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A former longtime Bowlero executive asked a federal court for permission to countersue the company, alleging extortion and retaliation.
In a recorded call, Bowlero’s vice chairman threatened to report the former employee to the FBI if he didn’t admit to spilling company secrets, according to a transcript of the conversation filed in court.
The company, which owns AMF and Lucky Strike bowling centers, previously sued the former executive alleging he hacked into the CEO’s email account, which he denies.
Bowlero has been embroiled in an EEOC investigation since 2016 related to age discrimination and retaliation claims involving more than 70 former employees. Bowlero denies the allegations.

A former executive at Bowlero, the world’s largest owner and operator of bowling centers, has asked a court’s permission to countersue his former employer for extortion and retaliation, after an executive on a recorded call threatened to report him to the FBI if he didn’t admit to spilling company secrets, according to a transcript of the conversation filed in court.
The allegations by Bowlero’s former chief information officer, Thomas Tanase, filed Wednesday in a proposed countersuit in Virginia federal court, come after he and dozens of others filed discrimination claims with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging they were fired based on their age or out of retaliation, according to company securities filings and the proposed countersuit. Bowlero denies the claims.

The company, which went public in late 2021 through a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, was among the select successful stocks to emerge from the SPAC boom. It owns two of the biggest brands in bowling — AMF and Lucky Strike — and operated more than 300 bowling centers across North America as of July. Between 2021 and 2023, Bowlero nearly tripled its annual revenue, from $395 million to $1.06 billion, and it expects sales to grow between 10% and 15% in fiscal 2024, according to company filings.
Tanase started with the company’s information technology department in 2001 before climbing his way up to the C-suite, where he worked closely with the company’s CEO and frequently had access to sensitive information contained in the CEO’s email accounts, he said in court filings. He says the company fired him in May because of his age, and in August, he filed a discrimination claim with the EEOC, according to a copy of the claim, which was included as an exhibit to the proposed countersuit.
Bowlero says that Tanase resigned and then had a change of heart when he realized he wouldn’t get severance pay. In July, the company sued him, alleging he hacked into the email account of CEO Thomas Shannon, copied company documents onto a personal USB drive and refused to hand over his company-issued devices. Tanase denies the claims.
Now, Tanase is seeking the court’s permission to countersue Bowlero and the company’s executive vice chairman, Brett Parker. Federal rules require Tanase to get permission to countersue given the timing of the filings.
In the proposed countersuit, Tanase alleges that Parker threatened to report him to the FBI if he didn’t admit to accessing Shannon’s emails and “come clean” about information he shared with Daniel Dowe, the attorney representing the EEOC complainants, and with CNBC, which has previously written about the discrimination allegations against Bowlero. During a March deposition, Tanase testified that he hadn’t spoken with CNBC, or any other media outlet, about the company.

‘You tell us everything you know’

In a phone conversation between Tanase and Parker that Tanase recorded in June 2023, Bowlero’s vice chairman and former finance chief allegedly asked Tanase numerous times to reveal what he’d said and told him that if he did, all would be forgiven, according to a transcript attached as an exhibit to the proposed counterclaim.
“If you come clean there is a path where you are our friend … You tell us everything that’s transpired … You tell us everything you know about Dowe everything that’s ever happened with respect to Dowe … With respect to the CNBC,” Parker said during the conversation, according to the transcript.
“Then there can be a number and there can be a go away and we can move on. But we have to get the truth and full clarity,” Parker said, according to the transcript. 
“You can … Fall back into our good graces and be our friend in this matter and you will get paid to do that, but it has to start with the truth.”
According to the transcript, Parker told Tanase if he explained everything and shared what information he had disclosed, the company could give him a “severance,” but “you really don’t want this to start with the police.” 
“I’m not going to be able to fight this internally, and you’re going to be trying to explain to the FBI that some device did this and I don’t want you to be in that position,” Parker said, according to the transcript. 
“You gotta help me help you,” he added.
In response, Tanase repeatedly told Parker he didn’t share any information with anyone and had been in the hospital when Shannon’s email account was allegedly breached, according to the transcript. As Bowlero’s former CIO, he previously had access to the CEO’s account and said it may have still been logged in on another device.  
“I haven’t done anything illegal … I haven’t done anything malicious either. I haven’t talked to anything or given out any information to anybody. I’ve told you this before,” said Tanase, according to the transcript.  
Bowlero said the transcript simply shows the company trying to extend an “olive branch” to Tanase if he were to confess to the hacking allegations. 
“Far from wrongfully seeking to obtain a benefit from Tanase, Mr. Parker … acknowledges that he is ‘trying to help.’ These are all actions which, in the face of Tanase’s hacking of Bowlero computer systems, neither Bowlero nor Mr. Parker were required to do,” Bowlero said in filings.  
“Indeed, what Tanase suggests is ‘extortion’ is obviously no such thing. Hence, even if Tanase had a private right of action for an extortion claim, the elements of such a claim are not met here,” the company said.
Tanase further alleges that Bowlero’s suit against him was brought in retaliation for his refusal to sign a termination agreement that required him to waive his right to pursue legal action against the company. He also claims Bowlero sued him to deter him from filing a complaint with the EEOC or serving as a witness in its investigation into Bowlero.
Tanase’s attorneys are seeking around $8 million in damages from Bowlero on the extortion claim and more than $27 million on the retaliation claim.
Late Thursday, Bowlero asked the judge overseeing the case to deny the request to countersue and to sanction Tanase by either issuing a default judgment in the company’s favor or precluding Tanase from further testimony. In court filings, the company said Tanase admitted he misstated facts in an earlier court affidavit, which he later corrected, and pointed out that he has hired at least three different law firms since the onset of the case.
“Tanase has so seriously impeached his own credibility that no testimony he can offer in his defense will rehabilitate him, and, in these circumstances, default judgment is appropriate in order to protect the integrity of the judicial process,” Bowlero said in a memorandum in support of its request for sanctions. 
Bowlero’s attorney Alex Spiro at law firm Quinn Emanuel, who has also represented A-listers such as Elon Musk and Alec Baldwin, said in a statement to CNBC Tanase “will lose” his request to file a countersuit, and that it “is almost certainly going to be denied.” 
“Mr. Tanase is now seeking the court’s permission to file baseless counterclaims against Bowlero, five months after the deadline and five days before fact discovery will close. This cynical attempt to deflect attention from his bad acts is fatally flawed on both the merits and on the law — and Bowlero is confident it will prevail in its lawsuit against Mr. Tanase,” said Spiro.
“His counterclaims are completely frivolous and we are seeking fees for responding to his motion,” he said.
In response, Tanase’s attorney Scott Pickus told CNBC if the court doesn’t permit Tanase to move forward with his counterclaim in the case, the suit can and “likely will” be filed as a new action. He said he “very much” disagrees that the assertions made in the proposed counterclaim are frivolous. 
He said he won’t comment on remarks Tanase made about misstating facts.
“Suffice it to say that we disagree with Bowlero’s interpretation of the law, disagree with Bowlero’s recitation of the facts, and look forward to the trial of this matter,” Pickus said.

EEOC investigation

Bowlero has been embroiled in an EEOC investigation since 2016 involving more than 70 former employees who claim they were unlawfully fired. They allege that Bowlero fired them for being too old as it worked to transform its hundreds of locations from what the company has referred to as “dingy” bowling alleys to upmarket experiences with elevated food and drink offerings. 
Complaints and an affidavit filed by three former employees, including Tanase, say Shannon hosted “beauty contests” with prospective hires over brief video calls to evaluate a candidate’s appearance as part of the hiring process. 
Tanase’s complaint accused Shannon of making “racial and especially inappropriate ‘blonde women’ jokes” and “always treated wom[e]n as an inferior class to men.” Tanase also alleged that the company’s policies banning Timberland boots and ball caps worn backward were “designed to deter African American males from using” the company’s bowling centers.
The EEOC has found reasonable cause in the majority of the complaints brought against Bowlero, including Tanase’s, while the rest remain under investigation, according to Tanase’s complaint and company reports. When the EEOC finds reasonable cause in a complaint, it means it believes discrimination occurred.
The EEOC previously tried to settle the complaints with Bowlero for $60 million in January 2023, but those efforts failed last April, CNBC previously reported. The agency now has the ability to file a federal lawsuit against the company, but it’s unclear if it will. Before the agency can sue Bowlero in federal court, the EEOC’s commissioners need to vote on the matter. 
Spiro, Bowlero’s attorney, told CNBC the employment discrimination claims “are without merit.”
“The so-called eeoc issues are age based discrimination claims, some of which date back to nearly a decade ago and no civil nor eeoc suit has ever even occurred with respect to those claims,” Spiro wrote in an email. 
Pickus, Tanase’s attorney, said the EEOC’s reasonable cause findings that Bowlero engaged in discriminatory practices dating back to 2013 “would seem to belie Mr. Spiro’s assertions” that his client’s counterclaims are “frivolous.”
“Those findings by the EEOC may well be why Bowlero has sued Mr. Tanase. Bowlero’s actions remind me of a sports cliche: the best defense is a good offense,” Pickus added.
“We look forward to proving both claims,” he said.

Dueling claims

Still at issue is whether Tanase resigned or was fired from his position — a dispute that’s at the center of Bowlero’s lawsuit, Tanase’s proposed countersuit and his EEOC claim, which are all separate but related actions.
In the leadup to his separation from Bowlero, Tanase said, the company began micromanaging him and harassing him by closely supervising his work so they could find a reason to fire him — a process he described as “managing out,” according to his EEOC complaint and proposed counterclaim. 
“Although Tanase suspected for several months that his employment might be in jeopardy, at no time did he seek to secure confidential information, remove property, or engage in any other self-serving conduct while having full access to Bowlero’s offices, office files, and computer servers,” Tanase’s attorneys wrote in the proposed counterclaim.
In the EEOC’s determination letter ruling that Tanase’s claims of age discrimination had cause, Director Rosemarie Rhodes wrote that the conduct of Tanase’s then-supervisor, current Bowlero President Lev Ekster, “included unwarranted hostility, frequent criticism, unnecessary correction of his work, and undermining his authority and role vis-a-vis subordinates and vendors.” 
Bowlero alleged that following Tanase’s separation from the company, he vowed to get “revenge” on his former employer and “bury” its CEO, according to its lawsuit against Tanase. The company alleged in its suit that Tanase told Bowlero Vice President of Human Resources Heather Webb that he had spoken with CNBC and several lawyers, including Dowe, about the company.
“Mr. Tanase said he would ‘walk away’, which Ms. Webb understood to mean that he would no longer attempt to seek revenge or retribution on Bowlero or Mr. Shannon, if Bowlero were to pay him a $1.2 million ‘severance’ payment. Bowlero refused to make the payment,” Bowlero’s lawsuit said. Tanase denies the claims.  More

Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images

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Hi folks! Two competing cell therapies from Bristol Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson both got good news from the Food and Drug Administration on Friday. 

But J&J’s drug is walking away with a notable edge over its rival.
The FDA expanded the approvals of both therapies, allowing patients to use them as earlier lines of treatment for a type of blood cancer called multiple myeloma. That can damage the bones, immune system, kidneys and red blood cell count.
Before that decision, J&J’s drug Carvykti and Bristol Myers’s treatment Abecma were both only available to people who previously received at least four specific drug regimens for the incurable blood cancer. 
First and foremost, the expanded approvals are a major step for patients. 
They add more options to a growing arsenal of treatments that have helped improve outcomes for people with multiple myeloma. People with the disease often relapse or their cancer becomes resistant to one treatment, requiring them to switch to different drug regimens. 

There’s no doubt that the approvals will expand the reach of both treatments to thousands of eligible patients. New cases of multiple myeloma crop up each year: More than 35,000 new cases will be diagnosed in 2024 in the U.S., according to J&J’s estimates. 
But the new approvals also give J&J’s therapy, which was developed with Legend Biotech, a clear advantage over Bristol Myers’s drug. 
The FDA’s expanded approval says patients can use Carvykti after just one prior line of therapy for multiple myeloma and if certain conditions apply. J&J has said that earlier access to the drug may provide patients with the potential for a treatment-free period earlier in the progression of the disease.
Bristol Myers’s Abecma, which is co-marketed by 2seventy bio, can be administered after at least two drug regimens for multiple myeloma, under the new FDA approval. 

The New York Stock Exchange welcomes Bristol Myers Squibb on Nov. 20th, 2020.

Here’s what some analysts are saying: The product label difference between the two drugs offers a “significant commercial advantage for Carvykti,” Jefferies analyst Kelly Shi wrote in a Sunday note. 
Carvykti’s eligibility as a second-line treatment for multiple myeloma “should limit the use” of other similar cell therapies in the following lines of therapy, Shi said. 
Both Carvykti and Abecma belong to a class of personalized treatments known as chimeric antigen receptor T-cell – or CAR-T – therapies that work by modifying white blood cells known as T-cells to attack cancer. J&J’s drug has gradually gained ground over Abecma in the CAR-T market for multiple myeloma, even though it first entered the market a year later. 
With the new approval on Friday, Jefferies’ Shi expects J&J’s drug to win the majority of that market share. The firm believes Carvykti is “well positioned” to eventually reach more than 80,000 patients in the U.S., EU and Japan as a second, third or fourth line of therapy. 
The FDA’s expanded approval of Carvykti could also put it on track to be a blockbuster product for J&J. Last year, the drug pulled in just $500 million in worldwide sales, according to Legend Biotech. 
The drug’s long-term opportunity could be around $8 billion a year, and the expansion as a second-line treatment for multiple myeloma makes for a “key market segment for achieving this revenue,” Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Rick Bienkowski wrote in a Wednesday note ahead of the approval. 
Guggenheim analyst Kelsey Goodwin said Abecma’s peak annual sales could be around $450 million a year, according to a Reuters interview last week. Bristol Myers’s drug brought in $472 million in worldwide sales in 2023. 
But even with new approvals under their belts, the two companies are grappling with the same long-term issue: supply constraints. 
Both J&J and Bristol Myers have outlined plans to boost production of their respective drugs. I’ll be watching to see how that part of the story plays out later this year, so stay tuned.
Feel free to send any tips, suggestions, story ideas and data to Annika at [email protected].

Latest in health care technology

A look at Mount Sinai’s approach to AI

Signage hangs outside Mount Sinai Hospital on August 4, 2014 in New York City.
Getty Images

On Monday, I visited part of the Mount Sinai Health System, which spans eight hospital campuses and a medical school, to learn about how it’s using generative artificial intelligence. 
In a small corner of The Mount Sinai Hospital that currently serves as the med school’s AI department, I spoke with executives about current initiatives and plans for the future – including plans to move that very department to a much larger, brand new building in June.
While Mount Sinai has been exploring applications of more traditional machine learning models for years, like many health systems, the organization has been looking closely at generative AI since OpenAI’s ChatGPT exploded onto the scene at the end of 2022.
Dr. Bruce Darrow, the health system’s interim chief digital and information officer, said Mount Sinai is evaluating use cases across patient care, education and research. Within patient care, anything the health system can do to safely help clinicians and staff speed up decision making is important, he said. 
For instance, Mount Sinai’s radiologists (doctors who use medical images like CT scans, MRIs and X-rays to identify and treat conditions) are already working with a number of new AI tools. Dr. Laurie Margolies, director of breast imaging at Mount Sinai, said she is exposed to three different AI software tools in her day-to-day work. 
One tool can evaluate an entire mammogram, another can evaluate a breast ultrasound and the third evaluates image quality, which radiologists can use to check on their technique and positioning, Margolies said. While radiologists don’t ever just defer to the computer, she said, AI can help provide an extra layer of assurance.   
“I think it’s a wellness tool,” Margolies said. “I think it’s making me much more relaxed. When I think a mammogram is normal, and the AI thinks it’s normal, I’m more confident hitting that normal button.”
Despite the ongoing hype and excitement around generative AI’s potential in health care, Mount Sinai is trying to take a measured approach to its implementation. Dr. David Reich, president at The Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai Queens, said a lot of the initial use cases have been rather quiet. 
One of the first places the technology was introduced, for instance, was in Mount Sinai’s financial departments, where Reich said people are now processing bills more effectively. 
“We’d rather be a little bit more slow and plodding and workflow-focused because we’re in a very serious business,” he said. 
Reich said it can be challenging to determine which AI solutions are actually worthwhile, so Mount Sinai has established a governance structure to help assess whether a tool is safe, feasible, practical and ethical to use. Above all else, the software needs to help address real problems, he said. 
“A lot of people just want to sell an algorithm,” Reich said.
Feel free to send any tips, suggestions, story ideas and data to Ashley at [email protected]. More

General Motors’ Cruise self-driving vehicle unit will redeploy cars on U.S. roadways for the first time since October.
The relaunch comes after the company ceased operations weeks after an Oct. 2 accident in which a pedestrian in San Francisco was dragged 20 feet by a Cruise robotaxi.
Cruise on Tuesday said its “goal is to resume driverless operations,” however it did not provide a timeline for doing so.

A Cruise vehicle in San Francisco on Feb. 2, 2022.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

General Motors’ Cruise self-driving vehicle unit will redeploy cars on U.S. roadways Tuesday for the first time since October, beginning with a small fleet of human-driven vehicles in Phoenix, the company said.
The relaunch comes after the company ceased operations weeks after an Oct. 2 accident in which a pedestrian in San Francisco was dragged 20 feet by a Cruise robotaxi after being struck by a separate vehicle.

The redeployed vehicles will not operate as they previously did — as robotaxis — but will “create maps and gather road information in select cities, starting in Phoenix,” the company said.
Cruise said its “goal is to resume driverless operations,” however it did not provide a timeline for doing so. It also did not announce a timetable for expanding human-driven vehicles to other cities.
“We have not yet made a commitment to where or when we will start supervised or driverless operations,” a spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC.
Still, the company called the relaunched fleet with human drivers “a critical step for validating our self-driving systems as we work towards returning to our driverless mission.”
“In October 2023, we paused operations of our fleet to focus on rebuilding trust with regulators and the communities we serve, and to redesign our approach to safety,” Cruise said in a blog post. “We’ve made significant progress, guided by new company leadership, recommendations from third-party experts, and a focus on a close partnership with the communities in which our vehicles operate. We are committed to this improvement as a continuous effort.”

A third-party probe into the October incident and subsequent fallout, which was ordered by GM and Cruise, found culture issues, ineptitude and poor leadership were at the center of regulatory oversights that led to the accident. The probe also investigated allegations of a coverup by Cruise leadership, but did not find any evidence to support those claims.
Cruise said in January that it “accepts” the conclusions found in the report. The San Francisco-based company, of which GM owns about 80%, said it will “act on all” recommendations and is “fully cooperating” with investigations by state and federal agencies following the Oct. 2 accident.
The company said in January that investigations or inquiries into the incident included those by the California DMV, the California Public Utilities Commission, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Prior to the accident, Cruise was planning an aggressive expansion of robotaxis outside its home market where the majority of its vehicles operated.
In addition to the ceasing of operations, Cruise leadership has been gutted: Its co-founders, including CEO and co-founder Kyle Vogt, resigned and nine other leaders were ousted. The venture also laid off 24% of its workforce as well as a round of contractors.

Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO: More

Boeing airplane deliveries dipped in the first quarter as the company faces increased scrutiny.
The manufacturer delivered 29 planes in March, most of them 737s.
Boeing’s major airline customers have complained that delivery delays have forced them to rethink their growth plans.

Boeing 737 MAX airplanes are pictured outside a Boeing factory on March 25, 2024 in Renton, Washington. 
Stephen Brashear | Getty Images

Boeing airplane deliveries dropped in the first quarter to the lowest number since mid-2021 as the company faces increased scrutiny after a door plug blew out from one of its 737 Max 9 planes midair in January.
The company handed over 83 planes in the three months ended March 31, most of them 737s, compared with 157 in the prior quarter and 130 planes in the year-earlier period. Solely in March, Boeing delivered 29 planes. Airbus said Tuesday that it delivered 142 planes in the first three months of the year, 63 of them in March.

Boeing customers are still ordering new jets from the manufacturer, which along with Airbus dominates the large jetliner market. The company logged orders for 111 for new planes last month when stripping out two cancellations, 85 of them 737 Max aircraft for American Airlines, which the carrier announced in early March.
The latest tally comes after the Jan. 5 accident on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 brought Boeing inches from a catastrophe. Federal accident investigators said the door plug was missing bolts that hold it in place. Since the accident, the Federal Aviation Administration has inspected Boeing’s 737 Max production and barred the plane maker from increasing output of the jets until it signs off on its quality control procedures.
Boeing executives have said the company is slowing down its production to improve quality control and avoid so-called traveled work, when repairs or other tasks occur out of sequence.
“We won’t rush or go too fast,” Boeing CFO Brian West said at a Bank of America conference last month. “In fact, we’re deliberately going to slow to get this right. And we are the ones who made the decision to constrain rates on the 737 program below 38 per month until we feel like we’re ready. And we’ll feel the impact of that over the next several months.”
Aircraft delivery delays sparked criticism from the CEOs of some of Boeing’s biggest airline customers, and in its wake, CEO Dave Calhoun last month announced he will step down by year’s end. Boeing also replaced its board chair and the head of its commercial airplane unit.

Alaska Airlines said last week it received $160 million in compensation from Boeing in the first quarter stemming from a brief grounding of the plane after the accident.
Boeing is scheduled to report first-quarter results and update investors on April 24.

Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO: More

Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy bet $600,000 on UConn to win the NCAA men’s championship.
He won $2.7 million.
DraftKings reported a record NCAA tournament, with sports betting now legal in 38 states plus Washington, D.C.

Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy is cashing in $2.76 million on UConn’s big win over Purdue on Monday night in the NCAA men’s championship game.
Portnoy tweeted the massive score off a March 20 $600,000 wager on the Huskies winning the national championship. Portnoy’s bet was a moneyline wager placed right before the NCAA tournament began, and required UConn to win six straight games for it to pay off for him. The bet paid off at 3.6-to-1.

DraftKings confirmed to CNBC it took the bet.
“The greatest bet of my life,” Portnoy said in the post on social media site X. “The biggest win of my life by a mile.”
Barstool signed a multiyear deal with DraftKings in February. The sports media company was previously owned by Penn Entertainment.
DraftKings reported a record NCAA tournament, with sports betting now legal in 38 states plus Washington, D.C. — five additional states since this time last year.
The American Gaming Association estimated Americans would legally wager $2.72 billion on the March Madness tournaments this year. That’s equivalent to 2.2% of the total handle wagered on any sporting events last year.

Geolocation tracking company GeoComply, which operators use to police bettors’ locations, told CNBC it saw a 42% increase in checks over the 2023 tournament.

Barstool founder and CEO Dave Portnoy is seen before the Florida Atlantic Owls and Loyola (Il) Ramblers game in the Barstool Invitational at Wintrust Arena on November 8, 2023 in Chicago, Illinois. 
Michael Hickey | Getty Images

DraftKings said Monday’s game was the most bet-on college basketball game of all time for the sportsbook.
FanDuel said the men’s championship game saw a 52% year-over-year increase in bet count and a 42% year-over-year increase in handle.
At Caesars Sportsbook, Monday’s championship game accounted for the most same-game parlays ever placed on a college basketball game.
“It was a tournament for the customers as favorites covered the spread 61% of the time,” Craig Mucklow, Caesars Sportsbook’s vice president of trading, said in an email.
Betting on the women’s tournament was particularly lucrative for the sportsbooks.
South Carolina’s undefeated season and the heroics of superstar Caitlin Clark fueled a massive influx of bets. FanDuel, BetMGM and Fanatics say the championship game was their single biggest betting event on women’s sports. Caesars said the women’s championship saw double the previous handle record for a women’s college basketball game.
“We could only imagine the handle if the game was given a proper primetime slot,” Mucklow said of the women’s final.
— CNBC’s Dan Mangan contributed to this report. More

3G Capital exited its investment in Kraft Heinz last year, marking an end of an era for the Brazilian private equity firm.
After a disastrous quarter for Kraft Heinz in 2019, some investors pointed fingers at 3G’s penchant for aggressive cost cutting.
Warren Buffett stood by 3G and Kraft Heinz. Berkshire Hathaway remains the food company’s largest shareholder.

Brazilian private equity firm 3G Capital quietly sold off its 16.1% stake in Kraft Heinz in the fourth quarter, nearly nine years after masterminding the blockbuster merger of Kraft Foods and Heinz with Warren Buffett.
The sale marks the end of an era for 3G. The firm’s influence over Kraft Heinz had been dwindling in recent years as its number of board seats slipped from three to none by July 2022.

“3G has not been involved in the management of Kraft Heinz, nor have they been on the Board for several years. They had continued to be an investor and were treated as we do any investor,” Kraft Heinz said in a statement to CNBC. “We did learn from their recent filing that 3G exited the Kraft Heinz stock entirely in 2023.”
The company added that Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, its largest shareholder with a 26.8% stake, is a committed long-term owner.
3G did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.

Heinz Kraft ketchup arranged in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, US, on Tuesday, July 25, 2023.
Tiffany Hagler-Geard | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Berkshire and 3G’s doomed romance began on Valentine’s Day in 2013 when the two firms announced they were teaming up to take Heinz private. The merger with Kraft Foods followed two years later.
The new company initially pleased investors with its earnings growth, thanks to its cost-cutting approach favored by 3G. The firm had already found success with that strategy when it created beer giant Anheuser-Busch InBev through a series of megamergers and took Burger King private and revived its sales.

But the packaged food business presented new challenges. Consumers were shifting to eating more fresh food. Plus, retailers’ private-label brands and newcomers touting themselves as a healthier option were stealing Big Food’s shoppers. Kraft Heinz sought to drive inorganic growth through a takeover bid for Unilever, but the Popsicle owner rejected its offer.
Then a disastrous quarter came for Kraft Heinz in 2019. In a single earnings report, the company slashed its dividend, disclosed a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into its accounting practices and wrote down its brands by $15 billion.
Several months later, Buffett told CNBC that Berkshire and 3G overpaid for Kraft Heinz, buoyed by optimism that its brands were more valuable than they actually were. Still, he stood by both 3G and Kraft Heinz. Other investors blamed 3G’s aggressive cost cutting for the company’s troubles.
To reverse the company’s downward spiral, 3G handpicked the food giant’s new chief executive, an AB InBev veteran, and Kraft Heinz went into turnaround mode. The company announced plans to ramp up its marketing and advertising spending and shift its strategy for making new products. To reduce its exposure to private-label competition, it also sold its cheese business to Lactalis, a French dairy giant, and its Planters nuts brand to Hormel.
In 2021, 3G founding partner Jorge Paulo Lemann stepped down from Kraft Heinz’s board. The following year, fellow founding partner Alexandre Behring left the board. And two months after Behring’s departure, 3G’s final board member, former AB InBev CEO Joao Castro-Neves, also stepped down. Kraft Heinz disclosed his departure in a regulatory filing but no press release — or fanfare — accompanied it.
3G had been periodically trimming its stake in Kraft Heinz since 2018. When it sold 25 million shares in 2019, at the height of the company’s troubles, the stock fell 4% in response to the disclosure. In 2022, it distributed about 7% of Kraft Heinz to investors in its fund, which reportedly included tennis star Roger Federer.
Last year, Kraft Heinz tapped Carlos Abrams-Rivera as its new chief executive. While he’s been with the company since 2020, he’s notably the company’s first CEO without ties to 3G. More

General Motors has redesigned Buick’s flagship Enclave SUV as the latest testament to the automaker’s ongoing reinvention of the roughly 125-year-old brand.
The updates to the 2025 Enclave — from new tech to exterior to interior redesigns — complete Buick’s refresh of its current four-vehicle lineup.
GM is expected to expand Buick’s lineup with a new all-electric vehicle as soon as this year and is conducting several “design studies” to determine what’s next for the once-dominant American brand.

 2025 Buick Enclave

WARREN, Mich. — General Motors has redesigned Buick’s flagship Enclave SUV as the latest testament to the automaker’s ongoing reinvention of the roughly 125-year-old brand.
The updates to the 2025 Enclave — from new tech to exterior to interior redesigns — complete Buick’s refresh of its current four-vehicle lineup. In 2022, Buick unveiled an aggressive concept vehicle called the Wildcat, kicking off the brand’s new design direction.

While the Enclave is the latest of Buick’s current vehicles to receive the Wildcat treatment, it may not be the last. GM is expected to expand Buick’s lineup with a new all-electric vehicle as soon as this year and is conducting several “design studies” to determine what’s next for the once-dominant American brand.
“I’m really excited about what the brand is becoming again,” GM President Mark Reuss said during a media event at the company’s design and technology campus in suburban Detroit. “[It’s a] really talented team, really talented execution, globally.”
Reuss, who started his career with Buick as a transmission calibrator, said the design team, led by Bob Boniface, has done a great job of “bringing life back into Buick design.”

 2025 Buick Enclave

The 2025 Enclave is longer, wider and taller than the current model. It also features a more aggressive exterior design, including a larger front grill and Buick’s new “reverse check mark” headlights.
“[It’s] the flagship of the Buick brand,” said Boniface during a media event. “We talked a lot about the visual DNA and here you see it, how it translates into our largest vehicle in the range … it’s masterful use of the surface language.”

The rear appears much more truck-like, with lots of angles and wide tail lamps across the SUV.
Inside is a new redesigned interior that features a “floating” center console that doesn’t attach to the vehicle’s front instrumental panel. It also includes a standard 30-inch diagonal, curved infotainment screen.

 2025 Buick Enclave

Super Cruise, GM’s hands-free highway driving system, will be offered on each of the Enclave’s three trims: Preferred, ST and Avenir. Also standard are front heated seats, wireless charging and other safety and convenience features.
GM is ditching a current V6 variant of the Enclave due to fuel economy in exchange for a standard 2.5-liter turbocharged engine with 328 horsepower and 326 foot-pounds of torque.
The automaker said 2025 Enclave pricing will be announced closer to when the vehicle enters production at a plant in mid-Michigan. Current starting prices range from roughly $43,300 to more than $60,000.

Buick transformation

Buick’s current lineup includes the Encore GX, Envista, Envision and Enclave crossovers/SUVs. It previously said its new EVs, starting in 2024, would all use the name Electra — a name the brand has used since 1959.
Company executives and spokespeople declined to reconfirm the timing of the new EV, saying it could launch in 2025. The brand’s website still says the vehicle’s expected availability is 2024.
Duncan Aldred, global vice president of Buick, called the brand’s progress a “pretty miraculous transformation.” He declined to comment on any additional nameplates to Buick’s U.S. lineup in the years to come.

Buick Wildcat concept

“As you see, there’s a lot of energy, enthusiasm, passion; people keep doing things, and it informs the future,” said Aldred, who also heads GM’s GMC brand. “You’re going to have to watch this space to see what comes next.”
GM as a whole is evaluating its product portfolios amid slower-than-expected adoption of electric vehicles and changes to federal fuel emissions to better incorporate hybrids and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles alongside EVs.
In 2022, Buick announced plans to exclusively offer all-electric vehicles by 2030. (GM as a whole previously announced a target to exclusively offer EVs to consumers by 2035.) Aldred, echoing prior comments from GM CEO Mary Barra, said the brand’s future regarding EVs will be based on customer demand.
Buick’s U.S. sales increased 16.4% during the first quarter, building on a 61.4% increase in overall sales last year compared to modest results in 2022.

 2025 Buick Enclave

Despite the sales growth last year to 167,030 units, the results remained roughly 40,000 units lower than in 2019, prior to the coronavirus pandemic causing yearslong supply chain and production problems.
Much of the growth for Buick came from incremental sales gains from its new entry-level Envista crossover, which was the brand’s third best-selling vehicle during the first quarter of this year at nearly 10,000 units.
Buick has also been growing its lineup and increasing average transaction prices for its top-end “Avenir” models across its lineup. Avenir models represented about 25% of Buick’s sales during the first quarter of this year.
Aldred said he believes Buick can continue to grow U.S. sales with its new vehicle lineup, especially as Envista production ramps up and the 2025 Enclave arrives in dealerships this summer.

Duncan Aldred, vice president of Buick-GMC sales for General Motors Co., speaks next to a GMC Sierra Denali HD truck displayed during an event in Chula Vista, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2019.
Sandy Huffaker | Bloomberg via Getty Images

“When that does come out, we believe we’ll have the freshest portfolio in the industry at that point,” Aldred said. “Every vehicle, really performing very, very strongly.”
That’s not the same situation in China, where Buick and other non-domestic brands have been struggling. Sales of Buicks in China have fallen roughly 40% to about 517,000 units from 2019 to 2023. That has coincided with a 32% decline in sales during that time for GM in China, where the prominence of local car manufacturers is on the upswing.
“The market has changed rapidly … just in terms of the number of brands on sale,” Aldred said. “It proliferates the market, it just does, but Buick remains healthy and successful there.”

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Cities of Success

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Denver, an epicenter for craft breweries, has seen a surge in recent years in nonalcoholic beer and spirits.
The interest is due in part to the active and health-conscious lifestyles of Denver residents, local breweries said.

Denver Beer Co.
Courtesy: Denver Beer Co.

This story is part of CNBC’s new quarterly Cities of Success series, which explores cities that have been transformed into business hubs with an entrepreneurial spirit that has attracted capital, companies and workers.
Alcohol-free beverage options have skyrocketed over the past few years, and that trend has especially picked up in the form of nonalcoholic beer in Denver, an epicenter for craft breweries.

The city, nestled in the Rocky Mountains, has embraced the alcohol-free trend as breweries increasingly shift to incorporating more inclusive beverages into their offerings.
Nonalcoholic options on menus increased more than 55% from the fourth quarter of 2022 to the same period in 2023, according to data from Technomic, a food service research and consulting firm.
Though nonalcoholic beers have been around since Anheuser-Busch launched O’Doul’s in 1990, recent surges in interest driven primarily by younger and more health-conscious consumers have caused an explosion in the sector, Technomic found.
And analysts forecast that interest will keep growing. Between 2022 and 2026, nonalcoholic beer volumes are expected to grow by about 25%, according to data from the IWSR, an alcoholic beverage insights company.
And according to data from NielsenIQ, a consumer buying behavior database, Colorado was the second-highest state accounting for nonalcoholic beverage investment in 2023.

“People are becoming more and more curious, and since Denver is a city with a lot of people that are outside exercising and staying fit, there are a lot of people who are interested in lowering their alcohol intake and staying healthy,” Keith Villa, co-founder and brewmaster of Ceria Brewing Company in Colorado, told CNBC. “In our case, we’re starting to see more and more people be educated about nonalcoholic and alcohol-free beer and start to reach for our products.”

Keith Villa., Ceria Brewing Company
Ceria Brewing Company

Ceria, launched by Villa and his wife, Jodi, in 2018, fully focuses on the alcohol-free beer market, which Villa said is “growing every day.” The beer has been especially appealing to younger consumers, he added.
Nonalcoholic and alcohol-free beer can be made one of four ways, Villa said: removing the alcohol with vacuum distillation, running the alcohol through a series of filters, using specialty yeast or making a low-alcohol beer and diluting it with water. Because those processes are expensive and time-consuming, Villa said it’s difficult for breweries to create nonalcoholic spirits.
But as beer consumption across the board continues to decline, Villa said more breweries in Denver are hopping on the trend.
“The market is getting more difficult for craft brewers, so in order to bring some money into their business, they’re starting to sell nonalcoholic beers,” he said. “There’s a demand out there, but the beers do have to be made the right way. As long as we oversee each other and help each other, we can make sure people have a good choice of products that are safe to consume.”

Keith and Jodi Villa.
Courtesy: Ceria Brewing Company

Denver’s beer scene

Food trend expert Kara Nielsen said that because Denver is such a beer-centric city, the rise of nonalcoholic beer and spirits fits with the city’s narrative.
“People [in Denver] like to play hard and then celebrate,” said Nielsen, who formerly lived in Denver. “In the last three to four years, there have been more and more very well-made nonalcoholic beers, including breweries in Colorado. It’s become more of a choice.”
Denver-based brewery Grüvi capitalized on that choice, providing a wide range of nonalcoholic offerings since its founding five years ago. Co-founder Niki Sawni said the company chose Colorado as its base because of its residents’ preferences for a healthier lifestyle and the subsequent potential for growth in the alcohol-free market.
Sawni said his customers were mostly health-conscious consumers at first. But then, he said, nonalcoholic and alcohol-free beer became trendy, attracting more mainstream customers. Almost every bar or restaurant in the area soon added zero-proof options in response, he said.
“It was just this realization that there was a gap in the market for when you didn’t want to drink — you were left choosing between sparkling water or pop or something that wasn’t a middle ground to enjoy that didn’t have alcohol but still allows you to have that sociability,” Sawni said. “That’s why we chose ‘Grüvi’ — it means fun and playful, and five years ago, nonalcoholic products were the opposite of that. So we were like, ‘OK, how can we try to make something that was so uncool popular?'”
And as his company has found success, Sawni said he’s also seeing an encouraging trend with larger, legacy alcoholic breweries that are now offering support and collaboration in a “symbiotic relationship” that hasn’t led to any competition.

Niki and Anika Sawni, founders of Grüvi.
Courtesy: Grüvi

One of those larger breweries is Denver Beer Co., founded 13 years ago with a single taproom. Now, the company has multiple taprooms across the area and has begun incorporating sparkling hop water, a nonalcoholic alternative, into its menus.
“At the end of the day, we’re a beer company, but we also understand there’s this desire from consumers to have a product that’s nonalcoholic,” CEO Robert MacEachern said. ‘With our ethos of being inclusive, we want as many people to enjoy our spaces, so this was a natural extension for us for people to enjoy our space.”
For Denver Beer Co., the nonalcoholic trend has allowed the brewery to remain true to its core identity while also adapting to its customers’ tastes. MacEachern said he’s especially seen interest in the nonalcoholic beverages from run clubs or bike clubs that meet in the summer and are looking for something refreshing while still getting the taproom experience.
And though alcoholic beer will always remain the company’s foundational identity, MacEachern said hop water has become “part of who we are.”
“Denver is the epicenter of craft beer. We’re rooted in that industry. People in Denver embrace change and innovation, and that’s allowed us to be successful while dealing with this nonalcoholic wave of behavior,” he said. “We’ll continue to build brand and brand equity — not just us, but all the craft beer companies. Nonalcoholic beer becomes an addition to who we are and not a subtraction.” More