Tag: Corporate Crime/Legal Action

Trump Organization Expands in India, Where Many of Its Partners Face Accusations

GURUGRAM, India—When the Trump Organization in April announced another luxury real-estate project in India, Eric Trump gave a shout out to his local partners for helping accelerate the brand’s expansion.

“We’re incredibly excited to launch our second project in Gurgaon,” Eric Trump, who runs day-to-day operations, using the former name for the city near New Delhi. “And even prouder to be doing it once again with our amazing partners.”

Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Rory Jones

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October 16, 2025
Trump is backed further into a financial corner after losing control of his company

With Donald Trump’s legal liabilities growing and a presidential campaign to run, losing control of his company couldn’t have come at a worse time.

After a New York judge ordered the Trump Organization to pay $364 million in penalties and barred the former president from any role in running a business in New York state for three years, Trump now finds himself backed further into a financial corner with fewer options for how to maneuver.

“It will have such an enormous impact on the operation of his business,” said Randy Zelin, a professor of law at Cornell University and a veteran criminal defense attorney with experience in complex financial matters. “But it will also provide a strong basis for an appeal.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James had asked New York State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron to levy a $370 million financial penalty against the Trump Organization and also to ban Trump and his children Ivanka, Donald Jr. and Eric Trump from running any company in the state of New York, where his real-estate empire has long been based.

Engoron’s ruling barred Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump from being involved in running any business in the state for two years. The judge also ordered that former U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Jones, who has been serving as an independent monitor of the Trump Organization since 2022, continue in that role with expanded powers for the next three years. The ruling also ordered that an independent compliance officer be appointed within 30 days.

“The Trump Organization shall be required to obtain prior approval — not, as things are now, subsequent review — from Judge Jones before submitting any financial disclosure to a third party, so that such disclosure may be reviewed beforehand for material misrepresentations,” the ruling read.

The outcome of the civil trial sat solely in Engoron’s hands, and in September, he issued a summary judgment essentially ruling in favor of James’s arguments that the Trump Organization had engaged in fraud for years by repeatedly misstating the value of assets to lenders and insurance companies.

The judgment is the latest in a string of legal and financial blows that the former president has faced and that have already had an impact on his presidential campaign.

Trump has incurred $76 million in legal costs over the past two years stemming from the wide array of criminal and civil prosecutions he faces. More than $27 million of the money raised in the last six months of 2023 to support his presidential campaign has instead been used to cover his legal costs, according to campaign-finance filings.

A report by Bloomberg earlier this week suggested that Trump may face a cash crunch caused by his ballooning legal costs as early as this summer, just as the presidential race will be heating up.

Last month, a federal jury ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million in damages for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll, whom he had attacked online after she had accused him of raping her in a department-store dressing room in the 1990s. He had earlier been hit with a $5 million verdict in a state case on similar charges.

Trump has vowed to appeal the verdicts and denied raping Carroll, but in order to appeal, he will be required to put up bonds for the full award amounts. That means he would need to either get a bank to back him or to pledge collateral — like a real estate asset — to secure the bond.

But without full control of his real-estate empire, Trump will likely find it harder to line up financing or use his assets as freely as before.

Under the terms of Engoron’s ruling, Trump will no longer be able to make any moves involving assets held by the Trump Organization without the approval of the court-appointed monitor.

Even pledging his assets as collateral for the bond that he would be required to post in order to file an appeal would be complicated by the imposition of a monitor.

“When you lose control of your company, you lose control of who is going to be paid and how much they will be paid. All the money will, first and foremost, be used to operate the business, and how much goes to Trump and his children becomes a secondary concern,” Zelin said.

Add to that the mounting legal costs for multiple criminal cases being brought against him — on charges related to Jan. 6 as well as charges of mishandling classified documents, election fraud, racketeering and illegally paying hush money to women who claimed they’d had affairs with him — and Trump finds himself in a worsening financial bind.

So far, the former president has managed to cover many of his legal costs through donations from his political supporters, but that means that money won’t be available to fund his campaign for president. At the end of the year, President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign had about $46 million cash on hand, while Trump’s campaign had $33 million, Federal Election Commission filings show. Some $50 million held by Trump’s political action committees has already been used to cover his legal bills.

Regarding the properties held by the Trump Organization, while Trump has been able to refinance many of the loans underlying his bigger real-estate holdings, pushing their maturity dates back several years, he still has a stake in some high-profile buildings that have debt coming due in the next few years.

With the court-appointed monitor part of the equation, it might now be more difficult for Trump to secure new debt in order to refinance those buildings, and that could even technically trigger defaults, depending on how the loan covenants were written.

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February 16, 2024
Tesla settles California hazardous-waste lawsuit for $1.5 million

Tesla Inc. will pay $1.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed earlier this week by 25 California counties accusing the electric-vehicle maker of mishandling hazardous waste.

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced the settlement late Thursday.

“While electric vehicles may benefit the environment, the manufacturing and servicing of these vehicles still generates many harmful waste streams,” Jenkins said in a statement. “Today’s settlement against Tesla, Inc. serves to provide a cleaner environment for citizens throughout the state by preventing the contamination of our precious natural resources when hazardous waste is mismanaged and unlawfully disposed.”

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday, accused Tesla
TSLA,
+0.84%
of improperly handling, transporting and disposing hazardous materials including oil, lead acid batteries, antifreeze and diesel fuel at as many as 101 sites across the state.

As part of the settlement, Tesla was ordered to pay $1.3 million in civil penalties, and $200,000 to reimburse the cost of the investigation, which began in 2018. Tesla also must comply with an injunction for five years to properly dispose of its hazardous materials.

Last month, Tesla reported earnings of $7.9 billion in the fourth quarter.

Tesla, which dissolved its media relations team in 2020, did not respond to a request for comment.

Tesla shares are down about 24% year to date, compared to a 3% gain by the S&P 500
SPX.

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February 1, 2024
Judge dismisses Disney’s free-speech lawsuit against DeSantis

Walt Disney Co.’s lawsuit against Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and others, alleging they retaliated against the company for publicly criticizing a controversial parents-rights education law backed by DeSantis, was dismissed by a federal judge on Wednesday.

Shares of Disney
DIS,
-0.92%
fell about 1% Monday.

Judge Allen Winsor ruled Disney lacked legal standing to sue DeSantis. He added that Disney’s charges “fail on the merits” against members of the Florida board of a special improvement district in which the company operates its parks and resort.

In his ruling, Winsor said Disney “has not alleged any specific actions the new board took (or will take) because of the governor’s alleged control.” He added the company “has not alleged any specific injury from any board action.”

“Its alleged injury … is its operating under a board it cannot control. That injury would exist whether or not the governor controlled the board,” he wrote.

Disney strongly suggested it will appeal Winsor’s ruling.

“This is an important case with serious implications for the rule of law, and it will not end here,” the company said in a statement. “If left unchallenged, this would set a dangerous precedent and give license to states to weaponize their official powers to punish the expression of political viewpoints they disagree with. We are determined to press forward with our case.”

The controversial legislation, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by critics, was passed in 2022.

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January 31, 2024
JetBlue, Spirit Airlines appeal court ruling blocking their proposed merger

JetBlue Airways Corp. and Spirit Airlines Inc. said late Friday that they have appealed a court ruling that earlier this week blocked their planned merger.

JetBlue
JBLU,
-1.19%
and Spirit
SAVE,
+17.19%
announced the appeal in a terse press release that provided no more details, adding only that the process is “consistent with the requirements of the merger agreement.”

Wall Street was split on whether the airlines would be legally obliged to appeal the Tuesday ruling, which sided with the Justice Department in saying that a merger between low-cost JetBlue and ultra-low-cost Spirit would hurt competition.

Shares of Spirit rallied 12% after hours Friday, while JetBlue shares fell nearly 2%. Analysts at JP Morgan said this week that the ruling freed JetBlue from a “costly merger.”

Earlier Friday, Spirit sought to reassure investors about its liquidity and issued an upbeat fourth-quarter revenue guidance. Spirit has amassed about $5.5 billion in debt, and is reportedly seeking advisers to help restructure it.

The likelihood of Spirit attracting a new merger or takeover bid is considered low without a debt restructuring. Frontier Group Holdings Inc.
ULCC,
-2.13%
and JetBlue competed for Spirit in 2022, with Frontier ultimately bowing out in July of that year.

Raymond James analyst Savanthi Syth said in a note earlier Friday that it was “clear to us that Spirit is pressing JetBlue to appeal the antitrust ruling, but we continue to believe the chances of success are low.”

Syth has estimated that an appeal would take some four to five months.

Shares of Spirit have lost 67% in the past 12 months, while shares of JetBlue are down 41%. The U.S. Global Jets ETF
JETS
has lost 9% in the same period. Those losses contrast with gains of 24% for the S&P 500 index
SPX.

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January 19, 2024
Verizon Mobile Customers Could Split $100 Million Settlement. Here’s How.

Verizon mobile phone customers could share a proposed $100 million class action settlement over monthly fees that people suing the communications company claim were unfairly charged and improperly disclosed. But those who want to claim their share of that money need to act by April 15.

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January 3, 2024
Apple can sell its latest smartwatches again after court pauses FTC import ban

The latest Apple Watches are available again after the company scored a legal victory Wednesday.

“We are thrilled to return the full Apple Watch lineup to customers in time for the new year,” Apple
AAPL,
+0.05%
said in a statement to MarketWatch. “Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2, including the blood-oxygen feature, will become available for purchase again in the United States at Apple Stores starting today and from apple.com tomorrow by 3 p.m. ET.”

A U.S. appeals court earlier Wednesday temporarily blocked a government commission’s import ban on popular Apple Watch models following a patent dispute with medical-technology firm Masimo Corp.
MASI,
-4.57%.

The court’s order allows Apple to temporarily resume selling the Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2. Both watches were pulled from Apple’s website last week and off store shelves this week when the ban went into effect. The appeals court is weighing a longer halt on the import and sales ban.

Masimo declined to comment.

On Tuesday, the tech giant filed an emergency request for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to halt the ban at least until U.S. Customs and Border Protection decides whether redesigned versions of its watches infringe Masimo’s patents.

The appeals court’s decision will allow the U.S. Customs department to consider Apple’s redesign of the offending Apple Watch models. A fix is expected by Jan. 12. Apple said in the motion Tuesday it could “suffer irreparable harm” if the ban is kept in place while the appeal is ongoing.

Shares of Apple were flat in trading Wednesday.

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December 27, 2023
Activision Blizzard to pay $55 million to settle California civil-rights lawsuit

Videogame maker Activision Blizzard has agreed to pay nearly $55 million to settle a California civil-rights lawsuit brought over complaints of sexual harassment, discrimination and pay disparities by women employees that helped trigger the company’s acquisition by Microsoft.

The settlement, announced by the California Civil Rights Department on Friday evening, resolves the lawsuit filed against the “Call of Duty” videogame studio by the agency in 2021 over claims that it “discriminated against women at the company, including by denying promotion opportunities and paying them less than men for doing substantially similar work,” CRD said.

The agreement, subject to court approval, will see Activision pay nearly $46 million into a settlement fund dedicated to compensating women employees and contract workers at the company, plus more than $9 million in attorneys’ fees and costs. Additionally, Activision will take steps “to help ensure fair pay and promotion practices at the company,” including retaining an independent consultant to evaluate its compensation and promotion policies.

Yet the settlement also sees CRD withdraw its initial claims alleging a culture of widespread, systemic workplace sexual harassment at Activision, according to a copy of the agreement provided to MarketWatch. The document notes that the department is filing an amended complaint that removes the sexual-harassment allegations against the company and focuses on the gender-based pay and promotion claims.

CRD made no note of its prior sexual-harassment claims against Activision in its announcement Friday. A spokesperson for the department said the statement “largely speaks for itself with respect to the historic nature of this more than $50 million settlement agreement, which will bring direct relief and compensation to women who were harmed by the company’s discriminatory practices.

Representatives for Activision declined to comment.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the news of the settlement Friday.

The California agency’s complaint was one of several high-profile investigations by both state and federal regulators in recent years into alleged workplace misconduct at Activision and failures by its leadership to respond appropriately.

While Activision repeatedly denied the allegations, they ramped up pressure on the Santa Monica, Calif.-based company and its CEO, Bobby Kotick, and eventually led to a $68.7 billion takeover bid by Microsoft
MSFT,
+1.31%
in January 2022. The acquisition closed this October after receiving approval by U.K. and E.U. antitrust regulators, though the U.S. Federal Trade Commission continues to challenge the deal in court. Kotick is expected to leave the company, which he led for more than three decades, at the end of this year.

The settlement would be the second-largest ever for the California Civil Rights Department, according to the Journal, after its $100 million agreement with another Los Angeles-area videogame developer, Riot Games, to resolve gender-discrimination allegations in 2021. The agency had initially sought a much-larger settlement with Activision, the publication reported, citing how the state had estimated the company’s liability at nearly $1 billion to some 2,500 employees with potential claims.

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December 15, 2023
Why do people keep suing celebrities like Ronaldo and Tom Brady over crypto losses?

Ever since the collapse of crypto currencies last year, the lawsuits have been flying.

But a series of class-action suits targeting celebrity endorsers of crypto exchanges like FTX and Binance have been piling up in federal court in Miami, all filed by the same group of south Florida lawyers.

The latest suit names global soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo for allegedly promoting “the mass solicitation of investments in unregistered securities” sold by Binance, the crypto exchange that was hit with a $4 billion fine last week after pleading guilty to violating the bank secrecy act.

The suit was filed in federal court in the southern district of Florida this week and centered around Ronaldo’s role in a global marketing campaign launched in 2022 for a series of Binance NFTs — or non-fungible tokens, a form of blockchain-backed art works that were, for a brief time, wildly popular.

A representative for Ronaldo didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

The filing against Ronaldo on Monday came alongside similar class action suits naming Major League Baseball, Formula 1 racing, Mercedes Benz and the advertising giants Dentsu and Wasserman, who created much of FTX’s global promotion campaign.

Messages left with representatives for MLB, Formula 1, Mercedes Benz, Dentsu and Wasserman weren’t immediately returned.

Those suits are the latest in a series of similar class action suits starting last year against celebrity endorsers of failed crypto exchanges such as Voyager and FTX, in which customers lost billions of dollars in deposits.

Over the past 18 months, a group of south Florida lawyers led by Adam Moskowitz have brought the suits on behalf of investors who lost money in last year’s crypto collapse, against paid celebrity endorsers including Shaquille O’Neal, Mark Cuban, Tom Brady, Gisele Bundchen, Shohei Ohtani, Larry David, Steph Curry and Naomi Osaka.

“All of these celebrities were paid hundreds of millions of dollars taken directly from customer deposits,” Moskowitz said in a statement. “Some of the most famous and wealthiest groups in the world may now be held responsible for the dramatic $20 billion dollar crypto collapse and biggest financial scandals in U.S. history.”

Moskowitz, who has been joined in the suits by lawyers with the firms Mark Migdal & Hayden and Boies Schiller and Flexner, headed by famed litigator David Boies, is seeking at least $5 billion in damages from those who helped promote the crypto exchanges.

The cases from last year are ongoing and each of the celebrities named have been fighting the suits in court.

Moskowitz, who specializes in class-action lawsuits, says issues revolving around crypto first got his attention more than two years ago, before the entire market crashed, when he came to believe that the special tokens each exchange was minting amounted to an unregistered security.

He first filed a lawsuit against Voyager early last year, before the exchange collapsed and the Securities and Exchange Commission began filing suits against many in the industry accusing them of dealing in unregistered securities.

“Right then what we were doing started to gain traction,” he said.

A series of favorable court rulings have allowed his cases to gain steam, he said, and has allowed to him to take the lead in such actions.

In another class action suit filed earlier this year, Moskowitz and his partners sued a group of YouTube financial influencers for their role in promoting FTX, accusing them of taking cash for uncritically singing the exchange’s praises.

Moskowitz said several of those suits have been settled but that others have continued.

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November 29, 2023
Bayer CEO Says Breakup Wouldn’t Fix All of the Company’s Ills

BERLIN—Bayer Chief Executive Bill Anderson said the company would bounce back quickly from a recent spate of bad news, and warned that a breakup of the pharmaceutical and agricultural company was no universal cure for its ailments.

A stream of negative news has rekindled calls from investors for Bayer to unlock value by spinning off its units into separate businesses. But in an interview with The Wall Street Journal this week, Anderson said the company couldn’t be distracted from the tough restructuring to fix the businesses.

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November 25, 2023

Here’s why you might not have to pay a 6% commission next time you sell a home

Going back decades, if you wanted to buy or sell a stock on the open market, you had to pay a 2% commission to buy and a 2% commission to sell. Then the advent of discount brokerage, led by Charles Schwab Corp.
SCHW,
+1.64%,
made lower commissions available until eventually, with improved technology and efficiency, the entire industry changed to enable the average investor to avoid commissions completely.

But the internet hasn’t done much to reduce the cost of selling a home in the U.S. Sellers typically pay a 6% commission to a real-estate agent to list and sell a home, with the seller’s agent splitting that commission with the buyer’s agent. But all of that may change because of a verdict this week in a class-action lawsuit in federal court against the National Association of Realtors.

Aarthi Swaminathan covers the case, what may happen next and the implications for home sellers and buyers:

Real-estate advice from the Moneyist

MarketWatch illustration

Quentin Fottrell — the Moneyist — works with three readers to answer tricky real-estate questions:

Economic outlook

On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell may have bolstered the case that the central bank is finished raising interest rates for this economic cycle. The federal-funds rate was left in its target range of 5.25% to 5.50%.

Jon Gray, the president of Blackstone Group, spoke with MarketWatch Editor in Chief Mark DeCambre and said he expected the Fed to succeed in bringing down inflation without pushing the U.S. economy into a deep recession.

Friday employment numbers: Jobs report shows 150,000 new jobs in October as U.S. labor market cools

Bond-market trend switches again

The U.S. Treasury yield curve has been inverted for nearly a year.

FactSet

Normally, longer-term bonds have higher yields than those with short maturities. But the yield curve has been inverted for nearly a year, with 3-month U.S. Treasury bills
BX:TMUBMUSD03M
having higher yields than 10-year Treasury notes
BX:TMUBMUSD10Y.

There has been elevated demand for long-term bonds, as investors have anticipated a recession and a reversal in Federal Reserve interest-rate policy. When interest rates decline, bond prices rise and vice versa.

As you can see on the chart above, the yield curve was narrowing until mid-October. Yields on 10-year Treasury notes were close to 5% on Oct. 19, but they have been falling the past several days as the three-month yield has remained close to 5.5%.

In this week’s ETF Wrap, Christine Idzelis reports on where all the money is flowing in the bond market.

In the Bond Report, Vivien Lou Chen summarizes the action as investors react to the Federal Reserve’s decision not to change its federal-funds-rate target range this week and to other economic news.

For income-seekers looking to avoid income taxes, here’s a deep dive into municipal bonds, with taxable-equivalent yields and a deeper look at those within four high-tax states.

Ford’s good news — in the bond market

Ford Motor Co.’s debt rating has been lifted by S&P to investment-grade.

Getty Images

Ford Motor Co.’s
F,
+4.14%
credit rating was upgraded to an investment-grade rating by Standard & Poor’s on Monday. This takes about $67 billion in bonds out of the high-yield, or “junk,” market, as Ciara Linnane reports.

A stock-market warning based on history

The original Magnificent Seven.

Courtesy Everett Collection

By now you have probably heard the term “Magnificent Seven” used to describe stocks of the tremendous tech-oriented companies that have led this year’s rally for the S&P 500
SPX
: Apple Inc.
AAPL,
-0.52%,
Microsoft Corp.
MSFT,
+1.29%,
Amazon.com Inc.
AMZN,
+0.38%,
Nvidia Corp.
NVDA,
+3.45%,
Alphabet Inc.
GOOGL,
+1.26%

GOOG,
+1.39%,
Meta Platforms Inc.
META,
+1.20%
and Tesla Inc.
TSLA,
+0.66%.
With Tesla’s recent decline, that company is now the ninth-largest holding in the portfolio of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust
SPY,
which tracks the benchmark index. Here are the top 10 companies held by SPY (11 stocks, including two common-share classes for Alphabet), with total returns through Thursday:

Company	Ticker	% of SPY portfolio	2023 total return	2022 total return	Total return since end of 2021
Apple Inc.	AAPL, -0.52%	7.2%	37%	-26%	1%
Microsoft Corp.	MSFT, +1.29%	7.1%	46%	-28%	5%
Amazon.com Inc.	AMZN, +0.38%	3.5%	64%	-50%	-17%
Nvidia Corp.	NVDA, +3.45%	3.0%	198%	-50%	48%
Alphabet Inc. Class A	GOOGL, +1.26%	2.1%	44%	-39%	-12%
Meta Platforms Inc. Class A	META, +1.20%	1.9%	158%	-64%	-8%
Alphabet Inc. Class C	GOOG, +1.39%	1.8%	45%	-39%	-11%
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Class B	BRK.B, +0.80%	1.8%	13%	3%	17%
Tesla Inc.	TSLA, +0.66%	1.7%	77%	-65%	-38%
UnitedHealth Group Inc.	UNH, -0.98%	1.4%	2%	7%	9%
Eli Lilly and Company	LLY, -2.15%	1.3%	60%	34%	115%
Sources: FactSet, State Street (for SPY holdings)

Five of these stocks (including the two Alphabet share classes) are still down from the end of 2021. SPY itself has returned 14% this year, following an 18% decline in 2022. It is still down 7% from the end of 2021.

Mark Hulbert makes the case that a decade from now, the Magnificent Seven are unlikely to be among the largest companies in the stock market.

A different market opportunity: India is seeing a multidecade growth surge. Here’s how you can invest in it.

The MarketWatch 50

The MarketWatch 50 series is back, with articles and video interviews starting this week, including:

PayPal soars after earnings report

PayPal CEO Alex Chriss.

MarketWatch/PayPal

After the market close on Wednesday, PayPal Holdings Inc.
PYPL,
+1.89%
announced quarterly results that came in ahead of analysts’ expectations, and the stock soared 7% on Thursday even though the company lowered its target for improving its operating margin.

In the Ratings Game column, Emily Bary reports on the positive reaction to PayPal’s new CEO, Alex Chriss.

A less enthusiastic earnings reaction: EV-products maker BorgWarner’s stock suffers biggest drop in 15 years after downbeat sales outlook

Consumers drive mixed reactions to earnings results

Apple Inc. reported mixed quarterly results.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

Here’s more of the latest corporate financial results and reactions. First the good news:

And now the news that may not be so good:

Harsh verdict for SBF

It might seem that some legal battles never end, but it took only a year from the collapse of FTX for the cryptocurrency exchange’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, to be convicted on all seven federal fraud and money-laundering charges brought against him. The charges were connected to the disappearance of $8 billion from FTX customer accounts.

Here’s more reaction and coverage of the virtual-currency industry:

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November 3, 2023

Prosecutors hammer at Sam Bankman-Fried’s credibility in FTX criminal fraud trial

Federal prosecutors on Monday sought to chip away at FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s credibility, pointing to discrepancies between his public comments and actions taken behind the scenes as the company collapsed.

In a steady drumbeat of questions, Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon tried to paint Bankman-Fried, the 31-year-old former wunderkind of the crypto world, as someone who lied to his customers about the safety of their investments, while secretly raiding their accounts to fund his own risky investments, luxury real estate purchases, costly celebrity endorsements and political contributions.

In his second day of testimony before a jury in his criminal fraud trial in Manhattan’s federal court, Bankman-Fried repeatedly said he couldn’t remember exactly what he had said in numerous media interviews in the days and weeks after FTX had declared bankruptcy and $8 billion in customer deposits had vanished.

He also sought to distance himself from decision-making at FTX’s sister investment firm, Alameda Research, whose risky bets helped bring the crypto trading platform down.

Sassoon pointed to multiple public comments by Bankman-Fried in which he claimed FTX’s risk management protocols made it safer than other crypto currency trading platforms, while the company allowed its own investment arm, Alameda Research to make risky bets without limit.

FTX ultimately collapsed largely as a result of the billions in loans it had extended to Alameda, which prosecutors allege was done using customer money.

Federal prosecutors have alleged that Alameda was effectively granted carte blanche to use FTX customer money to make risky bets. One key element was that certain risk-management systems that FTX used to to liquidate customer accounts that had entered into negative territory were disabled for Alameda, allowing it unfettered ability to make high-risk moves.

Throughout his testimony, Bankman-Fried claimed he had limited visibility as to what was happening at Alameda, which he founded and mostly owned, but which had ceased running day-to-day in 2021, when his ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison took over as CEO.

He said he only became aware of how bad a liquidity issue Alameda faced well after a financial crisis began sweeping through the crypto industry in the summer of 2022. Bankman-Fried said he had told Ellison, who had pleaded guilty and testified against him, that she should have taken hedge positions earlier to lessen the company’s risk.

But he said he continued to believe up until just days before the companies collapsed, that both Alameda and FTX were on firmer financial footing.

“I viewed Alameda as solvent and FTX as solvent and decently liquid,” he testified. “Had that analysis come up any other way, I would have been in full on crisis mode. But in my view at the time that wasn’t the case.”

Bankman-Fried did admit that he consulted frequently with Ellison about moves that Alameda made and even signed off on several billion-dollar investments.

“I think a few billion of them were my decision,” he said when asked about several large investments made by Alameda in 2021 and 2022.

Bankman-Fried is expected back in court for further cross examination on Tuesday. The judge in the case said he expected the case may go to the jury as early as Friday.

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October 30, 2023
WSJ News Exclusive | Xi Jinping Is Looking for Someone to Blame for China’s Property Bust

Updated Oct. 26, 2023 12:05 am ET

With China’s property bust threatening to sink the country’s economic recovery, Xi Jinping is looking for someone to blame.

After putting the billionaire founder of Evergrande, a heavily indebted property firm, under investigation for possible crimes, Beijing is expanding its probes to include bankers and financial institutions that facilitated developers’ risky behavior, people familiar with the matter say.

Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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October 25, 2023
Rite Aid is closing these 154 stores as part of its bankruptcy

Rite Aid plans to shutter 154 stores, many of them in Pennsylvania and California, as part of its bankruptcy plans, according to an initial list of those closures published in court documents filed on Tuesday.

That list was released Wednesday after the drugstore chain filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New Jersey over the weekend, amid billions in debt related to opioid lawsuits. The company at that time said it would “continue assessing its footprint and close additional underperforming stores” and announced the appointment of Jeffrey Stein as chief executive.

Here are the store locations slated to close:

California
4044 Eagle Rock Boulevard, Los Angeles
4046 South Centiela Avenue, Los Angeles
7859 Firestone Boulevard, Downey
4402 Atlantic Avenue, Long Beach
935 North Hollywood Way, Burbank
139 North Grand Avenue, Covina
13905 Amar Road, La Puente
920 East Valley Boulevard, Alhambra
3813 Plaza Drive, Oceanside
1670 Main Street, Ramona
6505 Mission Gorge Road, San Diego
8985 Mira Mesa Boulevard, San Diego
25906 Newport Road, Menifee
24829 Del Prado, Dana Point
30222 Crown Valley Parkway, Laguna Niguel
19701 Yorba Linda Boulevard, Yorba Linda
1406 West Edinger Avenue, Santa Ana
2738 East Thompson Boulevard, Ventura
720 North Ventura Road, Oxnard
20572 Homestead Road, Cupertino
2620 El Camino Real, Santa Clara
901 Soquel Avenue, Santa Cruz
571 Bellevue Road, Atwater
5409 Sunrise Boulevard, Citrus Heights
1309 Fulton Avenue, Sacramento
3029 Harbor Boulevard, Costa Mesa
959 Crenshaw Boulevard, Los Angeles
3000 South Archibald Avenue, Ontario
15800 Imperial Highway, La Mirada
8509 Irvine Center Drive, Irvine
499 Alvarado Street, Monterey

Connecticut
289 Greenwood Avenue, Bethel

Delaware
25 Chestnut Hill Plaza, Newark
3209 Kirkwood Highway, Wilmington

Idaho
1600 North Main Street, Meridian
5005 West Overland Road, Boise

Maryland
5 Bel Air South Parkway, Suite 1347, Bel Air
728 East Pulaski Highway, Elkton
5624 Baltimore National Pike, Baltimore
5804 Ritchie Highway, Baltimore
7501 Ritchie Highway, Glen Burnie
7967 Baltimore Annapolis Boulevard, Glen Burnie

Massachusetts
80 East Main Street, Webster

Michigan
924 West Main Street, Fremont
507 North Lafayette Street, Greenville
715 South Clinton Street, Grand Ledge
15250 24 Mile Road, Macomb
102 North Centerville Road, Sturgis
47300 Pontiac Trail, Wixom
35250 South Gratiot Avenue, Clinton Township
51037 Van Dyke Avenue, Shelby Township
3100 East Michigan Avenue, Jackson
9155 Telegraph Road, Taylor
1243 U.S. 31 South, Manistee
29447 Ford Road, Garden City
2838 East Court Street, Flint
1900 East 8 Mile Road, Detroit
36485 Garfield Road, Clinton Township
25922 Middlebelt Road, Farmington Hills
109 North Whittemore Street, St. Johns
1124 North Ballenger Highway, Flint
2701 South Cedar Street, Lansing

New Hampshire
420 Daniel Webster Highway, Merrimack

New Jersey
4057 Asbury Avenue Suite 8, Tinton Falls
431 Haledon Avenue, Haledon
35 Mill Road, Irvington
1636 Route 38 Suite 49, Lumberton
773 Hamilton Street, Somerset
1434 South Black Horse Pike, Williamstown
3 Marshall Hill Road West, Milford
210 Bridgeton Pike, Mantua
108 Swedesboro Road Suite 20, Mullica Hill
2370 Route 33, Robbinsville
1726 Route 37, East Toms River
86 B Lacey Road, Whiting

New York
2887 Harlem Road, Cheektowaga
2002 Avenue U, Brooklyn
2 Whitney Avenue, Floral Park
71-18 Kissena Boulevard, Flushing
3131 Hempstead Turnpike, Levittown
2981 Ocean Avenue, Brooklyn
3199 Long Beach Road, Oceanside
198 West Merrick Road, Valley Stream
836 Sunrise Highway, Bay Shore
2784 Sunrise Highway, Bellmore
901 Merrick Road, Copiague
577 Larkfield Road, East Northport
695 East Jericho Turnpike, Huntington Station
700-43 Patchogue-Yaphank Road, Medford
273 Pine Hollow Road, Oyster Bay
397 Sunrise Highway, West Patchogue
593 Old Town Road, Port Jeff Station
65 Route 111, Smithtown
2453 Elmwood Avenue, Kenmore
1567 Penfield Road, Rochester

Ohio
3129 Lincoln Way East, Massillon
120 South Main Street, New Carlisle
146 Woodman Drive, Dayton
2701 Market Street, Youngstown
401 West North Street, Springfield
230 South Main Street, Bellefontaine

Oregon
2440 Southeast Cesar Chavez Boulevard, Portland

Pennsylvania
2715 Parade Street, Erie
5612 North Fifth Street, Philadelphia
350 Main Street, Pennsburg
4011 Cottman Avenue, Philadelphia
1441 Old York Road, Abington
300 Market Street, Johnstown
8716 New Falls Road, Levittown
1750 Bustleton Avenue, Philadelphia
169 West Lancaster Avenue, Ardmore
1315 East Washington Lane, Philadelphia
801 Wyoming Avenue Suite 9, West Pittston
657 Heacock Road, Yardley
2801 West Dauphin Street, Philadelphia
1709 Liberty Street, Erie
674 Route 196, Suite 14, Tobyhanna
2722 West 9th Street, Chester
950 East Baltimore Pike, Yeadon
8235 Stenton Avenue, Philadelphia
7941 Oxford Avenue, Philadelphia
5440 Lansdowne Avenue, Philadelphia
700 Stevenson Boulevard, New Kensington
208 East Central Avenue, Titusville
1080 South West End Boulevard, Quakertown
136 North 63rd Street, Philadelphia
351 Brighton Avenue, Rochester
5235 Library Road, Bethel Park
5990 University Boulevard Suite 30, Moon Township
2501 Saw Mill Run Boulevard, Pittsburgh
5410 Keeport Drive, Pittsburgh
6090 Route 30, Greensburg
4830 William Penn Highway, Export
1730 Wilmington Road, New Castle
2178 West Union Boulevard, Bethlehem
1628 South Fourth Street, Allentown
2401 East Venango Street, Philadelphia
6327-43 Torresdale Avenue, Philadelphia
200 West Ridge Avenue Suite 112, Conshohocken
301 Eisenhower Drive, Hanover
7036 Wertzville Road, Mechanicsburg

Virginia
833 North Battlefield Blvd, Chesapeake
1458 Mount Pleasant Road, Chesapeake

Washington
601 South Grady Way Suite P, Renton
3202 132nd Street Southeast, Mill Creek
110 Southwest 148th Street, Burien
10103 Evergreen Way, Everett
8230 Martin Way East, Lacey
22201 Meridian Avenue East, Graham
9600 15th Avenue Southwest, Seattle
2518 196th Street Southwest, Lynnwood
3620 Factory Blvd Southeast, Bellevue
11919 Northeast 8th Street, Bellevue
7370 170th Avenue Northeast, Redmond

— Mike Murphy contributed to this report.

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October 18, 2023
Debt-ridden Rite Aid files for bankruptcy, will close more stores

Drugstore chain Rite Aid Corp. filed for bankruptcy Sunday, as it faces billions of dollars of debt related to opioid lawsuits.

In a statement Sunday night, Rite Aid
RAD,
-16.81%
said it will close some “underperforming” stores and announced Jeffrey Stein as its new chief executive and chief restructuring officer. Interim CEO Elizabeth Burr will remain on the company’s board.

The bankruptcy filing had been expected for months, and the Wall Street Journal reported in August that Rite Aid was more than $3.3 billion in debt, due largely to hundreds of lawsuits related to its distribution of opioid painkillers. The bankruptcy filing stays pending litigation against the company.

Earlier this month, the New York Stock Exchange warned Rite Aid that it was “no longer in compliance” with the exchange’s minimum pricing and valuation standards, and gave it six months for the stock to regain compliance. Rite Aid shares have plunged about 80% year to date.

Rite Aid said Sunday that lenders will provide $3.45 billion in financing for the chain to continue operating through the chapter 11 bankruptcy process.

“With the support of our lenders, we look forward to strengthening our financial foundation, advancing our transformation initiatives and accelerating the execution of our turnaround strategy,” Stein said in a statement. “In doing so, we will be even better able to deliver the healthcare products and services our customers and their families rely on — now and into the future.”

Rite Aid said it would work to minimize the effect of store closures on its customers so there is no disruption of services, and will transfer affected workers to different locations when possible.

Rite Aid has about 2,100 stores and employs around 47,000 people. It has closed more than 200 stores in the past couple of years.

Rite Aid also said it had reached a deal for pharmacy benefit-solutions company MedImpact Healthcare Systems Inc. to acquire its Elixer Solutions business. A price for the transaction was not disclosed.

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October 15, 2023
Debt-ridden Rite Aid files for bankruptcy, will close more stores

Drugstore chain Rite Aid Corp. filed for bankruptcy Sunday, as it faces billions of dollars of debt related to opioid lawsuits.

In a statement Sunday night, Rite Aid
RAD,
-16.81%
said it will close some “underperforming” stores and announced Jeffrey Stein as its new chief executive and chief restructuring officer. Interim CEO Elizabeth Burr will remain on the company’s board.

The bankruptcy filing had been expected for months, and the Wall Street Journal reported in August that Rite Aid was more than $3.3 billion in debt, due largely to hundreds of lawsuits related to its distribution of opioid painkillers. The bankruptcy filing stays pending litigation against the company.

Earlier this month, the New York Stock Exchange warned Rite Aid that it was “no longer in compliance” with the exchange’s minimum pricing and valuation standards, and gave it six months for the stock to regain compliance. Rite Aid shares have plunged about 80% year to date.

Rite Aid said Sunday that lenders will provide $3.45 billion in financing for the chain to continue operating through the chapter 11 bankruptcy process.

“With the support of our lenders, we look forward to strengthening our financial foundation, advancing our transformation initiatives and accelerating the execution of our turnaround strategy,” Stein said in a statement. “In doing so, we will be even better able to deliver the healthcare products and services our customers and their families rely on — now and into the future.”

Rite Aid said it would work to minimize the effect of store closures on its customers so there is no disruption of services, and will transfer affected workers to different locations when possible.

Rite Aid has about 2,100 stores and employs around 47,000 people. It has closed more than 200 stores in the past couple of years.

Rite Aid also said it had reached a deal for pharmacy benefit-solutions company MedImpact Healthcare Systems Inc. to acquire its Elixer Solutions business. A price for the transaction was not disclosed.

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October 15, 2023
Psst: Here’s why Google’s antitrust trial against the Department of Justice isn’t being talked about much

Google’s top executives have long established a reputation of saying as little as possible on most topics: Earnings calls. Product development plans. Management moves.

Legal matters are certainly on the list, as the company’s antitrust trial with the Justice Department concludes its third week. The public is barred from listening to the 10-week federal trial, and reporters often encounter a courtroom sealed to the public.

Secrecy around the nonjury trial belies the magnitude of the case, the biggest of its kind in tech, if not American business, since the DoJ tangled with Microsoft Corp.
MSFT,
+0.67%
in the 1990s and early 2000s. After years of investigation, the Justice Department claims Google used contracts worth billions of dollars with Apple Inc.
AAPL,
+0.30%
and other phone makers to elbow aside competing search engines that could lead to changes in Google’s business practices — even a breakup of the tech giant.

Google says it makes the best product, and vendors have a choice to work with other search-engine providers. In his opening statement, Google attorney John Schmidtlein said companies and consumers use Google’s popular search engine “because it delivers value to them, not because they have to.”

Asked by MarketWatch to comment further, a company spokesman declined.

Read more: Google spent billions to build an illegal monopoly, Justice Department says as trial gets under way

Alphabet Inc.
GOOGL,
-1.10%

GOOG,
-0.96%,
Google’s parent company, has steadfastly redacted information about the contracts at issue in the case, citing confidential company information, and Google’s lawyers — as well as those at Apple — have consistently asked to seal the courtroom. Before opening statements started on Sept. 12, nearly two-thirds of Google’s motions and responses in the case were sealed, according to the New York Times.

At the same time, criticism has rained on U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who has deferred to requests by Google and interested parties like Apple to hold testimony behind closed doors. (On Tuesday, Mehta countered he was relying on federal attorneys to resist persistent attempts by Google and other tech companies to seal the courtroom. He later pushed lawyers to ask more questions in public and wanted to unseal closed-session testimony.)

“A judge’s job isn’t to simply accept a party’s claim that public access to a trial would cause the sky to fall,” The Freedom of the Press Foundation said in a blog post Wednesday.

A cone of silence around such a historic case that could lead to changes to Google’s business practices or a breakup of the company is not surprising, given what is at stake.

“A trial should be open to the public, but there is a balancing act in affording companies some sort of privacy,” lawyer Abiel Garcia said in an interview. “Access to documents does disclose how a company thinks. There is a tension here in how Google wants its users to be transparent about their data, but doesn’t tell you what they are doing.”

Garcia, who presented in a preliminary injunction hearing before Mehta in 2015, said the judge has done an admirable job of respecting Google’s corporate secrets while gradually encouraging more public questioning and disclosures.

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September 29, 2023
Tesla sued for racial discrimination, retaliation by EEOC

Tesla Inc. was sued Thursday by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which alleges the EV maker violated federal law by “tolerating widespread and ongoing racial harassment of its Black employees” at its Fremont, Calif., plant, and by retaliating against those opposing the harassment.

Black employees at the Fremont factory, Tesla’s
TSLA,
+2.44%
first assembly plant and for years its only vehicle-manufacturing facility in the U.S., “have routinely endured racial abuse, pervasive stereotyping and hostility” as well as having racial slurs hurled at them, the lawsuit alleges.

“Slurs were used casually and openly in high-traffic areas and at worker hubs,” the EEOC said. Black employees “regularly” saw graffiti with slurs, swastikas, threats and nooses throughout the facility, including on desks, in bathroom stalls and elevators, according to the suit.

Tesla, which disbanded its media relations team during the pandemic, did not immediately return a request for comment. In August, SpaceX, another one of Tesla’s Chief Executive Elon Musk’s companies, was sued by the Justice Department over its hiring practices.

Employees who spoke up against the racial hostility suffered retaliations that included being fired or transferred, the EEOC said.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California after attempts at reaching a settlement before the litigation. It seeks compensatory and punitive damages as well as back pay for the affected workers. It also seeks changes to Tesla’s employment practices to prevent discrimination in the future, the EEOC said.

A Black Tesla employee was awarded $137 million in 2021 by a jury that agreed he was subjected to racial harassment at the Fremont factory, but in April 2022 a judge reduced the award to $15 million.

Shares of Tesla have doubled so far this year, compared with an advance of around 12% for the S&P 500 index
SPX.

The first Model S rolled out of the Fremont factory in 2012, and the plant now makes Model S, Model 3, Model X and Model Y vehicles, with capacity to make more than a million vehicles a year as well as energy products and battery cells.

Tesla opened up its second U.S. vehicle-making factory in the Austin, Texas, area in the spring of 2022.

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September 28, 2023
Retailers talk a lot about rising theft. But a retail industry report finds a key metric for it hasn’t increased that much.

Retail executives over the past year have talked a lot about “shrink” — or the losses they take due to theft, fraud or employee error — amid a flood of headlines about sometimes violent organized thefts at stores. But results from a retail-industry survey released Tuesday found the metric rose only modestly last year.

The report from the National Retail Federation, a retail industry group, found that the average shrink rate in 2022 crept higher to 1.6% from 1.4% in the prior year, when calculated as a share of sales. The figure from 2022 is in line with those seen in 2020 and 2019.

Still, the losses amounted to billions of dollars — $112.1 billion, up from $93.9 billion in 2021 — according to the report. And the report said that retailers were increasingly concerned about the violence of those crimes.

“Far beyond the financial impact of these crimes, the violence and concerns over safety continue to be the priority for all retailers, regardless of size or category,” David Johnston, the NRF’s vice president for asset protection and retail operations, said in a statement.

The NRF, working with the Loss Prevention Research Council — a research group founded by some of the nation’s biggest retailers — surveyed people in the industry who work in loss-prevention and asset protection. The report contained responses or information from 177 retail brands. The survey was distributed in May, June and July.

The report was published the same day that Target Corp.
TGT,
-2.48%
said it would close nine stores across four states next month, citing theft and dangers to employees.

“In this case, we cannot continue operating these stores because theft and organized retail crime are threatening the safety of our team and guests, and contributing to unsustainable business performance,” Target said in a statement.

The chain joins other retailers sounding the alarm about retail theft and closing stores, amid what executives have described as a spike in organized retail theft, or theft with the intent of reselling the goods. However, executives’ takes on earnings calls have differed slightly, and retailers are contending with other issues — like the fallout from inflation — that have hit financials.

Also see: Costco CFO says inventory ‘in good shape,’ thefts have not ‘dramatically’ increased as earnings top estimates

The fight over theft has played out, perhaps predictably, on partisan lines, with some blaming what they say are lax crime policies in large cities. But other analysts point to changes in the flow of foot traffic through population centers since the pandemic, and say the data is often too squishy and subjective to make any hard calls about the state of crime — and whether it’s rising or falling, particularly at retailers — in a particular area.

More than two-thirds of the retailers surveyed by the NRF “said they were seeing even more violence and aggression” from organized retail theft compared with a year ago. Twenty-eight percent reported being “forced” to close a specific store location, the report said, while 45% said they cut operating hours, and 30% said they reduced or changed an in-store product selection as a result of retail crime.

“The types of products shoplifters are targeting may not be based solely on price point,” the National Retail Federation said.

“Products can range from high-price, high-fashion items to everyday products that have a fast resale capability,” the group said. “While ORC groups have traditionally targeted specific items or types of goods, that list has expanded to new categories like outerwear, batteries, energy drinks, designer footwear and kitchen accessories.”

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September 26, 2023
Republican Texas AG Ken Paxton is acquitted of all 16 corruption charges at impeachment trial

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was acquitted Saturday of all charges at a historic impeachment trial that divided Republicans over whether to remove a powerful defender of former President Donald Trump after years of scandal and criminal charges.

The verdict reaffirmed Paxton’s durability in America’s biggest red state and is a broader victory for Texas’ hard right after an extraordinary trial that put on display fractures within the GOP nationally heading into the 2024 elections. In the end, Paxton was fully cleared by Senate Republicans, who serve alongside his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton.

Angela Paxton was not allowed to vote. But she attended all two weeks of the trial, including the reading of the verdict, when all but two of her fellow 18 Republican senators consistently voted to acquit her husband on 16 impeachment articles that accused him of misconduct, bribery and corruption. Ken Paxton, who was absent for most of the proceedings, did not attend the verdict.

It clears the way for Paxton to reclaim his role as Texas’ top lawyer, more than three months after his stunning impeachment in the Texas House forced him to temporarily step aside.

The outcome far from ends Paxton’s troubles. He still faces trial on felony securities fraud charges, remains under a separate FBI investigation and is in jeopardy of losing his ability to practice law in Texas because of his baseless attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

The jury of 30 senators spent about eight hours deliberating behind closed doors before emerging for the historic vote. A two-thirds majority is required to convict Paxton on any of the charges that accuse Paxton of bribery, corruption and unfitness for office.

The trial has plunged Texas Republicans into unfamiliar waters as they confronted whether Paxton should be removed over allegations that he abused his office to protect a political donor who was under FBI investigation.

For nearly a decade, Paxton has elevated his national profile by rushing his office into polarizing courtroom battles across the U.S., winning acclaim from Donald Trump and the GOP’s hard right.

The case centered on accusations that Paxton misused his office to help one of his donors, Austin real estate developer Nate Paul, who was indicted in June on charges of making false statements to banks. Paul has pleaded not guilty.

Eight of Paxton’s former deputies reported him to the FBI in 2020, setting off a federal investigation that will continue regardless of the verdict. Federal prosecutors investigating Paxton took testimony in August before a grand jury in San Antonio , according to two people with knowledge of the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because of secrecy rules around the proceeding.

One of the impeachment articles centered on an alleged extramarital affair Paxton had with Laura Olson, who worked for Paul. It allegeed that Paul’s hiring of Olson amounted to a bribe.

Paxton faces an array of legal troubles beyond the impeachment. Besides the federal investigation for the same allegations that gave rise to his impeachment, he also faces a bar disciplinary proceeding over his effort to overturn the 2020 election and has yet to stand trial on state securities fraud charges dating to 2015. He pleaded not guilty in the state case, but his lawyers have said removal from office might open the door to a plea agreement.

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September 16, 2023