Eight months after firing its CEO, Steve Easterbrook, for “sexting with a subordinate,” McDonald’s has sued Easterbrook for allegedly “lying, concealing evidence and fraud” in what appears to be a series of other workplace affairs. The company’s seeking to “recoup stock options and other compensation” that it allowed Easterbrook to keep when it showed him the door last year – NYTimes and WSJ and MarketWatch and Law360 and HuffPost
Checking in on Delta’s (bold if ill-fated) 2012 move to get into the oil refinery business, the first major U.S. airline to do so. Delta had hoped that sky-high jet A prices would help the airline “offset some of its expenses and perhaps even make some money.” Fast forward to 2020, where after years of making only modest profits (went things went well), Delta finds itself saddled with the refinery and awfully little good to show for it – NYTimes
China’s latest move in the escalating tit-for-tat between Beijing and Washington is the imposition of sanctions on 11 U.S. citizens, including several sitting Senators – WSJ
Speaking of China, the White House’s proposed TikTok ban has been getting most of the headlines in the past week. But for many in the U.S., the move to also bar WeChat has far deeper consequences—especially for the “millions of people with family or business in China” who use the app daily to keep in touch – Bloomberg
More on this weekend’s Executive Orders, none of which is expected to bring the advertised fast relief (if any at all), in part due to their widely perceived unconstitutionality – NYTimes and MarketWatch and Marketplace and WSJ
The EOs have thus far failed to jumpstart stalled Congressional relief talks – Bloomberg
New analysis from the San Francisco Fed suggests that “average inflation targeting”—a policy in which the Fed could aim to overshoot price growth in the future to make up for past underperformance—may be an appropriate approach for the current virus-influenced moment so as not to “exacerbate already-subdued prices as households and businesses expect low inflation to continue into the future and adjust their behavior accordingly” – Bloomberg
Despite a truly dismal start to the year that saw the company jettisoning investments in an effort to amass cash, Masa Son’s SoftBank has managed to swing back to the black, posting a “seemingly miraculous . . . $12 billion net profit for the three-month period that ended in June” – NYTimes and WSJ and MarketWatch
A California judge, “citing the state’s gig-worker law that went into effect this year,” has ordered ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft to treat their drivers as employees. Though game-changing for the entire gig economy, the ruling’s currently stayed pending appeal by the companies – WSJ and MarketWatch
Target appears to have hit a Covid-driven sweet spot, particularly in its digital sales, which have hit levels the retailer “wasn’t planning for until three years from now.” An important element of its success is its “lean model of shipping goods directly from its retail outlets” – WSJ
Connecticut-based Interactive Brokers LLC will pay a collective $38 million to three separate financial regulators to “resolve claims that the electronic trading platform failed to file suspicious activity reports for certain securities trades and ran afoul of anti-money laundering rules” – Law360
Need to step outside our current disaster but not leave the genre? How about this terrifying piece on how forest fires in the Chernobyl exclusion zone are releasing dangerous blasts of radiation into the surrounding areas (and anywhere downwind). Just some happy news for everyone – The Atlantic
Stay safe.
