In a exact interview with CRN, HP chairman Ray Lane outlined situations in which HP may hang on to its PC business. “If we don’t make that decision [to spin off], it’s because of two things: We can’t offer a better proposition to customers and investors,” Lane said. “If we can’t it stays inside HP.” If the company does decide to spin-off its personal systems group, Lane has suggested the company call it the “HP PC Business.” HP has the “largest and most profitable [PC] business in the world,” Lane explained during the InformationWeek 500 conference in California. “I am lobbying, and I don’t have to lobby very hard, to call it the HP PC Business. Call it HP. It will be a sister company,” Lane explained, pointing to HP’s spinoff of Agilent. “Agilent was a better business once spun off, because it was a very different business from what the rest of HP was doing.” Read on for more.
Lane believes the personal systems group will be more successful outside of HP, since it is on a different track than HP’s enterprise business. The company announced the possibility of a PSG spin-off to avoid a leak in the press, Lane explained. “We can’t afford to have hundreds of people working on a project without some kind of leak, and then we’re having to explain it to the press anyway,” he said. “So we thought it best that we go out and explain that we are going to look at this option for the benefit of that business model, the customers and the investors.” Early reports on Tuesday suggested HP had started to lay off as many as 525 employees from its Palm branch.
[Via CNET]
The U.S. Treasury Department last week issued regulations for a new corporate ownership database, following long-running debate over the types of businesses that should be required to report and what information they would need to provide.
The rule, which will go into effect in January 2024, settles some of the basic questions around the database, which lawmakers hope will help prevent the use of anonymous shell companies. But with years to go before the registry is fully functional, questions are likely to linger over how the reporting system will work in practice, financial experts say.
Congress passed legislation called the Corporate Transparency Act in January 2021 to create the ownership registry, but implementation of the law falls to Treasury’s anti-money-laundering bureau, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. FinCEN last year issued a draft proposal of the rule that received more than 250 comment letters, some recommending that officials make extensive revisions to the proposal.
The version finalized last week adopts some changes but largely hews to FinCEN’s initial proposal, which caused some business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to criticize the rule for being overly burdensome on small businesses.
The new regulations require limited liability companies and other corporate entities that fall under FinCEN’s reporting requirement to submit identifying information about their beneficial owners.
FinCEN’s rule broadly defines a beneficial owner as an individual who directly or indirectly exercises substantial control or who controls at least 25% of the ownership interests of a corporate entity.
“Substantial control” is itself broadly defined, which could create compliance challenges for companies, said Nikhil Gore, a partner at law firm Covington & Burling LLP, whose practice includes advising financial institutions on anti-money-laundering laws.
Since the definition is subjective, “the universe of people you have to identify isn’t as clearly bounded as might have been possible,” Mr. Gore said.
The rule requires reporting companies to submit the name, birth date, address and a unique identifying number from an acceptable identification document, such as a passport, along with an image of the document, for each beneficial owner.
Another key issue addressed by FinCEN’s rule relates to which companies will have to submit beneficial ownership information.
Companies covered by the rule include corporations, limited liability companies and other legal entities created by filing with one of the 50 U.S. states or a tribal government. Certain foreign companies that are registered to do business in the U.S. also will be required to file.
But there are 23 exemptions that were written into the legislation, including ones that carve out many companies. The largest exemptions are for publicly listed and large operating companies. Congress defined the latter as any company with more than 20 full-time employees, $5 million in revenue and operations in the U.S.
Lawmakers reasoned that ownership information for such companies already would be readily available, but the large carve-outs have sparked questions from some quarters.
“One thing to look out for is the extent that companies in that range become potential vehicles for illicit actors,” said Jamal El-Hindi, a counsel at law firm Clifford Chance LLP. Bad actors down the road could try to use the exemption as a loophole, he said.
FinCEN in its final rule did relax the deadlines it set for companies to file beneficial ownership information.
There are about 32 million existing companies that will be required to report ownership information once FinCEN’s rule becomes effective in 2024, according to the Treasury bureau’s estimates. Those companies will have a full year to file a report with the Treasury.
FinCEN expects another 5 million newly created companies to file annually. They will be given 30 days to report beneficial ownership information.
After making an initial report, both existing and newly created companies will have 30 days to file any updates to their beneficial ownership information.
FinCEN’s work establishing the beneficial ownership database is far from done. The Treasury bureau has two more rules to complete related to the ownership registry, one of which will focus on who can access the nonpublic database, and how. It is also racing to build the underlying infrastructure for the massive database.
The new registry will cost an estimated $82 million during the 2023 fiscal year and $35.6 million annually to maintain, according to FinCEN.
Questions that continue to linger around the database include if, and how, FinCEN would verify that information submitted by companies is accurate. The beneficial ownership law requires companies to certify their reports are accurate and imposes penalties for people who willfully provide false information. But it is unclear if FinCEN will take proactive steps to validate information submitted.
Write to Dylan Tokar at dylan.tokar@wsj.com
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Hunter College’s most affordable dormitory is slated for demolition to make way for the new Kips Bay life sciences campus that Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced last week – and students are asking why there doesn’t seem to be a plan to maintain a cheap housing option for some 700 undergraduates.
Hunter's Undergraduate Student Government is seeking answers about the Brookdale Campus Residence, known as the Brookdale dorms, citing the "hundreds of low-income, out-of-borough, out-of-state, and out-of-country students (who) rely on the affordability of Brookdale dorms to pursue their college education" at the school, which is part of the public City University of New York.
“CUNY has released no information on the timeline of this project OR how they plan to make up for the potential loss of a home for hundreds of students,” read an open letter from Hunter USG. “Where will these students go? What other alternative and affordable solutions are there? When will dorms stop being available? Nothing has been clarified with the main stakeholders here: Hunter College students.”
The students planned to attend the CUNY Board of Trustees meeting Monday afternoon, prepared with testimony and questions about future access to affordable housing and a nursing school facility. In the USG’s communication to the Hunter community, they encouraged students to share testimony regarding how Brookdale’s demolition would impact their lives as students.
Hochul and Adams announced plans Thursday morning for the Science Park and Research Campus, or SPARC, in Kips Bay, an "innovation hub" of science and public health. Scheduled to break ground in 2026, the plan is projected to create 2,000 new permanent jobs by its expected completion in 2031. It would all be built at East 25th Street and 1st Avenue in Manhattan – the site of Hunter’s Brookdale Campus, including the dorms and the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing. The estimated $1.6 billion SPARC would be anchored, in part, by a rebuilt school of nursing, but the press conference and the release didn’t make any mention of new dorms or housing.
Housing nearly 700 students a year, the Brookdale dorms provide students with single-occupancy rooms, library facilities, and recreation areas for $6,625- $9,385 per academic year. Other dormitory options cost from $13,000 to $16,000 for the academic year.
CUNY says current students have little to worry about. “The Brookdale dorms will not be impacted until at least 2024 and potentially later depending on the final timetable for the construction so certainly no current resident will be affected during this academic year,” a university spokesperson wrote in an email to City & State. “We are working to supply students information as soon as possible so they can start planning once a time is set for any relocations.”
But rebuilding the dorms isn’t a part of the SPARC plan, and CUNY doesn’t seem interested in building its own affordable student housing elsewhere to replace it “CUNY has other dorm agreements in the city, and campuses, with CUNY support, contract with third party vendors to secure dorm space when needed,” the spokesperson said. “We are committed to doing everything we can to help students secure affordable housing.”
But students are already fearing the loss of an affordable dorm option for Hunter. “I think it is very interesting to do this without providing an alternative solution to low income students, which makes up CUNY’s central audience and student body,” USG President Ariana Ahmed told City & State.
Students were pushed out of the Brookdale dorms once before. In March 2020, in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, residents were given three days' notice to move out, so the housing – located near many hospitals – could be used as medical space. There’s little concern about short notice with SPARC – construction isn’t expected to begin for years – but those in the Hunter community felt the poor communication then and now was the same.
"I was pretty shocked that no other communication was given to student government," Ahmed told City & State. Ahmed recounts being invited to the press conferences, stating, "I was given the communication that it was about a new campus, a new science building for Hunter and BMCC (Borough of Manhattan Community College). Nothing else."
And the dorms aren’t the only part of the SPARC plan that’s raised some real estate questions. Relocating the public college’s nursing school has been a top issue for Hunter College President Jennifer Raab. But after site work began at East 73rd Street and York Avenue, progress was halted for years. The Post reported it costs CUNY $1 million a year just to maintain the vacant site. CUNY is now canceling plans for the school of the nursing on the Upper East Side, and are moving forward with plans to include it at SPARC. A Friday email to the CUNY community from Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez said development of the 73rd Street lot will be taken over by the city’s Economic Development Corporation, taking the university system off the hook for maintenance. “Hunter will get space as part of that project when plans are finalized,” a CUNY spokesperson said.
But it’s not just students that aren’t entirely pleased with the plan. Some in leadership at Hunter College felt that CUNY threw out years of planning by Hunter for the Upper East Side nursing school, according to a source, and pushed forward with a lack of regard for nearly 700 beds of relatively affordable student housing. As the location of Hunter’s nursing school for over fifty years, Brookdale’s proposed closure has left Hunter’s students and administrators in a state of limbo.
Thursday’s dramatic spike doesn’t necessarily show that the stock market is about to bottom, but it does confirm that investors are so pessimistic that there isn’t a huge hurdle to overcome to turn things around. That’s one way to look at what is at stake from this week’s earnings from the likes of Netflix Tesla and AT&T
But there are questions for now and questions for a later. A new research paper circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research asks a fascinating question — which region will come to dominate the world economy? One of the authors is Laurence Kotlikoff, the Boston University professor and American Academy of Arts and Sciences fellow who in the 1970s designed the model that economists use to track economies over time.
Drawing on United Nations demographic and International Monetary Fund fiscal data, they created what they call the Global Gaidar Model, drawing on the name of the Russian institute of one of the co-authors. They focus on five variables — population growth, population aging, productivity catchup, fiscal adjustment and automation.
As of 2017, Western Europe and China each accounted for about 17% of world GDP, with the U.S. at 16%. By 2100, they expect a very different story, with China and India becoming the world’s top two economic hegemons, accounting for 27% and 16% of world GDP respectively, with the U.S. and Western Europe share at about 12% each.
The real surprise could be Sub-Saharan Africa, where in another scenario, it vies with the U.S. for top billing. That’s based on a study which expects an almost complete end to Chinese, Indian, Russia, Eastern European and former Soviet Union catch-up labor productivity growth. While the authors call that scenario “implausible,” they also acknowledge that worker productivity growth in Western Europe, North Asia, the U.K., Canada and other countries has trailed U.S. growth in the last two decades after exceeding it in the five decades following World War II. “Hence, what seems implausible to us may be exactly on target. The one constant in the record of relative economic growth is its inconsistency,” they say.
In one final scenario, if the catch-up growth rates observed between 1997 and 2017 continue into the future, then India comes out on top, with nearly 34% of world GDP. In that scenario, China’s number two at 22%, while the U.S. is down at 10%.
The study also suggests there’s a pending capital glut, because of the high savings rate in China, India and other regions that are aging. “This simulated capital deepening dramatically reduces our baseline model’s world interest rate – from 5.98% in 2017 to 1.18% in 2100. Importantly, major capital deepening arises under all three sets of catch-up growth rates,” they say. Regions like the U.S. with low national savings rates will import capital, meaning that even if they maintain or increase their share of world GDP, their share of gross national income could decline.
The marketsA big drop in U.K. bond yields helped set the stage for a rise in U.S. stocks in opening trade, with the Dow industrials up more than 600 points as the S&P 500 also rallied.
The buzzNew U.K. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said he will reverse nearly all of the tax cuts previously set out by the U.K. government and also review the energy price certain after April.
Bank of America headlined Monday’s slate of earnings releases, and beat both earnings and revenue estimates. Goldman Sachs is planning a major reorganization, according to The Wall Street Journal.
News Corp. shares jumped as the company said it may reunite with Fox which fell. News Corp. is the parent company of MarketWatch, the publisher of this report.
The Hamm family of Continental Resources founder Harold Hamm is offering $74.28 for each outstanding share. The family already hold 83% of the oil producer’s stock. Also in the energy space, BP is buying renewable natural-gas company Archaea Energy for $4.1 billion including assumed debt.
The Empire State manufacturing index fell to a slightly-worse-than-forecast reading of -9.1 in October, where readings below zero indicating deteriorating conditions.
Best of the webAmerican executives are in limbo at Chinese microchip companies after a U.S. ban.
The co-founder of former President Trump’s media company that is trying to merge with a SPAC has provided The Washington Post, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, with company messages and documents. Meanwhile, the rapper Kanye West is buying the conservative social-media site Parler.
Iran’s security forces have everything to lose if protesters topple the government.
Top tickersHere were the most active tickers as of 6 a.m. Eastern.
| Ticker | Security name |
| Tesla | |
| GameStop | |
| AMC Entertainment | |
| Nio | |
| Bed Bath & Beyond | |
| Apple | |
| AMC Entertainment preferred | |
| Conformis | |
| Amazon.com |
Here’s the colorful quote from Nike’s co-founder on why he’s donating so much to Oregon’s gubernatorial race.
Netflix’s The Crown is creating more controversy in the U.K.
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HP laptops offer something for you, whether you're a creative looking to edit photos, a gamer in search of a powerful laptop or a student in need of a small, lightweight laptop.
Many of the best HP laptops have features designed for remote or hybrid work such as improved webcams and microphones, better audio quality, longer battery life, faster charging and the fastest Wi-Fi 6 wireless.
Like other PC makers such as Dell, Lenovo, Acer and Asus, HP is in the midst of updating the processors in its laptops and two-in-ones. That means Intel-based models are moving from 11th-gen to 12th-gen CPUs, while AMD Ryzen systems are switching from 5000-series chips to 6000-series. It also means it's generally a good time to look for deals on older models of the best HP laptops. However, we've also seen big performance improvements with the new processors. An updated model might cost a little more but will add to the overall longevity.
Spectre is HP's top consumer laptop line so you're getting the best of the best with this 16-inch two-in-one.
Of course, a premium two-in-one like the Spectre x360 comes at a relatively high price; it starts at around $1,200. The top-end configuration we reviewed was good but not great considering its $2,030 price. This is definitely one we recommend getting with the 12th-gen Intel processors and Intel Arc graphics if you're going to go all-in. Read our HP Spectre x360 16 review.
HP's Victus 16 is a surprisingly robust and powerful gaming laptop that keeps up with the latest games at a more affordable price. Compared to HP's high-end Omen gaming laptop line, the Victus is more of an all-purpose laptop but still configured for gaming with a price starting at less than $1,000. HP offers several configurations with graphics chip options ranging from Nvidia's entry-level GeForce GTX 1650 up to a midrange RTX 3060 or AMD Radeon RX 6500M. We like almost everything about it except for its flimsy display hinge and underwhelming speakers. Read our HP Victus 16 review.
There are plenty of convertible Chromebooks, where the screen flips around to the back of the keyboard so you can use it as a tablet. But Chrome tablets with removable keyboards like the HP Chromebook x2 11 are still a rarity. It offers long battery life and performance that rises (slightly) above the competition. The main downside is that it's expensive; the model we reviewed is $599. However, that price did include both the keyboard cover and USI pen and it's regularly on sale for $200. If you're interested make sure to wait for one of those deals. Read our HP Chromebook x2 11 review.
If you're making a laptop aimed at creatives, it's not enough to just put discrete graphics and a strong processor in a slim body. The extra performance really should be paired with a good screen, and that's what you get with the HP Envy 14. The laptop's 16:10 14-inch 1,920x1,200-pixel display not only gives you more vertical room to work, but is color-calibrated at the factory and covers 100% of the sRGB color gamut. The result: a well-rounded option for creatives looking for on-the-go performance at a reasonable price. This model is due for a refresh, though, so keep an eye out for updated models. Read our HP Envy 14 review.
The buzz and hype have faded, but RECUR, a company that helps brands create and build communities around nonfungible tokens, is still building out its infrastructure and making future plans. According to a exact analysis by Dune Analytics, NFT trading volume has dropped 97% from its 2022 highs. Trading volume went from $17 billion in January to around $466 million in September, according to cumulative data from OpenSea, NFTX, LarvaLabs, LooksRare, SuperRare, Rarible, and Foundation.
RECUR, which is blockchain-agnostic, launched in 2021 and raised $50 million in a Series A at a $333 million valuation last fall. Those were different times. RECUR has since worked with brands like Nickelodeon, Hello Kitty, Paramount, and Star Trek. Meanwhile, platforms like Instagram and Twitter have also launched features to allow users to display NFT art on their profiles.
But there are some practice questions around whether this is going to keep working, especially as even the biggest and most hyped NFT projects have seen significant drops in floor price in 2022. Zach Bruch, co-founder and CEO of RECUR still thinks there is a future in NFTs. MarketWatch spoke to him to ask how this is going to work, challenges to keeping NFTs relevant, and what he foresees the space to look like in the next few years.
Answers have been edited for length and clarity.
AD: How have your partnerships with brands started? Did you approach them asking if they wanted to work with you, or do they approach you?
ZB: We started the business about 20 months ago. And the business has changed throughout that time period. As you can imagine, as markets change, as education change, and as people’s understanding [changes] overall, the industry has changed. So when we first went out to create these partnerships, almost two years ago, there was a large education process that we had to do to show them why it is relevant, why they made sense for their families, their communities, and so on.
But today, now that we’ve built all these tools, we’re seeing a lot of large enterprises and fortune 500 businesses come to us and say, “hey, your tooling is really great […] you have a really easy onboarding flow, where our user base can do something that they’re familiar with, like sign up, and under two minutes the same way, they might sign up for a Snapchat or an Instagram. So there’s no confusing wallet setup. You can use Apple Pay, they can use credit card, they can use crypto.” So they’re noticing and seeing a lot of these things. And now seeing these tools and recognizing that they can leverage them and use our toolset as their own creative canvas to create whatever they want. So at this point, we’re now just receiving a tremendous amount of inbound.
AD: Say that I want to create an NFT collection and work with you. What are you providing me that I can’t just do myself using another NFT-creation platform?
ZB: So I think the reason it’s so hard for developers and businesses right now is because the current landscape of solutions in the web three ecosystem is made up of countless point solution vendors that each do one very limited thing. So for example, if you were the head of Web3 at a large enterprise or you’re a developer, your typical journey goes something along the lines of this you want to launch a Web3 products. And now you needed a smart contract entered and then things on chain, you need to be compliant […] you realize you need utility to engage your user base. Now you need a gamification vendor, you need a custom marketplace that fit your brand aesthetic. Now you need a vendor for this, your users want to play with credit cards, well then you cash their money out to a bank account, you’ll need a vendor for each and each and every one of those things. And then you need to recruit entire back end engineering team and spend a year or more stitching all these vendors together then hope and pray it works. And then if you’re successful, well then now you have to… maintaining scale at all in perpetuity, so it’s truly a disaster. So with RECUR, what we do is make sure that every developer, every team has everything they need for Web3 in one platform.
AD: I recently reported that NFT trading volume has plunged 97% since January, which I’m sure you know. And in general there seems to be less hype around buying NFTs this year than there was last year. How has this impacted your business?
ZB: Thing that we’re noticing is that most people are looking at NFTs in a very one dimensional myopic way, when the reality is, is Web3 is about unlocking consumer and social markets in a way that was never before possible. And Web3 can and will transform every consumer experience and every consumer products business. So there are all sorts of different use cases that we’re now seeing a lot of large corporates and enterprises come to us with. From loyalty programs to real life events, to ticketing […] there really is limitless potential. And I think there have been in the past lots of, you know, barriers to entry, because the tooling has not existed. And now the tooling is here. We’ve built a lot of it.
AD: What’s a big challenge you’re facing right now?
ZB: I think the largest challenge in the space is always going to be education. There’s tremendous amounts of noise. It’s a very nascent space, just in general. And typically, things take a lot of time for any form of adoption.
A few years ago, I really started immersing myself deeper into the NFT community, it had many similarities to the early crypto community, brilliant tinkerers with deep passion, enormous vision for a more vibrant world. But similar to the early crypto communities, there’s a complete lack of infrastructure that would be required to onboard. So tooling, again, I felt was a large issue, as well as you know, as well as education. And while that first decade was about capital innovation this next decade, it seems it’s going to be about cultural innovation, and unlocking cultural culture, leveraging crypto tooling, and that is a very large shift.
AD: You’ve been working with large enterprises and brands with a lot of money. What about smaller creators and smaller businesses? Can they use these tools to enter Web3 or do they need a massive budget and a specialized team dedicated to it?
ZB: Yeah, so actually… we’re opening up our tooling to creators of all sizes. So you can be a college student in your dorm room, a small mom and pop shop in a town or a large enterprise and be able to leverage our tooling and have the same firepower of a large publicly traded business like a paramount for example. But what we’re also doing is that by Q1 of next year, we’ll also have a full no code, self service version of our platform. So you won’t even need any technical experience, or engineers, or any of that. So you really can get to market fast, be compliant, have high performance.
AD: What do you envision for the NFT space a year from now? Will we still be calling them NFTs? And will people still be buying them?
ZB: I do think NFTs will still be called NFTs a year from now […] you asked another question that that was pretty interesting. Well, will people want to be buying NFTs? I think that won’t matter. After I think most of what we’re doing digitally, will become NFT’s in the back end, because it will have to be, how else are you proving that you actually have digital ownership of something that will be always be underpinned by an NFT? And who knows that might become a rule, right? If you’re buying something digitally, online, that’s a digital item, the user has to have total ownership of that. And the way that would have to happen is the NFTs. So I think that there will be a lot of things that will be leveraging this back end infrastructure over the next call it five years, I think it will take longer than a year for all this to happen, of course, but I think we’re gonna see very fast growth.
