Back at it for ’22. Hope all had a good holiday season.
After deadlocking on several claims on their 7th day of deliberations, jurors weighing the fate of former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes ultimately found her guilty on 4 of 11 counts late Monday. Though clearing her of charges that “she defrauded patients with bogus blood-testing technology she knew didn’t work,” the 12-member jury convicted her of conspiracy and three counts of wire fraud “for intentionally defrauding investors,” concluding “a stunning fall for the once high-flying Holmes” – Law360 and Bloomberg and NYTimes and WSJ and Marketplace and Mashable and TechCrunch
Another variant, another revisiting of RTO plans. As Omicron takes hold around the U.S., businesses are again suspending or pushing back return-to-office plans, and a host of high consequence unknowns—from transmissibility to severity to changes in recommended isolation times for infected individuals—is making corporate guidance that much tougher - NYTimes and Bloomberg [and Law360, with a law-firm focus]
Airlines—already hit hard recently by rising Omicron-driven employee infections—saw recent snowstorms in Chicago and the D.C. area further disrupt flights, with nearly 3,000 cancellations hitting domestic carriers on Monday alone - NYTimes and WSJ
Hedge fund behemoth Bridgewater on Monday named Nir Bar Dea (current deputy CEO) and Mark Bertolini to serve as co-CEOs, replacing David McCormick at the top of the world’s biggest fund. McCormick resigned from the role “to consider a run for the U.S. Senate” in Pennsylvania - NYTimes and WSJ
India has opened an investigation into Apple’s App Store practices, the “most recent country to take aim at the U.S. technology giant.” The probe by Indian antitrust officials reportedly stems from a complaint it received last year from “an Indian nonprofit group alleging that a 30% fee Apple charges developers selling digital content via their apps harms software makers and stifles competition” - WSJ
In better news for Cook & Co., Apple’s market cap hit the staggering $3 trillion mark to start the week though closed just shy of that historic mark. The milestone is “even more remarkable” considering that it went from $1 trillion to $3 in little more than 3 years (while the first T took 42) - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and TechCrunch
Stocks rose with Apple to start the new year, and the S&P500 picked up where it left off 2021, closing at yet another record level, even as investors carefully watched for signs of Omicron’s impact on business - WSJ
The White House appears poised to nominate economist and former Fed official Philip Jefferson to a seat on the central bank’s board of governors. Jefferson currently is VP for academic affairs and an econ professor at North Carolina’s Davidson College - Bloomberg
Reveling in the beauty of the newly unveiled pavilion at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, an OMA-designed trapezoid in Los Angeles’ Koreatown - NYTimes
Stay safe, and get boosted,
MDR
