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Business

Feds seized nearly $700 million from FTX founder Bankman-Fried

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Jan 20 (Reuters) – Federal prosecutors have seized nearly $700 million in assets from FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried in January, largely in the form of Robinhood stock, according to a Friday court filing.

Bankman-Fried, who has been accused of stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers to pay debts incurred by his crypto-focused hedge fund, has pleaded not guilty to fraud charges. He is scheduled to face trial in October.

The Department of Justice revealed the seizure of Robinhood shares earlier this month, but it provided a more complete list of seized assets Friday, including cash held at various banks and assets deposited at crypto exchange Binance.

The ownership of the seized Robinhood shares, valued at about $525 million, has been the subject of disputes between Bankman-Fried, FTX, and bankrupt crypto lender BlockFi.

The most recent asset seizure reported by the DOJ took place on Thursday, when prosecutors seized $94.5 million in cash from an account at Silvergate Bank which was associated with FTX Digital Markets, FTX’s subsidiary in the Bahamas. The DOJ seized more than $7 million from other Silvergate accounts associated with Bankman-Fried and FTX.

The DOJ previously seized nearly $50 million from an FTX Digital Markets account at Moonstone Bank, a small bank in Washington state.

DOJ also said that assets in three Binance accounts associated with Bankman-Fried were subject to criminal forfeiture, but did not provide an estimate of the value in those accounts.

Reporting by Dietrich Knauth; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Daniel Wallis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Musk expected to take stand as trial resumes over Tesla tweet

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SAN FRANCISCO Jan 20 (Reuters) – Elon Musk, Tesla Inc’s (TSLA.O) chief executive, is likely to be called to testify on Friday in a jury trial over his 2018 Twitter post that he had “funding secured” to take the electric carmaker private, which shareholders allege cost them millions in trading losses.

The class action trial in San Francisco federal court resumed with investor Timothy Fries telling the jury how he lost $5,000 buying Tesla stock after Musk sent the tweet at the center of the lawsuit.

Musk, known for combative testimony, is expected to address why he has insisted he had Saudi investor backing for the deal, which never came together, and whether he knowingly made a materially misleading statement with his tweet.

The case is a rare securities class action trial and the plaintiffs have already cleared high legal hurdles, with U.S. Judge Edward Chen ruling last year that Musk’s post was untruthful and reckless.

Shareholders alleged that Musk lied when he sent the tweet, costing investors.

Fries told the jury that funding secured meant to him that “there had been some vetting, some critical review of those funding sources.”

Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, told the jury in his opening statement Wednesday that Musk believed he had financing from Saudi backers and was taking steps to make the deal happen. Fearing leaks to the media, Musk tried to protect the “everyday shareholder” by sending the tweet, which contained “technical inaccuracies,” Spiro said.

Guhan Subramanian, a Harvard Law School professor, told the jury that Musk’s behavior in 2018 lacked the hallmarks of traditional corporate dealmaking by tweeting his interest in Tesla without proper financial or legal analysis.

“Compared to the standard template it’s an extreme outlier,” said Subramanian, who called Musk’s approach “unprecedented” and “incoherent.”

A jury of nine will decide whether the tweet artificially inflated Tesla’s share price by playing up the status of funding for the deal, and if so, by how much.

The defendants include current and former Tesla directors, whom Spiro said had “pure” motives in their response to Musk’s plan.

Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Del., and Jody Godoy in San Francisco; Editing by Noeleen Walder, Peter Henderson, Matthew Lewis and Daniel Wallis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Jody Godoy

Thomson Reuters

Jody Godoy reports on banking and securities law. Reach her at jody.godoy@thomsonreuters.com

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US

Donald Trump’s company to be sentenced for 15-year tax fraud

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NEW YORK, Jan 13 (Reuters) – Donald Trump on Friday will learn how the company that bears the former U.S. president’s name will be punished after being found guilty of scheming to defraud tax authorities for 15 years.

A New York state judge will impose the sentence after jurors in Manhattan found two Trump Organization affiliates guilty of 17 criminal charges last month.

The sentencing comes three days after Justice Juan Merchan of the Manhattan criminal court ordered Allen Weisselberg, who worked for Trump’s family for a half-century and was the company’s former chief financial officer, to jail for five months after he testified as the prosecution’s star witness.

Trump’s company faces only a maximum $1.6 million penalty, but has said it plans to appeal. No one else was charged or faces jail time in the case.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which brought the case, is still conducting a criminal probe into Trump’s business practices.

Bill Black, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law specializing in white-collar crime, called the expected penalty a “rounding error” that offers “zero deterrence” to others, including Trump.

“This is a farce,” he said. “No one will stop committing these kinds of crimes because of this sentence.”

The case has long been a thorn in the side of the Republican former president, who calls it part of a witch hunt by Democrats who dislike him and his politics.

Trump also faces a $250 million civil lawsuit by state Attorney General Letitia James accusing him and his adult children Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump of inflating his net worth and the value of his company’s assets to save money on loans and insurance.

Bragg and James are Democrats, as is Bragg’s predecessor Cyrus Vance, who brought the criminal case. Trump is seeking the presidency in 2024, after losing his re-election bid in 2020.

At a four-week trial, prosecutors offered evidence that Trump’s company covered personal expenses such as rent and car leases for executives without reporting them as income, and pretended that Christmas bonuses were non-employee compensation.

Trump himself signed bonus checks, prosecutors said, as well as the lease on Weisselberg’s luxury Manhattan apartment and private school tuition for the CFO’s grandchildren.

“The whole narrative that Donald Trump was blissfully ignorant is just not real,” Assistant District Attorney Joshua Steinglass told jurors in his closing argument.

Weisselberg’s testimony helped convict the company, though he said Trump was not part of the fraud scheme. He also refused to help Bragg in his broader investigation into Trump.

The Trump Organization had put Weisselberg on paid leave until they severed ties this week. His lawyer said the split, announced on Tuesday, was amicable.

Weisselberg, 75, is serving his sentence in New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail.

State law limits the penalties that Justice Merchan can impose on Trump’s company. A corporation can be fined up to $250,000 for each tax-related count and $10,000 for each non-tax count.

Trump faces several other legal woes, including probes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, his retention of classified documents after leaving the White House, and efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.

Reporting by Karen Freifeld and Jonathan Stempel; editing by Jonathan Oatis

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Trump executive Weisselberg prepares for jail on Rikers Island

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NEW YORK, Jan 10 (Reuters) – A longtime executive for Donald Trump is expected to be sent to New York’s notorious Rikers Island jail after being sentenced on Tuesday for helping engineer a 15-year tax fraud scheme at the former president’s real estate company.

Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s former chief financial officer, pleaded guilty in August, admitting that from 2005 to 2017 he and other executives received bonuses and perks that saved the company and themselves money.

Weisselberg is expected to be sentenced to five months behind bars, after paying nearly $2 million in taxes, penalties and interest and testifying at the criminal trial of the Trump Organization, which was convicted on all counts it faced.

The sentence will be imposed by Justice Juan Merchan, who oversaw the trial in a New York state court in Manhattan. Weisselberg would likely serve 100 days with time off for good behavior.

Those days will probably not be easy for Weisselberg, 75, at a jail known for violence, drugs and corruption. Nineteen inmates there died last year.

“You’re going into a byzantine black hole,” said Craig Rothfeld, a prison consultant helping Weisselberg prepare for lockup.

50-YEAR RELATIONSHIP

Many convicts in New York City facing one year or less behind bars head to Rikers Island, which lies between the New York City boroughs of Queens and the Bronx and houses more than 5,900 inmates.

Rothfeld spent more than five weeks at Rikers in 2015 and 2016 as part of an 18-month sentence for defrauding investors and tax authorities when he was chief executive of the now-defunct WJB Capital Group Inc.

He now runs Inside Outside Ltd, which advises people facing incarceration. Another client is Harvey Weinstein, the former Hollywood movie producer convicted twice of rape.

After being sentenced, Weisselberg will likely be driven to Rikers and trade his street clothes for a uniform and sneakers with velcro straps.

Rothfeld said he hopes Weisselberg will be segregated from the general population, and not placed in a dorm with inmates who may not know him but will know his boss, who is seeking the presidency in 2024.

“Certainly Mr. Weisselberg’s 50-year relationship with the former president is on all our minds,” Rothfeld said.

A spokesman for the city’s Department of Correction said the agency’s mission is “to create a safe and supportive environment for everyone who enters our custody.”

Rikers is scheduled to close in 2027.

STAR WITNESS

Weisselberg was the star government witness against his employer.

He told jurors that Trump signed bonus and tuition checks, and other documents at the heart of prosecutors’ case, but was not in on the tax fraud scheme.

Though no longer CFO, Weisselberg remains on paid leave from the Trump Organization. He testified in November that he hoped to get a $500,000 bonus this month.

Weisselberg testified that the company is paying his lawyers. It is paying Rothfeld as well, a person familiar with the matter said. Rothfeld declined to comment.

Trump was not charged and has denied wrongdoing. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office is still investigating his business practices.

Merchan will also sentence the Trump Organization on Friday. Penalties are limited to $1.6 million.

Weisselberg remains a defendant in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ $250 million civil lawsuit alleging that Trump and his company inflated asset values and Trump’s net worth.

Rothfeld said he advised Weisselberg not to go outside at Rikers because of the risk of violence in courtyards, and not to interject himself into conversations between other inmates.

“The goal is to keep to yourself,” Rothfeld said.

Reporting by Karen Freifeld; Editing by Richard Chang

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Business

Meta battles U.S. antitrust agency over future of virtual reality

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SAN JOSE, Calif./ WASHINGTON, Dec 8 (Reuters) – The Biden administration on Thursday accused Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) of trying to buy its way to dominance in the metaverse, kicking off a high-profile trial to try to prevent the Facebook parent from buying virtual reality app developer Within Inc.

The FTC sued in July to stop the deal, saying Meta’s acquisition of Within would “tend to create a monopoly” in the market for virtual reality (VR) fitness apps. It has asked the judge to order a preliminary injunction that would halt the proposed transaction.

In an opening statement, FTC lawyer Abby Dennis said the Within acquisition was part of Meta’s bid to acquire new and more diverse virtual reality users, including customers of Within’s popular subscription-based virtual reality workout app Supernatural.

That would complement Meta’s existing virtual reality users, who tend to skew young and male, and be more focused on gaming, Dennis added.

“Meta could have chosen to use all its vast resources and capabilities to build its own dedicated VR fitness app, and it was planning on doing that before it acquired Within,” Dennis said, pointing to a plan from early 2021.

The plan, Operation Twinkie, involved expanding a rhythm game app called Beat Saber that the company acquired in 2019 into the fitness space via a proposed partnership with digital fitness company Peloton (PTON.O), Dennis said.

She cited an email from Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg saying he was “bullish” on fitness and calling the proposed partnership with Peloton “awesome.”

Lawyers for Meta and Within argued that the FTC did a poor job of defining the relevant market and said the companies compete with a range of fitness content, not just VR-dedicated fitness apps.

Meta’s lawyers also disputed that plans for a Meta-owned VR fitness app had proceeded beyond low-level “brainstorming” and argued that the FTC underestimated the competition in the market it had defined, citing the potential for fellow tech giants Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google and Bytedance to join the fray.

Rade Stojsavljevic, who manages Meta’s in-house VR app developer studios, testified that he had proposed the tie-up between Beat Saber and Peloton but did not develop a formal plan and never discussed the idea with either party.

Internal documents from early 2021 that were displayed in court showed Stojsavljevic proposing acquisitions of VR developers before they could be “cannibalized” by competitors and discussing pressure from Zuckerberg to “get aggressive” in response to reports of a prospective Apple headset.

The trial, scheduled through Dec. 20, will serve as a test of the FTC’s bid to head off what it sees as a repeat of the company acquiring small upcoming would-be rivals and effectively buying its way to dominance, this time in the nascent virtual and augmented reality markets.

The FTC is separately trying to force Meta to unwind two previous acquisitions, Instagram and WhatsApp, in a lawsuit filed in 2020. Both were in relatively new markets at the time the companies were purchased.

PRESSURE TO PRODUCE HIT APPS

A government victory could crimp Meta’s ability to maneuver in an area of emerging technology – virtual and augmented reality – that Zuckerberg has identified as the “next generation of computing.”

If blocked from making acquisitions in the space, Meta would face greater pressure to produce its own hit apps and would give up the gains – in terms of revenue, talent, data and control – associated with bringing innovative developers in-house.

Within developed Supernatural, which it advertises as a “complete fitness service” with “expert coaches,” “beautiful destinations” and “workouts choreographed to the best music available.”

It is available only on Meta’s Quest devices, which are headsets offering immersive digital visuals and audio that market research firm IDC estimates capture 90% of global shipments in the virtual reality hardware market.

The majority of the more than 400 apps available in the Quest app store are produced by external developers. Meta owns the most popular virtual reality app in the Quest app store, Beat Saber, the app it was considering expanding with the Peloton partnership.

The social media company agreed to buy Within in October 2021, a day after changing its name from Facebook to Meta, signalling its ambition to build an immersive virtual environment known as the metaverse.

Zuckerberg will be a witness in the trial. Other potential witnesses are Within CEO Chris Milk and Meta Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth, who runs the company’s metaverse-oriented Reality Labs unit.

The trial is at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington and Katie Paul in San Jose, Calif.; Editing by Alexandra Alper, Matthew Lewis and Cynthia Osterman

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Diane Bartz

Thomson Reuters

Focused on U.S. antitrust as well as corporate regulation and legislation, with experience involving covering war in Bosnia, elections in Mexico and Nicaragua, as well as stories from Brazil, Chile, Cuba, El Salvador, Nigeria and Peru.

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Business

Elon Musk trial opens to decide fate of his $56 billion Tesla pay

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WILMINGTON, Del, Nov 14 (Reuters) – A trial opened Monday over shareholder allegations that Tesla Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package was rigged with easy performance targets and that investors were duped into approving it, with Musk slated to take the stand later this week.

A Tesla (TSLA.O) shareholder hopes to prove during the five-day trial that Musk used his dominance over the electric vehicle maker’s board to dictate terms of the 2018 package, which did not even require him to work at Tesla full-time.

Musk, the world’s richest person, will testify Wednesday, Greg Varallo, an attorney for shareholder Richard Tornetta, told a court in Wilmington, Delaware, on Monday.

The trial began with Ira Ehrenpreis, a Tesla board member since 2007, taking the stand to describe the early years of the company and Musk’s role.

“I was very impressed with his vision for this endeavor,” said Ehrenpreis.

Tornetta has asked the court to rescind the pay package, which is six times larger than the top 200 CEO salaries combined in 2021, according to Amit Batish of research firm Equilar.

Musk and Tesla’s directors, who are also defendants, have denied the allegations. They argued the pay package did what it aimed to do — ensure that the entrepreneur successfully guided Tesla through a critical period, which helped drive the stock tenfold higher.

The case will be decided by Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of Delaware’s Court of Chancery. She oversaw the legal dispute between Twitter Inc (TWTR.MX) and Musk that ended with his purchase of the social media platform for $44 billion last month.

The Tesla shareholder lawsuit argues that the pay package should have required Musk to work full-time at Tesla. The company’s shareholders have become concerned that Musk is distracted by Twitter, which he has warned might not survive an economic downturn.

Musk told a business conference on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, on Monday that he had too much on his plate at the moment.

Legal experts said Musk is in a better legal position in the pay case than he was in Twitter’s lawsuit, which prevented him from walking away from the takeover.

Boards have wide latitude to set executive compensation, according to legal experts.

However, directors must meet more stringent legal tests if the pay package involves a controlling shareholder, and part of this trial is likely to focus on whether that description fits Musk. While he owned only 21.9% of Tesla in 2018, plaintiffs are likely to cite what is seen as his domineering personality and ties to directors.

In all, 19 witnesses are scheduled to testify, including directors and executives from 2018, compensation experts, and advisors who helped craft the pay package.

The disputed package allows Musk to buy 1% of Tesla’s stock at a deep discount each time escalating performance and financial targets are met. Otherwise, Musk gets nothing.

Tesla has hit 11 of the 12 targets as its value ballooned briefly to more than $1 trillion from $50 billion, according to court papers.

A decision will likely take around three months after the trial and could be appealed to the Delaware Supreme Court.

Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by David Gregorio and Jonathan Oatis

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Tom Hals

Thomson Reuters

Award-winning reporter with more than two decades of experience in international news, focusing on high-stakes legal battles over everything from government policy to corporate dealmaking.

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Business

Twitter lays off staff as Musk blames activists for ‘massive’ ad revenue drop

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  • Musk looking to axe around half of Twitter’s workforce
  • Employees file class action against Twitter
  • Staff lose access to systems
  • Volkswagen pulls ads

Nov 4 (Reuters) – Twitter Inc started a major round of layoffs on Friday, alerting employees of their job status by email after barring the entrances to offices and cutting off workers’ access to internal systems overnight.

The move follows a week of chaos and uncertainty about the company’s future under new owner Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, who tweeted on Friday that the service was experiencing a “massive drop in revenue” as advertisers pulled spending.

Musk blamed the losses on a coalition of civil rights groups that has been pressing Twitter’s top advertisers to take action if he did not protect content moderation. The groups said on Friday they are escalating their pressure and demanding brands pull their Twitter ads globally.

“In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” Twitter said in an email to staff on Thursday evening announcing the cuts that came on Friday, which was seen by Reuters.

The company was silent about the depth of the cuts, although internal plans reviewed by Reuters this week indicated Musk was looking to cut around 3,700 Twitter staff, or about half the workforce.

Staff who worked in engineering, communications, product, content curation and machine learning ethics were among those impacted by the layoffs, according to tweets from Twitter staff.

Shannon Raj Singh, an attorney who was Twitter’s acting head of human rights, tweeted on Friday that the entire human rights team at the company had been cut.

Musk has promised to restore free speech while preventing Twitter from descending into a “hellscape.” However, his reassurances have failed to calm major advertisers, which have expressed apprehension about his takeover for months.

Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) recommended its brands pause paid advertising on Twitter until further notice in the wake of Musk’s takeover, it said on Friday. Its comments echoed similar remarks from other companies, including General Motors Co (GM.N) and General Mills Inc (GIS.N).

Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, which is part of the civil rights coalition, said he knew of two more major advertisers that were preparing to announce that they would pause ads on the platform.

Musk tweeted that his team had made no changes to content moderation and done “everything we could” to appease the groups. “Extremely messed up! They’re (civil right groups) trying to destroy free speech in America.”

Speaking at an investors conference in New York on Friday, Musk called the activist pressure “an attack on the First Amendment.”

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

ACCESS TO SYSTEMS CUT

Dozens of staffers tweeted they lost access to work email and Slack channels before receiving an official notice, which they took as a sign they had been laid off.

[1/9] Owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc. Elon Musk arrives at the 29th Annual Baron Investment Conference in Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S., November 4, 2022. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

They tweeted blue hearts and salute emojis expressing support for one another, using the hashtags #OneTeam and #LoveWhereYouWorked, a past-tense version of a slogan employees had used for years to celebrate the company’s work culture.

Twitter’s curation team, which is responsible for “highlighting and contextualizing the best events and stories that unfold on Twitter,” had been axed, employees said on the platform. The company’s communications team in India has also been laid off, according to a Twitter executive in Asia.

A team that focused on research into how Twitter employed algorithms, an issue that was a priority for Musk, was also eliminated, according to a tweet from a former senior manager at Twitter.

Senior executives including Vice President of Engineering Arnaud Weber also said their goodbyes on Twitter on Friday: “Twitter still has a lot of unlocked potential but I’m proud of what we accomplished,” he tweeted.

Employees of Twitter Blue, the premium subscription service that Musk is bolstering, were also let go. An employee with the handle “SillyRobin” who had indicated they were laid off, quote-tweeted Musk’s previous tweet saying Twitter Blue would include “paywall bypass” for certain publishers.

“Just to be clear, he fired the team working on this,” the employee said.

Twitter’s head of Safety & Integrity, Yoel Roth, appeared to have kept his job, as did Vice President of Product Keith Coleman, who launched a tool called Birdwatch for users to write notes on tweets they identify as misleading.

Last week, Musk endorsed Roth, citing his “high integrity” after Roth was called out over tweets critical of former U.S. President Donald Trump years earlier. Musk has also tweeted that he likes Birdwatch.

Roth and Coleman did not respond to requests for comment.

DOORS LOCKED

Twitter said in its email to staffers that offices would be temporarily closed and badge access suspended in order “to help ensure the safety of each employee as well as Twitter systems and customer data.”

Offices in London and Dublin appeared deserted on Friday, with no employees in sight. At the London office, any evidence Twitter had once occupied the building was erased.

A receptionist at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters said a few people had trickled in and were working in the floors above despite the notice to stay away.

A class action was filed on Thursday against Twitter by its employees, who argued the company was conducting mass layoffs without providing the required 60-day advance notice, in violation of federal and California law.

The lawsuit also asked the San Francisco federal court to issue an order to restrict Twitter from soliciting employees being laid off to sign documents without informing them of the pendency of the case.

Reporting by Sheila Dang in Dallas, Katie Paul in Palo Alto, Calif., and Paresh Dave in Oakland, Calif.
Additional reporting by Fanny Potkin, Rusharti Mukherjee, Aditya Kalra, Martin Coulter, Hyunjoo Jin, Supantha Mukherjee and Arriana McLymore
Writing by Matt Scuffham
Editing by Kenneth Li, Jason Neely and Matthew Lewis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Paresh Dave

Thomson Reuters

San Francisco Bay Area-based tech reporter covering Google and the rest of Alphabet Inc. Joined Reuters in 2017 after four years at the Los Angeles Times focused on the local tech industry.

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Business

Amazon faces $1 bln lawsuit in UK for ‘favouring its own products’

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  • Consumer rights advocate bringing case for customers
  • Amazon says collective action is ‘without merit’
  • Case focuses on marketplace’s ‘Buy Box’ feature

LONDON, Oct 20 (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) is facing a lawsuit in Britain for damages of up to 900 million pounds ($1 billion) over allegations the online marketplace abused its dominant position by favouring its own products, lawyers said.

Consumer rights advocate Julie Hunter plans to bring the collective action on behalf of British consumers who have made purchases on Amazon since October 2016, lawyers representing her said.

The proposed case – which Amazon said was “without merit” – would be the latest mass action against a tech giant to be filed at London’s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT).

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Law firm Hausfeld, which represents Hunter, said on Thursday that Amazon has breached competition law by using “a secretive and self-favouring algorithm” to promote its own products through the “Buy Box” feature on its website.

Hunter said in a statement: “Far from being a recommendation based on price or quality, the Buy Box favours products sold by Amazon itself, or by retailers who pay Amazon for handling their logistics. Other sellers, however good their offers might be, are effectively shut out.”

An Amazon spokesperson said in a statement: “This claim is without merit and we’re confident that will become clear through the legal process.”

The lawsuit is expected to be filed at the CAT by the end of this month and will have to be certified by the tribunal before it can proceed.

It is being brought on an “opt-out” basis, meaning that any potential claimants will be included in the claim unless they choose to opt out.

The case follows the announcement by Britain’s antitrust watchdog in July that it is investigating Amazon over suspected breaches of competition law, including how it selects which products are placed within the “Buy Box” feature.

Amazon has faced similar probes elsewhere, recently making an offer to the European Commission to avert possible hefty EU antitrust fines.

The platform has also declined to describe its product-search system to an Australian competition regulator which has heard complaints of large marketplace platforms giving preference to in-house wares.

The CAT authorised an estimated 920 milion-pound ($1.1 billion) damages claim against Google (GOOGL.O) in July and approved another case worth up to 1.7 billion pounds against Apple (AAPL.O) in May.

The tribunal is also due to decide in January whether to give the go-ahead to a claim valued at up to 2.2 billion pounds against Meta Platforms (META.O), the owner of Facebook and Instagram, over alleged anti-competitive behaviour.

Google and Apple deny the allegations against them, according to court filings, and Meta did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

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Reporting by Sam Tobin; Editing by Andrew Heavens

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More U.S. companies charging employees for job training if they quit

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WASHINGTON, Oct 17 (Reuters) – When a Washington state beauty salon charged Simran Bal $1,900 for training after she quit, she was shocked.

Not only was Bal a licensed esthetician with no need for instruction, she argued that the trainings were specific to the shop and low quality.

Bal’s story mirrors that of dozens of people and advocates in healthcare, trucking, retail and other industries who complained recently to U.S. regulators that some companies charge employees who quit large sums of money for training.

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Nearly 10% of American workers surveyed in 2020 were covered by a training repayment agreement, said the Cornell Survey Research Institute.

The practice, which critics call Training Repayment Agreement Provisions, or TRAPs, is drawing scrutiny from U.S. regulators and lawmakers.

On Capitol Hill, Senator Sherrod Brown is studying legislative options with an eye toward introducing a bill next year to rein in the practice, a Senate Democratic aide said.

At the state level, attorneys general like Minnesota’s Keith Ellison are assessing how prevalent the practice is and could update guidance.

Ellison told Reuters he would be inclined to oppose reimbursement demands for job-specific instruction while it “could be different” if an employer wanted reimbursement for training for a certification like a commercial driving license that is widely recognized as valuable.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has begun reviewing the practice, while the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission have received complaints about it.

The use of training agreements is growing even though unemployment is low, which presumably gives workers more power, said Jonathan Harris who teaches at the Loyola Law School Los Angeles.

“Employers are looking for ways to keep their workers from quitting without raising wages or improving working conditions,” said Harris.

The CFPB, which announced in June it was looking into the agreements, has begun to focus on how they may prevent even skilled employees with years of schooling, like nurses, from finding new, better jobs, according to a CFPB official who was not authorized to speak on the record.

“We have heard from workers and worker organizations that the products may be restricting worker mobility,” the official said.

TRAPs have been around in a small way since the late 1980s primarily in high-wage positions where workers received valuable training. But in recent years the agreements have become more widespread, said Loyola’s Harris.

Licensed esthetician Simran Bal, who was taken to court by her former employer to repay $1900 in trainings they required her to attend, poses for a portrait outside the King County District Court in Shoreline, Washington, U.S., October 13, 2022. Bal, whose case was dismissed, says she was already licensed for services the trainings covered. REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson

One critic of the CFPB effort was the National Federation of Independent Business, or NFIB, which said the issue was outside the agency’s authority because it was unrelated to consumer financial products and services.

“(Some state governments) have authority to regulate employer-driven debt. CFPB should defer to those governments, which are closer to the people of the states than the CFPB,” it added.

NURSING AND TRUCKING

Bal said she was happy when she was hired by the Oh Sweet salon near Seattle in August 2021.

But she soon found that before she could provide services for clients, and earn more, she was required to attend trainings on such things as sugaring to remove unwanted hair and lash and brow maintenance.

But, she said, the salon owner was slow to schedule the trainings, which would sometimes be postponed or cancelled. They were also not informative; Bal described them as “introductory level.” While waiting to complete the training, Bal worked at the front desk, which paid less.

When she quit in October 2021, Bal received a bill for $1,900 for the instruction she did receive. “She was charging me for training for services that I was already licensed in,” said Bal.

Karina Villalta, who runs Oh Sweet LLC, filed a lawsuit in small claims court to recover the money. Court records provided by Bal show the case was dismissed in September by a judge who ruled that Bal did not complete the promised training and owed nothing. Villalta declined requests for comment.

In comments to the CFPB, National Nurses United said they did a survey that found that the agreements are “increasingly ubiquitous in the health care sector,” with new nurses often affected.

The survey found that 589 of the 1,698 nurses surveyed were required to take training programs and 326 of them were required to pay employers if they left before a certain time.

Many nurses said they were not told about the training repayment requirement before beginning work, and that classroom instruction often repeated what they learned in school.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters said in comments that training repayment demands were “particularly egregious” in commercial trucking. They said firms like CRST and C.R. England train people for a commercial drivers license but charge more than $6,000 if they leave the company before a certain time. Neither company responded to a request for comment.

The American Trucking Associations argues that the license is portable from one employer to another and required by the government. It urged the CFPB to not characterize it as employer-driven debt.

Steve Viscelli, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania who spent six months training and then driving truck, said the issue deserved scrutiny.

“Anytime we have training contracts for low-skilled workers, we should be asking why,” he said. “If you have a good job, you don’t need a training contract. People are going to want to stay.”

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Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Chris Sanders and Lisa Shumaker

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Diane Bartz

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Musk, Twitter could reach deal to end court battle, close buyout soon, source says

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WILMINGTON, Del., Oct 5 (Reuters) – Elon Musk and Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) may reach an agreement to end their litigation in coming days, clearing the way for the world’s richest person to close his $44 billion deal for the social media firm, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Musk, who is also chief executive officer of electric car maker Tesla Inc (TSLA.O), proposed to Twitter late on Monday he would change course and abide by his April agreement to buy the company for $54.20 per share, if Twitter dropped its litigation against him.

The two sides had been expected to reach a deal as early as Wednesday, but negotiations are continuing with a resolution expected to take more time, the source said.

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Twitter’s legal team, however, has yet to accept the agreement and Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, the judge on Delaware’s Court of Chancery, said she was preparing for the looming trial.

“The parties have not filed a stipulation to stay this action, nor has any party moved for a stay. I, therefore, continue to press on toward our trial set to begin on Oct. 17, 2022,” McCormick wrote in a Wednesday court filing.

Musk’s proposal on Monday included a condition that the deal closing was pending the receipt of debt financing. The potential agreement would likely remove that condition, said the source, who requested anonymity as the discussions are confidential.

Twitter’s legal team and lawyers for Musk updated the judge on Tuesday with their attempts to overcome mutual distrust and find a process for closing the deal.

Two firms that were interested in partly financing the deal, Apollo Global Management Inc (APO.N) and Sixth Street Partners, had ended talks to provide up to a combined $1 billion, two sources told Reuters.

An attorney representing a proposed class action against Musk on behalf of Twitter shareholders said in a letter to McCormick that Musk should be required to make a “substantial deposit” in case he again reneges on his commitment to close. He should also be liable for interest delaying the closing of the deal, said the letter from attorney Michael Hanrahan.

It is not clear what led the Musk legal team to offer to settle, but Musk is scheduled to be deposed on Thursday in Austin, Texas. Questioning is expected to be tough, which provides Twitter leverage in talks to close the deal.

Shares of Twitter closed 1.3% lower at $51.30 on Wednesday. The stock on Tuesday hit its highest level since Musk and Twitter agreed in April that he would buy the company for $54.20 per share.

A DISTRACTION

Tesla stock ended down 3.5% on Wednesday as investors worry that Musk may have to sell more shares in the electric carmaker to fund the Twitter deal and that Twitter could be a distraction for the entrepreneur.

Musk sold $15.4 billion worth of Tesla stock this year, but analysts said he may have to raise an additional $2 billion to $3 billion provided that the rest of his financing remains unchanged.

Musk said in July he was walking away from the takeover agreement because he discovered Twitter had allegedly misled him about the amount of fake accounts, among other claims.

Part of Musk’s case was based on allegations by Twitter whistleblower Peiter “Mudge” Zatko that became public in August, and Musk’s legal team on Wednesday rejected the idea that they had inappropriate talks with Zatko or spoken with him before his concerns became public.

Twitter’s, legal team has wanted to investigate if Alex Spiro, a lawyer from legal firm Quinn Emanuel, who has led the case for Musk, communicated with the whistleblower as early as May.

Twitter lawyers were suspicious that Zatko sent an anonymous May 6 email to Spiro. The sender claimed to be a former Twitter employee, offered information about the company and suggested communicating by alternate means.

Spiro said in a filing with the court on Wednesday he never read the email until Twitter brought it to his attention and it appeared to be someone seeking a job. Spiro also said he was unaware of the existence of Zatko’s allegations before they became public on Aug. 23.

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Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Del., and Anirban Sen in New York; Additional reporting by Hyunjoo Jin in San Fransico
Editing by Nick Zieminski, Matthew Lewis and Sam Holmes

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Tom Hals

Thomson Reuters

Award-winning reporter with more than two decades of experience in international news, focusing on high-stakes legal battles over everything from government policy to corporate dealmaking.

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