The New York Times Co. had planned to bring workers back to the paper’s Times Square offices part-time next month, but has now delayed their return “until conditions improve,” the company said in a statement. Last week, city health officials placed the Big Apple on “high alert” for risk of new COVID virus infections. The...
Chief executive officers at the largest U.S. companies averaged $14.7 million in compensation in 2021, the sixth consecutive year of record pay for corporate leaders. Pay packets grew by an average of 12 percent above 2020 levels. The median annual paycheck was $4.1 million; the balance of the compensation was in stock, much of which...
Home sales in the U.S. are slowing after a frenzied two years that saw median sale prices rise from $329,000 in 2020’s first quarter to $391,200 in this year’s first three months, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Existing homes sold at an annual rate of 5.6 million in April, compared to 6.1...
In April, sales of existing homes slipped 2.4 percent from March and 5.9 percent year on year to their slowest rate since June 2020, when the economy was battered by the onset of the COVID War, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported. The figure represents contracts signed in February and March for sales that...
In March, the proportion of payments on car loans, personal loans, and credit cards that were at least 60 days late rose for the eighth consecutive month, according to Equifax, one of three U.S. credit bureaus. For the month, 11.1 percent of credit cards issued to people with credit scores below 620 fell into that...
Investors have lost interest in special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) just when SPACs need them most. A SPAC or “blank-check company” is a special category of company that goes public, typically at $10 a share, even though it has no assets. When it has stockpiled enough capital, the SPAC buys and merges with a promising company...
With the dollar continuing to surge in value against other currencies and the euro down 7 percent so far this year, some analysts are beginning to speculate that this might be the year when the two reach a one-to-one value. That happened last in 2002. The euro sank toward the dollar in 2016 but bounced...
Around the world, cash holdings among investment fund managers has reached their greatest volume since the terrorist attacks in the U.S. in September 2001, the Financial Times reported. Last Monday and Tuesday, $5.2 billion was withdrawn from the world’s mutual funds holding equities, running up the four-week outflow to $16 billion, according to Bank of...
In last week’s stock market rout, Target’s share price suffered its worst single-day plunge since the Black Monday crash on 19 October, 1987, after the company cut its profit outlook from 8 percent of sales to 6 percent. Also, the company’s first-quarter profit fell below the lowest estimate among 23 analysts Bloomberg has surveyed. CEO...
Ten of the 11 sectors comprising the Standard & Poor’s 500 index have lost value this year. Only energy has been spared. The contagion spread more widely last Wednesday when Target and Walmart reported surprisingly poor first-quarter results. Kohl’s also missed its profit target and is actively seeking a buyer. With consumer spending supporting as...