Economy

A gathering of G20 finance ministers in Bengaluru has ended in discord after Russia and China refused to endorse a statement condemning Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and rejecting the use of nuclear weapons.The meeting broke up on Saturday without agreement on a joint communique from members’ finance ministers and central bank governors. Instead India, which holds the G20 presidency, issued a “chair’s summary and outcome document”. It was backed by delegates from 17 of the group’s 20 members, which include the world’s largest advanced and developing economies; Russia and China did not endorse it.The document reiterated the position taken by G20 leaders at a summit last year in Bali, when they deplored “in the strongest terms” Russia’s war on Ukraine and demanded Russia’s “complete and unconditional” withdrawal from Ukrainian territory.The document also repeated the Bali summit’s declaration that “the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible”. Ajay Seth of India’s finance ministry said Russian and Chinese delegates, who did not attend the Bengaluru meeting in person, had argued that the war and its consequences were beyond the mandate of finance ministers and central bank governors. Other members “felt that the war has implications for the global economy, so it was right to have those paragraphs”, he said.The disagreement over the communique highlights tensions within the G20 over its members’ positions on the war.The summary document said that “most” members other than Russia and China strongly condemned the war in Ukraine, which it said is causing “immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy”.

Nirmala Sitharaman, India’s finance minister, refused to say whether India was among the members that condemned the war. On Thursday, India abstained in a UN General Assembly vote condemning the war, along with China. Russia voted against the UN resolution.Sitharaman said that India had signed up to the G20 leaders’ declaration in Bali, from which the language of Saturday’s summary document was taken.German finance minister Christian Lindner said the failure to reach agreement on the communique was “regrettable”. “But for me it was more important that all the others adhered to a clear position of international law, multilateralism and the end of the war,” Lindner said.“It’s becoming difficult for the G20 to engage in constructive discussion because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is an act that shakes the foundations of the global order,” Japanese finance minister Shunichi Suzuki told reporters in remarks reported by Reuters.Bruno Le Maire, France’s finance minister, had said on Friday that France would refuse to sign any communique that involved stepping back from the Bali declaration. Additional reporting by Reuters More

Japan’s core consumer inflation hit a fresh 41-year high of 4.2% in January, data showed on Friday, keeping the central bank under pressure to phase out its massive stimulus programme.”The rise in consumer inflation is driven mostly by moves by companies to pass on rising raw material costs to households,” Kuroda told a news conference after attending the G20 finance leaders’ gathering in Bengaluru, India.The BOJ expects core consumer inflation to slow below 2% in both fiscal 2023 and 2024, as the effect of past rises in raw material costs fades, he said.”It’s true Japan’s situation is quite different from that of the United States and advanced European countries. The BOJ must maintain current ultra-loose policy to sustainably and stably achieve its 2% target,” Kuroda said. More

LONDON (Reuters) – Argentina’s government is in final talks with International Monetary Fund officials to ease foreign exchange reserves targets for 2023 under the country’s $44 billion program, two sources close to the matter told Reuters.The move comes as the South American commodities exporter is facing the worst drought in 60 years, which has pummeled soy, corn and wheat crops, compromising already weak foreign exchange reserves. Discussions include the impact of the drought on 2023 goals for net reserves, said an Argentina economy ministry adviser who asked not to be named because the talks were ongoing.Talks are now focused on agreeing on exact figures, said one of the sources. An Argentine government source, who asked not to be named because discussions are private, said talks are ongoing but nothing is defined yet.Officials for the Economy Ministry declined to comment. A spokesperson for the IMF declined to comment as the technical work is still ongoing. A group of representatives from Argentina’s central bank and Economy Ministry arrived in Washington this week for the fourth review of the extended fund facility program approved in March 2022, after a failed bailout four years earlier.  Meanwhile, Economy Minister Sergio Massa met with IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva on the sidelines of the Group of 20 meetings in Bengaluru, India.The discussions to change the central bank net reserves targets for this year are pre-emptive, as the country did meet its end-December 2022 net reserves targets, another source added. The world’s top exporter of soy oil and meal is also facing a rise in import costs of energy and fertilizers due to the war in Ukraine, adding pressure to much-needed dollar reserves. Net reserves today stand at around $4.4 billion, according to calculations from Buenos Aires-based brokerage firm PPI Inversiones.Under the latest review, Argentina had been set the target of net reserves to increase by $5.5 billion at the end of March and $9.8 billion at the end of the year.  More

BENGALURU (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Saturday she was willing to negotiate with Republicans in Congress over the Biden administration’s budget proposal to be unveiled next month – but not as a condition of raising the debt ceiling.Yellen told Reuters in an interview that the Biden budget for fiscal 2024 would contain “substantial deficit reduction over the next decade.”And we’re going to show how we’re going to accomplish that,” she said on the sidelines of a G20 finance leaders meeting. “Republicans need to put a plan on the table, and a negotiation or discussion about that is certainly possible, but it can’t be a condition or precondition for raising the debt ceiling.”Republicans who hold a slim majority in the House of Representatives, have demanded that President Joe Biden agree to spending cuts as in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.Yellen said the United States “can’t bargain over whether or not we’re going to pay our bills. It’s simply a fundamental responsibility a government has.”Yellen said that tax receipts collected around the April 15 filing deadline could allow for some adjustments in the department’s estimate of when it would no longer be able to pay all of the government’s bills without an increase in the $31.4 trillion debt limit.The Treasury has not yet changed its early June estimate for that time frame, made last month, although the Congressional Budget Office has estimated the Treasury’s’ cash and extraordinary borrowing measures could last until September.”The tax receipts will be informative about when the likely X-date is,” she said, referring to a common Washington term for a potential default date. “We felt comfortable and we told Congress that we could at least get to early June.” More

Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen urged her counterparts at a summit in India to condemn Russia’s actions, and she defended the cost of supplying aid to Kyiv.A year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the war is deepening the division among the world’s major economies, threatening fragile recoveries by disrupting food and energy supply chains and distracting from plans to combat poverty and restructure debt in poor countries.Those fissures were evident this past week as top economic policymakers from the Group of 20 nations gathered for two days at a resort in Bengaluru, a city in southern India, where efforts to demonstrate unity were overshadowed by flaring tensions over Russia. During the summit, Western nations imposed a barrage of new sanctions on Moscow and unveiled more economic support for Ukraine, while developing countries like India, which have been reaping the benefits of cheap Russian oil, resisted expressing criticism.The differing views left officials struggling to cobble together the traditional joint statement, or communiqué, on Saturday, forcing senior representatives from the Group of 7 nations, the world’s most advanced economies, to try to convince reluctant counterparts that defending Ukraine was worth the cost.“Ukraine is fighting not only for their country, but for the preservation of democracy and peaceful conditions in Europe,” Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said on Saturday in an interview, explaining the case that she had made to the more reluctant countries. “It’s an assault on democracy and on territorial integrity that should concern all of us,” she added.The summit took place at a pivotal moment for the global economy. The International Monetary Fund last month upgraded its global output projections but warned that Russia’s war in Ukraine continued to cast a cloud of uncertainty. The fund also noted that increasing “fragmentation” in the world could be a drag on growth in the future.Ms. Yellen was among the most forceful critics of Russia during the two-day meeting. At one point, she directly confronted senior Russian officials in a private session and called them “complicit” in the Kremlin’s atrocities.The grappling over how to characterize Russia’s actions led Bruno Le Maire, the French finance minister, to publicly vent his frustration with some countries that would not assail Russia in writing. He noted that when the leaders of the Group of 20 nations met in November, in Bali, Indonesia, their statement had asserted that most members strongly condemned the war, and he said on Friday that he was opposed to watering down that sentiment.“I want to make it very clear that we will oppose any step back from the statement of the leaders in Bali on this question of the war in Ukraine,” Mr. Le Maire, who declined to name the holdouts, said at a news conference. “We strongly condemn this illegal and brutal attack against Ukraine.”India’s close economic ties with Russia have made its role as the host of the Group of 20 this year especially challenging. Moscow is a major supplier of energy and military equipment to India, while the United States is India’s largest trading partner.To remain neutral, India has tried to avoid describing the conflict as a “war” and instead focused on other issues. In an opening address to the summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid out the threats facing the global economy, but he made no mention of Russia, pointing instead to “rising geopolitical tensions in many parts of the world.”Some of the resistance to condemning Russia is because of concern about the United States’ use of its economic might to isolate a member of the Group of 20.“The fact that the U.S. clearly has so much power to take action against a geopolitical rival is a significant concern,” said Eswar Prasad, a trade policy professor at Cornell University who speaks to both American and Indian officials. “There’s clearly been a splintering of the G20.”Mr. Prasad added that the aggressive use of sanctions by the United States had raised anxiety among other nations — even if they disagreed with Russia’s actions — that they could someday be exposed to Washington’s wrath.That use of economic warfare was on display on Friday, when the United States imposed sanctions on more than 200 individuals and entities in Russia and other countries that are helping to financially support Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Sanctions were also placed on Russia’s metals and mining sector and on energy companies.The war in Ukraine was not the only matter this past week that consumed finance ministers in India.The United States and Europe continued to hash out differences over American subsidies for electric vehicles that European countries believe will harm their economies. A global tax agreement that was struck in 2021 continues to flounder, raising the prospect that it could unravel. And talks over restructuring debt burdens facing poor countries to avoid a cascade of defaults failed to bear fruit, largely because of resistance from China.“There hasn’t been a significant change that I see,” said Ms. Yellen, who expressed frustration at China’s role as a roadblock this past week.But it is the war in Ukraine that has left the world’s economic leaders most divided. In many cases, resistance to supporting Ukraine and confronting Russia is the result of complicated domestic politics in many countries, and the United States is no exception.A growing number of Republicans, including former President Donald J. Trump, have been arguing in recent weeks that the United States cannot afford to endlessly support Kyiv. They contend that at a time when the United States is burdened by record levels of debt and a weakening economy, that money would be better spent on domestic problems.In the past year, the United States has directed more than $100 billion dollars of humanitarian, financial and military aid to Ukraine. The Congressional Budget Office projected last week that the United States was on track to add nearly $19 trillion to its national debt over the next decade, $3 trillion more than previously forecast.For the Biden administration, scaling back aid to Ukraine does not appear to be an option.In the interview, Ms. Yellen argued that the United States can afford to bear the costs and that supporting Ukraine was a priority for national security and economic reasons.“The war is having an adverse effect on the entire global economy,” Ms. Yellen said, “and providing the support that’s necessary for Ukraine to win this and bring it to an end is certainly something that we really can’t afford not to do.” More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Ajay Banga, U.S. President Joe Biden’s pick to run the World Bank, will face a tough slate of issues around the institution’s finances and capital structure from the get-go, thorny problems he must address as he reshapes the bank into a force for combating climate change on top of its traditional role as a poverty fighter.Biden and his team have ambitious plans for overhauling the 77-year-old World Bank, which critics have said under its outgoing chief David Malpass was too timid in financing climate initiatives and still funds substantial fossil fuel projects across the developing world.The key to it all, of course, is money, and as organized and funded now, the World Bank would be stretched to meet those goals. Banga’s nomination, announced on Thursday, won a round of rapid endorsements as top finance leaders met on Friday in India, a sign his ascendance by early May – or possibly sooner – is all but assured, though other member countries can also submit nominations through March 29 before the World Bank’s governors choose the president.Even before he takes office, the former Mastercard Inc (NYSE:MA) chief is expected to start working his numerous constituencies as early as April when top officials meet in Washington at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s spring meetings. Member countries are expected to approve initial moves to stretch the bank’s balance sheet to free up more funds for climate projects, pandemic preparedness and other priorities.If confirmed, he will jump into high-profile talks in June hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley focused on developing a new global financial pact to reform how rich countries finance poor countries grappling with climate-driven damages.Under Banga’s leadership, Mastercard became among the first companies to set net-zero emission targets under the Science Based Targets initiative. He also serves on the advisory board of Beyond Net Zero, a climate finance fund.Biden administration officials touted Banga’s decades of experience building global companies and public-private partnerships to fund responses to climate change and migration.”Ajay has proven his ability as a manager of large institutions and understands investment and the mobilization of capital to power the green transition,” said John Kerry, the U.S. special envoy on climate change.SEEKING RESOURCESAn even tougher challenge then awaits Banga in winning a capital increase from member countries. This will be especially difficult for the World Bank’s top shareholder, the United States, due to political brawling between the Biden administration and the Republican-majority House of Representatives. The House has major sway over the country’s purse strings and its leaders are not disposed to widen the World Bank’s role in fighting climate change.In fiscal 2022, the World Bank committed more than $104 billion to projects around the globe, according to the bank’s annual report. Experts say countries will need trillions of dollars to fight and adapt to climate change.Before an increase can even be considered, U.S. officials say changes in World Bank debt-to-equity ratios and other rules could free up more funds for the climate fight, given the reluctance of a politically divided U.S. Congress to appropriate more funds in a direct capital increase. An independent report prepared for the Group of 20 major economies said changing the way the bank and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) operate could unlock hundreds of billions of dollars in additional funds.But some middle-income countries worry that could weaken the bank’s AAA credit rating and raise borrowing costs, Mark Malloch Brown, president of the Open Society Foundations told Reuters. “The middle-income countries worry … that the cost of borrowing will increase because of the refusal of the West to put up more cash.”Iskander Erzini Vernoit, director of the Morocco-based climate think tank Imal Initiative for Climate and Development, said the U.S. – which has only contributed $2 billion of the $100 billion in climate finance rich countries have pledged – needed to invest more. “Playing the blame game with management of the MDBs will only get you so far, and not far enough to finance tackling the polycrisis at scale,” he said. More

BENGALURU (Reuters) -Group of 20 (G20) nations have some disagreements over restructuring debt for distressed economies, the chief of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Saturday, adding that banning private cryptocurrencies should be an option.India’s G20 presidency comes as its South Asian neighbours Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan are seeking urgent IMF funds due to an economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war.China, the world’s largest bilateral creditor, urged the group of big economies on Friday to conduct a fair, objective and in-depth analysis of the causes of global debt issues as clamour grows for lenders to take a large haircut, or accept losses, on loans.”On debt restructuring, while there are still some disagreements, we now have the global sovereign debt roundtable with consideration of all public and private creditors,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told reporters after chairing the roundtable with Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.”We just finished a session in which it was clear that there is a commitment to bridge differences for the benefit of countries.”U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said there were no “deliverables” from the meeting, which was mostly organisational.Further discussions of the panel, which includes major bilateral creditors including China, India and the G7 countries, several debtor countries, are planned around the time of the IMF and World Bank spring meetings in April.”We certainly had that agreement that this is a useful forum,” Yellen told Reuters in an interview. “We look forward to participating in it.”CRYPTO RESTRICTIONSApart from restructuring debt, regulating cryptocurrencies is another priority area for India, which Georgieva agreed with.”We have to differentiate between central bank digital currencies that are backed by the state and stable coins, and crypto assets that are privately issued,” Georgieva said.”There has to be very strong push for regulation… if regulation fails, if you’re slow to do it, then we should not take off the table banning those assets, because they may create financial stability risk.”Yellen said she had not suggested the “outright banning of crypto activities, but it was critical to put in place a strong regulatory framework.” More

As tech companies cut costs and move to remote work, their left-behind office furniture has become part of a booming trade.Brandi Susewitz touched the curved stitching on a pair of bright red Arne Jacobsen Egg Chairs and announced they were worth around $5,000 each. The chairs were in pristine condition, perched in the reception area of the software company Sitecore’s office in downtown San Francisco.Trisha Murcia, Sitecore’s workplace manager, said she was likely the only person who ever sat on them. “It’s really sad,” she said. “They opened this office in 2018 and then Covid happened.”Ms. Murcia led Ms. Susewitz around Sitecore’s office, pointing out bar stools that had never been used, 90-inch flat screens, shiny conference room tables and accent chairs from the retailer Blu Dot. The whiteboard walls, outfitted with markers and erasers, were spotless. And rows upon rows of 30-by-60 inch, height-adjustable Knoll desks with Herman Miller Aeron chairs sat collecting dust.Ms. Susewitz measured and snapped photos, identifying designer brands and models. Her office furniture resale business, Reseat, would take all of it, she declared. “We can find a home for this,” she said. “We have time.”Brandi Susewitz looked at two red Arne Jacobsen Egg Chairs during a visit to the Sitecore office in San Francisco last month.Jason Henry for The New York TimesSitecore was reducing its office space because the pandemic meant more employees worked remotely.Jason Henry for The New York TimesMs. Susewitz, who started Reseat in 2020, is one of an increasing number of behind-the-scenes specialists in the Bay Area who are carving out a piece of the great office furniture reshuffling. There are professional liquidators, Craigslist flippers and start-ups spouting buzzwords like “circular economy.” And a few guys with warehouses full of really nice chairs.All of them are capitalizing on a wave of tech companies that are drastically shrinking their physical footprints in the wake of the pandemic-induced shift to remote work and the recent economic slowdown.Nowhere is the furniture glut stronger than in San Francisco. Tech workers have been slowest to return to the office in the city, where commercial vacancy rates jumped to 28 percent last year, up from 4 percent in 2019, according to the real estate firm CBRE. Occupancy in San Francisco in late January was 4 percent below the average of the top 10 U.S. cities, according to the building security firm Kastle. And companies of all sizes, including PayPal, Block and Yelp, are giving up their expensive downtown headquarters or downsizing their office space.Add to that the tech industry’s recent U-turn from optimistic hypergrowth to fear and penny pinching. That has led tech giants such as Google and Salesforce, along with smaller companies like DoorDash and Wish, to carry out widespread layoffs, cutting more than 88,000 workers in the Bay Area over the last year, according to Layoffs.fyi.Some start-ups have abruptly gone under, including the flying car company Kittyhawk, the autonomous vehicle start-up Argo AI and the interior design start-up Modsy. Others have slashed spending, starting with their dusty, rarely-used offices full of designer furniture.Ms. Susewitz checked out an Aeron chair during her visit to Sitecore. She toured the office with Trisha Murcia, Sitecore’s workplace managerJason Henry for The New York TimesMs. Susewitz measured office furniture at Sitecore’s office in downtown San Francisco.Jason Henry for The New York TimesLast month, Twitter held a public auction for some of its furniture, hawking dry erase boards, conference tables and a three-foot blue statue of its bird logo. The social media company, which is owned by Elon Musk, at one point stopped paying the rent on some of its office leases.Layoffs in Big TechAfter a pandemic hiring spree, several tech companies are now pulling back.A Growing List: Alphabet, Microsoft and Zoom are among the latest tech giants to cut jobs amid concerns about an economic slowdown.Salesforce: The company said it would lay off 10 percent of its staff, a decision that seemed to go against the professed commitment of its co-founder and chief executive, Marc Benioff, to its workers.New Parents Hit Hard: At tech companies that spent recent years expanding paid parental leave, parents have felt the whiplash of mass layoffs in an especially visceral way.Tech’s Generational Divide: The recent cuts have been eye-opening to young workers. But to older employees who experienced the dot-com bust, it has hardly been a shock.Martin Pichinson, a founder of Sherwood Partners, an advisory firm that helps restructure failing start-ups, said he was staffing up to handle increased demand. Today’s reckoning was not as severe as that of the dot-com bust in the early 2000s when dozens of tech companies collapsed, he said, but “everyone is acting as if businesses are falling apart.”That’s led to a lot of expendable furniture, much of it hewing to a specific youthful aesthetic of Instagrammable bright colors and midcentury modern shapes. That look, complemented by plant walls of succulents and kombucha on tap, was a hallmark of the tech talent wars over the past two decades, telegraphing a company’s success and sophistication.Then there’s the Aeron chairs. The $1,805 black roller-wheel desk chairs are a closely-watched barometer of tech excesses. Their sleek design makes them a work of art, according to the Museum of Modern Art. And in the tech industry, where workers are used to being pampered while chained to their desks, they are ubiquitous.When internet companies imploded in 2000, liquidators filled their warehouses with the “dot-com thrones.” Now any whiff of empty Aerons piling up conjures memories of that slump and sets off fears that another is imminent.The Bay Area’s Craigslist currently has gobs of the chairs for sale, photographed in warehouses, lined up in corners of conference rooms and wrapped in plastic outside a storage unit. Some are selling for as cheap as a few hundred bucks.The listings are a reminder: Silicon Valley is a place of booms and busts, with enterprising hustlers who see nothing but opportunity, even in the rubble.Mr. Norbu’s furniture reselling business, called Enliven, has expanded to include a van, three employees and a warehouse.Jason Henry for The New York TimesA trail of Dropbox furnitureFor furniture specialists, it all starts with supplies from tech companies like Dropbox.In 2019, the file storage company moved into its 735,000-square-foot headquarters in San Francisco. Its 15-year lease was the largest in the city’s history at the time. Dropbox’s old office was rented to other companies, and last year, a cache of furniture — futuristic-chic chairs, couches and tables — from that office made its way to a liquidator.The inventory included several emerald green velvet Jean Royère-style Polar Bear chairs that cost roughly $10,000 to custom make in 2016, according to their maker, Classic Design LA.Three of those chairs sold to Tenzin Norbu, a furniture reseller in Richmond, Calif., who paid around $1,000 for each. Mr. Norbu, 25, started buying and selling high-end furniture on online marketplaces early in the pandemic, when people were eager to redecorate the homes they were stuck inside and stymied by supply chain delays on furniture.Since then, his business, called Enliven, has expanded to include a van, three employees, a 4,000-square-foot warehouse and annual revenue in the mid-six figures.The tech talent wars, with companies competing to out-perk one another with the fanciest offices, were good for designer furniture. The retreat from that battle has been just as good for resellers.Last year, Mr. Norbu scored some lounge chairs and couches from Fast, a payments start-up that collapsed in the spring. He also paid “tens of thousands” of dollars, he said, to fill a 20-foot truck of still-in-the-box furniture that WeWork, whose valuation had plummeted, had kept in storage since 2019. The trove included dining chairs, lamps, couches and a chunky red Bollo armchair by the Swedish designer Fogia.Mr. Norbu’s inventory included three green Polar Bear chairs that were custom made for Dropbox.Jason Henry for The New York TimesMr. Norbu said he planned to buy furniture from more tech start-ups as his business grows.Jason Henry for The New York TimesOn a recent tour of his warehouse, Mr. Norbu pointed out a pair of never-used felt poufs from a start-up, two glass coffee tables from Delta Air Lines, some gray lounge chairs that were “probably from Google” and plants from a venture capital firm.Mr. Norbu aims to target more tech start-ups as his business expands. The companies are always acquiring or shedding furniture, since they tend to grow quickly and shut down abruptly. Many of his buyers also work in tech, he said, which means they could find themselves eating dinner at the very conference table they once gathered around for meetings.Last year, Mr. Norbu sold one of the Polar Bear chairs that had been owned by Dropbox to a fellow furniture flipper, Nate Morgan, for $1,400. Mr. Morgan started trading furniture in the fall after he was laid off from a business development job at Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. He said he quickly discovered the Bay Area contains “crazy pockets of massive amounts of furniture.”Mr. Morgan’s business, Reclamation, recently worked with a wealthy tech entrepreneur who had bought a second San Francisco home to live in while his main home was being renovated. The entrepreneur furnished the 4,000-square-foot second home with new goods from Restoration Hardware. Nine months later, when the entrepreneur moved into his main home, Mr. Morgan bought all of the second home’s furniture for 10 percent of its retail price.Mr. Morgan, 44, said the furniture business was a welcome shift from the 15 years he spent working in tech. “It feels really good to be building a local community business that’s tied to this geographic area,” he said.Outside Mr. Norbu’s 4,000-square-foot furniture warehouse.Jason Henry for The New York TimesMr. Morgan later sold the Polar Bear chair that had been at Dropbox for a profit to an interior designer in Los Angeles, who then sold it to a client in the Hollywood Hills. From the liquidator, to Mr. Norbu, to Mr. Morgan, to the interior designer, each person in the chain made a little money.Dropbox declined to comment. During the pandemic, the company shifted to remote work and made plans to sublet 80 percent of its headquarters. Takers have been slow; the company recently lowered its expected rate, pushed out its target for finding tenants by two years and recorded a $175 million charge on its real estate holdings in 2022.Dropbox’s remaining space has been converted into what the company calls a “studio” instead of an “office,” designed for meetings and “touchdown spots,” or cafes and libraries for people to sit, chat and work briefly. There are no more desks.‘It was a ghost town’Ms. Susewitz, 49, has worked in office furniture since 1997, when she became a customer service representative at Lindsay-Ferrari, a Bay Area furniture dealer now known as One Workplace.The furniture industry’s wastefulness always bugged her, she said, with companies discarding durable, commercial-grade items that were built to last decades every time they moved. Companies waited until the last minute to deal with the furniture, she said, increasing the odds it wound up in the trash.In the late 1990s dot-com boom, Ms. Susewitz created a business plan to build an online marketplace for used office furniture. She abandoned it when eBay took off, thinking the company would eventually solve the problem. “But that never happened,” she said.Over the next two decades, she worked in sales and business development, outfitting Bay Area businesses with goods from “the big five” of workplace furniture — Steelcase, MillerKnoll, Haworth, Allsteel and Teknion.Before the pandemic, Sitecore was expanding its space so rapidly that it had leased another half of a floor in its office tower.Jason Henry for The New York TimesWhen the pandemic hit, Ms. Susewitz’s livelihood of new office furniture screeched to a halt. She watched with disgust as companies tossed out barely-used desks and chairs.“Perfectly good, brand-new furniture is just being carted off to landfills,” she said. So she created Reseat to help businesses liquidate furniture. The company uses an inventory management system that tracks the items’ “life cycles” so it can quickly share the specifications for the furniture, making the goods easier to sell. Given enough time, sellers can expect 20 cents on the dollar for their furniture, she said. Reseat, which has 14 employees, has worked with more than 100 companies and sold more than eight million pounds of furniture.“Our goal is to sell it standing,” Ms. Susewitz said. “Once it ends up in a warehouse, it loses value and ends up collecting dust.”In December, Reseat was hired to liquidate more than 900 work stations, 96 office chairs, 40 work benches, 24 sofas and 84 file cabinets at an office in Santa Clara, Calif. Analog Devices, the semiconductor company that had moved out, hardly used the space during the pandemic. But Pure Storage, the data storage company moving in, didn’t want those pieces. Reseat had just four weeks to sell the items.“It just ate me up inside,” Ms. Susewitz said. That she found buyers in time was “a miracle,” she added.Pure Storage said it was reusing a “substantial” amount of Analog Devices’s furniture, including desk chairs and conference room items, but it planned to install its existing desks “to better suit how Pure employees work in a more open office environment.” An Analog Devices representative declined to comment.Ms. Susewitz was excited about the furniture at Sitecore because the company had contacted Reseat months ahead of its move, setting it up to easily find a home for its goods. At Sitecore’s office, she showed off how to identify the size of an Aeron chair. Each one has a set of plastic bumps hidden on its back. Two bumps indicate the most common size, a “B.”There were 16 size Bs around a wooden conference table that Sitecore had built using wood from a houseboat that was in Sausalito, Calif. In the center, a basin filled with Legos was flanked by the universal emblems of the pandemic: a bottle of Purell and a package of Clorox wipes.Ms. Susewitz said she would take everything from Sitecore’s kitchen area, except for the plates and silverware.Jason Henry for The New York TimesBefore the pandemic, Sitecore was expanding its space so rapidly that it had leased another half of a floor in its office tower. But “once the pandemic hit, it was a ghost town,” said Brad Hamilton, the company’s head of real estate and facilities.Sitecore plans to downgrade to 30 desks from 170. “We’re paying an outrageous amount of money for a floor that nobody uses,” he said.Toward the end of the office tour, Ms. Susewitz surveyed Sitecore’s empty kitchen area, outfitted with a Ping-Pong table, a Ms. Pac-Man machine and two curved, six-foot privacy coves. Ms. Susewitz said she would take everything, except for the plates and silverware.Chair influencersOne result of the furniture trading is a lot more people logging into Zoom meetings from very nice chairs — and not only in the Bay Area.In January, Gilad Rom, a software engineer in Los Angeles, decided to upgrade his work station at home. He searched Craigslist and found a seller with 500 Aeron chairs — apparently acquired from a SiriusXM office that had shifted to remote work — in Culver City, Calif.When he posted a picture of the chairs gathered in a room, their black foam arms intertwined, the reaction was explosive. Some people wanted to score their own cheap Aeron. Many more wanted to reminisce about what the empty chairs represented — corporate excess gone awry.“I think it brought back a lot of memories,” Mr. Rom, 43, said. “Flashbacks from 2008 and 2000.”The seller, a secondhand furniture shop called Wannasofa, was so overwhelmed with calls after Mr. Rom’s tweet that the store gave him a 25 percent discount. “Apparently I’m a chair influencer now,” he said.The reaction also gave him an idea.“Maybe I should build an app that helps people find cheap luxury furniture,” he said. “Maybe there’s something there.” More