Business news 2020

Herbert Marcus, his sister Carrie Neiman and her husband Abraham Neiman opened their first clothing store in 1907 in Dallas. Today the company owns 42 Neiman Marcus stores, two Bergdorf Goodman stores and 30 Last Call clearance centers. Today the company is also bankrupt. Join the crowd.

Neiman Marcus advances bankruptcy preparations: sources
Reuters, Apr 3 2020 10:34 AM

Neiman Marcus Group is stepping up preparations to seek bankruptcy protection after the coronavirus pandemic forced the debt-laden luxury department store chain to close its stores, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday. Neiman began holding confidential discussions this week with bondholders about possible financing that would help the company continue operating while under bankruptcy protection. The company has also started similar discussions in recent days with its lenders.

https://in.reuters.com/article/neima...-idINKBN21L2QZ

With the majority of Americans under stay-at-home orders amidst the coronavirus pandemic, people are shopping online instead of going out to the stores – and anyway, hundreds of thousands of stores are temporarily closed. With the nation's movie theaters closed, people are turning to Netflix, Disney+ and other streaming services. Shares of Amazon and Netflix are at record highs and Netflix' valuation is now higher than Disney's. Who would have thought that to be possible?

Jeff Bezos gets $6.4 billion richer as Amazon stock hits a new record high

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeik.../#6f35dbdc53b0

Netflix stock surges to record high as investors bet on streaming during coronavirus

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ne...rus-2020-04-15

First we were told "red men" was a racist term and we should call them "Indians." Then we were told "Indians" was a racist term and we should call them "native Americans." Now, apparently, even "native American" is a racist term. Not only that, the woman pictured on packages of Land O'Lakes butter is presented as a "sex object." Really? It's a painting, not a real woman. Chalk up another victory for the PC crowd.

Land O’Lakes removing native American woman from packaging after 92 years
Photos of members of the farmer-owned cooperative will replace the logo used since 1928.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/land-...b6a92100e1a900

Before the coronavirus pandemic shut down much of the world, we used to have businesses known as "theaters." They showed movies on a large screen and people could sit and watch them. With a majority of us under stay-at-home orders, streaming services such as Hulu, Netflix, Crackle, Tubi TV, HBO GO, HBO NOW, FandangoNOW, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video have seen huge increases in subscriptions. Vudu, which launched in 2004 and now offers nearly 33,000 movies, television shows, cartoons and concert videos, has just been sold for an undisclosed price.

Fandango to buy on-demand video service Vudu from Walmart as the streaming wars heat up

https://thenextweb.com/apps/2020/04/...-wars-heat-up/

In 1947, Mitchell Cinader and Saul Charles founded a women's clothing business, Popular Merchandise, Inc. In 1983, Cinader changed the company's name to J.Crew. He thought the name "Crew" would help it to compete against Ralph Lauren's Polo brand and he added the "J" just to make the name sound distinguished. In 2020, that doesn't seem to matter.

The Twitter response to J.Crew's filing for bankruptcy has been savage – but there is a point being made
Many tweets note that the retailer's problems were terminal long before the coronavirus pandemic hit.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/th...int-2020-05-04

Carrie Marcus Neiman, Abraham Neiman and Herbert Marcus opened their first store in 1907 in Dallas. Neiman Marcus also owns Horchow and Bergdorf Goodman. Neiman Marcus is the latest in what will surely be a long line of retailers filing bankruptcy amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Neiman Marcus files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection
The move follows the bankruptcy filing by J.Crew.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ne...ion-2020-05-07

With 20.5 million jobless claims filed in April alone, our nation's unemployment rate is now at its highest level since 1933. In a lengthy "nothing-is-my-fault" interview on Fox & Friends, King Donald the First declared, "It's fully expected. There's no surprise. Everybody knows that. Even the Democrats aren't blaming me for that. But what I can do is, I'll bring it back." Really? No, that's just another empty promise similar to his 2016 boast that "I alone can fix" America's problems.

Economy loses 20.5 million jobs in April; Unemployment jumps to 14.7%

https://aflcio.org/2020/5/8/economy-...ment-jumps-147

San Diego-based Garden Fresh Restaurants owned 97 Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes restaurants. That's "owned" – past tense. I'm guessing Furr's, Cici's, Ryan's, Shakeys, Golden Corral, Hometown Buffet and Old Country Buffet will also be forced to shut down.

Souplantation's buffet-style restaurants closing for good due to the coronavirus
Owner says there was no way the restaurants' longtime self-serve model could survive in the era of COVID-19.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com...the-coronvirus

Another day, another bankruptcy. Blame the coronavirus. Stage Stores, headquartered in Houston, operates 793 department stores in 42 states.

Stage Stores Ffles for bankruptcy, seeks buyer as it sells off inventory
Discount retailer, which operates brands including Gordmans, Goody's and Bealls, intends to liquidate inventory as stores reopen in coming weeks.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/discoun...er-11589174938

JCPenney is the fourth company to file for bankruptcy in the past two weeks – and that doesn't count Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes, which is going out of business. Our nation's unemployment rate continues to climb. In the past two months, nearly 36,000,000 Americans have filed for unemployment.

JCPenney files for bankruptcy
CNN, May 15 2020 10:21 PM

JCPenney filed for bankruptcy on Friday, the latest retail giant to see its downfall hastened by the coronavirus crisis. The pandemic was the final blow to a 118-year-old company struggling to overcome a decade of bad decisions, executive instability and damaging market trends. The company has an agreement with most of its lenders on the turnaround plan that will allow it to stay in business as a more financially healthy company but will include closing an as yet unannounced number of its 846 stores. As part of the turnaround process, JCPenney arranged to borrow an additional $450 million from those lenders to pay for operations during the reorganization.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/15/busin...tcy/index.html

Restaurants and fast-food outlets have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. They're open only for drive-thru orders and delivery orders and they lost more than $30 billion in sales during March and $50 billion in April. Chipotle Mexican Grill, however, is doing very well. Today their stock price reached a record high of $1,017.87 and right now is at $998.58. All I can say is people must really love those chicken burritos, sofritas and keto salad bowls!

Chipotle shares hit a record high above $1,000 as the company sees strong delivery momentum

https://markets.businessinsider.com/...0-5-1029212322

Charles Rolls and Henry Royce founded the Rolls-Royce luxury car company in 1906 in Manchester, England. In 1915, during World War I, they began manuafacturing airplane engines. Most of these 9,000 job cuts, 17% of the company's workforce, will come from the civil aerospace division.

Rolls-Royce to cut 9,000 jobs amid coronavirus crisis

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52723107

For more than 30 years, Johnson & Johnson executives knew their talcum powder contained small amounts of asbestos but they never disclosed this to regulators or to the public. "We won't sell talcum powder anymore but the asbestos and all the lawsuits have absolutely nothing to do with our decision." Yeah, uh-huh.

Johnson & Johnson stops selling talc-based baby powder in US and Canada

https://www.npr.org/2020/05/19/85918...u-s-and-canada

Sind sie verrückt? Was dachten sie? And the first letters that appeared on the screen spelled "neger," the German word for.....well, you can guess. Volkswagen executives tried to defend this ad. They couldn't.

Volkswagen execs 'horrified' over racist ad showing large white hands flicking a black man away from a Golf 8
The German automaker initially said critics 'misunderstood' the Instagram clip, which has been pulled.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/vo...man-2020-05-21

Walter Jacobs acquired 12 Model T automobiles and started a Rent-A-Ford business in 1918 in Chicago. John Hertz, a thoroughbred racehorse owner and breeder, bought the company in 1923. The Hertz Corporation now operates in North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East. Hertz isn't doing much businesss right now, though. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, hardly anyone is traveling. So.......

Hertz files for bankruptcy

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/22/busin...tcy/index.html

Cost Plus Imports opened its first store in 1962 in San Mateo, California, selling home furnishings, beanbag chairs, incense and novelty items. The chain became Pier 1 in 1966 and by 2006 had grown to 1,300 stores. By October 2020, the number of Pier 1 stores will be zero.

Pier 1 is officially going out of business

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/01/busin...ale/index.html

Warner Music Group owns Warner, Elektra, Asylum, Atlantic, Reprise, Parlophone and hundreds of smaller labels including Atco, Bearsville, Big Tree, Blind Pig, Nonesuch, Chrysalis and Rhino. It is the world's third-largest recording company behind Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment.

Warner Music Group prices IPO at $25 a share to raise $1.925 billion

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/wa...ion-2020-06-03

James Cash Penney opened the first J.C. Penney store in 1902 in Kemmerer, Wyoming. A decade later, the chain had grown to 34 stores. By 1966, there were Penney stores in all 50 states. The chain grew to 2,053 stores in 1973. In May 2020, JCPenney filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and by 2022 only 600 stores will remain.

JCPenney is closing 154 stores this summer

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/04/busin...rus/index.html

The jobs report released yesterday showed the United States unemployment level at 13.3% – and King Donald viewed that as a good thing because it was an improvement over April. Of course he, as usual, took sole credit for the drop in the unemployment rate. It now turns out many unemployed or laid-off workers were misclassified and the actual unemployment figure is as high as 16.1%. And how is King Donald responding to this news? *Crickets*

Ex-acting Labor secretary defends BLS in the wake of jobs report misclassification error

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/06/polit...n-error-cnntv/

The National Bureau of Economic Research said today we're in a recession. I think most of us knew that three months ago.

The US economy is officially in recession

https://www.aol.com/article/finance/...sion/24516177/