Raphael Stevens

Activist investor Jana Partners has taken a stake in Macy’s and sent a letter to the department store chain’s board Wednesday, urging it to separate its e-commerce business, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC.
Jana has said it expects a standalone digital business would be worth a multiple of Macy’s current market value, which is about $7 billion.
Such a separation would mimic a similar one from the high-end department store operator Saks Fifth Avenue.

Macy’s store in Herald Square in New York.
Scott Mlyn | CNBC

Activist investor Jana Partners has taken a stake in Macy’s and sent a letter to the department store chain’s board on Wednesday urging it to separate its e-commerce business, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC.
The person said Macy’s online business has already drawn interest from firms that would invest in it, in conjunction with a spinoff.

Macy’s shares closed Thursday up nearly 3%, having risen more than 105% year to date.
A representative from Macy’s declined to comment. Jana didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
In a presentation earlier this month, Jana said Macy’s online business could be worth about $14 billion, which is higher than $7 billion market value the department store currently has. Jana suggested the split at that time without saying anything about its stake in the department store operator.
Macy’s had told investors in August that it expected its e-commerce sales this year to be between $8.35 billion and $8.45 billion, after nearly doubling in the past four years.
Such a separation would mimic a similar one from the high-end department store operator Saks Fifth Avenue, which earlier this year spilt off its digital business into a separate company. The deal valued Saks.com at $2 billion, or about double its annual sales.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Jana’s stake in Macy’s earlier in the day.

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A Minnesota general contractor pleaded guilty to a scheme to hijack dormant shell companies and then pump-and-dump their stock shares on the over-the-counter market to unwitting investors.
Mark Miller is the second person to admit guilt in the brazen scam, which ran from 2017 through 2019, and involved the fraudulent takeovers of at least four publicly traded companies that had no effective business.
The Breezy Point resident’s co-defendant, Christopher James Rajkaran, previously pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud last week in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis.

A pedestrian wearing a face mask looks at a smartphone while passing in front of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, on Monday, July 20, 2020.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

A Minnesota general contractor pleaded guilty Thursday to a scheme to hijack dormant shell companies and then pump-and-dump their stock shares on the over-the-counter market to unwitting investors.
Mark Miller is the second person to admit guilt in the brazen scam, which ran from 2017 through 2019, and involved the fraudulent takeovers of at least four publicly traded companies that had no effective business, and had failed to make required regulatory filings for some time.

Miller’s co-defendant, Christopher James Rajkaran, previously pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud last week in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis.
Miller pleaded guilty in that court to that same charge. Like Rajkaran, he will have the 14 other criminal counts he was charged with dismissed when he is sentenced later, pursuant to a plea agreement with federal prosecutors.
The 44-year-old MIller is free on bond. But Rajkaran, a 36-year-old who lives in Queens, New York, is being detained without bail as a flight risk due to his connections to the nation of Guyana.
A third defendant, Saied Jaberian, 59, of Hopkins, Minn., has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud, and is awaiting trial.
As part of his plea, Miller agreed to forfeit $38,000 in ill-gotten proceeds.

Federal sentencing guidelines suggest that he receive a prison term of between 30 and 37 months, and a fine of between $10,000 and $100,000.
But Judge David Doty will determine Miller’s actual punishment at sentencing.
During his plea hearing, Miller gave brief answers acknowledging his understanding of the plea agreement and a description of his criminal acts as detailed by a prosecutor.
“I’m guilty of the summary that you walked through,” Miller told the prosecutor.
The three defendants were charged in June with a scheme to use resignation letters purporting to be from other people to seize control of four shell companies — Digitiliti, Encompass Holdings, Bell Buckle Holdings, and Utilicraft Aerospace Industries.

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Miller and Jaberian, as well as an unidentified person related to Miller, became the nominal CEOs and presidents of the targeted companies, according to prosecutors.
Miller admitted using the Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR public filing system and bogus press releases to inflate the share prices of those companies by claiming new business opportunities, when in fact the firms had no significant operations or revenue.
Miller admitted that he and his co-defendants bought millions of shares of stock in the companies, in many cases for far less than a penny per share, and then sold them on the over-the-counter market for many times what they paid for them. Prosecutors have said the trio earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits from the scheme.
At the time he was indicted, Miller was involved in an effort to seize control of a Florida penny-stock company, New World Gold Corp., which is not named as one of his seven targets in either the criminal case or a civil lawsuit against Miller filed by the SEC.
Miller voluntarily dropped a lawsuit he filed in Florida as part of his effort to take over New World Gold less than two weeks after CNBC reported his involvement with that company.
After he was criminally charged this summer, Miller resigned as a member of the city council of Breezy Point, Minn.

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Alaska is in the thick of a surge of Covid cases that devastated the continental U.S. over the summer.
Alaskan officials activated “crisis standards of care” on Oct. 2 across 20 hospitals.
That gives facilities some legal protection if they have to choose who will get a bed or ventilator that may save their life while forgoing treatment for others who are less likely to survive.

Joyce Johnson-Albert looks on as she receives an antibody infusion while lying on a bed in a trauma room at the Upper Tanana Health Center Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021, in Tok, Alaska.
Rick Bowmer | AP

Dr. Jeremy Gitomer at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage realized last month there weren’t enough dialysis machines to treat the flood of Covid patients suffering from renal damage.
One intubated 70-year-old woman, who was also battling kidney failure and was on dialysis for six days, wasn’t likely to make it, he recalled.

Gitomer and his medical team decided to terminate her treatment to free up the machine for a 48-year-old man who was also on a ventilator and had a higher chance of recovery if given dialysis. Both patients died in the end, he said, adding that up to 95% of intubated Covid patients on dialysis do not survive in Alaska.
“It’s terrible that I’m living through this because I’ve never seen more people die in my career,” said Gitomer, a nephrologist who works at Anchorage’s three hospitals for the Kidney and Hypertension Clinic of Alaska. “I’ve been doing this 25 years.”
Doctors at Providence have been forced to choose who might live and who will likely die as a crush of Covid patients stretches the hospital’s limited resources to capacity.

Angie Cleary, a registered nurse, cares for Joyce Johnson-Albert as she receives an antibody infusion while lying on a bed in a trauma room at the Upper Tanana Health Center Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2021, in Tok, Alaska.
Rick Bowmer | AP

Alaska is in the thick of a surge of cases fueled by the highly contagious delta variant, which devastated the continental U.S. over the summer. To alleviate the burden on the state’s health-care system, Alaskan officials on Oct. 2 activated “crisis standards of care” across 20 hospitals, a measure that gives them some legal protection if they have to choose who will get a bed or ventilator that may save a patient’s life while they forgo treatment for others who are less likely to survive.
Anchorage hospitals, where nearly all of the state’s dialysis machines are located, have been forced to reject transfers of patients who have a low chance of survival from other in-state medical centers, Gitomer said. It’s not just putting Covid patients at higher risk. Hospitals are now struggling to treat non-Covid patients with a range of life-threatening conditions, including cancer, accident injuries and organ failure. Patients with brain tumors face extended emergency room delays, prolonging their ability to get an MRI and see a neurosurgeon, doctors say.

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Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, located some 40 miles northeast of Anchorage, can’t just transfer renal and heart failure patients to Anchorage like it usually does. The hospital now has to keep some of them overnight and “well enough to make it for outpatient dialysis the next day,” said Dr. Anne Zink, the state’s chief medical officer and an emergency room physician at Mat-Su.
“Instead of one nurse being able to care for four or five emergency department patients, they might be caring for 10 emergency department patients,” Zink said of Mat-Su, where Covid patients occupy almost half of the hospital’s 100 beds. “Patients having to board in the emergency department wait for a really extended period of time.”  

Alaska, which has managed dozens of Covid cases at any time throughout most of the outbreak, had more than 1,200 new cases Wednesday — peaking at a seven-day average of 1,317 new cases on Sept. 27, according to a CNBC analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University. Alaska is the third-least populous state in the nation, but it currently has the most Covid cases per person at 120 new infections per 100,000 residents as of Wednesday. And Covid patients are crowding hospital beds at almost twice the rate of the national average, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services.
Alaska’s sheer geographic vastness further complicates the state’s ability to battle the outbreak: Health-care centers are so spread out that the average Alaskan must travel about 150 miles one way for medical attention, Zink said. Mat-Su Regional Medical Center alone services an area the size of West Virginia.
The state brought in 400 out-of-state medical personnel late last month to help with the surge, Zink said.
A combination of school resuming, snow falling and people spending more time indoors has made Alaska particularly vulnerable to the highly transmissible delta variant this fall, Zink said. Many communities also lacked access to running water and sewers and faced high rates of respiratory diseases before the pandemic even began, she explained, elevating their risk for a Covid outbreak.
“We’re seeing far more death and dying with this surge,” said Dr. Angelique Ramirez, chief medical officer at Foundation Health Partners in Fairbanks. “It’s happening on a daily basis, it’s happening in younger people, and it’s happening despite everything we know how to do.”
Vaccine hesitancy runs high in Alaska, making monoclonal antibodies a popular Covid treatment, Ramirez said. But as the supply of antibodies dwindled with the surge, Ramirez said Foundation Health was forced to reserve the lifesaving treatment for only the most vulnerable patients.

Herbie Demit, Tanacross Village Council president, walks through a cemetery Thursday, Sept. 23, 2021, in Tanacross, Alaska. Alaska is experiencing one of the sharpest rises in COVID-19 cases in the country, coupled with a limited statewide healthcare system that is almost entirely reliant on Anchorage hospitals.
Rick Bowmer | AP

“When it became scarce, we had a choice to make,” Ramirez said. “And our choice was we could either use up all we had and simply run out, or we could choose to look at who was using it and make decisions off of it at a community level as to who would most benefit from it and limit it to those individuals.”  
Staffing crunches at Foundation Health have reduced capacity, Ramirez said. The hospital has been postponing non-emergency surgeries and discharging pneumonia patients earlier than usual, equipping them with at-home oxygen treatments once doctors are comfortable with their recovery rather than holding them until they’ve fully recuperated, she said.  
Ramirez blamed the surge in Fairbanks on the region’s low vaccination rate and public resistance to wearing masks. And even though Ramirez said the surge began before schools started for the year, she said she expected the return to in-person learning would exacerbate the outbreak.
Alaska has vaccinated more than 51% of its population against Covid, ranking 35th in the nation among all states and Washington, D.C., as of Wednesday, according to the CDC. Misinformation and anti-vaccine sentiment have proven significant obstacles in the push to immunize more Alaskans, said Charlee Gribbon, a nurse and infection preventionist at Bartlett Regional Hospital in Juneau.
“Viruses are a hard pathogen to control,” Gribbon said. “So when we pull out all the stops, we just need everybody to help us out with whatever they can do to avoid spreading the illness.”
— CNBC’s Nate Rattner contributed to this report.

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Califf helmed the FDA from February 2016 to February 2017 after a year as the agency’s deputy commissioner for medical products and tobacco.
His nomination would mark the end of a nine-month search for a permanent successor for Acting Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock.
Biden must nominate Woodcock or choose another full-time commissioner by mid-November, The Washington Post reported.

Dr. Robert Califf
Getty Images

President Joe Biden is close to nominating former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf to lead the agency once again, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
An Obama appointee, Califf helmed the FDA from February 2016 to February 2017 after a year as the agency’s deputy commissioner for medical products and tobacco, according to the FDA’s website. His nomination would mark the end of a nine-month search for a permanent successor for Acting Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock, who took over the agency on an interim basis in January.

Biden must nominate Woodcock or choose another full-time commissioner by mid-November, the Post reported. A White House official told the publication that Biden had not yet made his selection, while Califf declined to comment.

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Before joining the FDA, Califf was Duke University’s vice chancellor for clinical and translational research, according to the agency’s website. A cardiologist and graduate of the university’s School of Medicine, he directed Duke’s Translational Medicine Institute and founded the Duke Clinical Research Institute, the FDA said.
Read more about Califf’s potential nomination in The Washington Post.

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Now-former “Jeopardy!” champ Matt Amodio told CNBC on Thursday he’s planning to safely invest his winnings.
“I’ve got the boring answer. I’m going to do long-term invest and hold,” said Amodio, who had won 38-straight games and racked up $1.5 million.
“Index funds paired with a small amount of bonds, with yearly rebalancing, how can you go wrong, right?” said the Yale computer science doctoral student.

Matt Amodio, whose prolific run on “Jeopardy!” came to an end earlier this week, told CNBC on Thursday he has no risky investment plans for his winnings.
“I’ve got the boring answer. I’m going to do long-term invest and hold,” Amodio said on “Squawk on the Street.”

Before losing in the episode that aired Monday, Amodio won 38 straight games on “Jeopardy!,” the second-longest streak in the trivia show’s history, trailing only Ken Jennings, who won 74 in a row. Amodio finished with $1,518,601 in total winnings — before taxes, of course.
On the show, Amodio played with an aggressive style, seeking out Daily Doubles and betting big when he found them. He doesn’t appear to want to take a similar approach to investing his “Jeopardy!” payday.
“I’m not there on the day-to-day trading. It’s too much for me to keep track of,” said Amodio, an Ohio native who’s pursuing a doctorate in computer science at Yale University. “But index funds paired with a small amount of bonds, with yearly rebalancing, how can you go wrong, right?”

“Jeopardy!” contestant Matt Amodio during a taping of the popular game show.
Jeopardy Productions Inc. via AP

Amodio’s $1.5 million is the third-largest sum won during regular-season play on “Jeopardy!”. Jennings holds the top spot, with $2.52 million, and James Holzhauer, who won 32 consecutive games in 2019, is in the second place, with $2.46 million.
Although he often won in runaway fashion, Amodio told CNBC he’s not totally shocked his “Jeopardy!” streak is over now.

“A little bit surprised, but not too surprised. I had anticipated this moment 38 times prior to my 39th game, and every time before that I happened to win,” Amodio said. “But I knew it was always a possibility.”
Amodio’s attention-grabbing run on “Jeopardy!” coincided with a moment of transition for the long-running TV program, which is trying to find a permanent replacement host for the late Alex Trebek.
After a series of guests hosts, including CNBC’s own David Faber, Mike Richards had been named the permanent host in August. But he was ousted, and later removed as the show’s executive producer, too, after offensive comments he made about Jews, women and people who have disabilities resurfaced.

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Elon Musk touted SpaceX’s plan to use Starlink for in-flight Wi-Fi, saying in a tweet on Thursday that the service could add “low latency ~half gigabit connectivity in the air!”
Starlink is the company’s project to build an interconnected internet network with thousands of satellites to deliver high-speed internet to consumers anywhere on the planet.
SpaceX has previously said that it has an “aviation product in development,” and is “in talks with several” airlines about adding Starlink in-flight Wi-Fi.

Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, stands in the foundry of the Tesla Gigafactory during a press event. year.
Patrick Pleul | picture alliance | picture alliance | Getty Images

Elon Musk on Thursday touted SpaceX’s plan to use Starlink for in-flight Wi-Fi, emphasizing that his company is in discussions with airlines to add the high-speed satellite internet service.
“Please let them know if you want it on your airliner,” Musk wrote in a tweet, adding that Starlink could add “low latency ~half gigabit connectivity in the air!”

Starlink is the company’s plan to build an interconnected internet network with thousands of satellites, known in the space industry as a constellation, designed to deliver high-speed internet to consumers anywhere on the planet.
SpaceX has launched 1,740 Starlink satellites to date, and the network has more than 100,000 users in 14 countries who are participating in a public beta, with service priced at $99 a month.
SpaceX Vice President Jonathan Hofeller earlier this year said that the company is “in talks with several” airlines about adding Starlink in-flight Wi-Fi, noting that it has an “aviation product in development.”
“We’ve already done some demonstrations to date and [are] looking to get that product finalized to be put on aircraft in the very near future,” Hofeller said in June.

Airlines work with satellite broadband providers for inflight Wi-Fi, with Viasat and Intelsat – the latter of which purchased Gogo’s commercial aviation business – two such companies that add connectivity on flights by airlines including Delta, JetBlue, American Airlines and United. But, while existing services use satellites in distant orbits, Starlink satellites orbit closer to the Earth and could boost the speeds that passengers see inflight.

Hofeller also emphasized that Starlink “provides a global mesh,” so that “airlines are flying underneath that global mesh have connectivity anywhere they go.”
Shares of Gogo, which now focuses on business aviation rather than commercial airlines, fell as much as 5% in trading Thursday.

A Boeing 737-200 prepares to land at the Jorge Newbery airport in Buenos Aires on August 21, 2008.
Juan Mabromata | AFP | Getty Images

Musk has previously said that “regulatory approval” is currently dictating the timeline for when Starlink can be used by airlines, as the service “has to be certified for each aircraft type.”
“Focusing on 737 & A320, as those serve most number of people, with development testing on Gulfstream,” Musk said in a tweet in June.

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Are MBAs worth it? It depends on many factors, like whether you have the money, time and willingness to commit.
In 2015, I enrolled in The University of Florida’s online MBA program, all while working a full-time job in finance. The degree cost me $60,000 and took two years to complete, but it gave me the confidence to take business risks, improved my decision-making skills, expanded my network, and even boosted my salary.

It also taught me several valuable lessons about business and money:

1. Contracts don’t have to be complicated

Having a contract for any business deal you make can save you from emotional distress and financial losses. It doesn’t matter if it’s with close friend or family member — anything that involves a chunk of your time and money should come with a contract.
Also, the mere act of proposing a contract is a good stress test: If the other party gives long-winded reasons not to sign, you should probably move on.
Even a short and simple handwritten one can go a long way. Here are the most essential elements to include:

The “offer”: Something needs to be offered.
The “consideration”: Something needs to be exchanged for it (usually money, otherwise it is a gift or a promise, rather than a contract).
An “acceptance”: Both sides need to accept the terms of the contract.
The “mutuality”: Both sides need to agree to the conditions and understand that they’ve entered into a contract.

2. The trick to persuasion

Aristotle’s three key components of persuasion, which I learned in my Business Writing and Negotiations class, gave me the tools and methods I needed to succeed at selling myself and winning people over:

Ethos (ethics): Cite your moral standing and credibility.Example: “I am a wife, a mother, and a taxpayer. I’ve served faithfully for 20 years on the school board. I deserve your vote for [X].”
Pathos (emotion): Tap into the emotional impact of your argument.Example: “My opponent wants to hurt [X] by doing [X]. Imagine how frustrated you would be if [X] were to happen.”
Logos (logic): Craft your message with facts, such as evidence, analogies, statistics or even hypothetical scenarios.Example: “We do not have enough money to pay for improvements to [X]. And without improvements, the [X] system will falter and thus hinder our economy. Therefore, we should do [X] to pay for better [X].”

3. Too many options can be a bad thing

More than once, I’ve gone into a store, looked at rows of the same product in varying colors, brands and sizes. They all seemed like great options, but I felt paralyzed and couldn’t decide.
Psychologist Barry Schwartz captured this experience perfectly in his book, “The Paradox of Choice,” in which he argues that the more choices people have, the more likely they are to become dissatisfied with their choices later on, or feel stuck and don’t make a choice at all.
The number of options you present to a customer is extremely important and can affect your bottom line. Don’t overwhelm them.

4. Time in the market beats timing the market

In business school, we reviewed a study with a simple insight that replays in my head every time I make an investment decision: Investors who buy and hold tend to perform significantly better than those who trade often.
Our professor cited legendary investor Warren Buffett, who wrote in his 1991 shareholder letter that “the stock market serves as a relocation center at which money is moved from the active to the patient.”
I know, it isn’t sexy. But it was also the message of Jack Bogle, the founder of index fund giant Vanguard Group: “Time is your friend; impulse is your enemy.” Whenever markets were down and anxiety up, his advice was “don’t just do something, stand there.”

5. How to be a better negotiator

Advanced Negotiations was one of the hardest classes I took, partly because it pitted students against one another — and the outcomes affected our grades.
In one case, I represented Canadian zoos and wanted to borrow pandas from Chinese zoos. Working out the cost and duration of the panda visits caused a long standoff between me and my classmate.
But it taught me a few things about how to get what I want:

Statistically, the first person to make an offer in a negotiation tends to do better (they “anchor” their number first). But if you get too greedy, it could embitter the other party and hurt you.
Before going into a negotiation, do some scenario planning: What are all the things that might happen? How will you react? What are your walkaway terms?
Touch on things that will benefit the other person and what you can easily give them. Try to roll it all into your deal as a negotiation: “I can’t offer that salary, but I can let you work from home if you’d like.”

The ideal position is for both parties to walk away and feel like they got the deal of the century.
Sean Kernan is a writer and former financial analyst. Follow him on Twitter @seanjkernan.
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Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to be deposed next week in New York City.
Protesters filed a lawsuit alleging they were “violently attacked” by his security guards on the sidewalk outside of Trump Tower in September 2015.
Trump’s videotaped deposition on Monday morning will be held in Trump Tower itself, which is located on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan’s Midtown section.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump leaves Trump Tower in Manhattan on May 18, 2021 in New York City.
James Devaney | GC Images | Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to be deposed next week in New York City for a lawsuit filed by protestors who allege they were “violently attacked” by his security guards on the sidewalk outside of Trump Tower in September 2015.
Trump’s videotaped deposition on Monday morning will be held in Trump Tower itself, which is located on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan’s Midtown section.

He will be questioned there by lawyers for the plaintiffs in the civil complaint, which is pending in Bronx Supreme Court.
“This is a case about Donald Trump’s security guards assaulting peaceful demonstrators on a public sidewalk,” said Benjamin Dictor, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.
“We will be taking the trial testimony of Donald Trump, under oath, on Monday after years of the defendants’ dilatory attempts to shield him from this examination. We look forward to presenting the video of Mr. Trump’s testimony to a jury at his trial.”

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Trump’s s videotaped testimony will be presented to a jury as a result of a prior judicial order which allowed the then-president to avoid having to testify in person while serving in the White House.
A spokeswoman for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump in July was ordered by Bronx Supreme Court Judge Doris Gonzalez to sit for the deposition, which was to be scheduled at a later date.
He and the plaintiffs later agreed that he would be deposed on Sept. 24, but that was postponed after his lawyers came back and said Trump was no longer available for that date, according to an order by Gonzalez last week.
The timing of Monday’s deposition was agreed to by Trump and the plaintiffs, according to that order, which first was reported Thursday by ABC News.
In addition to Trump, defendants in the lawsuit include his 2016 presidential campaign, the Trump Organization, and Keith Schiller, who had for years acted as Trump’s bodyguard.
The suit seeks damages for the actions of Trump’s security staff, during the Sept. 3, 2015, protest outside of Trump Tower, months after Trump announced his run for the Republican presidential nomination.
The plaintiffs, who are human rights activists of Mexican origin, say they were assaulted by Trump’s guards and had their signs destroyed by the guards during the event, which was protesting what they saw as Trump’s anti-Mexican immigrant racism.
Trump’s then-head of security Schiller is accused of punching one of the protestors, Efrain Galicia, in the head after Galicia tried to retrieve a sign that Schiller had ripped from his grasp.

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