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Writers and producers are near an agreement to end the Writers Guild of America strike after meeting face-to-face on Wednesday, people close to the negotiations told CNBC.
The two sides met and hope to finalize a deal Thursday, the sources said. While optimistic, the people noted, however, that if a deal is not reached the strike could last through the end of the year.
On Wednesday evening, the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers released a joint statement that the two groups met for bargaining and would meet again Thursday.

Writers and producers are near an agreement to end the Writers Guild of America strike after meeting face-to-face on Wednesday, people close to the negotiations told CNBC’s David Faber on Wednesday.
The two sides met and hope to finalize a deal Thursday, the sources said. While optimistic, the people told Faber, however, that if a deal is not reached the strike could last through the end of the year.

On Wednesday evening, the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers released a joint statement that the two groups met for bargaining and would negotiate again on Thursday. Representatives didn’t respond to requests for further comment.
WGA members have been on strike for more than 100 days — with actors joining the picket line in July — leaving Hollywood production of TV shows and movies at a standstill. Production has been halted for several high-profile shows and films, including Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” Disney and Marvel’s “Blade,” and Paramount’s “Evil.”
Earlier in the week, the writers’ union said it would resume negotiations with the studios.
This appears to be the closest the two sides have come to a resolution since the more than 11,000 film and TV writers went on strike beginning May 2. They have argued their compensation doesn’t match the revenue that’s been generated during the streaming era.
Beyond higher compensation, the WGA has been pushing for new rules that would require studios to staff TV shows with a certain number of writers for a certain period. The writers are also seeking compensation throughout the process of preproduction, production and postproduction. As of now, writers are often expected to provide revisions or come up with new material without being paid.

In late August, the AMPTP went public with its latest proposal to the WGA at the time and tensions between the two groups appeared to remain high.

Discussions between the studios and writers have included sit-down conversations with top media brass, including Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, Disney’s Bob Iger, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos and NBCUniversal film head Donna Langley.
The strikes have weighed on these media companies as they grapple with making streaming profitable and getting people back in theaters.
Warner Bros. Discovery — the owner of a TV and film studio, as well as the largest portfolio of pay TV networks — warned investors of the effects of the strikes earlier this month when it adjusted its earnings expectations. The company said it now expects that its adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization will take a hit of $300 million to $500 million, with a full-year range of $10.5 billion to $11 billion.
At a conference earlier this month, Zaslav called for an end to the writers and actors strikes.
“We need to do everything we can to get people back to work,” Zaslav said at the investors’ conference. “We really have to focus as an industry, and we are, on trying to get this resolved in a way that’s really fair.”
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. NBCUniversal is a member of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. More

Tech bosses have long sought to disrupt the initial public offering (IPO). They bristle at the thought of the high fees collected by spreadsheet-savvy investment bankers for flogging their vision, at the alchemical process of divvying up shares to new investors and at the money left on the table when the price of a company’s shares soars as soon as they begin trading on an exchange. Many plans have been hatched to improve the process, with varying degrees of success. When going public in 2004 Google botched a “Dutch” auction for its shares, which started with the highest bid and worked downwards, rather than upwards, to a price that matches the supply of shares to investors’ demand. As a final insult to the formalities of the normal IPO process, an interview with the search giant’s founders was published, of all places, in Playboy magazine, and of all times, during the supposedly “quiet period” in the run-up to their company’s stockmarket debut.Little of this bravado was on display on September 19th, when Instacart was welcomed on New York’s Nasdaq exchange. The grocery-delivery firm is one of the latest to ring the bell after an almost two-year drought in IPO activity. Instacart sold its shares for $30 a pop, the top of a price range that had been revised higher in the days before its listing. Their price closed a further 12% above that after the first day of trading, giving the firm a market value of $11bn. That was the second strong debut in as many weeks. On September 14th Arm’s share price climbed by 25% after its Japanese owner, SoftBank, floated around 10% of the chip designer’s stock on the Nasdaq.On the surface, Arm and Instacart look rather different. Instacart’s market capitalisation is less than a quarter that of Arm. Its business of connecting shoppers with people who buy and ferry their groceries looks less exciting than chipmaking, an industry at the heart of the artificial-intelligence (AI) revolution. Yet both firms are, in various ways, indicative of what to expect from the gathering wave of public listings. This is likely to be less audacious than the last bonanza in 2021. And that may be for the better.Although Instacart’s first-day pop was mostly undone the next day, the fact that the share price did not sink below the offer price may inspire confidence in other startups. Plenty are looking for inspiration. According to data from PitchBook, around half of the 83 unlisted American firms that were first valued at more than $1bn in 2019 have either gone public, gone bankrupt or gone on sale. For the significantly larger class of 2021, composed of nearly 360 such “unicorns”, the share drops to 6%. Having missed out on the listing boom of 2020-21, many may now be ready to trade in the relative quietude of private-company life for the drudgery of quarterly earnings calls, not least to provide liquidity for their shareholders, including stock-option-holding employees.Many investors are ready to back them but, in contrast to the go-go years, not unconditionally. For a start, hand-on-heart promises of future growth count for less in an era of high interest rates than profits in the here and now. According to Goldman Sachs, a bank, nearly half of the class of 2020-21 failed to post even one profitable quarter within two years of listing. Emphasis on profitability in turn favours more mature companies. Data collected by Jay Ritter of the University of Florida show that the share of firms that were lossmaking before listing fell from 81% in 2000 to less than half in the subsequent three years, after the dotcom bubble burst. In that period the median age of a listing firm rose from six years to more than ten. Few fresh listers are quite as mature as Birkenstock, a nearly 250-year-old German sandal-maker about to list in New York. But many are at least adolescent. Klaviyo, which helps clients automate marketing and listed on September 20th, was founded in 2012. So was Instacart. Arm turns 33 in November. Startups that barely manage to edge into the black, as Instacart did for the first time in 2022, should prepare to go public at a steep discount to their peak private-market valuations. Jefferies, an investment bank, estimates that in the first half of this year stakes in venture-capital funds changed hands at an average of 69% of their reported asset values. This is already translating into compressed valuations on public stock exchanges. Instacart’s market capitalisation is around a quarter of the $39bn implied by its last private funding round in February 2021, when Silicon Valley venture investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia pumped $265m into the firm.The way companies are listing their shares is also looking less exuberant. Bosses considering a listing in 2021 had two novel paths to the market, in addition to the old-school IPO. One was to merge with one of the more than 800 special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), which raised $220bn in 2020 and 2021, and allowed startups to escape some of the scrutiny of conventional IPOs. The other, a direct listing, involved floating shares without the usual IPO roadshow to drum up investors’ interest and line up buyers, for which investment bankers charge companies through the roof. But SPACs often attracted firms which had less sensible business models, or less scrupulous ones. After a series of scandals and disappointments, SPACs look dead in the water.Whatever floats your basketToday’s nervy investors may balk even at the less controversial direct listings, which can be more volatile since they do away with some of the pre-flotation price discovery. Indeed, what little IPO innovation there is aims to smooth the listing process in a jittery environment. Notably, both Arm and Instacart lined up big-name investors to buy slugs of shares in their offerings. These included, among others, Alphabet, Apple and Nvidia for Arm, and, for Instacart, Norway’s sovereign-wealth fund and PepsiCo. The practice has historically been more prevalent in cautiously capitalist Asia. America’s turbocharged capitalism may need to get used to it, too, at least temporarily. ■Read more from Schumpeter, our columnist on global business:The Mittelstand will redeem German innovation (Sept 14th)America’s bosses just won’t quit. That could spell trouble (Sep 4th)Cherish your Uber drivers. Soon they will be robots (Aug 31st)Also: If you want to write directly to Schumpeter, email him at [email protected]. And here is an explanation of how the Schumpeter column got its name. More

Adidas CEO Bjorn Gulden said Kanye West didn’t mean it when he made a series of antisemitic remarks.
“Very unfortunate because I don’t think he meant what he said and I don’t think he’s a bad person — it just came across that way,” Gulden said on the podcast “In Good Company.”
Adidas ended its Yeezy partnership last fall after Ye was widely condemned for antisemitism.

Shoes are offered for sale at an Adidas store in Chicago, Feb. 10, 2023.
Scott Olson | Getty Images

Adidas CEO Bjorn Gulden defended Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, and said the rapper didn’t mean it when he made a series of antisemitic remarks.
In a conversation on philanthropist Nicolai Tangen’s podcast “In Good Company,” Gulden was asked about the retailer’s partnership with Ye and how its Yeezy collaboration fell apart. 

“He did some statements, which wasn’t that good and that caused Adi to break the contract and withdraw the product,” Gulden said on the program, which aired Sept. 12. 
“Very unfortunate because I don’t think he meant what he said and I don’t think he’s a bad person — it just came across that way,” he added.
Last fall, the German sneaker giant announced it was ending its highly lucrative partnership with Ye and pulling Yeezy products from its shelves after he made a series of widely criticized antisemitic remarks. 
“I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE,” Ye wrote in a since deleted post on Oct. 9.
Following widespread public outcry, Adidas announced it had ended its relationship with Ye, stopped production of Yeezy-branded products and ended all payments to Ye and his companies. 

Foot Locker and Gap soon followed suit and announced they would pull Yeezy products from their stores.
Gulden, who was named CEO of Adidas about a month after the scandal unfolded, called the company’s breakup with Ye “very sad” because it meant that the retailer “lost that business,” which he described as one of the most successful collaborations in history. 
“You know when you work with third parties, that could happen and you know it’s part of the game. That can happen with an athlete, it can happen with an entertainer, so it’s part of the business,” said Gulden. 
Earlier in the show, Gulden called Ye “one of the most creative people in the world,” both in terms of music and street culture. 
Despite the public comments from its chief executive, an Adidas spokesperson told CNBC that the company’s position on Ye “has not changed.”
Adidas CEO Bjorn Gulden defended Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, and said the rapper didn’t mean it when he made a series of antisemitic remarks.
“Ending the partnership was appropriate,” the spokesperson said. More

The Biden administration said it will resume offering free at-home Covid tests to American households Monday as the virus gains a stronger foothold nationwide. 
Americans will soon be able to use COVIDtests.gov to request four free tests, the administration said in a release. 
The government had offered free test kits through that website since January 2022, but the site stopped taking orders June 1 to conserve supplies of the tests. 

Covid-19 home test kits are pictured in a store window during the Covid-19 pandemic in the Manhattan borough of New York City, Jan. 19, 2022.
Carlo Allegri | Reuters

The Biden administration on Wednesday said it will resume offering free at-home Covid tests to American households Monday as the virus gains a stronger foothold nationwide. 
Americans will soon be able to use COVIDtests.gov to request four free tests, the administration said in a release. 

The government had offered free test kits through that website since January 2022, but the site stopped taking orders June 1 of this year to conserve supplies of the tests. 
The government is relaunching the program in time for the fall and winter when the virus typically spreads at higher levels. Covid hospitalizations have already increased for eight straight weeks — an uptick primarily driven by newer strains of the virus.
But the Biden administration noted that the at-home tests set to be delivered will detect currently circulating Covid variants. The kits are intended for use through the end of 2023 and will come with instructions for how people can verify if a test’s expiration date has been extended, the administration added.
Testing is a critical tool for protection as Covid infections climb again. But lab PCR tests — the traditional method of detecting Covid — have become more expensive and less accessible for some Americans since the U.S. government ended the public health emergency in May. 
The end of that declaration also changed how public and private insurers cover at-home tests, potentially leaving some people unable to get those tests for free through their plans. But certain local health clinics and community sites still offer at-home tests to the public at no cost. 

Also on Wednesday, the Biden administration said it will provide $600 million to strengthen manufacturing capacity at 12 Covid test manufacturers across the country. The administration expects to secure about 200 million tests from those companies. 
“These critical investments will strengthen our nation’s production levels of domestic at-home COVID-19 rapid tests and help mitigate the spread of the virus,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement. More

Anheuser-Busch is ending the controversial practice of cutting off the tails of its Clydesdale horses for cosmetic purposes.
Animal rights groups including PETA have decried the practice as “crude mutilation” and spent months protesting the company.
The Clydesdale-drawn beer wagon appears at hundreds of events across the country and has become a staple in Budweiser’s marketing since its debut nearly a century ago.

Budweiser Clydesdales handler walks several Clydesdales in Houston, March 31, 2014.
James Nielsen | Houston Chronicle via Getty Images

Anheuser-Busch InBev said it will no longer cut the tails of the iconic Clydesdale horses used in its signature Budweiser commercials and at events, following extended backlash from animal rights groups.
The beverage maker, which has seen sales suffer after criticism of its partnership with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney, debuted its horse-drawn beer wagon nearly a century ago to celebrate the repeal of Prohibition of beer. The Clydesdale horses instantly became a hit with audiences and Anheuser-Busch has since used them in hundreds of appearances across the country each year for parades, television commercials and Super Bowl events.

However, the practice known as “docking,” which can involve cutting through a horse’s tailbone, has come under scrutiny. Anheuser-Busch on Wednesday said it has stopped cutting off tails.
“The practice of equine tail docking was discontinued earlier this year,” a spokesperson for the company said. “The safety and well-being of our beloved Clydesdales is our top priority.”
Tailbone amputation for cosmetic reasons is illegal in 10 states and multiple countries. The American Veterinary Medical Association has also condemned it.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said an investigation it conducted found Budweiser horses had their tails docked for cosmetic reasons, and it decried the practice as “crude mutilation.” PETA said it found some representatives for Anheuser-Busch have said they trimmed the hairs on the tails rather than cut them off.
Earlier this month, an international coalition of animal protection organizations, including PETA, sent a letter to Anheuser-Busch urging the beer maker to end the practice. PETA even purchased stock in the company to voice concerns at shareholder meetings, in addition to protests and other actions the group took.

In a statement to CNBC, PETA said it’s celebrating the beer maker’s decision to stop cutting horse tails by “cracking open some cold ones.”
In addition to saying it would stop the practice, the company also announced a new partnership with American Humane, the world’s largest certifier of animal welfare practices. More

Tobacco giant Philip Morris International is considering selling off a stake in its largest pharmaceuticals unit.
The company has been making inroads into the wellness and health-care space in recent years as it pivots toward becoming a business focused on smoke-free products and respiratory medicines.
More recently, the division has struggled, and Philip Morris has had talks with Deutsche Bank on a range of options to try to grow its wellness and health-care division.

A Vectura Group logo is seen on a smartphone and a PC screen.
Pavlo Gonchar | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Philip Morris International is considering selling off a stake in its largest pharmaceuticals unit.
The tobacco company, which makes Marlboro cigarettes, made inroads into the health care and wellness space in 2021 with the acquisition of Vectura, a U.K.-based pharmaceutical company that makes inhaled medicines and inhaler devices.

But more recently, the division has struggled, and Philip Morris has had talks with Deutsche Bank on a range of options to try to grow its wellness and health-care division, The Wall Street Journal first reported.
The company has been looking for a new partner to help boost Vectura, and it’s contemplating different options including a licensing or royalties deal, a commercial partnership or a sale of a majority or minority stake in the business.
In recent years, Philip Morris has also acquired Fertin Pharma, a nicotine gum maker, and OtiTopic, a respiratory drugmaker.
The three deals, which together totaled more than $2 billion, were part of the company’s broader, long-term pivot toward developing smoke-free products and medicines aimed at treating respiratory diseases commonly associated with cigarette smoking.
The acquisitions, however, triggered backlash from the public health sector. In the second quarter of this year, the company took a $680 million impairment charge related to its wellness and health-care division.

At the time of the Vectura deal, Philip Morris said the acquisition would grow its “Beyond Nicotine” business and help the division achieve its goal of generating at least $1 billion in net revenues from these products by 2025. Following the setbacks, Philip Morris walked back on that goal and said it would begin reducing its investments in the division.
The company, in its Q2 earnings call, said it nevertheless will “remain committed to developing” its wellness and health-care business and it plans to “accelerate Vectura’s growth and will be exploring potential partnerships.”
The news comes as the tobacco company continues to face resistance from public health groups. This week, Philip Morris had its CEO removed from the lineup at the Concordia Annual Summit, a side event to the United Nations General Assembly meeting held in New York every September, after health experts refused to speak at the conference in protest against his appearance.
Concordia also rescinded Philip Morris’ membership in the conference effective immediately. More

The car industry faces unprecedented upheaval as the importance of the internal-combustion engine, which has defined it for more than a century, declines and that of battery power, which will define its future, rises. The latest reverberation of this historic shock is now rippling through the four-yearly contract negotiations between Detroit’s “big three” carmakers and its biggest trade union. On September 15th, for the first time ever, members of the United Auto Workers (uaw) began simultaneous industrial action against Chrysler, General Motors (GM) and Ford. (Chrysler is part of Stellantis, whose biggest shareholder part-owns The Economist’s parent company.) The union’s tactical change foreshadows a protracted stand-off, the stakes of which are high for the union and the carmakers alike.In the past the UAW renegotiated its contract with one of the big three, with the other two usually falling into line with any agreements. In 2019 the renegotiation happened at gm, which reached a deal with the union only after a six-week strike by 48,000 workers had cut production by 300,000 vehicles, costing the company $3.6bn in net profit. Even though this time the industrial action is affecting all three companies, it is more targeted. The three factories affected so far together employ only 13,000 of the uaw’s 146,000 members who work at the Detroit trio. As a result, reckons Evercore isi, a bank, only up to 20,000 vehicles might be lost in the first week of the strike.That could change if the talks do not move fast enough. The uaw has threatened to tighten the screw considerably if no progress is made by September 22nd. In particular, extending the strikes to factories making engines could result in 150,000 unmade vehicles a week, because other plants that depend on powertrains are also forced to stop production. Hitting the manufacture of lucrative pickups would inflict even more duress on the companies. The union thinks it can afford to dig in, thanks to a $825m strike fund that could pay $500 a week to all the uaw‘s big-three members for 11 weeks. It also has the public on its side; two in three Americans tell pollsters they support unions, almost an all-time high.The UAW argues that American carmakers’ recent good fortune should be shared out more evenly, pointing to record profits and ballooning bosses’ pay. The self-styled “audacious and ambitious” set of demands from Shawn Fain, the uaw’s newish leader, includes a cumulative pay rise of 36% over the next four years. Also on the wish list are a return of more generous pension provisions and a rapid end to a scheme introduced in 2007 after bail-outs induced by the financial crisis, whereby new workers are paid less than existing employees.The car giants have countered by offering a pay increase of around 20% and some other concessions. They contend that meeting all the union’s demands would frustrate their costly efforts to turn themselves from manufacturers of gas-guzzlers into software-powered makers of electric vehicles (EVs). Ford says that this would more than double its labour costs. These, the firm adds, are already much higher than at Tesla, a non-unionised EV pioneer, or at foreign-owned factories with similarly unorganised workforces. And far from paying the “poverty wages” as Mr Fain claims, Ford says that its offer would boost average annual pay and benefits from $112,000 to $133,000.The carmakers are right to worry about rising costs. The uaw, for its part, may well see the current moment as its last chance to stay relevant before more of the industry switches to EVs, which are less mechanically complicated and so less labour-intensive to make. This is signalled by another of its demands—the right to strike over factory closures. Its insistence on that suggests that in four years’ time the negotiations will not be so much about money. Instead, they could be more like a rerun of 2019, when one of the main points of contention was gm’s decision to close four plants—but on a much larger scale. ■ More