Business

Shares of DWAC gained 66% Monday, pushing the company’s market value over $1 billion for the first time since August.
“In a very, very, very short period of time, you’re going to be very happy,” the former president told supporters in a Pennsylvania rally on Saturday.
Trump Media’s merger with the SPAC still faces some legal and financial hurdles.

The social media app will be developed by Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG).
Rafael Henrique | LightRocket | Getty Images

Shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp., the company set to take Trump Media and Technology Group public, spiked Monday after former president Donald Trump hinted at a 2024 presidential run.
Shares of DWAC gained 66% Monday, pushing the company’s market value over $1 billion for the first time since August. The stock is still down 43% year to date as the special purpose acquisition company navigates financial and legal troubles.

“In a very, very, very short period of time, you’re going to be very happy,” Trump told supporters in a Pennsylvania rally on Saturday, going on to mention “taking back” America in 2024.
Trump’s presidential run would likely drive traffic to Trump Media’s Truth Social platform, where he has agreed to post content exclusively for eight hours before posting it elsewhere. However, the company still faces a hurdle to completing its acquisition of Trump Media and the Truth Social platform.
DWAC is still working to secure enough shareholder support to extend the deadline for the merger to September 2023. The vote has been adjourned six times, and will take place again Nov. 22.
The deal is also the subject of a criminal probe into possible securities violations over discussions that took place between DWAC and Trump Media prior to the merger announcement.
The delays have resulted in at least $138 million of a $1 billion investment in DWAC being pulled from the company, and the former president himself has suggested the SPAC combination may not go through.

“If they don’t come with the financing I’ll have it private,” Trump said to supporters in early October at a rally in Michigan. “Easy to have it private.”
There’s also concern that Trump could defect from his own platform. Internal documents revealed that he was approached with opportunities from alternative platforms Gettr and Parler before committing to the Trump Media enterprise. And Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk has said he would reinstate Trump’s account on that social platform after he was banned following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
While Trump praised Musk’s acquisition, he has committed to remaining on Truth Social.

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Wells Fargo downgraded Club holding Costco (COST) in a rare move Monday, citing “brewing headwinds” to the wholesale retailer’s growth momentum. We think this call is a mistake and see Costco as a buy here, given the value it continues to offer its customer base amid a deteriorating economy. Analysts at Wells Fargo said their downgrade to the equivalent of neutral from buy was based on growing evidence of slowing food price inflation — which had benefited Costco given its competitive offerings — along with softer fuel traffic comparisons and overall weaker consumer demand. “Costco remains a high quality name, but we see a number of hurdles in the path of this rich multiple stock moving forward,” the analysts wrote in a note. Wells Fargo also lowered its price target for Costco to $490 a share from $600 a share. The Club took issue with the downgrade of such a solidly recession-resistant retailer. “It does have a rich premium, but this is one of the most dependable companies in any type of economic climate ,” Jeff Marks, director of portfolio analysis at the Investing Club, said Monday. Costco’s stock slid around 1% in early trading before edging up Monday afternoon to close at $488.55 a share. The stock has fallen 15% this year, but continues to outperform the broader market, with the S & P 500 down roughly 21% year-to-date. Wells Fargo’s take Costco saw heightened consumer demand last year due to tailwinds from Covid-19, as consumers spent more time at home and stocked up on household essentials. But this year, as life has returned to some level of normalcy for many Americans, Costco’s membership-only retail business could see sales come under pressure if demand is softer, Wells Fargo said. “It does appear that COST’s traffic has moderated recently. We have become increasingly concerned about how staples retail stocks react to slowing top-line momentum, and COST may have more exposure to this issue given its relatively high multiple,” the analysts wrote. Wells Fargo also cited expected easing in fuel margins at the retailer, which sells gasoline, and potential currency headwinds. But Wells Fargo’s take on Costco is hardly unanimous on Wall Street. Analysts at Stifel last week said they continue to see Costco as a “best-in-class retailer” and a “core holding for large-cap consumer investors.” That research note came on the heels of Costco releasing sales data for October, which showed an uptick of 6.7% but came in behind September’s sales growth of 8.6%. Despite the month-over-month slowdown, Stifel analysts found that Costco’s 2-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for same store sales in October accelerated for the fourth consecutive month. The Club take We think Wells Fargo’s analysis on Costco underappreciates the full value of its business model and does not change our view that Costco is a market leader in the retail space. It’s important to understand how Costco runs its business because that’s where it drives an unparalleled value proposition to its customers. Costco focuses on increasing membership at its global warehouses, where it derives most of its revenue. The wholesale retailer has been able to maintain strong membership renewal rates because it can pass along vendor discounts to members that it receives from the high volume of foods it buys. Furthermore, we see the possibility of a special dividend, last distributed in November 2020, as a catalyst that could boost the stock. This dividend has been paid out to investors four times within the past eight years. Additionally, management could raise membership fees in 2023, further supporting top line growth. While shares of Costco are valued at a premium, we think it’s justified given the company’s steady earnings growth. As we’ve said before, Costco is the best retailer to own in a challenging economy, and we believe it can continue to outperform its competitors as consumers search for cost-saving deals. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long COST. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.

Customers carry their items after shopping at Costco in Washington D.C., May 5, 2021.
Ting Shen | Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images

Wells Fargo downgraded Club holding Costco (COST) in a rare move Monday, citing “brewing headwinds” to the wholesale retailer’s growth momentum. We think this call is a mistake and see Costco as a buy here, given the value it continues to offer its customer base amid a deteriorating economy. More

The bad news just keeps coming. Ten months after America’s stockmarket peaked, its big technology companies have suffered another rout. Hopes that the Federal Reserve might change course have been dashed; interest rates are set to rise by more than previously thought. The bond market is screaming recession. Could things get any worse? The answer is yes. Stockmarket booms of the sort that crested in January tend to engender fraud. Bad times like those that lie ahead reveal it. “There is an inverse relationship between interest rates and dishonesty,” says Carson Block, a short-seller. Quite so. A decade of ultra-low borrowing costs has encouraged companies to load up on cheap debt. And debt can hide a lot of misdeeds. They are uncovered when credit dries up. The global financial crisis of 2007-09 exposed fraud and negligence in mortgage lending. The stockmarket bust of the early 2000s unmasked the deceptions of the dotcom bonanza and the book-cooking at Enron, WorldCom and Global Crossing. Those with longer memories in Britain will recall the Polly Peck and Maxwell scandals at the end of the go-go 1980s. The next downturn seems likely to uncover a similar wave of corporate fraud. Where, exactly, is hard to know in advance, fraud-busters concede. Everyone has a favourite hunch. The rush to comply with the demands of environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing seems ripe for more imbroglios; in May German police raided the offices of dws, an asset manager, over claims of greenwashing. The various government schemes to shore up businesses in the pandemic are another candidate. They were designed to be tapped quickly, so checks were by necessity lax. Evidence of fraud is already emerging. The archetypal sin revealed by recession is accounting fraud. The big scandals play out like tragic dramas: when the plot twist arrives, it seems both surprising and inevitable. No simple formula exists to sort the number-fiddlers from the rest. But the field can be narrowed by searching within the “fraud triangle” of financial pressure, opportunity and rationalisation.Start with pressure. Sometimes this is self-imposed. If you make the cover of “Business Genius Monthly”, in Mr Block’s words, “the guy on the cover becomes your identity, the ceo of a high-flying firm.” Fessing up that the firm is not flying high becomes unthinkable. Often it is the result of external expectations, says Andi McNeal of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, a 90,000-strong professional body based in Texas. The expectations to be met—or gamed—can be regulatory: think of how bankers pulled the wool over the eyes of their watchdogs before the financial crisis; or how Volkswagen deceived environmental agencies about the pollution from its cars in the “diesel-gate” scandal that blew up in 2015. For bosses of listed firms, the external eyes to please are often those of portfolio managers, analysts and traders—and the thing doing the pleasing are accounting earnings. The stockmarket uses profits as a rough-and-ready guide to how well a company is doing and at what price its shares should change hands. Earnings “misses” can be punished brutally. The shares of Meta, owner of Facebook, lost 25% of their value after disappointing quarterly earnings last month. A lot of ceo pay is tied to share prices, which creates the incentive to meet earnings forecasts. That bosses feel pressure to deliver predictable earnings is well documented. Almost all of the 400 managers surveyed in the mid-2000s by John Graham, Campbell Harvey and Shiva Rajgopal, a trio of academics, said they had a strong preference for smooth earnings. Most admitted they would delay big spending line items to meet a quarterly earnings target. More than a third said they would book revenues this quarter rather than the next, or incentivise customers to buy more earlier. If anything, the rewards for smoothing earnings have grown. Investors attach rich valuations to the shares of dependable earners, or so-called “quality stocks”. Those that suddenly look unreliable have a long way to fall (see chart). Some bosses will resort to fraud to avoid that fate. Motive is not enough to lead people to commit fraud. The circumstances have to be right (or rather, wrong). Opportunity will vary by jurisdiction. In places where the rule of law is weak, scope to falsify accounts with impunity is wider. You should expect to find more book-cooking in emerging markets than in rich ones. Some short-sellers, such as Mr Block, have trained their attentions on Chinese firms listed abroad, whose accounts are hard for foreigners to verify. They landed a big target in 2020, when Luckin Coffee agreed to pay $180m to settle accounting-fraud charges in America. India is another font of scandal. Its tycoons are often afforded a reverence that is at odds with their probity. In rich countries, opportunity is afforded by the latitude of accounting practices. Earnings are a slippery concept. In a simple business, like a lemonade stand, profit is the difference between the cash coming in from lemonade sales and cash going out to buy lemons. More complex businesses have to account for non-cash items, or “accruals”, such as sales that have been booked but not yet paid for. Accruals also include costs that will eventually be a drain on cash, but aren’t yet: wear and tear (depreciation) of assets, pension payments, bad debts and so on. Accruals always rely on a forecast or best guess of how things will turn out. “Accountancy is full of such estimates,” notes Steve Cooper, a former board member of the International Accounting Standards Board, who now writes the Footnotes Analyst, a blog. Accruals estimates can change for defensible reasons. Amazon Web Services, the e-emporium’s cloud-computing division, said in February that it would extend the working life of its servers by a year, thus lowering its depreciation costs. This is perfectly legitimate. No one knows for sure the useful life of fixed assets, such as servers (or aircraft or office buildings). Some less scrupulous firms, however, can time accruals changes to give earnings a bump, by bringing forward revenue to the present or deferring costs to the future. Eventually, earnings must tally with cashflow. Firms that do not generate a lot of cash tend to pile on debt to disguise the fact. Corporate sleuths know this, which is one reason fraudsters go to great lengths to conceal their true debt burden. Another reason, powerful during recessions, is to avoid a downgrade from rating agencies, which would raise borrowing costs. The side that completes the fraud triangle is rationalisation. Though some fraudsters are, as Mr Block points out, sociopaths who don’t feel the need to justify themselves to anyone, fraud is likelier to occur if company bosses feel they can justify it to themselves. “Everybody does it” is something you might hear from the earnings-smoothers at the white-lie end of the accounts-fiddling spectrum. Some fraudsters fall back on altruistic reasoning, telling themselves they are doing it to save jobs or investors. “This is just temporary” is another common rationalisation, says Ms McNeal. Book-cooking can feel acceptable in a recession, in cases where the bosses sincerely believe that the business has good long-term prospects. This is what happened at one particular company. It was a classic story, says the executive who was brought in to clean up the mess. Business was good. The management believed they had found a recipe for success. They repeated this formula until long after it had stopped working. The pressure increased after recession struck. Costs were slashed in an effort to sustain profits. The cuts served only to hurt the business. Somehow reality had to be kept at bay. So the company began to fiddle its accounts.How many such cases are thrown up by the next recession depends in part on its severity. It is easier to keep a fraudulent show on the road in a short downturn. In a prolonged one, a few sorts of corporate sinners are likely to come to be unmasked. The least guilty category is firms that were run with a view to meeting accounting goals but to the long-term detriment of the business. This group includes firms so obsessed with managing earnings that they skimped on investment in capacity, new products or brands, and firms that were so intent on managing costs that they destroyed valuable relationships with suppliers or employees. A firm that pays too much attention to accounting measures of success is not committing fraud. But such a focus may act as a gateway to actual book-cooking. Some firms that were flying high only to suddenly lose altitude may decide to fiddle the numbers in the hope that the good times would quickly return. A loss of revenue is the likeliest trigger for fraud of this kind. The peculiar circumstances of the post-pandemic economy have now given rise to other possible triggers, such as excess inventories or problems with suppliers going bust. The share prices of Walmart and Target fell sharply in May, after the two retailers revealed they had misjudged demand for some goods and been left with large stocks of unsold items. It is easy to imagine less honest firms seeking to cover up mistakes of this kind rather than fess up to them.Then there are firms with no real business or not much of one. Wirecard, a much-feted Germany “fintech” firm that imploded in 2020, fits this category. So does Nikola, a startup with plans to make battery-powered lorries, whose founder, Trevor Milton, was found guilty last month by a federal court in New York of defrauding investors. By the cold light of recession, similar such examples will come to light. A lot of venture capital (vc), much of it undiscerning, poured into untested enterprises in recent years. The valuations they were assigned in the boom years already look like fantasy; many of their business models will prove similarly fanciful. Their venture-capitalist backers may try to conceal such souring bets. Their fees are based on the value of their portfolio companies, whose equity is not frequently traded. That gives the vc fund managers wide discretion on the value (or “marks”) they place on them. The same is true of private equity. Both vc firms and private-equity firms, which focus on mature businesses, are notoriously slow in writing down these values in bad times. When a fund matures, its sponsor must usually sell companies, at which point the market value ought to be clear. But these days a lot of private-asset “exits” are sales to other private funds, including some run by the same asset manager. Clubby arrangements of this kind invite abuse. The slow-growth, low-rate 2010s were a favourable climate for fraud to breed in all these areas. There were no doubt instances where financial pressure, opportunity and rationalisation became aligned. Everybody does it? Perhaps. But even the “smoothing” that seems acceptable in a boom will be judged harshly in a bust. ■To stay on top of the biggest stories in business and technology, sign up to the Bottom Line, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. More

Marijuana legalization proposals are on the ballot in Arkansas, Maryland, Missouri, North Dakota and South Dakota.
They could join 19 states, two territories and Washington, D.C., where recreational marijuana is already legal.

A recreational marijuana smoker indulges in smoking weed on April 14, 2020 in the Bushwick section of the Brooklyn borough of New York City.
Bruce Bennett | Getty Images

Voters in a handful of states — including four that traditionally favor Republicans — are set to decide Tuesday whether to legalize recreational marijuana, paving the way for its sale and cultivation in newly regulated markets across the country.
Arkansas, Maryland, Missouri, North Dakota and South Dakota could join 19 other states and the District of Columbia, which have already legalized recreational marijuana. The votes come about a month after President Joe Biden urged state and local officials to pardon those convicted on state and local charges of simple marijuana possession, following his lead in pardoning those convicted on such federal charges.

Arkansas

In 2016, Arkansas became the first state in the Deep South to approve medical cannabis. Now it may become the first state in the region to legalize recreational use if voters approve Issue 4, which would create a regulated, adult-use market.
The measure would allow adults to purchase up to an ounce of cannabis from licensed retailers and implement a 10% sales tax. Those funds would go toward law enforcement, operations at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and drug court programs authorized by the Arkansas Drug Court Act, according to the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture.
It also allows for 20 nonmedical marijuana cultivation licenses and up to 120 nonmedical dispensary licenses, but it lacks provisions to expunge criminal records for marijuana convictions and for growing plants at home.
Issue 4, sponsored by Responsible Growth Arkansas, has received pushback from opposition groups, including Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who has spoken out against Biden’s federal pardons.
“We have to make sure we don’t move to decriminalization of drugs that are harming Americans. The fact that a drug is unlawful discourages usage,” Hutchinson said.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, former President Donald Trump’s former press secretary and frontrunner to be Arkansas’ next governor, also opposes the amendment.
A poll by Talk Business & Politics and Hendrix College shows 50.5% support legalization and 43% oppose it, with the rest undecided.

Maryland

If Maryland’s Question 4 passes, it will join neighbors Washington, D.C., and Virginia in legalizing marijuana for recreational use.
The proposed amendment would allow adults to possess up to 1.5 ounces, or two marijuana plants, beginning July 1, 2023. It also allows for expungement of records of people arrested for marijuana possession, and for people serving time for simple possession to have their sentences reconsidered. It would also establish a cannabis business assistance fund for small businesses, as well as minority- and women-owned businesses entering the adult-use cannabis industry, among other provisions.
A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found 73% of voters favor legalizing the use of cannabis for people 21 and older.
Maryland legalized medicinal marijuana in 2013, and a year later, decriminalized possession of 10 grams or less of cannabis.
If passed, Question 4 would go into effect on July 1, 2023.

Missouri

Missouri’s Amendment 3 would allow adults in the state to purchase and possess up to three ounces of marijuana and grow up to six flowering plants at home.
A 6% sales tax on recreational marijuana would go toward facilitating automatic expungements for people with certain nonviolent marijuana offenses on their records, veterans’ health care, substance misuse treatment and the state’s public defender system.
Amendment 3 also adds at least 144 new small businesses to the existing businesses licensed and certified for medical marijuana in the state, according to Legal Missouri 2022, the advocacy group that sponsored the measure. New license holders will be selected by lottery.
Republican Gov. Mike Parson opposes the measure, calling it a “disaster,” according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
A poll by Emerson College Polling and The Hill showed 48% support for the amendment among likely voters.

North Dakota

Marijuana legalization did not pass in North Dakota when it appeared on ballots in 2018, losing by a margin of 41% to 59%.
This election, New Approach North Dakota got a revised proposal back on the ballot. Measure 2 would allow for the possession of up to an ounce of marijuana, grant permits to 18 retailers and seven cultivation facilities, impose a 5% cannabis excise tax, and allow individuals three cannabis plants for at-home growing.
“The 2018 initiative was not written with sufficient safeguards,” said Jared Moffat, the campaign director for New Approach North Dakota and a campaign manager for the Marijuana Policy Project. He said the 2018 proposal lacked guidelines for driving under the influence and employee drug testing policies. 
“We have heard from many North Dakotans who voted against the 2018 ballot measure who are supportive of Measure 2 this year,” he said.
New Approach North Dakota has raised over half a million dollars, most of which went to signature drives to get the proposal on the ballot, according to Moffat. It’s also been distributing yard signs, texting voters and running radio ads.

South Dakota

South Dakota is the only state among the five where its proposal for legal weed doesn’t include creating a regulated market. Instead, voters will consider possession and home cultivation.
In 2020, voters approved a constitutional amendment to legalize cannabis, but the state supreme court nullified the results on technical grounds, a move championed by Republican Gov. Kristi Noem.
The new proposal, Measure 27, would limit possession to one ounce of marijuana. Individuals would be able to own up to three plants at home, as long as they live in a jurisdiction where there is not a licensed marijuana retail store.
According to ballotpedia.com, there are some differences between 2020’s version and Measure 27. In 2020, the proposal covered licensing, taxation, local government regulations of marijuana and regulations regarding hemp. Measure 27 stays clear of these areas.
Fifty-one percent of voters plan to vote no on Measure 27, while 40% plan to vote yes, according to Emerson College Polling.

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Elon Musk’s SpaceX introduced restrictions to its Starlink internet service to curtail data drains of power users.
The company added a new policy on data use that will result in “slower speeds” for customers who use one terabyte of data per month during “peak hours.”
SpaceX’s Starlink team wrote in the email that the change was due to “a small number of users consuming unusually high amounts of data.”

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk speaking about the Starlink project at MWC hybrid Keynote during the second day of Mobile World Congress on June 29, 2021 in Barcelona, Spain.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Elon Musk’s SpaceX introduced restrictions to its Starlink internet service to curtail data drains of power users.
The company added a new policy on data use that will result in “slower speeds” for customers who use one terabyte of data per month during “peak hours,” which it defines as between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m., according to an email sent to Starlink users on Friday, a copy of which was seen by CNBC.

While SpaceX still promises “unlimited data” for its users, its service now has two tiers: “Basic” and “Priority.” Users are automatically offered “Priority Access” with the fastest speeds, but will be downgraded to “Basic Access” after passing the new threshold.
“In times of network congestion, users with Basic Access may experience slower speeds and reduced performance compared to Priority Access, which may result in degradation or unavailability of certain third-party services or applications. Bandwidth intensive applications, such as streaming videos, are most likely to be impacted,” SpaceX wrote on its website.
SpaceX’s Starlink team wrote in the email that the change was due to “a small number of users consuming unusually high amounts of data.” The company said less than 10% of the service’s customers utilize more than one terabyte of data per month.
It’s a noted shift in the Starlink service, which previously advertised “no data caps.” SpaceX updated its online messaging to now say “there are no hard data caps,” and pointed to the new policy.

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The company’s priority system applies to residential customers in the U.S. and Canada, who pay $110 a month, as well as all its business and maritime customers, who pay $500 a month and $5,000 a month, respectively.

Starlink’s new service tiers offer a new revenue opportunity for SpaceX, as well. The company is offering customers the option to be automatically billed for additional data used. Continued “Priority Access” beyond the terabyte-threshold costs $0.25 per additional gigabyte for residential users and $1 per additional gigabyte for business customers.
SpaceX emphasized on its website “Starlink is a finite resource that will continue to grow as we launch additional satellites.”
To date SpaceX launched has about 3,500 Starlink satellites into orbit. The service had about 500,000 subscribers as of June. The company has steadily expanded Starlink’s product offerings as well, selling services to residential, business, RV, maritime and aviation customers.

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Months after Donald Trump began building his social media platform, Truth Social, he considered jumping ship and backing a competitor.
Trump spoke with conservative platforms Gettr and Parler about partnerships before completing a deal with Digital World Acquisition Corp.
Truth Social’s founders privately worried about a “meltdown” and raised concerns about exclusivity with the former president.

The TRUTH Social website is seen on a mobile device with an image of former US president Donald Trump in the background in this photo illustration in Warsaw, Poland on 23 February, 2022.
Nurphoto | Getty Images

Months after Donald Trump began building his social media platform, Truth Social, he considered jumping ship and backing a competitor, according to an insider account.
Trump Media founders and former “Apprentice” contestants Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss first met with Trump over burgers and ice cream on Jan. 26, 2021 — according to a daily log of dealings within the company provided by founder and whistleblower Will Wilkerson — weeks after Trump was banned from Twitter following the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot. The meeting was referred to internally as “the cheeseburger summit.”

Litinsky and Moss officially partnered with Trump through their company, United Atlantic Ventures, in February 2021 to build Trump Media and Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social.
On June 11, 2021, however, Litinsky and Moss worried privately about a potential “meltdown” as Trump considered backing his former aide Jason Miller’s Gettr app, CNBC has learned. As Trump weighed the Gettr offer, he also had a call with the right-wing social platform Parler, according to the internal log, which offered the ex-president a 12.5% stake.
Months after the initiation of the Trump Media and Truth Social project, Trump met with Gettr. He was offered $5 million a year for his participation, and, according to Wilkerson’s daily log, the Truth Social co-founders wondered if Trump would strike a “side deal.”
The Washington Post first reported Trump’s conversations with Gettr Monday. Parler did not immediately respond to request for comment.

The apps Paler, Truth Social, Rumble, Gettr, CloutHub and MeWe on an iPhone 12.
Christoph Dernbach | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

At issue, according to Wilkerson’s account, was whether Trump’s public statements would be exclusive to the Truth platform.

Trump signed an agreement with UAV dated Feb. 2, 2021 that dictated his and the Trump Organization’s responsibilities to Trump Media and Technology Group and Truth Social. The agreement also granted Trump 90% of the company’s shares.
Among these responsibilities included providing the intellectual property rights to the Trump name, logos, marks images, photos, videos and likeness, a key asset in many of Trump’s business dealings. As the company looked to go public through the special purpose acquisition company Digital World Acquisition Corp., internal documents seem to show that founders worried about their exclusivity with the Trump name.
According to internal emails, an alteration in the SPAC agreement attempted to change Donald Trump’s “exclusive” license to Trump Media’s product to a “non-exclusive” license.
Nelson Mullins lawyer John Haley, who advised the Trump Media SPAC deal, called the licensing agreement a “fundamental building block for the [Trump Media Group] initiative and platform,” according to an August 2021 email obtained by CNBC.
Haley said the move to a non-exclusive agreement “essentially ‘guts'” Trump’s commitments to the platform and leaves DWAC with an ‘”unbankable’ initiative that will not survive.”
Haley did not immediately return request for comment from CNBC.
Wilkerson’s daily log shows that, in response to the concerns, Moss and Litinsky met with Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Trump Organization attorneys. The pair later held a call with Trump himself that discussed Jason Miller.
The log records multiple delays — including one while Don Jr. hunted pheasants in England — before the final agreement with DWAC was brought to Mar-a-Lago on Oct. 20, 2021.
At Mar-a-Lago, the internal log says, “There was serious doubts that DJT would not sign, he called Jason Miller about Gettr, and grilled Andy about the deal.” Trump eventually signed the agreement, which still has yet to be consummated.
The agreement makes Trump’s posts available exclusively on Truth Social for eight hours before he can share them elsewhere, according to The Washington Post. Elon Musk, who recently acquired Twitter, has said he would reinstate Trump’s Twitter account. Trump, while lauding the acquisition, has said he will remain on Truth Social.
Representatives from Trump Media and DWAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

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Elon musk’s takeover of Twitter raises questions of policy: is it right for the world’s richest man to own such an important forum for public debate? It raises issues of law: is his decision to get rid of so many workers within days of completing the acquisition above board? And it raises questions of strategy: can Twitter make money by moving from a business model based on advertising to one based on subscription? But it is also an extremely public test of a particular style of management. In the way he thinks about work, decision-making and the role of the CEO, Mr Musk is swimming against the tide. His attitude to employees is an obvious example of his counter-cultural approach. For a futurist, Mr Musk is a very old-fashioned boss. He doesn’t like remote work: earlier this year he sent an email to employees at Tesla demanding that they come to the office for at least 40 hours a week. Anyone who thought this was antiquated could “pretend to work somewhere else”, he tweeted. Whatever the legality of his decision to fire so many Twitter workers, his methods are brutal: people locked out of corporate IT accounts, careers ended with an impersonal email, half the workforce gone at a stroke. It’s as if Thanos had decided to try his hand at business. For those who remain, hard graft is the expectation; insiders say that one of Mr Musk’s first acts at the firm was to cancel monthly firm-wide “days of rest”. The template for the modern manager tends to be a low-ego, compassionate boss who gives people autonomy. Someone didn’t get the memo. His critics have to accept that the my-way-or-the-highway approach has worked before. At his other firms, like Tesla and SpaceX, Mr Musk may not have offered empathy but has provided a planet-sized sense of purpose, from popularising electric vehicles to colonising Mars. Whether this can work for him at Twitter is less clear. His vision for the product as a “digital town square” where free speech flourishes is a typically grand one. This time, however, he is not taking on lumbering incumbents, but fixing an existing business where judgment and politics matter as much as engineering. The way that Mr Musk takes decisions also cuts across consensus. Comparatively little research has been done on how CEOs make their choices, but a Harvard Business School working paper published in 2020 had a bash by asking 262 of the school’s own alumni how they went about making strategy. The authors of the paper did discover a wide range of approaches, with some managers going on gut instinct and others using very formalised processes. But the researchers found that bosses who use more structured processes tend to lead bigger and faster-growing firms (which way causality runs is not clear). They also tend to make decisions more slowly. Mr Musk and his acolytes are in a different camp: fast, informal and aggressive. Reports are already surfacing of fired Twitter workers being asked to come back.He is unorthodox in another way, too. Peter Drucker, a doyen among management thinkers, described the CEO as being the person in the organisation who bridges the outside world and the inner workings of the company. No one else in the firm is in a position to combine these perspectives, Mr Drucker wrote. Mr Musk is not so much bridging this gap as making the distinction between the inside and outside of the company irrelevant. His personal brand and wealth are inextricably linked with the other firms he runs. At Twitter he is going even further, tossing out product ideas on his own Twitter feed, polling the audience for their views and offering real-time commentary on how things are going. And Twitter itself is a platform on which everyone—users, ex-employees, the people who founded the firm, policymakers and pundits—weighs in publicly to say how things are going. There is not much of an inside to talk of. You might object that Mr Musk is a one-off, and so is this deal. When he first made his offer to buy Twitter, he explicitly said that it was not because of an economic rationale. He later tried to wriggle out of the transaction entirely. The story of a billionaire owner of a social-media platform has little in common with the challenges that preoccupy the salaried executives of most public firms. Maybe so, but if Mr Musk makes another success of his latest venture by being brutal to his workforce, skipping the PowerPoint sessions and managing through memes, the MBA will still need a bit of an update. ■Read more from Bartleby, our columnist on management and work:How to think about gamification (Nov 3rd)The archaeology of the office (Oct 27th)When bosses walk in employees’ shoes (Oct 20th)To stay on top of the biggest stories in business and technology, sign up to the Bottom Line, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. More

Blood grown in a laboratory has been transfused into humans for the first time in a landmark clinical trial.
Two patients in the U.K. have so far received tiny doses of the lab-grown blood as part of a wider trial to see how it behaves inside the body.
If successful, U.K. researchers say the technology could significantly improve treatment for people with blood disorders and rare blood types.

Blood grown in a laboratory has been transfused into humans for the first time in a landmark clinical trial.
Future Publishing | Future Publishing | Getty Images

LONDON — Blood grown in a laboratory has been transfused into humans for the first time in a landmark clinical trial that U.K. researchers say could significantly improve treatment for people with blood disorders and rare blood types.
Two patients in the U.K. received tiny doses — equivalent to a few teaspoons — of the lab-grown blood in the first stage of a wider trial designed to see how it behaves inside the body.

The trial, which will now be extended to 10 patients over the course of several months, aims to study the lifespan of lab-grown cells compared with infusions of standard red blood cells.
Researchers say the aim is not to replace regular human blood donations, which will continue to make up the majority of transfusions. But the technology could allow scientists to manufacture very rare blood types which are difficult to source but which are vital for people who depend on regular blood transfusions for conditions such as sickle cell anemia.
“This world leading research lays the groundwork for the manufacture of red blood cells that can safely be used to transfuse people with disorders like sickle cell,” said Dr. Farrukh Shah, medical director of Transfusion for NHS Blood and Transplant, one of the collaborators on the project.
“The need for normal blood donations to provide the vast majority of blood will remain. But the potential for this work to benefit hard to transfuse patients is very significant,” she added.

How does the technology work?

The research, which was conducted by researchers in Bristol, Cambridge and London, as well as NHS Blood and Transplant, focuses on red blood cells that carry oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body.

Initially, a regular donation of blood was taken and magnetic beads were used to detect flexible stem cells that are capable of becoming red blood cells.
Those stems were then placed in a nutrient solution in a laboratory. Over the course of around three weeks, the solution encouraged those cells to multiply and develop into more mature cells.
The cells were then purified using a standard filter — the same kind of filter that is used when regular blood donations are processed to remove white blood cells — before being stored and later transfused into the patients.
For the trial, the lab-grown blood was tagged with a radioactive substance, often used in medical procedures, to monitor how long it lasts in the body.
The same process will now be applied for a trial of 10 volunteers, who will each receive two donations of 5-10mls at least four months apart — one of normal blood and one of lab-grown blood — to compare the cells’ lifespans.

How much will it cost?

It is also hoped that a superior lifespan of lab-grown cells could mean patients require fewer transfusions over time.
A typical blood donation contains a mixture of young and old red blood cells, meaning their lifespan can be unpredictable and sub-optimal. Lab-grown blood, meanwhile, is freshly made, meaning it should last the 120 days expected of red blood cells.
Still, there are significant costs currently attached to the technology.
The average blood donation currently costs the NHS around £145, according to NHS Blood and Transplant. Lab-grown substitutes would likely be more expensive.
NHS Blood and Transplant said there was “no figure” for the procedure as yet, but added that costs would be reduced as the technology is scaled up.
“If the trial is successful and the research works, then it could be introduced at scale in future years, meaning that costs would fall,” a spokesperson told CNBC.

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