What we’re reading (12/1)
“Bob Iger’s Disney Return: 5 Far-Fetched (or Are They?) Megadeal Scenarios” (The Hollywood Reporter). “Iger, in a Nov. 28 town hall with employees, dismissed the idea that another megadeal is what’s driving this new era for the executive at Disney. ‘We have a great set of assets here,’ Iger told staffers. ‘Nothing is forever, but I am very, very comfortable with each of the assets that we have,’ he added, and specifically called the idea that Disney could sell out to Apple ‘pure speculation.’”
“Layoffs Hit White-Collar Workers As Amazon, Walmart, Others Cut Jobs” (Wall Street Journal). “Recent rounds of layoffs at large U.S. companies mark a departure from the usual pattern as executives navigate fears of an economic slowdown: This time, white-collar workers have been among the first and hardest hit. Demand has fallen sharply for professionals in technology, legal, scientific and finance fields, and companies that ramped up staffing during the pandemic, including tech firms, are slowing down hiring or cutting jobs as they close down some projects or scale back others.”
“World Outlook 2023: The Looming Recession” (Deutsche Bank). “The recession we have now been anticipating for nine months draws nearer. A downturn may already be under way in Germany and the euro area overall thanks to the energy shock stemming from the Russia-Ukraine war. Our expectation for a recession in the US by mid-2023 has strengthened on the back of developments since early last spring.”
“Greenlight Continues To Rack Up Gains” (Institutional Investor). “David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital posted a 2.7 percent gain in November. It lagged the major indices, which surged between roughly 4.4 percent and 5.7 percent for the month. But the folks at the heavily hedged value-driven fund are certainly not complaining.”
“Physicists Create A Holographic Wormhole Using A Quantum Computer” (Quanta Magazine). “Physicists have purportedly created the first-ever wormhole, a kind of tunnel theorized in 1935 by Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen that leads from one place to another by passing into an extra dimension of space. The wormhole emerged like a hologram out of quantum bits of information, or “qubits,” stored in tiny superconducting circuits. By manipulating the qubits, the physicists then sent information through the wormhole, they reported today in the journal Nature.”
