Some rare last-minute SEC intervention forced Hertz to suspend its planned sale of up to $500 million in shares of the bankrupt car-rental company while the agency undertakes a closer review of the offering- WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch and Law360
PepsiCo’s Quaker Oats responded rapidly to the furor that followed a Monday TikTok post by singer Kirby and announced that it will rename and rebrand its Aunt Jemima syrup and pancake mix, acknowledging that the 131-year-old brand was “based on a racial stereotype” – NYTimes and WSJ and Marketplace
German-based payments company Wirecard has again delayed publication of its 2019 annual report after auditor E&Y “said it had been deceived over evidence of [$2.1 billion] in cash balances,” sending shares of the fintech firm plummeting this morning – WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch
New Upshot analysis shows how a dramatic reduction in spending by the highest-earning quarter of Americans (“collectively responsible for about half of the decline in consumption during this recession”) has meant disaster for the “service jobs that depend directly on the spending—and whims—of the well-off” – NYTimes
Unemployment claims have eased week-to-week recently, but we’ll probably see another report with over a million more seeking jobless benefits when the numbers come out today – WSJ and MarketWatch
Black-owned small businesses have borne a disproportionate brunt of the pain from the lockdown, and “they appear to be benefiting less from federal stimulus programs” – NYTimes
So while helpful in theory that the White House has confirmed that small-business owners can seek PPP-loan forgiveness “even if they don’t rehire all of the workers they laid off, . . . effectively eliminating a rule that many borrowers had feared would leave them stuck with a large debt,” it’s unlikely the change will change anything for those small businesses that had trouble accessing PPP funds in the first place – NYTimes
Fed Chair Powell warned lawmakers in his second day on the Hill that the economic gains the country’s seen in recent weeks could dissipate “if Congress were to pull back . . . too quickly” – WSJ and Bloomberg
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and wife Patty Quillin have donated $120 million to “the United Negro College Fund, Spelman College and Morehouse College, the largest-ever gift to support scholarships at historically black colleges and universities.” Hastings and Quillin cited an effort at ending “capital isolation” among the reasons for their gift – NYTimes and MarketWatch
A new Urban Institute study has found that the “opportunity zones” created by the 2017 tax law and touted as “a boon to black Americans and hard-hit communities” is actually “spurring relatively little job creation while disproportionately helping high-profit real estate projects and not small businesses” – NYTimes
Federal authorities are seeking more than $1 billion from Altaba, the Yahoo successor “whose assets primarily consisted of shares in the Chinese technology giant Alibaba” – Law360
The New Yorker has joined others in thinking about how the pandemic will reshape the way the look and feel of how we live and work – NewYorker
We’re off tomorrow to celebrate Juneteenth. We hope it’s a day of reflection and action for you as well, and we’ll see you back here next week.
Stay safe.
