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Tag: personnel management

  • UBS will cut 3,000 jobs in Switzerland as it absorbs Credit Suisse | CNN Business

    UBS will cut 3,000 jobs in Switzerland as it absorbs Credit Suisse | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    UBS expects to shed around 3,000 jobs in Switzerland as it tries to save $10 billion from a sweeping overhaul of the global banking giant created by its emergency rescue of Credit Suisse earlier this year.

    The job cuts amount to around 8% of staff employed by the combined bank’s Swiss operations and may spark new controversy in the country, where the deal has already proved unpopular with the public and some politicians.

    “The Swiss Bank Employees Association demands that the 37,000 employees of the two institutions in Switzerland are treated fairly and equally in the integration process,” the Swiss banking union said in a statement.

    On a call with analysts Thursday, UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti said: “Every lost job is painful for us. Unfortunately, in this situation, cuts were unavoidable.”

    Ermotti said the job cuts would be spread “over a couple of years” and that the bank would provide affected employees with financial support, outplacement services and retraining opportunities.

    The Swiss bank, which has a combined global workforce of nearly 122,000, gave no further details on the numbers of likely layoffs outside of Switzerland in its second quarter earnings statement — the first report since it acquired its rival.

    UBS confirmed plans to retain Credit Suisse’s banking operations in Switzerland, and fully absorb those into the newly-merged group, rather than opting for a spin-off or IPO, even though that may have resulted in fewer redundancies.

    “Our analysis clearly shows that a full integration is the best outcome for UBS, our stakeholders and the Swiss economy,” Ermotti said in a statement. He added that this was “one of the biggest and most complex bank mergers in history.”

    UBS said that it expected to generate more than $10 billion in savings from the integration by the end of 2026, $1 billion more and a year earlier than planned when the takeover was announced in March. The bank’s shares gained as much as 7% on the news.

    UBS (UBS) agreed on March 19 to buy Credit Suisse for the bargain price of 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.4 billion) in a rescue orchestrated by Swiss authorities to avert a banking sector meltdown.

    UBS posted net profit of $29 billion for the second quarter, reflecting a one-off boost from the acquisition of Credit Suisse at a fraction of its value. But it also benefited from continued strong inflows into its global wealth management business, recording $16 billion of net new money — the highest second-quarter figure in over a decade.

    Controversy in Switzerland

    Credit Suisse went bust after confidence in the ailing lender collapsed and customers yanked their money from the bank. The firm had been plagued by scandals and compliance failures in recent years that wiped out its profit and caused it to lose clients.

    But the death blow came after it acknowledged “material weakness” in its bookkeeping and as the demise of US regional lenders Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank spread fear about weaker institutions.

    The combination of the banks has caused controversy in Switzerland because it leaves the country exposed to a single massive financial institution with a market share of about 30% and assets roughly double the size of its annual economic output.

    Taxpayers were originally on the hook for potential losses arising from the deal, but UBS said earlier this month it would no longer need a Swiss government guarantee of 9 billion francs ($10.3 billion) for future potential losses arising from Credit Suisse assets.

    It also said it no longer required a 100 billion franc ($114.2 billion) government-backed loan and that Credit Suisse had repaid an earlier loan from Switzerland’s central bank of 50 billion francs ($57.1 billion).

    “Taxpayers will no longer bear any risks arising from these guarantees,” the Swiss government said at the time.

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  • Google is laying off hundreds in its recruitment division | CNN Business

    Google is laying off hundreds in its recruitment division | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Google confirmed it will lay off hundreds of staff members who helped recruit and hire employees, as Silicon Valley continues its cost-cutting efforts.

    The latest cuts come after Google parent Alphabet in January eliminated 12,000 jobs, or about 6% of its workforce, across the company as it grappled with economic uncertainty that hit the company’s bottom line last year, especially its core advertising business.

    During Google’s July earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai said the company was continuing to slow its “expense growth and pace of hiring.”

    “We continue to invest in top engineering and technical talent while also meaningfully slowing the pace of our overall hiring,” Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini said in a statement Wednesday, adding that the workload for recruiters has declined as hiring slows. “To ensure we operate efficiently, we’ve made the hard decision to reduce the size of our recruiting team.”

    The layoffs were earlier reported by Semafor and CNBC.

    The cuts will affect a few hundred members of Google’s recruiting organization globally; most of the team will remain and continue hiring for critical roles such as top engineering talent, according to Google. The company did not specify the exact number of layoffs in the department.

    Google also said the recruiting cuts are not part of any wider layoffs, and that affected employees will be supported with severance offers and other benefits.

    Some Google recruiters for the company’s cloud, user experience, software engineering and other teams posted on LinkedIn, noting they had been affected by the layoffs.

    “My heart is heavy for everyone that was impacted alongside me, and I know better days are ahead for all of us as much as today doesn’t feel like it,” one affected Google recruiter wrote.

    Alphabet grew its workforce by more than 50,000 employees starting in 2021 as booming demand for its services during the pandemic boosted profits. But last year, the company’s core digital ad business slowed as fears of an economic downturn or a recession caused advertisers to pull back their spending.

    This year, the company has emphasized its efforts to cut costs as it works to stabilize its business. Google in July said its profits had grown nearly 15% year-over-year in the quarter ended in June, as the company’s Search and YouTube ads businesses continued to recover.

    As of the end of 2022, Alphabet had 190,234 employees, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. By the end of June, its headcount had fallen to 181,798, according to its most recent filing.

    A wide range of other tech companies also made major layoffs this year as they attempt to cut costs amid economic challenges, including Meta, Microsoft and, more recently, T-Mobile.

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  • Epic Games to lay off 16% of its workforce | CNN Business

    Epic Games to lay off 16% of its workforce | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, said on Thursday that it will lay off 16% of its staff, around 830 employees, as it attempts to reverse what CEO Tim Sweeney called “unrealistic” spending.

    In a letter to employees Thursday, Sweeney said the video game company had been “spending way more money than we earn, investing in the next evolution of Epic.”

    “I had long been optimistic that we could power through this transition without layoffs, but in retrospect I see that this was unrealistic,” Sweeney said in the letter, which the company shared publicly. He added that Epic plans to divest from the online independent music platform Bandcamp, which it bought last year and which will now be acquired by the music marketplace firm Songtradr. Epic will also spin off most of its marketing division SuperAwesome into a standalone company.

    Epic’s layoffs are just the latest job cuts to hit the tech industry, which was forced to adjust after the stunning growth many companies saw during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic began to slow. Meta, Microsoft, T-Mobile, Lyft and others have all reduced their workforces earlier this year. More recently, Google parent Alphabet made its second round of layoffs of the year, eliminating several hundred recruiting jobs in September after having cut 12,000 employees in January.

    About two-thirds of Epic’s Thursday layoffs will impact employees outside the company’s “core development” teams, Sweeney said. Some laid off workers announced on LinkedIn that they had been affected, including employees working in user experience for Fortnite, production, employee engagement and recruitment.

    Laid off employees will receive a severance offer that includes six months of base pay, accelerated stock vesting and other benefits, according to Sweeney.

    “We’re cutting costs without breaking development or our core lines of businesses so we can continue to focus on our ambitious plans,” Sweeney said. “Some of our products and initiatives will land on schedule, and some may not ship when planned because they are under-resourced for the time being. We’re ok with the schedule tradeoff if it means holding on to our ability to achieve our goals.”

    The Epic layoffs also come amid the latest escalation in a protracted legal battle between the video game company and tech giant Apple. Following a yearslong back-and-forth over an antitrust lawsuit brought by Epic over Apple’s App Store payment practices, both companies have asked the US Supreme Court to review a lower court ruling in the case.

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  • Nokia says it will cut up to 14,000 jobs | CNN Business

    Nokia says it will cut up to 14,000 jobs | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    Nokia will slash up to 14,000 jobs in a major cost-cutting drive to address a “weaker” market environment, it said in a statement on Thursday.

    The Finnish telecom giant, a major provider of 5G equipment that employs 86,000 people, announced the move as part of a wider restructuring that will lower its headcount to between 72,000 and 77,000.

    The move will help the company reduce staffing expenses by 10% to 15%, and save at least €400 million ($421.4 million) in 2024 alone, the company projected.

    Overall, it said the reductions are expected to trim Nokia’s costs by up to €1.2 billion (nearly $1.3 billion) cumulatively by the end of 2026. Nokia (NOK) said it would “act quickly” to make changes.

    “The most difficult business decisions to make are the ones that impact our people,” CEO Pekka Lundmark said in the statement. “We have immensely talented employees at Nokia and we will support everyone that is affected by this process.”

    The announcement came on the same day that Nokia reported worse-than-expected results. It said sales in the third quarter had fallen 15% compared to the same period a year ago, as “macroeconomic uncertainty and higher interest rates continue to pressure operator spending.”

    Mobile network sales fell 19% in the third quarter compared to the previous year, the company added, due to a slowdown in the pace of 5G deployment in markets such as India.

    This week, Swedish rival Ericsson also warned that sales in the second half of 2023 would likely come in lower than usual, echoing Nokia’s remarks of a “challenging environment and macroeconomic uncertainty.”

    But Nokia has maintained its outlook for 2023, forecasting between €23.2 billion and €24.6 billion ($24.4 billion and $25.9 billion) in sales for the full year.

    “We continue to believe in the mid to long term attractiveness of our markets,” Lundmark said.

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  • LinkedIn is cutting more than 650 jobs | CNN Business

    LinkedIn is cutting more than 650 jobs | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    LinkedIn is laying off 668 people across its engineering, product, talent and finance teams as part of a broader restructuring, the social media platform announced Monday.

    In a blog post, the social media site for professionals said it is making changes to its organizational structure and streamlining its decision making.

    “Talent changes are a difficult, but necessary and regular part of managing our business,” the company said. Microsoft bought LinkedIn in 2016.

    The company is dedicating many of its resources toward artificial intelligence. Recently, LinkedIn announced an AI-assisted candidate discovery for recruiters using the site. And in Microsoft’s most recent earnings report, LinkedIn reported its AI-powered collaborative articles are the fastest-growing traffic driver on the site.

    LinkedIn already cut 716 positions in May and shut down its jobs app in mainland China. That decision was made amid shifts in customer behavior and slower revenue growth, CEO Ryan Roslansky said in a letter to employees.

    In the wake of mass layoffs across the tech sector at the end of last year, LinkedIn enjoyed an uptick in users and “record engagement” among its 875 million members at the time, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told analysts in last October’s earnings call.

    The company continues to grow financially. LinkedIn also announced in its most recent earnings report that it surpassed $15 billion in revenue for the first time during this fiscal year, and that its membership growth “accelerated” for the eighth quarter in a row.

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  • Employers are preparing for a recession, but that doesn’t always mean layoffs | CNN Business

    Employers are preparing for a recession, but that doesn’t always mean layoffs | CNN Business

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    Minneapolis
    CNN
     — 

    Areas of the US economy have started to crack under the weight of persistently high inflation and a string of 10 consecutive rate hikes from the Federal Reserve.

    But despite all that, the labor market has kept humming right along. And that’s largely expected to be the case, again, in Friday’s monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    Economists are forecasting a net gain of 190,000 jobs for May, according to Refinitiv. While that would mark a significant retreat from April’s surprisingly strong 253,000 jobs added, it would land slightly above the average monthly gains seen during the strong labor market in the years leading up to the pandemic.

    Economists are also expecting the unemployment rate to tick back up to 3.5%. The US jobless rate has hovered at decade-lows for more than a year, with the current 3.4% rate matching a 53-year low hit in January.

    Private sector employment increased by 278,000 jobs in May, according to ADP’s monthly National Employment Report, frequently seen as a proxy for the government’s official number. That’s significantly higher than estimates of 170,000 jobs added but slightly below the previous month’s revised total of 291,000.

    Additional labor market data released Thursday showed that initial weekly jobless claims for the week ended May 27 totaled 232,000, almost no change from the previous week’s revised total of 230,000 applications.

    “In the last few months, the job market has continued to defy gravity, adding a steady clip of jobs and holding unemployment at historically low levels despite a backdrop of rising interest rates, banking turmoil, tech layoffs and debt ceiling negotiations,” Daniel Zhao, lead economist at employment review and search site Glassdoor, wrote in a note this week. “After a healthy April jobs report, May is likely to repeat with an equally strong performance.”

    Consumer spending and the labor market — two ares of strength in the economy — have, in a way, continued to feed on themselves.

    Last week, a Commerce Department report showed that not only did the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge heat up in April but so did consumer spending. Economists largely attributed consumers’ resilience to the healthy labor market as well as ample dry powder stockpiled from home refinances and from the temporary pause in student loan payments.

    In turn, that’s kept businesses busy.

    “With demand for goods and services holding up, employers who have been cautious and have been very nervous about over-hiring are — when push comes to shove — having to keep hiring just to keep pace with business activity,” Julia Pollak, chief economist for online employment marketplace ZipRecruiter, told CNN. “They’re very worried about a recession later this year, but they need to keep hiring today to provide the pizzas that people are demanding and to prevent flights being canceled.”

    She added: “Companies have also learned the hard way how costly staffing shortages can be.”

    But labor shortages are becoming far less acute: This past Memorial Day weekend, 1% of flights were canceled, Pollak said, noting that cancellations were fivefold higher a year before.

    “And while that’s a good news story — the end of shortages and disruptions during the pandemic is good for most consumers and good for businesses — it does come at some cost, which is a measurable decline in worker and job seeker leverage,” she said.

    Labor turnover data released Wednesday showed that the US employment market remained tight in April.

    Job openings bounced up to 10.1 million positions, bucking economists’ predictions for a fourth-consecutive monthly decline, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey report. The jump brought the ratio of vacancies to unemployed to almost 1.8, which is well above a range of 1.0 to 1.2 that is considered consistent with a balanced labor market, according to Michael Feroli, JPMorgan chief US economist.

    Although the April JOLTS data showed that fewer people were voluntarily quitting their jobs, the amount of layoffs and discharges dropped during the month, suggesting that employers are continuing to hoard workers, noted economist Matthew Martin of Oxford Economics.

    While monthly job gains haven’t tailed off as much as anticipated to this point, there is a notable slowdown that’s occurred from the blockbuster job gains of the past three years.

    But whether the softening is a sign of a return to pre-pandemic form or perhaps of a downswing into a downturn, remains to be seen.

    Some of the traditional recession indicators have been flashing red. Layoff announcements have quadrupled so far this year to 417,500, which — excluding 2020 — is the highest January to May total since 2009, according to a report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas released Thursday. Falling consumer confidence, monthly declines in the Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index, and drops in temporary help employment are also signaling that a downturn is just ahead. However, that long-predicted recession isn’t here just yet.

    “We were in such an unusual place during the pandemic with some of those indicators at completely extraordinary heights that they have experienced extraordinary declines,” Pollak said. “But those declines were just a return to normal, not a contraction, and it’s not a recession.”

    The government’s May jobs report is scheduled for Friday at 8:30 a.m. ET.

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  • 3M announces mass layoffs as manufacturing slows | CNN Business

    3M announces mass layoffs as manufacturing slows | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    3M announced significant layoffs Tuesday as part of yet another major restructuring plan as the manufacturing sector prepares for a possible recession and slumping demand for goods.

    The manufacturing behemoth behind some consumer brands, including Post-It Notes and Scotch Tape, said it would lay off 6,000 staff around the world. Those cuts are in addition to the 2,500 manufacturing roles 3M eliminated in January. 3M also announced several mass layoffs in 2019 and 2020, but total headcount has been up and down over the past several years.

    The company said it anticipates it will save up to $900 million a year before taxes after the layoffs are complete. 3M argued that the cuts are “intended to make 3M stronger, leaner and more focused” by simplifying its supply chain and reducing layers of management.

    “These actions are expected to meaningfully reduce costs and drive long-term improvement in margins and cash flow while enabling a more efficient and effective structure for driving long-term growth,” 3M said in a statement.

    3M also announced several management changes as it reported earnings and sales that fell from the previous year. Sales slumped 9% to $8 billion, while net income attributable to the company tumbled 25% to under $1 billion in the quarter.

    The company said it would prioritize products that customers are increasingly demanding, including climate tech, sustainable packaging and automated industrial products, among other emerging technologies. 3M also reaffirmed its previous outlook for 2023, anticipating sales would fall by as much as 6% this year.

    3M said the supply chain problems that doomed the sector for years in the wake of the pandemic have largely eased. That means backlogged orders have been shipped, and the company (and its peers) no longer need as much staff to handle the workload.

    Meanwhile, demand for manufactured goods has fallen in recent months. Consumers have been spending less on stuff and more on experiences lately, and businesses are gearing up for an anticipated recession.

    3M rival Dow also announced thousands of layoffs at the beginning of the year.

    Shares of 3M

    (MMM)     rose slightly in premarket trading.

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  • David’s Bridal laying off over 9,000 workers | CNN Business

    David’s Bridal laying off over 9,000 workers | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    David’s Bridal, one of largest sellers of wedding gowns in the United States, is laying off thousands of workers nationwide, according to a notice filed to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor.

    The notice said the retailer is eliminating 9,236 positions across the United States. In Pennsylvania, the layoffs are set to begin on April 14 and end on August 11 and will affect 15 stores in nine counties in the state. The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notifications did not specify when the layoffs would begin or how many stores would be affected in other states.

    The Conshohocken, Pennsylvania-based retailer employs more than 11,000 workers, according to the Wall Street Journal.

    David’s Bridal told CNN Business that the company is “evaluating our strategic options and a sale process is underway.” It also said all of its stores currently remain open.

    “The scale of these layoffs suggest that David’s Bridal is in crisis mode,” said Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData Retail. “It indicates there is massive restructuring going on behind these scenes with a view to conserve cash as the company prepares for either bankruptcy or a sale.”

    Saunders said he expects the company to close stores as part of its plan.

    “The business in its current form isn’t working and the hope will be that a smaller entity will be more financially viable,” he said.

    The layoffs come as problems grow for David’s Bridal, which is reportedly filing for bankruptcy for the second time in five years, according to The New York Times, which cited people familiar with the matter. The Times said the retailer could be exploring a sale as part its restructuring plan.

    David’s Bridal filed for bankruptcy in 2018 after being laden with growing debt and declining sales of wedding dresses. It emerged from bankruptcy in 2019 as it continued to try to fix the business.

    But a global pandemic in 2020 badly walloped weddings as social gatherings came to an abrupt standstill. The following year, David’s Bridal, which operates more than 300 stores, said it had anticipated weddings to return with a vengeance because of pent-up demand.

    But the layoffs at David’s Bridal come amid ongoing job losses across retail, tech and other industries. Walmart last week said it is laying off more than 2,000 workers at five US warehouses and Best Buy

    (BBY)     is reportedly cutting hundreds of store-level jobs, according to a Wall Street Journal report Friday.

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  • Oil prices surge after OPEC+ producers announce surprise cuts | CNN Business

    Oil prices surge after OPEC+ producers announce surprise cuts | CNN Business

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    Hong Kong/Atlanta
    CNN
     — 

    Oil prices spiked during Asian trade Monday after OPEC+ producers said they would cut production in a surprise move.

    Brent crude, the global benchmark, jumped 4.8% to $83.73 a barrel, while WTI, the US benchmark, rose 4.9% to $79.36.

    Rising oil prices could mean inflation remains higher for longer, adding pressure to a hot-button issue for consumers around the world.

    On Sunday, Saudi Arabia announced that it would start “a voluntary reduction” in its production of crude oil, alongside other members or allies of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

    The cuts will start in May and last through the end of the year, an official with the Saudi Ministry of Energy was quoted as saying by Saudi state-run news agency SPA.

    The reductions are on top of those announced by OPEC+ in October, according to SPA.

    That month, oil producers had agreed to slash output by 2 million barrels a day, the largest cut since the start of the pandemic and equivalent to about 2% of global oil demand.

    Saudi Arabia now says it will cut oil production by another half a million barrels a day.

    Meanwhile, Iraq will slash production by 200,000 barrels per day, and the United Arab Emirates will decrease output by 144,000 barrels per day.

    Kuwait, Algeria and Oman will also lower production by 128,000, 48,000 and 40,000 barrels per day, respectively.

    In a Sunday note, Goldman Sachs analysts said the move was unexpected but “consistent with the new OPEC+ doctrine to act pre-emptively because they can without significant losses in market share.”

    The collective output cut by the nine members of OPEC+ totals 1.66 million barrels per day, said the analysts, who hiked their price forecast for Brent this year to $95 per barrel.

    Saudi Arabia’s energy ministry described its latest reduction as a precautionary measure aimed at supporting the stability of the oil markets, according to SPA.

    The White House pushed back on that notion — as well as the latest cuts by OPEC+.

    “We don’t think cuts are advisable at this moment given market uncertainty — and we’ve made that clear,” a spokesperson for the National Security Council said. “We’re focused on prices for American consumers, not barrels.”

    In October, OPEC+’s decision to cut production had already rankled the White House.

    US President Joe Biden pledged at the time that Saudi Arabia would suffer “consequences.” But so far, his administration appears to have back off on its vows to punish the Middle East kingdom.

    Russia, a member of OPEC+, also said Sunday that it would extend a voluntary reduction of 500,000 barrels per day until the end of 2023. The move was announced by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, as cited by state-run news agency TASS.

    That decision was less surprising. Goldman analysts said they had forecast the cut would last into the second half of the year.

    — CNN’s Hanna Ziady and Arlette Saenz contributed to this report.

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  • Starbucks fires Buffalo union worker who ‘ignited a movement’ to organize | CNN Business

    Starbucks fires Buffalo union worker who ‘ignited a movement’ to organize | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Starbucks has fired a Buffalo, New York, worker who “ignited a movement” from one of the first stores in the coffee chain to unionize, Starbucks Workers United said Friday.

    The firing came the same week that former CEO Howard Schultz testified before Congress, where he was grilled by lawmakers for the company’s labor practices and alleged union-busting.

    Alexis Rizzo had been shift supervisor at the Genesee Street store in Buffalo for 7 years, the union said. That store was one of the first of two locations to officially win their union campaigns in January 2022 after the federal labor board certified its results. Rizzo was the worker who first contacted the union.

    “This is retaliation at its worst,” a statement from Starbucks Workers United said. The union noted two other employees were fired and a union leader was written up.

    CNN is still seeking comment from Starbucks and Rizzo.

    “Instead of negotiating a first union contract as required by law, Starbucks has chosen to double down on its illegal union-busting by firing Alexis Rizzo,” Sen. Bernie Sanders tweeted Friday night, saying Rizzo “must be reinstated.”

    The pro-union senator placed pressure on Schultz’s alleged union-busting tactics when he testified before the Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions on Wednesday.

    “Over the past 18 months, Starbucks has waged the most aggressive and illegal union-busting campaign in the modern history of our country,” said Sanders.

    Schultz noted during the hearing that the company’s baristas earn an average of $17.50 an hour, which is more than the minimum wage in multiple states, “including, respectfully Chairman Sanders’ [state],” referring to Vermont.

    The three-time CEO asserted he prefers the company to have a direct relationship with its employees instead of going through a union, denying the company violated labor laws or that he was a union buster.

    Nearly 300 locations have voted to join Starbucks Workers United. National Labor Relations Board judges found Starbucks has committed 130 labor violations and the agency has issued more than 70 official complaints against it. Starbucks has filed its own series of complaints against the union, and in his testimony before Congress, Schultz said the company considers these claims “allegations,” not findings of fact.

    Starbucks and the union have yet to sign a contract.

    “What is outrageous to me is not only Starbucks’ anti-union activities and their willingness to break the law, it is their calculated and intentional efforts to stall, stall and stall,” Sanders said during the hearing.

    In a statement, the union said, “Starbucks can fire our leaders, but they cannot stop our movement or stop the public from seeing the truth.”

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  • Amazon to lay off 9,000 more workers | CNN Business

    Amazon to lay off 9,000 more workers | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Amazon is cutting 9,000 more jobs, CEO Andy Jassy announced Monday in a memo to staff.

    The latest cuts come after the company announced earlier this year that it was eliminating some 18,000 positions as part of a major cost-cutting bid at the e-commerce giant.

    Jassy said the fresh round of job cuts will take place in the coming weeks, and will mostly impact people working in the following divisions: Amazon Web Services, People Experience and Technology (PXT), advertising and Twitch.

    “This was a difficult decision, but one that we think is best for the company long term,” Jassy wrote in the memo.

    “Some may ask why we didn’t announce these role reductions with the ones we announced a couple months ago,” Jassy added. “The short answer is that not all of the teams were done with their analyses in the late fall; and rather than rush through these assessments without the appropriate diligence, we chose to share these decisions as we’ve made them so people had the information as soon as possible.”

    The latest layoffs at Amazon come amid a spate of job cuts in the technology industry in recent months, as the sector confronts a whiplash in pandemic-induced demand for digital goods and services and broader macroeconomic uncertainty.

    Amazon, like a number of other Big Tech companies, also rapidly grew its headcount during the early days of the pandemic. Jassy wrote on Monday that the hiring “made sense given what was happening in our businesses and the economy as a whole.” “However, given the uncertain economy in which we reside, and the uncertainty that exists in the near future, we have chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount,” he added.

    Just last week, Facebook-parent Meta said it was laying off an additional 10,000 workers, on top of the 11,000 job cuts announced late last year.

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  • Facebook-parent Meta plans to lay off another 10,000 employees | CNN Business

    Facebook-parent Meta plans to lay off another 10,000 employees | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Facebook-parent Meta plans to lay off another 10,000 workers, marking the second round of significant job cuts announced by the tech giant in four months.

    The latest layoffs, announced on Tuesday, come after Meta said in November that it was eliminating approximately 13% of its workforce, or 11,000 jobs, in the single largest round of cuts in the company’s history.

    In a Facebook post Tuesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the job cuts will take place “over the next couple of months.”

    “We expect to announce restructurings and layoffs in our tech groups in late April, and then our business groups in late May,” he wrote. In a “small number of cases, it may take through the end of the year to complete these changes.”

    “Overall, we expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired,” Zuckerberg said.

    As of September 2022, Meta reported a headcount of 87,314, per a securities filings. With 11,000 job cuts announced in November and the 10,000 announced Tuesday, that would bring Meta’s headcount down to around 66,000.

    Meta is far from the only Big Tech company to undergo layoffs amid higher inflation, recession fears and a whiplash in pandemic-induced demand. In the first months of this year, Amazon, Google-parent Alphabet and Microsoft have all confirmed major job cuts impacting tens of thousands of tech workers.

    Shares of Meta rose more than 4% in early trading Tuesday following the announcement.

    When the first round of job cuts was announced in November, Zuckerberg blamed himself at the time for the company’s over-hiring earlier in the pandemic. Meta  nearly doubled its headcount between March 2020 and September of last year, as the Covid-19 crisis led to a surge in demand for digital services.

    But the situation changed radically for the social media giant and other tech companies last year as pandemic restrictions eased and people returned to their offline lives. Meta’s core business was also hit by privacy changes implemented by Apple and advertisers tightening budgets amid recession fears.

    In its most-recent quarterly earnings report, Meta posted a sharp drop in profits and reported its third straight quarterly decline in revenue. But during the earnings call, Zuckerberg promised investors that 2023 would be the “year of efficiency” for the company, following years of heavy investment in growth and a more immersive version of the internet called the metaverse.

    On that call, Zuckerberg also suggested that more job cuts could be coming.

    “We closed last year with some difficult layoffs and restructuring some teams. When we did this, I said clearly that this was the beginning of our focus on efficiency and not the end,” Zuckerberg said during the earnings call in early February. He added that the company would be focused on “flattening” its org structure and “removing some layers of middle management to make decisions faster.”

    “As part of this, we’re going to be more proactive about cutting projects that aren’t performing or may no longer be as crucial, but my main focus is on increasing the efficiency of how we execute our top priorities,” Zuckerberg said.

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  • Alphabet’s self-driving car unit has cut 8% of its staff this year | CNN Business

    Alphabet’s self-driving car unit has cut 8% of its staff this year | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Waymo, the self-driving car division of Google

    (GOOGL)    ’s parent company Alphabet, said on Wednesday that it has cut approximately 8% of its staff across two rounds of layoffs this year.

    Some 209 jobs were eliminated in total, after cuts in late January and another more recent round, the company confirmed on Wednesday.

    “We took a thoughtful approach and feel confident that we’re providing for each of these former teammates through this transition,” the company said in a statement to CNN Wednesday. “We’re confident that we have the right teams in place to achieve success for Waymo.”

    The Waymo job cuts come amid a spate of layoffs in the tech sector, as the industry adjusts to waning demand for digital services years into the pandemic and confronts broader uncertainty in the global economy. Rising interest rates have also dried up the easy access to funding tech companies used to fuel ambitious projects and bets on the future.

    Alphabet said in January that it was cutting 12,000 jobs, or 6% of its workforce, after having grown by more than 50,000 employees over the prior two years. The cuts to Waymo highlight how even Alphabet’s most ambitious and high-profile long-term bets are not immune to its renewed focus on reining in costs.

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  • New York Times: Twitter lays off another 10% of staff | CNN Business

    New York Times: Twitter lays off another 10% of staff | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Twitter’s massive job cuts continued this weekend, as the company cut about 10% of its remaining staff, according to a report in the New York Times.

    The latest axing of about 200 jobs takes the company’s headcount down to under 2,000 staffers, according to the Times. That’s down from the 7,500 who worked for the social media platform before Elon Musk bought the company last fall for $44 billion.

    The paper reported that the cuts hit product managers, data scientists and engineers who worked on machine learning and site reliability, which, it said, helps keep Twitter’s various features online. The “monetization infrastructure team,” which maintains the services through which Twitter makes money, was reduced to fewer than eight people from 30, according to the report.

    Twitter did not respond to a request for comment from CNN on the Times report.

    Twitter has been losing advertisers since Musk took over. Ad revenue had been responsible for more than 90% of company revenue. Musk’s plans to raise revenue directly from Twitter users by selling verification of accounts has thus far not worked as planned.

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  • Here’s what keeps Jerome Powell up at night and interest rates high | CNN Business

    Here’s what keeps Jerome Powell up at night and interest rates high | CNN Business

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    A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell threw markets into a tizzy on Tuesday as he spoke about the economy alongside his former boss, Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein, at the Economic Club of Washington.

    Stocks struggled for direction as investors tried to get a read on Powell’s economic outlook, attitude towards inflation and on future interest rate hikes. Wall Street cheered as the Fed chair said the disinflationary process has begun, then soured when he said the road to reaching 2% inflation will be “bumpy” and “long” with more rate hikes ahead.

    Markets soared to new highs, before quickly falling to session lows and then recovering to close the day in the green.

    “Powell doesn’t want to play games with financial markets,” said EY Parthenon chief economist Gregory Daco after the conversation. But at the same time, he said Powell wanted to communicate that the Fed’s “base case was not for inflation to come down as quickly and painlessly as some market participants appear to expect.”

    Here’s why Powell thinks bringing down prices will be more difficult than investors anticipate.

    Structural changes in the labor market: The US economy added an astonishing 517,000 jobs in January, blowing economists’ expectations out of the water. The unemployment rate fell to 3.4% from 3.5%, hitting a level not seen since May 1969.

    The current labor market imbalance is a reflection of the pandemic’s lasting effect on the US economy and on labor supply, said Powell on Tuesday in answer to a question about the report. “The labor market is extraordinarily strong,” he said. Demand exceeds supply by 5 million people, and the labor force participation rate has declined. “It feels almost more structural than cyclical.”

    “If we continue to get, for example, strong labor market reports or higher inflation reports, it may well be the case that we have to do more and raise rates more,” he said.

    Core services inflation: Powell noted that he’s seeing disinflation in the goods sector and expects to soon see declining inflation in housing. But prices remain stubborn for services. Service-sector inflation, which is more sensitive to a strong labor market, is up 7.5% from the year prior through the end of 2022, and has not abated, he said.

    “That sector is not showing any disinflation yet,” Powell said. “There has been an expectation that [higher prices] will go away quickly and painlessly and I don’t think that’s at all guaranteed.”

    Geopolitical uncertainties: Powell also cited concerns that the reopening of China’s economy after the sudden end of Covid-Zero restrictions, plus uncertainty about Russia’s war on Ukraine could also affect the inflation path in ways that remain unclear.

    ▸ The labor market is strong, but tech layoffs keep coming. There were around  50,000 tech jobs cut in January, and the trend has continued into February.

    Video conferencing service Zoom is one of the latest to announce layoffs. The company said Tuesday that it’s cutting 1,300 jobs or 15% of its workforce. 

    Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said in a blog post on Tuesday that Zoom ramped up employment  quickly due to increased demand during the pandemic. The company grew three times in size within 24 months, he said and now it must  adapt to changing demand for its services.

    “The uncertainty of the global economy, and its effect on our customers, means we need to take a hard — yet important — look inward to reset ourselves so we can weather the economic environment, deliver for our customers and achieve Zoom’s long-term vision,” he wrote.

    Yuan added that he plans to lower his own salary by 98% and forgo his 2023 bonus. Shares of Zoom closed nearly 10% higher on Tuesday. 

    The announcement comes just one day after Dell said it would lay off more than 6,500 employees.

    Amazon

    (AMZN)    , Microsoft

    (MSFT)    , Google and other tech giants have also recently announced plans to cut thousands of workers as the companies adapt to shifting pandemic demand and fears of a looming recession.

    ▸ Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis told CNN that he is starting to think that the US economy could avoid a recession and achieve a so-called soft landing.

    It’s hard to have a recession when the job market is still so robust, he told CNN’s Poppy Harlow on Tuesday on CNN This Morning.

    Still, “we have more work to do,” Kashkari told Harlow, adding that the labor market is “too hot” and that is a key reason why it is “harder to bring inflation back down.”

    Although many investors are starting to think the Fed may pause after just two more similarly small hikes, to a level of around 5%, Kashkari said he believes the Fed may have to raise rates further. Kashkari has a vote this year on the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed’s interest-rate setting group.

    ▸ It’s a good time to be in the oil business. BP’s annual profit more than doubled last year to an all-time high of nearly $28 billion.

    The British energy company said in a statement that underlying replacement cost profit rose to $27.7 billion in 2022 from $12.8 billion the previous year. The metric is a key indicator of oil companies’ profitability.

    BP

    (BP)     also unveiled a further $2.75 billion in share buybacks and hiked its dividend for the fourth quarter by around 10% to 6.61 cents per share.

    BP’s shares rose 6% in Tuesday trading following the news. Over the past 12 months, its shares have soared 24%.

    The earnings are the latest in a string of record-setting results by the world’s biggest energy companies, which have enjoyed bumper profits off the back of skyrocketing oil and gas prices.

    Last week, another energy major Shell reported a record profit of almost $40 billion for 2022, more than double what it raked in the previous year after oil and gas prices jumped following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    On Wednesday it was TotalEnergie

    (TTFNF)    s turn. The French company posted annual profit of $36.2 billion for 2022, double the previous year’s earnings.

    Disney has found itself in the middle of a culture war battle that could end up transferring Disney World’s governance to a board appointed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. And that may be the least of Disney’s problems, writes my colleague Chris Isidore.

    The company faces a media industry in turmoil, plunging cable subscriptions, a still-recovering box office, massive streaming losses, activist shareholders, possible reorganization and layoffs and growing labor disputes with employees. That’s a lot for CEO Bob Iger to handle.

    Iger, who retired as CEO in 2020 only to be brought back in November, has been mostly quiet about his plans for the company since his return. That ends at 4:30 p.m. ET Wednesday when he is set to begin an earnings call with Wall Street investors.

    Click here to read more about what to look for on what is certain to be a closely-followed call.

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  • EV maker Rivian to cut 6% of jobs amid price war | CNN Business

    EV maker Rivian to cut 6% of jobs amid price war | CNN Business

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    Reuters
     — 

    Rivian Automotive is laying off 6% of its workforce in an effort to cut costs as the EV maker, already grappling with falling cash reserves and a weak economy, braces for an industry-wide price war.

    The company is focusing resources on ramping up vehicle production and reaching profitability, Chief Executive R.J. Scaringe said in an email to employees on Wednesday announcing the job cuts. Reuters obtained a copy of the email.

    Layoffs at Rivian come amid falling EV prices kicked off by cuts made recently by Elon Musk-led Tesla

    (TSLA)     and Ford Motor Co.

    The price cuts by Tesla and Ford are expected to hurt EV upstarts such as Rivian, Lucid Group and British startup Arrival, which Monday said it would lay off half its staff.

    Despite a blockbuster initial public offering in November 2021, Rivian’s shares have fallen nearly 90% from their peak that month to Tuesday’s close. Rivian’s stock was trading down 4% on Nasdaq on Wednesday, paring some losses after news of the job cuts.

    “We must focus our resources on ramp and our path to profitability,” Scaringe said in the email, in which he apologized to employees for the necessity of the cuts.

    A Rivian spokesman confirmed the email was sent, but declined further comment.

    “They’re bleeding cash and would like to grow at a much faster rate, but they continue to struggle with their EV production ramp and have been unable to meaningfully drive down unit costs,” CFRA Research analyst Garrett Nelson said. “We think that is what’s behind this decision.”

    Rivian is focusing on ramping up production of its R1 trucks and EDV delivery vans for top shareholder Amazon.com and launching its R2 platform, he said. “The changes we are announcing today reflect this focused roadmap.”

    Irvine, California-based Rivian, which has about 14,000 employees, will let go of about 840 staff in a move that will not affect manufacturing operations at its plant in Normal, Illinois.

    Rivian, which has been losing money on every vehicle it builds, narrowly missed its full-year production target of 25,000 vehicles last year as it dealt with supply-chain disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. It had previously halved that target.

    To further conserve its cash, Rivian late last year shelved plans to build delivery vans in Europe with Mercedes. Rivian had earlier pushed back by a year to 2026 the planned launch of a smaller R2 vehicle family at the $5 billion plant it is building in Georgia.

    Last July, Rivian, which is scheduled to report fourth-quarter results on Feb. 28, laid off staff and suspended some programs as part of a broader restructuring.

    The company has a market valuation of $17.8 billion. Its cash and cash equivalents stood at $13.27 billion as of Sept. 30, 2022, down from over $18 billion a year earlier.

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  • Apple is the only US tech giant to have avoided significant layoffs. Will it last? | CNN Business

    Apple is the only US tech giant to have avoided significant layoffs. Will it last? | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    In less than three months, four of the big five US tech companies have cut tens of thousands of employees combined, shattering myths about the industry’s seemingly unstoppable growth in the process.

    But there has been one notable exception: Apple.

    To date, Apple

    (AAPL)     has not announced any substantial cuts, thanks in part to slower headcount growth than some of its peers during the pandemic and continued demand for its core products. Some analysts think more modest cost cuts could be coming, however.

    The iPhone maker is set to report earnings results for the final three months of 2022 on Thursday after the bell. It is expected to post a rare year-over-year decline in revenue.

    While these expectations show the strain Apple’s business is under, Wedbush Securities’ Dan Ives said in a note this week that pent-up demand for upgrading iPhones remains strong. “Apple will likely cut some costs around the edges, but we do not expect mass layoffs from Cupertino this week,” Ives wrote.

    Tom Forte, a senior research analyst at DA Davison, agreed there will be staff reductions, but likely not as drastic as those at other large tech companies. “Apple will cut headcount,” he said in a recent interview on Bloomberg TV, but suggested the cuts would come through attrition or reductions at the retail level.

    “While they haven’t done so yet, like everyone else, they will adjust their headcount for the current level of demand,” he said.

    Fueled by a surge in demand for digital products earlier in the pandemic, Big Tech went on a massive hiring spree.

    Amazon

    (AMZN)     and Meta each doubled their headcount between the third quarter in 2019 and the third quarter 2022, according to data shared in the companies’ securities filings. Alphabet, meanwhile, grew its headcount 64% during that time, and Microsoft grew its staff by more than 50% over approximately the same period.

    Apple, by comparison, grew its headcount by a more modest 20%. As of September 2022, Apple said it had approximately 164,000 full-time employees.

    Many tech CEOs, with varying degrees of remorse, have blamed over-hiring in the early days of the pandemic for the mass layoffs now. As pandemic restrictions eased last year, the demand for digital services shifted back toward pre-pandemic levels. Inflation pinched consumer and business spending, and rising interest rates evaporated the easy money tech companies had tapped into. And one-by-one, amid the whiplash, household names in Silicon Valley began announcing widespread layoffs to adjust to the new environment.

    While Apple has not announced layoffs, its business has been strained in other ways. Like other Big Tech companies, it has faced threats of antitrust action in the United States and EU. Earlier this month, Apple also said CEO Tim Cook had agreed to a massive pay cut this year, following a shareholder vote on his compensation package after its stock fell about 27% in 2022.

    As consumer spending tightened, global smartphone shipments plunged 18% in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to market research firm Canalys. Apple’s business also faced supply chain hurdles linked to China’s Covid lockdowns and unrest that hit a key production site in Zhengzhou, China late last year.

    Still, Apple’s business is weathering the downturn better than some of its fellow tech giants. In its most-recent earnings report, the company reported sales grew 8% year-over-year and that the company hit a September quarter revenue record for iPhone.

    Thursday’s earnings results will show whether Apple can keep defying gravity.

    “Apple continues to innovate with high-quality, industry-leading products supported by a powerful digital platform,” analysts at Monness, Crespi and Hardt wrote in an investor note Tuesday. “However, regulatory headwinds persist and we believe the darkest days of this downturn are ahead of us.”

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  • Tech CEO apologizes for quoting Martin Luther King Jr. in layoff announcement | CNN Business

    Tech CEO apologizes for quoting Martin Luther King Jr. in layoff announcement | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    A tech CEO is apologizing after quoting Martin Luther King Jr. in a layoffs announcement.

    On January 24, PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada sent a letter to employees announcing the digital operations management company would eliminate about 7% of its workforce.

    Tejada quoted King at the end of that letter.

    “I am reminded in moments like this, of something Martin Luther King said, that ‘the ultimate measure of a [leader] is not where [they] stand in the moments of comfort and convenience, but where [they] stand in times of challenge and controversy,’” she wrote. “PagerDuty is a leader that stands behind its customers, its values, and our vision — for an equitable world where we transform critical work so all teams can delight their customers and build trust.”

    On Friday, Tejada apologized for quoting King.

    “The quote I included from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was inappropriate and insensitive,” she said in the memo. “I should have been more upfront about the layoffs in the email, more thoughtful about my tone, and more concise. I am sorry.”

    When asked for additional comment, a representative for PagerDuty pointed to the blog post updated with Tejada’s apology.

    The tech industry has seen a spate of layoffs in recent weeks. Amazon announced in early January that it would lay off more than 18,000 workers. And Salesforce said it plans to cut about 10% of its staff. Microsoft, meanwhile, is laying off 10,000 employees.

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  • A 6th Memphis officer is off the force, and 3 fire department workers are fired as new details emerge from the deadly police beating of Tyre Nichols | CNN

    A 6th Memphis officer is off the force, and 3 fire department workers are fired as new details emerge from the deadly police beating of Tyre Nichols | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: This article contains graphic videos and descriptions of violence.



    CNN
     — 

    [Breaking news update, published at 5:55 p.m. ET]

    Three Memphis Fire Department personnel who responded to the Tyre Nichols beating have been fired, according to the department.

    [Previous story, published at 5:04 p.m. ET]

    Fallout from the deadly police beating of Tyre Nichols now includes a sixth Memphis officer removed from duties, demands for more criminal charges against officers and calls for nationwide police reform.

    Officer Preston Hemphill “was relieved of duty with the other officers” involved in the January 7 encounter with Nichols, Memphis police Maj. Karen Rudolph said Monday.

    Hemphill has actually been on administrative leave since the beginning of the investigation, Memphis police spokesperson Kimberly Elder told CNN. Elder declined to say whether Hemphill is being paid or whether any other officers were put on leave.

    Body cam footage reveals Hemphill fired a Taser at Nichols and saying, “One of them prongs hit the bastard.”

    Later, Hemphill says to another officer: “I hope they stomp his ass.”

    Five other Memphis officers have been fired and face charges of second-degree murder in connection with the beating death of Nichols.

    Hemphill has not been charged. “He was never present at the second scene” that escalated to the beating, and Hemphill has been cooperating with the investigation, his attorney Lee Gerald said.

    Attorneys for Nichols’ family wonder why authorities were quick to fire five Black police officers and charge them with murder – while staying relatively quiet about Hemphill role in the encounter.

    “The news today from Memphis officials that Officer Preston Hemphill was reportedly relieved of duty weeks ago, but not yet terminated or charged, is extremely disappointing. Why is his identity and the role he played in Tyre’s death just now coming to light?” attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci said in a statement Monday.

    “It certainly begs the question why the White officer involved in this brutal attack was shielded and protected from the public eye.”

    But officials knew releasing video footage of Nichols’ beating without filing charges against officers could be “incendiary,” Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said Sunday. “The best solution was to expedite the investigation and to expedite the consideration of charges so that the charges could come first and then the release of the video,” he said.

    Video of the gruesome beating “outraged” the Memphis police chief. The footage showed “acts that defy humanity,” Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis said.

    The attack has fueled broader public scrutiny of how US police use force, especially against people of color. And weeks after Nichols’ death, many questions remain. Among them:

    • Whether more officers will face charges or other: Memphis City Council member Frank Colvett said he wanted to know why more officers at the scene of Nichols’ beating scene had not been disciplined or suspended.

    It’s also not clear whether Hemphill or others will face criminal charges. “We are looking at all of the officers and first responders at the scene,” Shelby County District Attorney’s Office spokesperson Erica Williams said Monday. “They could face charges, or they could not, but we are looking at everyone.”

    It was “unprecedented” for indictment charges against the officers to come within weeks, said Mulroy, the Shelby County district attorney.

    • How Memphis’ police chief will fare: While some have praised Chief Davis’ swift action in the case, she also created the controversial SCORPION unit that the charged officers were linked to. “There is a reckoning coming for the police department and for the leadership,” Colvett said. “She’s going to have to answer not just to the council but to the citizens – and really the world.”

    • What happens to fire and sheriff’s personnel: Two Memphis Fire Department employees who were part of Nichols’ initial care were relieved of duty, pending the outcome of an internal investigation.

    And two deputies with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office have been put on leave pending an investigation.

    • If Nichols’ death spurs national-level police reform: The Congressional Black Caucus has asked for a meeting with President Joe Biden this week to push for negotiations on police reform.

    Video of the fatal encounter is difficult to watch. It starts with a traffic stop and later shows officers repeatedly beating Nichols with batons, punching him and kicking him – even as his hands are restrained behind his back at one point.

    Nichols is heard calling for his mother as he was kicked and pepper-sprayed.

    He was left slumped to the ground in handcuffs. Another 23 minutes passed before a stretcher arrived at the scene. Nichols was hospitalized and died three days later.

    “All of these officers failed their oath,” said Crump, one of the attorneys representing the Nichols family, “They failed their oath to protect and serve.”

    At the residential street corner where Nichols was beaten, mourners created a makeshift memorial. Across the country, protesters marched in cities including New York, Atlanta, Boston and Los Angeles.

    Nichols’ family remembered him as a good son and father who enjoyed skateboarding, photography and sunsets. They recalled his smile and hugs and mourned the moments they’ll never have again.

    Family members promised to “keep saying his name until justice is served.”

    Protesters gather Saturday in New York to denounce the police beating of Tyre Nichols in Memphis.

    The five fired officers charged in connection with Nichols’ beating – Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin and Desmond Mills Jr. – are expected to be arraigned February 17.

    From top left: Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills, Demetrius Haley. From bottom left: Justin Smith and Tadarrius Bean.

    Mills Jr. didn’t cross lines “that others crossed” during the confrontation with Nichols and instead was a “victim” of the system he worked within, his attorney, Blake Ballin, told CNN.

    Martin’s attorney, William Massey, said “no one out there that night intended for Tyre Nichols to die.”

    Attorneys for the other former officers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    The Memphis Police Association declined to comment on the terminations beyond saying the city of Memphis and Nichols’ family “deserve to know the complete account of the events leading up to his death and what may have contributed to it,” the union said in a statement.

    The Shelby County district attorney’s office said each of the five fired officers face seven counts, including: second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated kidnapping in possession of a deadly weapon, official misconduct and official oppression.

    But a second-degree murder charge – which requires intent to kill – might be harder to prove than a first-degree felony murder charge, said Alexis Hoag-Fordjour, assistant professor of law and co-director of the Center for Criminal Justice at Brooklyn Law School.

    “For first-degree felony murder, it means that a murder happened in conjunction with an underlying felony,” said Hoag-Fordjour, noting she practiced law in Tennessee.

    “Here, every single charge that the Memphis district attorney charged these five individuals with were felonies. And the underlying felony that would support a first-degree murder charge – felony murder – is kidnapping.”

    The kidnapping counts against officers may seem unusual because “we obviously deputize law enforcement officials to make seizures, to make arrests,” Hoag-Fordjour told “CNN This Morning” on Monday.

    “But at this point … what would have been legitimate behavior crossed the line into illegitimacy.”

    While first-degree felony murder might be easier to prove, Hoag-Fordjour said, second-degree murder convictions are still possible.

    Under Tennessee law, a person can be convicted of second-degree murder if they could be reasonably certain their actions would result in somebody’s death, Hoag-Fordjour said.

    And some of the blows dealt to Nichols – including kicks to the head and strikes with a baton while he was subdued on the ground – could be deemed deadly, she said.

    The five fired officers charged in Nichols’ beating were members of the now-scrapped SCORPION (Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods) unit, Memphis police spokesperson Maj. Karen Rudolph said Saturday.

    Hemphill, the officer placed on administrative leave, was also a member of the SCORPION unit, a source familiar with his assignment confirmed to CNN.

    The unit, launched in 2021, put officers into areas where police were tracking upticks in violent crime.

    “That reprehensible conduct we saw in that video, we think this was part of the culture of the SCORPION unit,” Crump said.

    “We demanded that they disbanded immediately before we see anything like this happen again,” he said. “It was the culture that was just as guilty for killing Tyre Nichols as those officers.”

    Memphis police will permanently deactivate the unit. “While the heinous actions of a few casts a cloud of dishonor on the title SCORPION, it is imperative that we, the Memphis Police Department take proactive steps in the healing process for all impacted,” the department said.

    Colvett supported the dismantling of the SCORPION unit.

    “I think the smart move and the mayor is correct in shutting it down,” the council member said. “These kinds of actions are not representative of the Memphis Police Department.”

    The case should give the city a chance to “dig deeper” into community and police relations, City Council member Michalyn Easter-Thomas said.

    “We saw a very peaceful and direct sense of protest in the city of Memphis, and I think it’s because maybe we do have faith and hope that the system is going to get it right this time,” Easter-Thomas said.

    Crump called on Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which passed the Democratic-controlled House in 2021 but t.

    “The brutal beating of Tyre Nichols was murder and is a grim reminder that we still have a long way to go in solving systemic police violence in America,” Congressional Black Caucus chair Rep. Steven Horsford said Sunday in a statement.

    The Tennessee State Conference NAACP president applauded Davis for “doing the right thing” by not waiting six months to a year to fire the officers who beat Tyre Nichols.

    But she had had harsher words for Congress: “By failing to craft and pass bills to stop police brutality, you’re writing another Black man’s obituary,” said Gloria Sweet-Love. “The blood of Black America is on your hands. So, stand up and do something.”

    On the state level, two Democratic lawmakers said they intend to file police reform legislation ahead of the general assembly’s Tuesday filing deadline.

    The bills would seek to address mental health care for law enforcement officers, hiring, training, discipline practices and other topics, said Tennessee state Rep. G.A. Hardaway, who represents a part of Memphis and Shelby County.

    While Democrats hold the minority, with 24 representatives compared to 99 GOP representatives, this legislation is not partisan and should pass on both sides of the legislature, Rep. Joe Towns Jr. said.

    “You would be hard-pressed to look at this footage (of Tyre Nichols) and see what happened to that young man, OK, and not want to do something,” he said. “If a dog in this county was beaten like that, what the hell would happen?”

    Correction: An earlier version of this story had the wrong first name for Tyre Nichols.

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  • How Big Tech’s pandemic bubble burst | CNN Business

    How Big Tech’s pandemic bubble burst | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    In January 2021, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella spoke in lofty terms about how the first year of the pandemic had sparked a staggering shift toward online services, benefiting his company in the process. “What we have witnessed over the past year is the dawn of a second wave of digital transformation sweeping every company and every industry,” he said.

    Two years later, the situation appears much more stark. This week, Microsoft said it planned to lay off 10,000 employees as businesses rethink their pandemic-era digital spending and confront broader economic uncertainty. Microsoft’s customers, Nadella said, are now trying “to do more with less.”

    Microsoft isn’t the only company experiencing such a dramatic reversal. Days later, Google-parent company Alphabet followed suit, saying it plans to cut around 12,000 jobs, amounting to more than 6% of its staff.

    Over the past three months, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook-parent Meta have announced plans to cut more than 50,000 employees from their collective ranks, a stunning reversal from the early days of the pandemic when the tech giants were growing rapidly to meet surging demand from countless households living, shopping and working online. At the time, many tech leaders seemed to expect that growth to continue unabated.

    By September of 2022, Amazon

    (AMZN)     had more than doubled its corporate staff compared to the same month in 2019, hiring more than half a million additional workers and vastly expanding its warehouse footprint. Meta nearly doubled its headcount between March 2020 and September of last year. Microsoft

    (MSFT)     and Google

    (GOOGL GOOGLE)     also hired thousands of additional workers, as did other tech firms like Salesforce

    (CRM)    , Snap

    (SNAP)     and Twitter, all of which have announced layoffs in recent weeks, too.

    But many of those same leaders appear to have misjudged just how much growth spurred by the pandemic would continue once people returned to their offline lives.

    In recent months, higher interest rates, inflation and recession fears causing a pullback in advertising and consumer spending have all weighed on tech companies’ profits and share prices. Wall Street analysts now project single-digit revenue growth during the all-important December quarter for Google, Microsoft and Amazon, and declines for Meta and Apple, when they report earnings in the coming weeks, according to Refinitiv estimates.

    The recent cuts in most cases amount to a relatively small percentage of each company’s overall headcount, essentially erasing the last year of gains for some but leaving them with tens or in some cases hundreds of thousands of remaining workers. But it nonetheless upends the lives of many workers now left to search for new jobs after their employers exit a period of seemingly limitless growth.

    “They went from being on top of the world to having to make some really tough decisions,” said Scott Kessler, global sector lead for technology, media and telecommunications at investment firm Third Bridge. “To see this dramatic reversal of fortunes… it’s not just the magnitude of these moves but the speed that they’ve played out. You’ve seen companies make the wrong strategic decisions at the wrong times.”

    Apple

    (AAPL)     remains an outlier as the one major tech company that has yet to announce layoffs, although the iPhone maker has reportedly instituted a hiring freeze of all areas except research and development. Apple

    (AAPL)     grew its staff by 20% from 2019 through last year, markedly less than some of its peers.

    “They’ve taken a more seemingly thoughtful approach to hiring and overall managing the company,” Kessler said.

    Tech CEOs, from Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg to Salesforce’s Marc Benioff, have blamed themselves for over-hiring early on in the pandemic and misreading how a surge in demand for their products would cool once Covid-19 restrictions eased. Pichai on Friday also took the blame for Alphabet’s cuts, and said he plans to return the company’s focus to its core business and “highest priorities.”

    “The fact that these changes will impact the lives of Googlers weighs heavily on me, and I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here,” Pichai said in an email to employees that was posted to the company’s website Friday.

    Notably, however, none of the Big Tech company CEOs now overseeing layoffs appear to have been hit with any change to their compensation or title.

    The tech layoff announcements are likely to continue into the upcoming earnings season, Kessler said, amid ongoing economic warning signs. And even companies that might not yet be feeling the pain may follow their peers’ lead in trimming their workforces.

    “I think there is an element of [some companies saying], ‘We might not see this right now but all these other big companies, these companies that we compete with, that we know, that we respect, are taking these kinds of actions, so maybe we should be thinking and acting accordingly,” Kessler said.

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