Finance editor Meredith Mazzilli here, taking the final turn as guest host while executive editor Matt Turner wraps up parental leave.
I'll get the shameless promotion for my own newsletter out of the way first - you can sign up here for Wall Street Insider to get a behind-the-scenes look at the finance team's biggest scoops and deep dives.
The world's most powerful leaders and execs (not to mention a sizable Business Insider contingent) flocked to Davos this week. Here are some interesting nuggets from the sidelines of this annual meeting of the minds:
- A generation of private-equity leaders is getting ready to hand over the reins to successors. Dakin Campbell spoke with Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, who said too many companies pit execs against each other in succession battles and explained why he kept his next in line a secret for more than a year.
- Joe Ciolli chatted with Amy Webb, a quantitative futurist and professor of strategic foresight at NYU, who predicted that tech giants like Amazon and Apple will "completely dismantle the healthcare industry as we know it."
- Attention job-seekers: Andy Baldwin, the global managing partner of client services at EY, told Cadie Thompson that the firm wants to hire for more tech roles in the years ahead, and explained why it's changing what it looks for in candidates.
- Buzzwords are often maddening corporate-speak to soften the blow of big, unpopular decisions. And that's exactly why they're worth unpacking. As Joe reports, the word "upskilling" kept popping up during most of Business Insider's conversations with execs, investors, and strategists. Here's why.
- Spiked seltzer was everywhere in 2019. John Blood, the chief legal and corporate-affairs officer and corporate secretary for AB InBev, told Cadie how the company is thinking about the fizzy booze market now, and why it doesn't spend much time worrying about any rivalry between White Claw and InBev's own brands.
Digging into buzzy healthcare startup One Medical
Speaking of the rich and powerful - I'm a big fan of stories that sift through hundreds of pages of jargon and boilerplate in S-1 filings to uncover the juiciest stuff companies share before going public. One of the fun things we get to learn is who's about to get richer.
Primary-care startup One Medical recently filed paperwork to go public, and Lydia Ramsey and Zach Tracer broke out the investors and execs with the biggest stakes, plus how much they stand to gain. Topping the list is The Carlyle Group, which led a $220 million private financing round for One Medical in 2018. The private-equity firm owns a nearly 27% stake that would be worth $450.5 million at the top of the IPO range. Still, there's plenty of red ink in the filing: One Medical's net losses have been deepening for the membership-based platform even as users climbed (sound familiar?)
Finance and Investing
Going from fresh-out-of-college, brand-new analyst to running an investment team as a portfolio manager at Steve Cohen's Point72 isn't a linear path. Here are the different ways to rise the ranks.
Billionaire and Milwaukee Bucks co-owner Wes Edens was chairman of the firm overseeing one of America's largest newspaper chains, but skipped more than a quarter of its board and committee meetings in 2018.
Robert Kiyosaki, author of the #1 personal finance book of all time "Rich Dad, Poor Dad," thinks public-market investors are being duped.
Tech, Media, Telecoms
AT&T has made no secret of its desire to lead the increasingly fractured media landscape through its newly acquired WarnerMedia entertainment properties and Xandr adtech division.
We asked a group of investors at successful venture capital firms to name the startups that will boom this year.
These brands have built lasting partnerships with creators on social media, and include names like SeatGeek, Sephora, and Chipotle.
Healthcare, Retail, Transportation
MedMen, a flashy cannabis retailer with stores in Las Vegas, Los Angeles' Venice Beach neighborhood, and on New York's Fifth Avenue, has been punished by investors.
There's a reason lithium-ion batteries are in nearly every electronic device - they're energy-dense, lightweight, and don't degrade quickly. Where they fall short is in the storage of electricity on the grid for multiple days.
Walmart joining TikTok might just be the crossover event of the century. The nearly 60-year-old retailer is surprisingly active on the social media platform that has gained explosive popularity among young people, especially Gen Z.