Author: TI Editor

(Bloomberg) — The former head engineer of the failed student-finance startup Frank testified that when he asked company founder Charlie Javice if her request to create “synthetic” customer data was legal, she told him in his native French that she didn’t intend to “end up in an orange jumpsuit.”  Patrick Vovor told jurors he didn’t want to do anything illegal and declined to provide the data. The dramatic testimony by Vovor, now a JPMorgan Chase & Co. employee, came at the end of a week that provided additional details of the bank’s vetting of its failed $175 million acquisition of…

(Bloomberg) — AT&T Inc. is no longer encouraging employees to wear pins that state their favored pronouns and has canceled a series of LGBTQ-friendly events in the most recent effort by a big company to roll back its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The company’s chief diversity officer, Michelle Jordan, is now listed as vice president of culture and inclusion on LinkedIn. Her team has been renamed as well, a person close to AT&T said. The company will no longer fund the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention group for LGBTQ youth, or Turn Up the Love, a series of Pride…

Millennium Management lost about $900 million so far this year from two teams focused on index rebalancing, a strategy recently upended by global stock market volatility, according to people familiar with the matter. Glen Scheinberg runs the larger of the two index-rebalancing teams, a group known as SRBL, while Dubai-based Pratik Madhvani manages the other crew focused on the strategy, the people said. A representative for Millennium declined to comment. Index rebalancing — often highly leveraged — involves betting on which companies enter or exit various stock indexes, and it can be lucrative for giant multimanager hedge funds like Millennium.…

(Adds details on layoffs, reorganization in paragraphs 2, 9-10) TORONTO, March 7 (Reuters) – Royal Bank of Canada , Canada’s largest lender, laid off some employees as a result of changes at its business segments following the C$13.5 billion acquisition of HSBC’s domestic business last year, two sources with direct knowledge of the layoffs told Reuters. Some of the layoffs were at the technology and operations, personal banking and commercial banking teams and began earlier this week, the sources said, requesting anonymity. It was unclear how many employees were impacted or if layoffs would continue. RBC separated its personal and…

Mondelez International Inc. is asking regulators for permission to ignore a shareholder proposal that calls for greater transparency on the Oreo maker’s Russian operations. The snack company is looking to exclude a resolution from Wespath Institutional Investments LLC from the agenda of its next shareholder meeting, according to a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Shareholders including Wespath argue that Mondelez has a responsibility to show investors how it’s conducting business in Russia and Ukraine in a way that protects human rights and are calling for a third-party assessment.  The Mondelez letter, dated March 3, cites SEC guidance released…

(Bloomberg) — Thames Water is preparing for the possibility that it may be pushed into special administration following an appeal in a London court next week, according to people familiar with the matter. While Thames executives believe a temporary nationalization of Britain’s largest water and sewage utility is unlikely, they are nevertheless developing contingency plans, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing confidential matters. The company’s efforts to restructure its more-than £16 billion ($20.6 billion) debt load hinge, in part, on what happens next week, when the UK’s Court of Appeal will hear challenges to Thames Water’s…

(Bloomberg) — Two units of Robinhood Markets Inc. agreed to pay $26 million to settle Financial Industry Regulatory Authority allegations that it failed to respond to red flags about potential misconduct and didn’t verify the identities of thousands of customers. The fine from the broker-dealer industry regulator comes on the heels of a separate $45 million settlement by Robinhood Securities and Robinhood Financial in January with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which accused the retail trading firm of failing to preserve records and not reporting suspicious activity on time, among other problems.  “Today’s action reminds Finra members that compliance…

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(Reuters) -Activist investor Mantle Ridge has built a stake worth more than $1 billion in consultancy firm Cognizant Technology, saying its shares are undervalued, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Shares of the company, whose market capitalization stands at more than $41 billion, rose over 5% in extended trading. Mantle Ridge started buying up shares of the company in the second half of 2022, when the stock was trading in the high $50 to low $60 per-share range, the report added. The activist firm has been privately engaging with Cognizant about its progress on boosting the share price, the…

Supply Lines is a daily newsletter that tracks global trade. . The CEOs of the three largest American steelmakers are urging US President Donald Trump to resist giving any tariff exemptions on imports of the alloy. Nine US steel industry executives sent a letter to Trump on March 7, just days before the US is expected to implement a 25% tariff on all steel imports. The letter said prior exemptions given to nations allowed for increased import volumes that damped the original impact of Trump’s duties during his first administration. The CEOs, which include Nucor Corp.’s Leon Topalian, United States Steel…