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Confidence among America's chief executives has fallen to its lowest levels since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Conference Board said Wednesday. Its latest CEO survey, conducted between April 25th and May 9th, took the mood of 133 leaders of mostly public companies; it found that 68% expect the Federal Reserve's interest rate increases to trigger a recession. Sixty-one percent reported that economic conditions have worsened over the past six months, compared with 35% who said that during the first quarter. Just 14% reported improving economic conditions. Sixty percent expect conditions to worsen, up from 23% in the first quarter. The Conference Board's report followed comments from Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf on Tuesday, who said there is no doubt that a downturn is looming. "It’s going to be hard to avoid some kind of recession," he commented at the Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything Festival. Nevertheless, he added, consumers and businesses are still financially healthy by many measures. “The fact that everyone is so strong going into this should hopefully provide a cushion such that whatever recession there is, if there is one, is short and not all that deep." 

 

CNN

Fox Business

Wall Street Journal

Former Wells Fargo wealth management executive Joe Bruno has accused the U.S. bank of scheduling fake interviews with black and female candidates for roles that were already filled in order to boost its diversity statistics. Mr Bruno claims he was fired after he blew the whistle to his bosses about the alleged fake interviews. He is one of seven current and former Wells Fargo employees who claim their bosses in the bank's wealth management unit instructed them to interview diverse candidates for positions that had already been filled. “To the extent that individual employees are engaging in the behavior as described by The New York Times, we do not tolerate it,” the bank’s spokesperson, Raschelle Burton, said.

 

New York Post

New York Times

Employees prefer working for bosses who are active on social media by a ratio of four to one, according to a survey by Brunswick Group, an advisory firm. Business leaders who are visible online are perceived as more transparent and accessible - crucial for retention and recruitment - the firm found. According to Brunswick’s survey of 3,600 employees of companies with staff of more than 1,000 and 2,800 readers of financial publications, 82% of employees will research a CEO’s online presence when considering joining the company and nearly 80% of employees and over 90% of financial news readers expected leaders to communicate on social media amid a crisis.

 

Yahoo! Finance

A federal appeals court has ruled that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) can’t bring enforcement actions seeking financial penalties through the regulator’s in-house courts. The decision, from a split panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, is a further blow in a legal backlash over federal agency tribunals that critics say violate the separation-of-powers doctrine. The judges said in their decision that a nearly decade-old SEC enforcement action against a small hedge fund manager was invalid because it violated his right to a jury trial. They also wrote that Congress was wrong to have delegated power to the SEC to decide whether to prosecute people in the agency’s in-house or federal district courts.

 

Wall Street Journal

A group of Democratic lawmakers led by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon is calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate ID.me, the identification company best known for its work with the IRS. In a letter addressed to FTC Chair Lina Khan, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Alex Padilla of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey joined Mr. Wyden in suggesting the firm misled the American public about the capabilities of its facial recognition technology. ID.me chief executive Blake Hall said in a January LinkedIn post that the company uses a powerful kind of facial recognition tech that searches for individuals within mass databases of photos, an assertion that a company press release issued a few days prior directly contradicted. In addition to criticizing Mr. Hall for misleading consumers about how the company used their biometric data, the senators said that ID.me’s deceptions may have led it to win federal and state contracts it otherwise would not have obtained, a fact which the senators say could “constitute deceptive and unfair business practices under the Section 5 of the FTC Act.” ID.me declined to comment on the specific concerns mentioned in the letter, and pointed to its track record of preventing unemployment fraud.

 

Cyberscoop

Engadget

A proposed class action lawsuit has been filed in Brooklyn federal court against McDonald's and Wendy's, accusing them of defrauding customers with ads that make burgers appear larger than they actually are. Plaintiff Justin Chimienti is arguing that the firms use undercooked beef patties in ads, making the patties appear 15% to 20% larger than what customers get. The complaint said meat shrinks 25% when cooked, and quoted a food stylist who said she has worked for McDonald's and Wendy's and prefers using undercooked patties because fully-cooked burgers look "less appetizing." The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for alleged breaches of contract since May 2016 and violations of consumer protection laws nationwide.

 

Fox News

Reuters

US News and World Report

The U.S. Treasury Department has announced new Hezbollah-related sanctions that target Ahmad Jalal Reda Abdallah, the Lebanese businessman who is the Iran-backed group's financial facilitator, and his companies. Abdallah is a Hezbollah official and an active member of its global financial network, according to the Treasury. Hezbollah is classified by the U.S and other Western countries as a "terrorist organization."

 

Reuters

Sexual misconduct allegations at New York asset manager GoldenTree have ignited a multimillion-dollar legal dispute that offers a revealing insight into the inner workings of the business, the FT reports.

 

Financial Times

Twitter bosses have told staff that the $44bn deal to sell the micro-blogging platform to Elon Musk is moving forward as planned, and the company has no plans to renegotiate the agreed-upon price of $54.20 per share with Mr. Musk. Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s top lawyer and head of policy, also told employees at an all-hands meeting that there is “no such thing as a deal being on hold,” according to people who attended the meeting. Mr. Musk has claimed that he is pausing the deal while he learns more about the number of bots and spam accounts on the social media service.

 

Bloomberg

A Meta executive has told staff that they are banned from discussing abortion on Workplace, an internal version of Facebook, citing “an increased risk” that the company is seen as a “hostile work environment.” The policy, which Meta introduced in 2019 but hasn’t until now been reported, prohibits workers from discussing “opinions or debates about abortion being right or wrong, availability or rights of abortion, and political, religious, and humanitarian views on the topic,” according to a section of the company’s internal 'Respectful Communication Policy' reviewed by The Verge. Meta’s VP of HR, Janelle Gale, said during an all-hands meeting with staff that abortion was “the most divisive and reported topic” by employees on Workplace. She said that “even if people are respectful, and they’re attempting to be respectful about their view on abortion, it can still leave people feeling like they’re being targeted based on their gender or religion . . . It’s the one unique topic that kind of trips that line on a protected class pretty much in every instance.” Some Meta employees have urged management to ditch the policy following a leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade. They contend that the prohibition is at odds with employees being allowed to talk “respectfully” about issues such as Black Lives Matter, immigration, and trans rights.

 

The Verge

Electric car maker Tesla wants to keep workers at its Shanghai factory in a so-called ‘closed loop’ system until mid-June, according to people familiar with the matter. The plan to retain a system whereby staff are ferried to and from work and tested for Covid-19 regularly comes even as Chinese authorities move to ease wider lockdown restrictions in the city. Thousands of Tesla staff have been sleeping on the floor of the company's plant south of Shanghai working 12-hour shifts, six days a week, to boost production after a weeks-long pause because of lockdown.

 

Bloomberg

Younger employees are discussing their pay with coworkers in the hopes of getting raises. Nearly 42% of Gen Z workers and 40% of millennials have shared details of their compensation with a colleague or other professional contact, according to a March study of 2,449 American adults conducted for Bankrate by YouGov. The comparable figure for Gen Xers is 31% and for Baby Boomers it is 19%. “Inflation right now is really increasing the urgency for younger workers to bring up the conversations,” said Bankrate’s Sarah Foster. “Thanks to the Great Resignation, for the first time in a lot of these younger workers’ lives, they have the leverage to seek out the pay that they want.”

 

Bloomberg

Family Dollar is closing an Arkansas distribution facility where more than 1,000 rodents were found earlier this year, forcing the recall of items from hundreds of stores, the company said Wednesday. The Food and Drug Administration announced in February that it had inspected the distribution facility following a consumer complaint. Inside the building, inspectors said they found live rodents, dead rodents in “various states of decay,” rodent feces, dead birds and bird droppings. After fumigating the facility, more than 1,100 dead rodents were recovered, officials said. Family Dollar issued a temporary recall and closed 404 stores in six states — Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee — so numerous products that had been at the facility could be removed from shelves. Family Dollar said in February it was not aware of any illnesses related to the recall.

 

New York Times

US News and World Report

BBC Worklife reports on how a complete overhaul of office culture has effectively ended the ‘forced fun’ of the pre-pandemic era, including mandatory monthly birthday celebrations, afterhours drinks and outings to obstacle courses.  Participation out of obligation creates a “corporate cult,” according to Paul Lopushinsky, founder of Vancouver, British Columbia-based consultancy Playficient, “where it’s almost indoctrination. You end up with fake smiles. ‘Oh yeah, of course, it’s great here, I just love these activities.’ It’s a culture of harmony with a lot of disharmony just below the surface.” Nevertheless, a new kind of work fun is increasingly important. Events that people actually want to attend are a helpful way to facilitate team bonding, and to give those who’d prefer to remain mostly remote a good reason to re-join their colleagues. Smart companies are working to identify the types of ‘fun’ workers actually like: the things they’ll show up for because they want to, not because their arm is twisted. 

 

BBC News