EGN NEWS DESK
A story of two Bezos companies
Jeff Bezos shocked many when he spoke of his hopes for President-elect Donald Trump’s return to energy on the DealBook Summit final month. The duo’s reset took a brand new twist with Amazon’s announcement that it could launch a documentary on Melania Trump shot by an outcast filmmaker, and extra tumult at The Washington Post.
But Bezos, like different enterprise leaders, has been transferring nearer to the president-elect, and the choices are inevitably being analyzed in that context.
Amazon known as it a “behind the scenes” take a look at Trump — however she can have an enormous say. The documentary will likely be launched this yr on its Prime Video service and in theaters; filming started after the election. Melania is an government producer, suggesting that she’s going to have the ability to form the narrative.
The documentary was directed by Brett Ratner, who was accused of sexual misconduct. Ratner is the high-profile director and producer of movies corresponding to “Rush Hour” and “The Revenant.” But he disappeared from Hollywood after six girls leveled accusations towards him that Ratner denied. He has resurfaced after getting into Trump’s orbit. It’s one other instance of Trump’s MAGA motion’s career-rehabilitating powers, Semafor’s Ben Smith writes — and the way tech platforms are prepared to reject “progressive judgments on folks and content material.”
The fallout from The Post’s refusal to endorse a presidential candidate remains to be taking part in out. Last week, Ann Telnaes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, stop after saying the paper killed a cartoon depicting Bezos and different tech C.E.O.s bending the knee to a statue of Trump. She known as that call a “sport changer,” and “harmful for a free press.” (The Post rejected Telnaes’s model of occasions, saying the cartoon was rejected for editorial causes.)
More disruption might come quickly. On Sunday, Oliver Darcy reported in his Status publication that The Post’s star political reporter Josh Dawsey was becoming a member of an exodus from the paper, and that layoffs have been anticipated this week. The paper has already struggled to rent a brand new government editor after quite a few high candidates reportedly pulled out of the operating.
Yet Bezos has doubled down on his Post choice. He informed Andrew on the DealBook Summit that he was “proud” of the transfer and was “optimistic” a few second Trump time period. That view has unnerved a lot of his Post staff. But there’s little signal that he or different enterprise leaders will cease courting Trump quickly. Since the election, Trump has pulled in $200 million to fund his inauguration, together with from large companies.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel sue the U.S. authorities for blocking their merger. The firms accused President Biden and different officers of corrupting the overview course of, and harming the American metal business and its employees. U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel additionally sued Cleveland-Cliffs, its C.E.O. and the worldwide president of the steelworkers union, claiming that they’d illegally undermined the proposed deal. Biden moved to dam the deal final week, a transfer that’s creating diplomatic tensions between Tokyo and Washington.
New York City faces its first large take a look at of congestion charging. The metropolis turned the primary within the nation to cost motorists to enter sure areas of Manhattan on Sunday, with some drivers required to pay $9. Day 1 precipitated few hiccups, however Monday morning site visitors looms, and President-elect Donald Trump has promised to reverse federal approval for this system.
“The Brutalist” and “Emilia Pérez” are the large winners on the Golden Globes. The movies gained a collection of awards, making them and their stars main contenders for the Academy Awards. “The Brutalist” gained greatest drama, greatest actor for Adrien Brody and greatest director, whereas “Emilia Pérez” was awarded greatest comedy or musical and greatest supporting actress for Zoe Saldaña. Demi Moore additionally gained her first Golden Globe Award of her five-decade profession for her function in “The Substance.”
A labor dispute upends Big Ski
With overcrowded slopes and a few U.S. each day lift-ticket costs topping $325, the economics of snowboarding has lengthy felt damaged.
That frustration has come to a head in Park City, Utah, the place a strike by ski patrollers has led to the closure of roughly two-thirds of the most important ski resort within the United States.
The standoff has reignited criticism of a wave of consolidation that has remodeled an business scuffling with local weather change, dwindling skiable actual property, and a conflict between mountain communities and Wall Street-funded enlargement.
What’s taking place: On Dec. 27, The Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association, went on strike towards Vail Resorts — which owns Park City Mountain and 41 different resorts in Australia, Europe and North America — demanding a pay elevate to $23 per hour from $21.
The transfer has prompted enormous lift-line waits, and a torrent of gripes about ruined holidays. Vail Resorts’s inventory has fallen greater than 6 % for the reason that strike began.
Negotiations are set to renew on Monday. Vail says that it has made “vital progress resolving 24 of the 27 contract gadgets.” Ski patrollers and different unionized workers members argue that they’ve been priced out of the booming native actual property market. They are represented by the Communications Workers of America union, which has made large inroads with employees in Hollywood and the tech business.
Their plea has gained some assist: a GoFundMe account has raised greater than $250,000.
The U.S. ski business is dominated by a number of giants. The sector took off within the Nineteen Eighties after President Jimmy Carter ordered the U.S. Forest Service to cease regulating lift-ticket costs, Michael Childers, a professor at Colorado State University, informed DealBook. Most resorts are on federal lands, and operators pay the federal government a lease that’s “effectively beneath” the “market worth for the land by which they function,” he added. The Forest Service and different companies have taken a hands-off strategy to regulating the sector, he famous.
Is antitrust scrutiny of the business set to develop? Last yr, the Justice Department began investigating a bid by Alterra Mountain, one other business large, to purchase Arapahoe Basin in Colorado — the primary such antitrust inquiry in many years. That prompted analysts to pepper Kirsten Lynch, the C.E.O. of Vail Resorts, with questions on earnings calls about whether or not larger regulatory scrutiny was coming.
Despite the tensions, business watchers are skeptical that the Trump administration, which has pledged to step up deregulation, will stand in the best way of Big Ski.
Remembering Sam Butler, a high company adviser
Samuel Butler, a longtime company lawyer who labored on a number of the most transformative offers of the twentieth century, together with Time’s takeover of Warner Communications and Disney’s acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC, died on Saturday in New York, DealBook’s Michael de la Merced experiences. He was 94.
Butler, who counted Warren Buffett as a good friend, was among the many longest-serving leaders of Cravath, Swaine & Moore, the blue-chip regulation agency. He was additionally a outstanding determine in civic establishments, together with the New York Public Library.
Butler turned a go-to adviser for M.&A. throughout the offers increase of the Nineteen Eighties and Nineties. After graduating from Harvard and Harvard Law School and clerking for Justice Sherman Minton of the Supreme Court, the Indiana native joined the agency in 1956.
He turned its presiding companion in 1980, and through that point he suggested on the gross sales of Squibb to Bristol-Myers, CBS to Westinghouse, and Salomon Smith Barney to Travelers Group. He stepped down in 1998, having turn into Cravath’s third-longest-serving chief.
“Sam was a unprecedented lawyer whose judgment was constantly sought out by purchasers of their most difficult and consequential moments,” Faiza Saeed, Cravath’s presiding companion, stated in an announcement to DealBook.
Butler solid a decades-long friendship with Buffett. The two first met when Butler was a director of Geico within the mid-Nineteen Seventies, when Buffett started investing within the auto insurer. The Oracle of Omaha credited Butler with saving the troubled insurer by recruiting Jack Byrne as C.E.O. (Berkshire ultimately purchased Geico in 1996, with Butler advising on the deal.)
Such was their bond that Buffett known as Butler in on a Thursday in July 1995, telling him he wanted assist with a fancy deal set to be introduced on Monday: Disney’s takeover of Capital Cities/ABC, the place Buffett was a serious shareholder. Butler later recalled that the transaction needed to be finished on that timeline, or Disney may attempt to recut the deal. The sale was introduced on schedule.
“During Sam’s tenure at Cravath, everyone needed him as their lawyer,” Buffett stated in an announcement to DealBook. “Berkshire was fortunate to have the chance to work with him.”
He is survived by three youngsters, 9 grandchildren (together with the investor Nick Brown) and eight great-grandchildren.
The week forward
Jobs, the Fed, the way forward for TikTok and the sentencing in President-elect Donald Trump’s hush-money trial are anticipated to dominate the agenda this week. Here’s what to look at:
Monday: Jensen Huang, the C.E.O. of the chipmaker Nvidia, is about to ship a keynote handle at CES 2025 in Las Vegas. Artificial intelligence is predicted to be within the highlight on the annual tech commerce present extravaganza.
Wednesday: The Fed is scheduled to launch minutes from its December coverage assembly, probably revealing extra element concerning the path of rates of interest over the primary months of the Trump administration.
Thursday: Major U.S. inventory markets will likely be closed as a part of a nationwide day of mourning for Jimmy Carter, the thirty ninth president of the United States.
Friday: It’s jobs day, with economists anticipating to see a slight cool-off in hiring.
Elsewhere, the way forward for TikTok, which may very well be banned within the United States this month, would be the topic of a landmark Supreme Court listening to. And in New York, Trump is about to be sentenced in his hush-money prison case.
THE SPEED READ
Deals
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Italy is reportedly in talks with SpaceX over a $1.6 billion deal to produce safe telecommunications for its authorities through Starlink. (Bloomberg)
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Centerview Partners is contemplating promoting a stake in its enterprise for the primary time or pursuing an preliminary public providing. (WSJ)
Politics and coverage
Best of the remainder
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Here’s the newest on the winter storm that’s slamming into the Mid-Atlantic states this morning after inflicting widespread disruption throughout a part of the Midwest. (NYT)
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“Sam Altman on ChatGPT’s First Two Years, Elon Musk and A.I. Under Trump” (Bloomberg)
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