Business

Scott Boras represented Juan Soto in his negotiations with the New York Mets.
Soto’s deal is the largest contract in sports history.
Boras said Soto’s performance at Citi Field also factored into his decision.

Major League Baseball super agent Scott Boras just negotiated the biggest contract of his life.
On Thursday, the New York Mets signed 4-time All-Star Juan Soto to a record-breaking $765 million, 15-year contract. It’s the largest deal in professional sports history.

Soto will be the first player in the MLB to earn more than $50 million in a single season.
“Half the league wanted to participate in this,” Boras told CNBC’s “Power Lunch.” “So many teams were seeking this rare value, because in the end, it was just good business to acquire it.”
Boras talked about the difficult decision Soto and his team had in finding the best fit. One factor in his decision was his recent performance at Citi Field, where the Mets play.
“Juan Soto’s performance levels in Citi Field are well known to him,” Boras said. “He plays at his highest level of performance and players think about execution. You think about all these factors.”
In Soto’s 35 games at Citi Field, the left-handed hitter scored 12 home runs, 26 RBI’s and had an on-base percentage of .466 and .709 slugging.

His longest homerun of his career, 466 feet, came at Citi Field on August 12, 2020.
Boras also shared that it wasn’t all about the money for the 26-year-old player.
“When you’re an athlete, you think about all things, but you primarily also think about your routine, your performance,” Boras said. “There’s vastly more things than the economics.”
Speaking at his introductory press conference, Soto said the Mets had treated him like family.
“They showed me a lot of love on the standpoint of what they have and how they’re going to try to make it comfortable. That’s one of the things that impressed me more, and how they’re going to treat everybody around me and my family,” Soto said. More

Federal Aviation Administration chief Michael Whitaker said he will step down on Jan. 20, when President-elect Donald Trump is scheduled to be inaugurated.
Whitaker, who was nominated to the top FAA role by President Joe Biden, began a five-year term in October 2023.
Trump’s last appointed leader, ex-Delta captain Steve Dickson, stepped down in early 2022.

Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Mike Whitaker listens to a question during a news conference on the FAA’s work to hold Boeing accountable for safety and production quality issues, at the Federal Aviation Administration Headquarters on May 30, 2024 in Washington, DC. 
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images

The head of the Federal Aviation Administration, Mike Whitaker, said Thursday he will step down Jan. 20, the day President-elect Donald Trump takes office, leaving the key agency that oversees Boeing and the U.S. airline industry again without a leader.
Whitaker was confirmed to serve a five-year term as FAA administrator in October 2023. He set production limits and heightened the agency’s scrutiny of Boeing after a near-catastrophic door-plug blowout on a Boeing 737 Max in January, when he was months into the job.

Mark House, the FAA’s assistant administrator for finance and management, will become acting deputy administrator.
The agency has seen several changes in leadership in recent years. These have come during one of the U.S. aviation industry’s most tumultuous periods, which has included two crashes of Boeing’s best-selling 737 Max planes and a subsequent grounding, the Covid-19 pandemic, and series of high-profile close calls and safety issues involving U.S. airlines and airports.
Trump’s last nominee to lead the FAA, ex-Delta captain Steve Dickson, resigned in 2022, midway through his term.
“You have seen leadership come and go — and through every transition you have kept air travel steady and safe. This transition will be no different,” Whitaker said in a statement.
A spokesman for Trump’s transition team didn’t immediately comment.

Trump has not yet nominated an FAA administrator for his second term. His eventual nominee, if confirmed, will face a host of challenges, including continued oversight of Boeing and staffing up and modernizing air traffic control. Shortages of controllers have vexed airline executives, who have blamed staffing shortages for congestion in some of the country’s busiest airports.
The FAA’s oversight of the space industry has also been the source of controversy. Companies including Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have been urging improvements to the FAA’s speed and efficiency in regulating rocket launches and spacecraft returning from orbit.
Musk also said in September that his company would sue the FAA for “regulatory overreach,” after the agency fined SpaceX for license violations and, according to the company, held up test flights of its Starship rocket. More

SITTING ON THE board of a large American company is at once the plummest and most thankless work in business. Plum because, when everything is going right, you pocket $300,000 a year in cash and stock for showing up to a well-catered meeting every month and a half. Thankless because you seldom get credit for things going right but take the blame when they go awry. And awry they go with disturbing regularity. More

It’s that time of year again, when we celebrate our successes and gloss over our failures. For our 2024 employee awards we have all our classic categories, from team member of the year and newcomer of the year to the big one: employee of the year. As usual, the winner of that award will enjoy a weekend away in a location of our choosing. More

It was as if the sun came out on Wall Street. Donald Trump’s election victory was met not just with a blistering stockmarket rally, but also a flurry of dealmaking. Mondelez, a snack-seller, is reportedly trying to buy Hershey, a chocolatier. Consolidation beckons for the advertising industry. Bankers are expecting that many more tie-ups will follow. The surge in activity partly reflects a level of certainty that would have materialised whoever won the election. But it also has much to do with the changing of the guard at America’s antitrust authorities. More

“Change is neither good nor bad. It simply is,” declares Donald Draper, the unflappable star of “Mad Men”, a television drama set in 1960s adland. Not all advertising executives share his sangfroid. Today, technology is changing the industry faster than at any time since Mr Draper’s era. The result is a reshaping of Madison Avenue that is leaving some admen choking on their Old Fashioneds. More

Whoopi Goldberg started the All Women’s Sports Network with George Chung, co-founder of international media holding company Jungo TV.
Goldberg told CNBC her childhood passion for sports and desire for greater female representation in the field inspired her to start the network.
AWSN is available in the U.S. on the free streaming service Vizio WatchFree+.

Hollywood icon Whoopi Goldberg hopes her newly launched All Women’s Sports Network will bring more attention to women’s sports.
Goldberg started the network with George Chung, co-founder of international media holding company Jungo TV. It’s the first global media channel dedicated exclusively to highlighting women’s sports and is available in the U.S. on the free streaming service Vizio WatchFree+.

Goldberg told CNBC her childhood passion for sports and desire for greater female representation in the field inspired her to start the network.
“I want little girls to have what we used to call baseball cards for their new favorite players, and I want them to follow just like I used to follow Mickey Mantle,” Goldberg said.
AWSN is also available via international partners in India, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines.
The network will air 2,000 hours of live sports the remainder of this year and into 2025. It will feature a wide range of sports from soccer, basketball, volleyball and field hockey to cricket, judo and table tennis.

Actor & comedian Whoopi Goldberg arrives on the Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday, November 6, 2024.
Todd Owyoung | Nbcuniversal | Getty Images

Goldberg said she hopes the growth of women’s basketball and soccer will help put the spotlight on other women’s sports.

“We started to see amazing basketball being played, and I think more people said, ‘Hey, I want to watch more of that.’ What other sports are women playing that we don’t know about? Like hockey or roller derby. I love roller derby. I want America to have a roller derby team,” Goldberg said. “I want it out there because women are doing it.”
Chung said Vizio currently reaches 20 million television sets, and, within the next three to four months AWSN expects to be available over on 100 million devices in the U.S.
Goldberg acknowledged she faced some initial resistance in launching the network, but once she met Chung, their goals aligned.
“I like a good business proposition, and I want this to go way past my lifetime. I want it to be as well known as an ABC, NBC or CBS,” she said.
Disclosure: NBC and CNBC are divisions of NBCUniversal. More

The biggest supermarket merger in American history is dead. In the space of just a few hours on December 10th, federal and state judges both sided with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), America’s main antitrust regulator, to block the acquisition of Albertsons, a big supermarket chain, by Kroger, another such firm. By the next day the pair were adversaries: Albertsons has not only called off the deal, it is also now suing Kroger for failing to make “best efforts” to get regulatory approval. More