WeWork Founder Loses 'Billionaire' Status, Threatens Lawsuit As SoftBank Pulls $3BN Investor Bailout

We would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the room where former WeWork CEO and co-founder Adam Neumann received the news that SoftBank was officially walking away from a promised $3 billion purchase of WeWork shares, pledged as part of a deal to oust Neumann and save the struggling rental-space startup after investors backed out of a planned IPO, robbing the company of more than $6 billion in short-term funding.

Without that money, and now, with the global travel business at a standstill and the whole world working from home for the foreseeable future, WeWork is very likely doomed. Now, SoftBank's billionaire founder Masayoshi Son is facing serious pressure from a litany of adversaries including the US ratings agencies (Moody's recently cut the company's credit rating two notches deep into junk territory), notorious activist investor Paul Singer, whose Elliott Capital Management has been pressing the Japanese conglomerate to improve its performance as SoftBank, or at least buy back more stock, and the global banks to whom Masa Son has now pledged 40% of his SoftBank shares.

The ratings cut led to a repricing of SoftBank debt to all-time lows, coupled with a surge in the company's borrowing costs.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/wework-backers-threaten-lawsuits-softbank-pulls-3bn-buyout-and-walks-away

We cannot allow Facebook and Twitter to use Covid-19 to launch their own coup d’état

World leaders are having their social media posts deleted under the guise of the pandemic, but is this just the beginning of socially destructive subterfuge?

A few days ago, Facebook and Twitter decided to delete contributions from two world leaders. The first was Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who shared a video and aired his view that “hydroxychloroquine is working in all places” to treat Covid-19. Facebook decided it was against what the World Health Organization had decreed and trashed the video. Twitter followed up by removing two of Bolsonaro’s tweets.

They also deleted a tweet by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, in which he spoke of a “brew” that would eliminate any infectious genes.

Even former New York Mayor and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani got his knuckles rapped. His tweet quoting someone else stating that hydroxychloroquine is 100 percent effective had the vanishing spray applied too.

Whatever the scientific truth behind what works in the fight against Covid-19 is another debate. The bigger issue here is now that Facebook and Twitter have crossed the threshold, will they ever go back?

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/484797-facebook-twitter-covid-social-media/

Five Days Before It Filed For Bankruptcy, Whiting Execs Got $15 Million In Bonuses

Just days Whiting Petroleum it became the first shale casualty of the current oil price crash, when it filed for prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Wednesday morning after the plunge in oil prices left it unable to pay its debts, the company's board - supposedly with the approval of the company's creditors - approved $14.6 million in cash bonuses for top executives.

As part of this KERP, or Key Employee Retention Plan, CEO Brad Holly would collect $6.4 million of the total, which will be “paid immediately,” the company said in a filing Wednesday according to Bloomberg. Four other executives including Chief Financial Officer Correne Loeffler will get the rest.

The board said employees eligible for variable compensation can receive payouts that amount to no more than their target levels. The payouts will be made quarterly. As part of the deal, the senior executives agreed to forfeit equity awards they were in line to receive this year.

The bonus plan which was signed off by the board on March 26, or 5 days before the Chapter 11 filing, is "part of an overhaul of the company’s variable compensation program" with the filing noting that the coronavirus pandemic, coupled with a price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia, has dealt a crushing blow to the oil and gas industry, making it “virtually impossible” to set short-term performance goals.

To be sure, the board knew just how bad the optics of this deal would be, so why do it? The stated reason: the program "is intended to ensure the stability and continuity of the company’s workforce and eliminate any potential misalignment of interests that would likely arise if existing performance metrics were retained."

CEO Holly, who was executive vice president at Anadarko before he was named Whiting CEO in 2017, has collected $4 million in salary and bonuses since then; he’s also received payouts of stock that have plunged in value. CFO Loeffler, who joined the company just eight months ago, will receive $2.2 million from the bonus plan.

In other words, only the people who pushed Whiting into Chapter 11 can deliver it from bankruptcy, or so the thinking goes.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/five-days-it-filed-bankruptcy-whiting-execs-got-15-million-bonuses

Netanyahu, just out of isolation, goes back in after health minister tests positive for Covid-19

On Wednesday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ended his self-isolation period, but now he has to go back into quarantine after another senior official tested positive for Covid-19.

Netanyahu is one of several top government officials who will be quarantined following the positive test of Health Minister Yaakov Litzman. Others include Yossi Cohen, the head of the Israeli spy agency Mossad, National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat, and several leadership-level figures in the Health Ministry who all recently came into contact with Litzman.

The 71-year-old health minister and his wife Chava were found to have contracted the killer virus, his office confirmed on Wednesday overnight. Both feel well, but in line with the ministry’s guidelines, everyone who came into contact with him must go into a 14-day quarantine.

Ironically, Netanyahu had just ended his own period of isolation, which was mandated after his Knesset affairs adviser, Rivka Paluch, tested positive for the disease. The two-week quarantine from their previous encounter expired on Wednesday evening.

The Israeli leader last tested negative for the disease on Monday. He will be working from his Jerusalem residence, his office said in a statement.

The ministry is currently investigating who else may need self-isolation. Litzman attended the Israeli parliament last week, so security footage is being reviewed to identify those he came into contact with.

It was not immediately clear where the minister himself contracted the virus. Itamar Grotto, the deputy director-general of the ministry, said it may have been another senior government official or someone within the Haredi community in Jerusalem. Litzman is the head of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party.

As of Thursday, the Health Ministry identified 6,211 Covid-19 cases in Israel, with 29 patients dead so far.

https://www.rt.com/news/484768-netanyahu-isolation-health-minister/