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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has issued a statement in response to Kyrie Irving’s recent behavior.
“I am disappointed that he has not offered an unqualified apology and more specifically denounced the vile and harmful content contained in the film he chose to publicize,” Silver’s statement said.
On Wednesday night, the Brooklyn Nets and Irving issued a statement and committed to donate $500K to combat antisemitism.

Kyrie Irving #11 of the Brooklyn Nets brings the ball up the court during the fourth quarter of the game against the Chicago Bulls at Barclays Center on November 01, 2022 in New York City.
Dustin Satloff | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is speaking out against Kyrie Irving after the Brooklyn Nets star posted a link to a film containing offensive antisemitic material.
In a statement issued Thursday, Silver called the decision to post the video “reckless” and said he will be meeting with Irving in person next week to discuss the situation.

“While we appreciate the fact that he agreed to work with the Brooklyn Nets and the Anti-Defamation League to combat antisemitism and other forms of discrimination, I am disappointed that he has not offered an unqualified apology and more specifically denounced the vile and harmful content contained in the film he chose to publicize,” Silver’s statement said.
In an Oct. 27 tweet, Irving posted a link to the film “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake up Black America,” which promotes antisemitism and disinformation. The post has since been removed.
On Wednesday night, Irving and the Nets issued a joint statement following a growing backlash.
“I oppose all forms of hatred and oppression and stand strong with communities that are marginalized and impacted everyday,” Irving said. “I am aware of the negative impact of my post towards the Jewish community and I take responsibility.”
The team and Irving agreed to donate $500,000 toward organizations that work toward eradicating hate and intolerance and said they will also work with the Anti-Defamation League.

“The events in the past week, have sparked many emotions within the Nets organization, our Brooklyn community and the nation,” the Nets said in their statement. “The public discourse that has followed has brought great awareness to the challenges we face as a society when it comes to hate and hate speech.”
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt told CNBC’s Squawk Box that antisemitic hate speech is at all time highs.
For example, multiple public companies including Adidas, Gap and Balenciaga recently broke ties with Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, after the rapper’s antisemitic remarks.
And after billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, a group of online extremists have been posting hateful messages targeted towards Jewish people. Musk has touted free speech on the platform and pushed for looser content rules.
“This is really problematic and it has real world consequences,” Greenblatt said.

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CNBC has canceled “The News with Shepard Smith” after two years.
Smith is leaving the network after his show concludes later this month.
It’s new CNBC President KC Sullivan’s first major shakeup.

The News with Shep Smith
Adam Jeffery | CNBC

NBCUniversal’s CNBC has canceled “The News with Shepard Smith,” its primetime general news show, to refocus on business and market coverage.
The network announced the news Thursday in an e-mail to CNBC employees. Smith will be leaving the network later this month, according to a person familiar with the matter. CNBC will replace Smith’s primetime show with markets coverage until a new live show focusing on business news launches in 2023.

“After spending time with many of you and closely reviewing the various aspects of our business, I believe we must prioritize and focus on our core strengths of business news and personal finance,” CNBC President KC Sullivan said in an e-mail to CNBC employees. “As a result of this strategic alignment to our core business, we will need to shift some of our priorities and resources and make some difficult decisions.”
Smith’s show will end at an unspecified date later this month. His team includes about 20 people. The company will work over the coming weeks to help employees affected by the cancellation find other potential opportunities across NBC News Group.
Smith joined CNBC two years ago from Fox News to bolster primetime TV ratings. His show accomplished that, doubling CNBC’s 7 p.m. ET viewership and bringing in the wealthiest audience of any primetime cable news program over the last two years, according to Sullivan. “The News with Shepard Smith” had its largest average audience last month since April.
The decision to move on from Smith is the first major decision made by Sullivan since taking over CNBC from Mark Hoffman in September. Hoffman had been CNBC’s president since 2005.
While other news organizations such as CNN are going through cost cutting measures, the decision to replace Smith’s show with a nightly business program is strategic in nature. Sullivan is attempting to clarify CNBC’s brand as specifically targeting business, given the many choices on TV and on the internet for more general news, he said in the e-mail.

“We need to further invest in business news content that provides our audiences actionable understanding of the complex developments in global markets and the implications on institutions, investors and individuals,” Sullivan wrote. 
WATCH: Shep Smith reports on advertisers backing out of Twitter

Disclosure: Comcast’s NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.

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The MoPei phone-swing device is ingeniously depressing. It is a cradle for smartphones that rocks back and forth when it is plugged in, and it is designed to cheat fitness apps into believing that you are on the move. If you have a step counter, this phone shaker can gull it into thinking you have taken 8,700 paces in an hour. “Ideal for those people who don’t have the time or energy to get your recommended steps in,” boasts the product blurb. Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

Elon Musk plans to charge Twitter users $8 a month for a “verified” account, and to adjust the fee based on “purchasing-power parity”. How might that work? Think about what $8 can buy in America. Then imagine how much similar items would cost in, say, India—roughly 187 rupees on average, according to the imf. That is what Twitter might charge in that country. Converted at market exchange rates, 187 rupees is less than $2.40, making verification look relatively cheap in India. Compared with India’s income per person, however, it still looks relatively dear.■To stay on top of the biggest stories in business and technology, sign up to the Bottom Line, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. More

In the past few years Guo Guangchang, chairman of Fosun, a Chinese conglomerate, has watched as the Communist Party has taken down his rivals. Two executives at hna, an indebted airline that once held a big stake in Deutsche Bank, have been arrested. The founder of Anbang, an acquisitive insurer, has received a lengthy prison sentence for financial crimes. So has the founder of Tomorrow Group, a banking-and-insurance empire.Mr Guo does not appear in imminent danger of sharing their fate. But his company is in trouble. On October 25th Moody’s, a ratings agency, downgraded Fosun’s debt deeper into junk territory. Chinese banks have been asking the firm to provide more collateral for loans. To meet its obligations Fosun has already divested $5bn-worth of assets this year, according to data from Refinitiv, a research firm. By 2023 it could shed $11bn-worth. That is quite the reversal for the asset-hungry group. It also marks the end of a freewheeling era in Chinese business, which is turning inwards under President Xi Jinping. Fosun has sought to offer Chinese people a three-pronged lifestyle experience that targeted their “happiness, wealth and health”. Customers could look to it to manage their money, plan their holidays and sell them medicines. To that end, it amassed, among other assets, a listed drugmaking division; financial-services firms in Europe; a large portfolio of fashion brands (such as St John Knits, an American women’s label, and Sergio Rossi, an Italian cobbler); a 20% stake in Cirque Du Soleil, a Canadian circus; and controlling stakes in Club Med, a French resort chain, and Wolverhampton Wanderers, an English football club. The perceived success of this strategy has led admirers in Chinese business circles to liken Mr Guo to Warren Buffett, America’s revered asset-accumulator. The reality of this success is debatable. In 2015 Mr Guo vanished for a few weeks amid a police probe, only to emerge pledging to buy fewer assets and focus on managing the ones he already has. Over the next two years Fosun divested assets worth around $9bn. The discipline did not last; in 2017 it splurged nearly $7bn on new investments. Soon afterwards some of its bets began to sour. In 2019 Thomas Cook, a British travel company part-owned by Fosun, filed for bankruptcy. The following year its 20% stake in Cirque Du Soleil was wiped out under similar circumstances. Throughout, debt has loomed large. In annual investor meetings Fosun executives have routinely pledged to bring leverage down. To little effect, it seems. And things may have got dicier of late, as the company has tapped more short-term debt, which now makes up 53% of its total borrowings of $16bn, up from 46% in 2021. Rolling it over has become harder in the past year, as many Chinese property developers have defaulted on offshore bonds, which has cooled investors’ enthusiasm for Chinese firms’ debt more broadly.An even bigger problem than its debt may be Fosun’s business model. It was based on a vision of the future where both China’s businesses and its people travelled and spent freely around the globe. But China’s zero-covid policy has trapped most Chinese at home for nearly three years and dented consumer confidence. And under the increasingly authoritarian Mr Xi, Chinese companies are viewed with growing caginess in the West. In this new world, Fosun looks like a relic of a happier time. ■To stay on top of the biggest stories in business and technology, sign up to the Bottom Line, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. More

Twitter is no longer a public company, but it is being run in a more public way than ever before. Elon Musk, who took the social network private on October 27th at a cost of $44bn and immediately installed himself as its temporary chief executive, has been developing his plans for the firm through the medium of tweets at all times of day and night.Mr Musk, who said he was buying Twitter to protect free speech in “the de facto public town square”, tweeted on his first full day in charge that the company would set up a “content moderation council”. Outsourcing moderation dilemmas to an independent board, as Facebook has since 2020, would be no bad thing. One of the chief concerns about Mr Musk’s ownership of Twitter is that the platform could be leant on by anyone with leverage over his other, larger businesses. Tesla, Mr Musk’s carmaker (and main source of wealth), has a factory in Shanghai and last year made a quarter of its revenue in China, whose public squares are hardly free.Yet the focus of Mr Musk’s first week in charge was not moderation but money. His acquisition was funded with about $13bn of debt. Interest rates are rising and the ad market, which provides nearly all of Twitter’s revenue, is falling. Some advertisers are especially nervous of the new Musk-owned Twitter: ipg Mediabrands, a giant media buyer, recommended on October 31st that clients pause their spending on Twitter while the dust settled.To cut costs Mr Musk appears to have started a round of lay-offs, which is probably overdue. Last year Twitter had 1.5 employees for every $1m in revenue, compared with 0.6 at Meta, Facebook’s owner. At the same time he hopes to bring in more users with features including the resurrection of Vine, a decade-old app that beat TikTok to the short-video craze but which Twitter allowed to wither.The most radical plan, though, is to boost revenues by weaning Twitter partially off ads and onto subscriptions. Users will be able to pay $8 a month (or another amount depending on their whereabouts, see chart) to see half as many ads, post long audio and video clips and get priority for their own tweets in other people’s replies and search results.Mr Musk characterised this as a democratic alternative to the “lords & peasants system”, in which Twitter awards blue badges verifying the identity of “notable” tweeters. Increasing the number of verified users may help reduce spam. But prioritising tweets that are paid for, over ones that are good, may worsen the user experience. And charging audiences risks driving them to other social platforms that are free. As Stephen King, a blue-badged novelist, tweeted in an exchange with Mr Musk: “Fuck that, they should pay me.”Subscriptions may kick off another argument. Among users who subscribe via the Twitter app, a cut of ongoing monthly fees will go to the app store in question: 15% in the case of Google and up to 30% in the case of Apple. Companies that rely on subscriptions, like Spotify, or in-app purchases, like Epic Games, have long complained about this app-store tax. In Mr Musk, Apple and Google face another opponent—one who is armed with the world’s loudest megaphone.■To stay on top of the biggest stories in business and technology, sign up to the Bottom Line, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. More

Conglomerates could hardly be less fashionable. The diversified industrial empires of old are taught as case-studies in underperformance, misaligned management incentives and poor capital allocation. Bosses fear that a “conglomerate discount”—the difference between the market value of a firm and the hypothetical value of its constituent parts—will invite activist investors to agitate for divestments. Focus is now the idée fixe of industrial organisation.Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

The company said global same-store sales rose 9.1% in the quarter.
Burger King reported same-store sales growth of 10.3%, driven by strong international growth. U.S. same-store sales rose 4%.
On Wednesday, Yum Brands reported stronger same-store sales at its Taco Bell and KFC chains

A sign is posted in front of a Burger King restaurant on February 15, 2022 in Daly City, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Restaurant Brands International on Thursday reported stronger sales at Burger King and Tim Hortons, joining the fast-food companies seeing a bump in sales as consumers look for more affordable options.
The results come after rival Yum Brands on Wednesday also reported stronger same-store sales at its Taco Bell and KFC chains. The company said it generally isn’t seeing a change in consumer behavior and that more premium menu items in the U.S. are proving popular.

And last week, McDonald’s said its U.S. same-store sales were fueled by stronger traffic and price hikes. The burger giant said it is drawing more customers who are opting for fast-food instead of dining out at pricier places.
Restaurant Brands CEO Jose Cil told CNBC that the company isn’t seeing any material trading down or out of its chains. Like the rest of the industry, Burger King, Popeyes and Tim Hortons have all raised prices to mitigate rising food and labor costs.
“We work closely with our franchisees to make sure we consider all the factors: CPI, food away from home and food at home,” he said.

Shares of Restaurant Brand rose less than 1% in morning trading.
Here’s what the company reported compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by Refinitiv:

Earnings per share: 96 cents adjusted vs. 80 cents expected
Revenue: $1.73 billion vs. $1.66 billion expected

Net sales in the quarter rose 15.5% to $1.73 billion. Global same-store sales grew 9.1%, with digital sales now accounting for about a third of system-wide sales.
Burger King reported same-store sales growth of 10.3%, fueled by its performance overseas. In the U.S., the figure rose 4% as the Restaurant Brands works to revive sales with a turnaround plan.
Tim Hortons’ same-store sales increased 9.8%, which the company attributed in part to new menu items.
The coffee chain reported Canadian same-store sales growth of 11.1%, demonstrating that its turnaround has taken hold. Demand for its breakfast and lunch food is higher, and sales of cold coffee drinks are also climbing. Still, locations in Canadian city centers are lagging as office workers continue to work from home.
At Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, same-store sales rose 3.1%. The fried chicken chain’s U.S. same-store sales rose 1.3%.
The latest addition to Restaurant Brands’ portfolio, Firehouse Subs, reported flat same-store sales. The company bought the sandwich chain in late 2021 for $1 billion and has been focusing on expanding it internationally.
For the three months ended Sept. 30, Restaurant Brands reported a net income of $530 million, or $1.17 per share, up from $329 million, or 70 cents per share, a year earlier.
Like other multinational companies, Restaurant Brands’ results were hurt by the strong dollar. The company reported a $30 million loss from foreign exchange rates.
Excluding items, the company earned 96 cents per share.

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