shows senior distributor Stephan Gratziani, now in an even higher level position at the company, spilling some troubling insights and opinions on Herbalife's business model.
Here are a few choice comments, presented as a case study in what not to say on camera about what it's like to work at your publicly traded employer.
Via http://giphy.com
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A trove of email correspondences between Snapchat executives including Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton were leaked as part of the Sony Pictures hack.
Lucas Jackson / Reuters
Following up on leaks of a number of private email correspondences of Snapchat executives that included Michael Lynton, the CEO of Sony Pictures, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel expressed outrage in a letter he tweeted this afternoon.
"I've been feeling a lot of things since our business plans were made public last night," he wrote in a message to his team, which he also tweeted out. "Definitely angry. Definitely devastated."
The hack exposed a number of acquisitions the company made that it did not announce, some of the specifics of the company's most recent financing round, which valued Snapchat at $10 billion, as well as talks the company was having with Vevo over video integration. The leaked emails also confirmed Facebook's acquisition offer for the company was for more than $3 billion.
"I felt like I was going to cry all morning, so I went on a walk and thought through a couple things," he wrote. "I even ran into one of my high school design teachers. She gave me a huge hug. I really needed it."
The emails were released as part of a large-scale hack on Sony Pictures, where hackers released a massive amount of information about the company, including email threads like the ones involving Snapchat. Michael Lynton is an investor and advisor to the company, so the correspondences between himself and Mitch Lasky, a general partner at Benchmark Capital who is also on the Snapchat board, were included in the leaks.
Earlier this year, Snapchat settled charges with the Federal Trade Commission over complaints that it was misleading its users. In the complaint, the FCC said Snaps could easily be saved despited Snapchat's marketing that the messages would disappear for good after the time expired. The company was required to implement a comprehensive privacy program as part of the settlement.
"It's not fair that the people who try to build us up and break us down get a glimpse of who we really are," he wrote. "It's not fair that the people get to take away all the hard work we've done to surprise our community, family, and friends."
Here's his full response to the hacks:
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“We’re not getting what we need from the federal government.”
Molly Hensley-Clancy / BuzzFeed
Activists have turned to state governors in a battle over the fate of students at Corinthian Colleges, the massive for-profit college chain that is in the process of being shuttered by the federal government.
In letters written to six state governors, released today and provided exclusively to BuzzFeed News, the Center for American Progress' Higher Ed Not Debt Campaign encouraged states to take matters into their own hands regarding the controversial sale of 56 Corinthian campuses to ECMC Group, a nonprofit student loan guarantor that many say is unfit to handle the struggling schools.
The Education Department has endorsed the sale, leading many to criticize the federal government for not doing enough to provide recourse to students. "We haven't gotten what we needed from the federal government," said Maggie Thompson, Higher Ed Not Debt's campaign manager. "So we're going directly to the states."
The letters ask the governors to refuse to release buyers of Corinthian campuses from legal liability in lawsuits and investigations against the company, an agreement that many regard as necessary to sell off the schools. The Education Department agreed to release ECMC Group from liability, but Kamala Harris, the California Attorney General, refused, which will likely lead to the closure of Corinthian schools in California next year.
Thompson praised Harris' actions, saying that allowing Corinthian's schools to close, rather than being bought up by ECMC, will likely leave students better off, because the federal government is obligated to forgive the loans of current students at shuttered schools.
"It'll allow students to have some element of choice," Thompson said. "They can start over with a clean slate."
California is the only state with campuses up for sale that is currently suing Corinthian, but thirteen states have open investigations against the company, which could eventually result in lawsuits and fiscal penalties.
Higher Ed Not Debt is also asking state governors to consider taking out "surety bonds" against Corinthian's closure, bonds which would ensure refunds for indebted Corinthian students in the case of the school's closure; cash-strapped Corinthian is unlikely to be able to offer significant financial relief. Oregon took out a surety bond to ensure refunds for its 900 students.
Activists are also appealing directly to Corinthian buyer ECMC Group today. Higher Ed Not Debt, along with other activist groups, plan to hold a protest in front of ECMC's headquarters in Minnesota. The campaign also released a letter to Dave Hawn, ECMC's CEO, asking him to consider offering a refund to students and to stop pursuing a bankruptcy exemption for Corinthian.
ECMC, which has previously come under fire for "ruthless tactics" pursuing student loan debtors who try to discharge their federal loans in bankruptcy, is asking the Education Department to exempt Corinthian from bankruptcy penalties that would prevent schools under Chapter 11 from receiving federal financial aid.
The reclusive film icon doesn’t have email. Of course.
River Road Entertainment / Via giphy.com
Buried in the thousands of Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton's emails released by hackers is a message from reclusive director Terrence Malick, asking for help in securing rights for a song in a movie he's working on. But it's not an email; it's a scanned image of a typewritten letter signed by Malick. The director, his assistant said in the email to Lynton, "does not have an email account." This isn't surprising — Malick shuns the press and has given all of one interview since the 1970s.
The letter describes a scene where Ryan Gosling and Rooney Mara sing "a few phrases" from "Will You Love Me Tomorrow." Malick said that he had no problem securing rights from "Dylan to Madonna to Arcade Fire" under the same terms, but that the Gerry Goffin–Carole King classic was not available under those terms and so risked being cut out of the movie entirely.
Malick is presumably talking about a scene from what The Hollywood Reporter called "Untitled Terrence Malick Project," not Knight of Cups, the Malick film starring Christian Bale whose trailer was released this week.
The use of (relatively) contemporary pop and rock music is a departure for Malick, whose more recent films have used a wide range of classical music from composers like Bach, Wagner, and Mozart.
Here's the full letter. The scene, however, will likely not show up in the film when it's released. Lynton forwarded Malick's request to a Sony Music executive, calling Malick "an icon in the film business." The Sony Music executive, indicated that she probably wouldn't be able to help.
Thumbnail image courtesy River Road Entertainment and available here.
Darden Restaurants had its first earnings call since its board was completely replaced two months ago, on which it heavily emphasized to-go ordering at its largest chain. “Olive Garden has great food that travels very, very well.”
With activist hedge fund Starboard Value's complete takeover of Olive Garden parent Darden Restaurants' board in October, everyone knew change was in the air for the fast casual Italian chain.
On Darden's second quarter earnings call Tuesday evening, the company announced that it is indeed the dawn of a new era for Olive Garden, were sales grew by 0.5% in the last three months, compared to a decline of 1.3% in the previous quarter. But the most significant change in the brand's strategy announced on the call isn't that the chain will start salting its pasta water. Instead, the future success of Olive Garden, according to management, will rely heavily on its takeout business.
"[One piece] that I believe is really important in the Olive Garden momentum is to-go." Darden's interim CEO Eugene Lee said on the call. "We're seeing that business grow at 15%. Consumers want convenience."
As evidence for the success of Olive Garden's nascent takeout push—online ordering became available in July, and mobile capabilities only on November 3—Lee announced the brand now receives more than 30,000 online orders each week, and that Olive Garden's takeout business accounts for 8.6% of its total sales. Lee sees that number climbing to as high as 12% in the near future.
Moreover, the average check for Olive Garden to-go orders is 30% higher than that of in-store diners, many of whom are foregoing bottomless breadstick baskets in the restaurant, preferring to slip into a carbohydrate-induced stupor in the comfort of their own living rooms.
"So we have some people that we're trading out of the in-restaurant experience to the to-go experience. [But] it's not like this is totally a negative trade for us," Lee said. "And it's big part of our strategy, as we've identified convenience as a need that we can meet for the consumer because of the type of food that we serve."
Lee added that Olive Garden's menu is well-suited for takeout, emphasizing his faith in the pasta-to-go concept.
"Olive Garden has great food," he said. "That travels very, very well."
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