Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Adam Neumann was flying high. Literally. His office-rental giant WeWork was months away from being valued at $47 billion. Revenue was doubling annually. And Mr. Neumann was zipping across the Atlantic Ocean in a Gulfstream G650 private jet with friends last summer, smoking marijuana. After the group landed in Israel and left the plane, the flight crew…
Millions of smartphone users confess their most intimate secrets to apps, including when they want to work on their belly fat or the price of the house they checked out last weekend. Other apps know users’ body weight, blood pressure, menstrual cycles or pregnancy status. Unbeknown to most people, in many cases that data is…
A lawyer for President Donald Trump arranged a $130,000 payment to a former adult-film star a month before the 2016 election as part of an agreement that precluded her from publicly discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter. Michael Cohen, who spent nearly a decade as a…
Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -0.05% has struck again. Only this time the internet giant is shaking up an industry it hasn’t yet entered. Amazon’s potential entry into the pharmacy-services industry helped spur CVS HealthCorp.’s CVS -2.94% $66 billion bid for insurance giant Aetna Inc., AET 11.54% according to a person familiar with the matter. An acquisition of a major insurer was among roughly a dozen strategies CVS’s management team…
Real estate startup WeWork Cos. has struck a deal to acquire Lord & Taylor’s flagship New York City store for $850 million, a move that will convert the landmark building into the startup’s headquarters next year. The transaction, part of an effort by Lord & Taylor’s parent Hudson’s Bay Co. HBC +2.04% to reduce its debt, is the most dramatic…
A real-estate startup called Compass Inc. has hired hundreds of sales agents away from older rivals, collected $225 million from marquee investors and amassed a valuation of over $1 billion, all with the pitch that its software can make brokers more efficient. Real-estate veterans say they’re baffled by how the four-year-old firm, active in only…