New York Observer: Whole Foods Isn’t Just About Where You Buy Your Food; It’s About Who You Think You Are
When Whole Foods
co-CEO John Mackey’s book, Conscious Capitalism, came out in January, Claude Arpels and Winsome Brown hosted a book party for about 150 people at their gorgeous and expansive Tribeca apartment. It was a fitting venue. While America’s hard right continues to find new ways to make people hate big business and the overpaid Wall Street courtiers that serve it, the tastefully decorated digs screamed You Can Still Do Well Without Selling Your Soul to Goldman Sachs.…
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New York Observer: Michael Dell’s Bid to Take Dell Private Is a Joke, But It’s Not Funny
As far as mysteries go, this one kind of disappoints
. Michael Dell and his private equity partner, Silver Lake, want us to believe that they have a secret plan for reviving the fortunes of the struggling PC maker, a plan they insist they can only pull off if they take the Austin-based company private in a $24.4 billion leveraged buyout. Forget the incontrovertible evidence of a company and industry in decline, they say—the falling revenues, declining margins and competition-via-commoditization. Focus instead on … the hypnotic power of Michael Dell’s insistence that the company’s best days are ahead.…
New York Observer: Forget North Korea: There’s Only One Korean ‘Threat’— Samsung Electronics
The lead story in The Daily Beast on April 11 asked the question on many people’s minds: “How Scared Should You Be About North Korea?” I’m no political scientist, but I’ll give you my answer anyway: not at all.In other words, the threat of North Korea is what it’s always been, which is pretty much nothing. So don’t listen to the Pentagon. What’s the real Korean threat? The one that consists of someone actually doing something as opposed to just saying something? That would be Samsung
.…
New York Observer: Memories of You, Ron Johnson
It seemed like a good idea at the time. When J. C. Penney hired former Apple retail chief Ron Johnson in late 2011, pretty much everyone agreed that things could only get better for the struggling department store chain. The man’s track record spoke for itself—he worked for Apple, for God’s sake! What could go wrong? A lot.
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New York Observer: The New York Times Ought to Stop Its Wild Bank Chase
It’s easy to hate bankers these days. The latest outrage? According to a March 2 article in The New York Times, the financial services giant JPMorgan Chase encourages its so-called private client advisers to suggest in-house investment products to its well-heeled clientele. The gall! And this was no thinly reported story, either. The Times got its scoop from an inside man—Johnny Burris, one of those very advisers. Make that former advisers. Mr. Burris, you see, was fired last year, and therefore has no axe to grind. Wait, what?
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New York Observer: M&A Activity Reveals CEOs To Be Sheeplike
In the ocean of money that is Wall Street, things come in waves
.…
New York Observer: Question Authority
When David Einhorn, the poker-playing hedge fund superstar, decides to publicly take on a company whose stock he owns (or has shorted), he usually gets results. Once you establish a reputation for astute calls on Wall Street—Mr. Einhorn’s most famous being his bearish call on Lehman in the spring of 2008—the lemmings can’t help but follow. His latest target: Apple
.…
New York Observer: The (Not As) Big Apple
When you’re learning a new language, the best sign that you’ve got a lock on it is when it’s in your dreams. It’s a pretty sure thing, then, that many among us have used the new language of “iPhone” or “iPad” while asleep—because we all speak Apple now. Investors, too. But whereas they once dreamed of an $800 share price, last week they experienced a communal nightmare of a $450 stock
. And they were not asleep.…
New York Observer: Tears for Sears
Eddie Lampert Props Up the Troubled Retailer, But Who’s Buying?
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