Feb. 20, 2019

It might seem an unlikely cohort of allies, Johnson and prison-reform activists, corporate chiefs and Koch Industries. But thanks in large part to a shortage of workers in a tight U.S. labor market, the cause is catching traction with a growing number of businesses.

Feb. 28, 2019

The insatiable appetite for all things Elizabeth Holmes is part of an overarching obsession in America right now: We can’t get enough of scams and scammers.

Feb. 8, 2019

Bill Gross loves to surprise.

The bond-market pioneer announced this past week that he was retiring from Janus Henderson, a gentle echo of his more abrupt, 2014 departure from the investment firm that he co-founded in 1971 and grew to prominence and dominance. No one knew the intense, hypercompetitive billionaire was about to step down quietly. He always said that he would leave the trading floor boots first.

But Gross also sees numbers clearly, and four years of underperforming short-term interest rates is a hard record to drag higher. If anyone knows the value of a strong head start, it’s Gross, and at 74, he is acutely aware of a ticking clock.

Oct. 15, 2018

Sears Holdings Corp . filed for bankruptcy early on Monday morning, the culmination of a years-long decline of the American retail institution, providing another example as to why hedge fund managers should steer clear of retail. Low share valuations attracted hedge fund managers, but now the sector is littered with their egos bruised and their money burned.

April 13, 2018

It started off as such a nice gesture.

Stephen Schwarzman, the 71-year-old co-founder and CEO of the Blackstone Group, the private-equity giant, wanted to give $25 million to his old high school to help fund a renovation project that would build a new science and technology center.

What did he want for his magnanimity? Just a little recognition. Normal stuff. A portrait of himself, displayed prominently in the school building. Input on the center’s construction progress, a review of the contractors. “Aggregated assessment data” on students’ progress in their new coding classes and whatever other computer stuff they get up to, just to make sure the thing’s working.

When the renaming was announced hours before the March 27 meeting, an uproar ignited in the suburban Philadelphia community.

March 15, 2019

“The whole world is scamming the system,” says Cooperating Witness 1 in the Justice Department’s huge complaint charging dozens of wealthy celebrities, investors, and executives in a vast college-admissions bribery scandal.

The scandal ensnared many in the investment industry. But despite all that expertise, these charges, if true, would demonstrate a very poor ability to weigh risk and return.

There’s a hot new asset class where growth may be outpacing every established market: proximity to celebrity billionaires. For charity!

The charity auction website Charitybuzz is hosting its annual Entrepreneur Auction, in which normal folk like you and me can bid for an interaction with a rich and famous company founder or corporate executive.

Sept. 7, 2018

The first thing you notice about Gary Shteyngart, author of novels like Super Sad True Love Story, is that he will make space for you. Whatever you just said is OK, because he has room even for that unforgivable deficiency. The second thing is that you may be providing material.

June 8, 2018

Two hedge funds made a mess in a corner of the credit market. So guess who’s the cleanup crew? More hedge funds.

They’ve been holed up in Manhattan conference rooms and on calls for months, trying to fix credit-default-swap contracts, following what many see as financial gamesmanship that broke them.

Maligned in the financial crisis, CDS are drawing scrutiny again. Even the Vatican has condemned their use. As banks have pulled back from CDS and trading has contracted, users now skew toward investors seasoned in trading distressed assets, who often lock horns in court fights and exploit legal loopholes, wrangling basis points out of corporate distress and one another. And in a low-yielding world, investors have had to get more creative and use ever-sharper elbows, to generate returns.

Feb. 1, 2019

Ken Langone gets it.

The 83-year-old billionaire co-founder of Home Depot knows that people are sick of the growing inequality in the U.S. and understands why they want to do something about it. There’s a risk, however, that we end up like Venezuela. So he wrote I Love Capitalism! The book is part memoir and partly an argument for a system that he says provides a higher quality of life than do other economic systems for everyone who wants to participate—if done right. We caught up with Langone to hear where he thinks the problems are, what he’s afraid of, and what we should do about it.