Dispatch #1 from the Elizabeth Holmes Theranos criminal fraud trial, which opened yesterday with jury selection and saw the excusing of 9 of the initial batch of about 50 potential jurors for lack of vaccination - WSJ and NYTimes and Bloomberg
Uncertainty surrounding the rise of the Delta variant has prompted Google to push back its return-to-office date to January 2022, the latest large employer to alter its post-pandemic plans - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg
Wool sneaker and clothing company Allbirds “offered a long-awaited peek at its earnings” this week as part of its IPO filing that was made public on Tuesday. The company operated at an annual loss for 2020, though it had banner digital sales (nearly 90% of the $219 million in revenue it took in last year) - NYTimes and WSJ
On the perverse nature of the markets that sees terrible news in the real world (largely Covid-related) translate into banner days on Wall Street - NYTimes
Wells Fargo is facing more troubles rising out of its sham account and related scandals that have already cost the bank “more than $5 billion in fines and legal settlements.” Now, the OCC and CFPB are threatening new sanctions if the bank doesn’t kick its restitution payments and controls overhaul into high gear - Bloomberg
The Surface Transportation Board—“a five-member panel that must bless the merger of freight railroads”—threw a wrench in Canadian Nation’s $30 billion bid to acquire Kansas City Southern, finding that the “Canadian railroad won’t be permitted to complete a deal using a temporary voting trust that was a crucial part of the offer” - WSJ and NYTimes
Fascinating stuff from the Times here, which explores the clean-up work—largely in the form of content moderation—that global consulting firm Accenture is doing for Facebook. The companies “rarely talk[ ] about . . . or even acknowledge[ ]” their relationship, itself a remarkable fact given that Accenture is doing some $500 million of work for Zuck & Co. each year - NYTimes
OPEC+ countries are meeting by video today to weigh “how much oil to pump into the market as the pandemic continues to inject uncertainty into the global economy.” General consensus is that the group will stay the course on their hard-fought agreement from July to “increase production by 400,000 barrels a day in each of the coming months” - NYTimes
European tech giant Prosus has reached a nearly $5 billion deal to buy BillDesk, the Indian payments platform, in a play to increase the company’s footprint in the Indian tech scene - WSJ and Bloomberg
Private Equity’s got a new hot target, and it comes with an accent. A surfeit of global investment capital (some $1.3 trillion, by last count) has PE giants “eager to pluck bargains on British shores, where company valuations have been depressed by years of Brexit uncertainty and then disrupted by the pandemic.” The real question, as far as we’re concerned, is whether these heady days of acquisitions will result in some of the same retail bankruptcies that lagged PE moves here in the states - NYTimes
Thanks to Daveed and Lin Manuel, the Marquis de Lafayette’s had something of a solid run of late here in the States. Not so in his native France, where—at least as argued here—his reputation as a doer rather than a thinker may have cost him some love - NewYorker
Stay safe, and get vaxxed,
MDR
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