Author: Fortune
Be careful, the phone booths have eyes. Or ears, it turns out. And they’re hooked up to an algorithm. In office spaces, a new type of cubicle has started cropping up over the past decade— phone booths that provide a slice of isolation for employees who want to escape from the open-floor plan. The co-founders of phone-booth maker Framery launched this concept in 2010 so they could concentrate without always having to hear their boss on calls. Since then, Framery has stretched across the corporate world with clients like NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Postmates. Now, a new version of the pods…
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Hertz Global Holdings Inc. is replacing its chief executive officer in the wake of a disastrous bet on electric vehicles that the company began unwinding in recent months. Stephen Scherr, who ran Hertz for just over two years after three decades at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., has decided to step down, the rental-car company said late Friday in a statement. It’s replacing him with Gil West, the former chief operating officer of General Motors Co.’s Cruise robotaxi unit. West also will join the board of directors on April 1, according to the statement, which confirmed an earlier Bloomberg report. Scherr,…
Meaghan Ferneau was 29 years old when she found out she was infertile. She had undiagnosed endometriosis for years, and described doctors who said her condition was all in her head until a specialist told her she needed “surgery for it yesterday.” It was the start of a seven-year series of failed embryo transfers, surgeries, medical hormone treatments and a miscarriage. She’s spent the past three years pursuing IVF treatment, and it was all for one goal: “I wanted to hear my baby cry.” Now age 35, Ferneau gave birth to her daughter nine months ago. The Arkansas-based senior manager…
On Tuesday, former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin closed a $1 billion equity deal to rescue the faltering New York Community Bank. On Thursday, he said he was working to buy TikTok with a group of investors after the House passed a bill demanding that Chinese firm ByteDance sell the app. It’s been the source of considerable Gen Z (and probably a lot of millennial) panic, as the realization dawns that the defining social-media platform of the 2020s really could go away. After leaving the public eye for years after Joe Biden’s electoral defeat of Donald Trump in 2020, Mnuchin is back…
Gen Z and millennial tourists will make up half of all travelers in the Asia-Pacific region, the fastest growing region for travel, by 2025, says Todd Handcock, the global chief commercial officer and Asia-Pacific head for Collinson Group, which operates the Priority Pass airport lounges. But this new generation of tourists wants something else from their travel. These two groups have a “hyper heightened focus on personalized value-added experiences,” according to Collinson’s customer engagement report. Younger travelers are thus more likely to value benefits such as spas or sleeping pods at the airport, treating time spent waiting for flights as…
Federal prosecutors are asking that Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced cofounder of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, be sentenced to 40 to 50 years in prison, according to a sentencing memo on Friday. “Justice requires that he receive a prison sentence commensurate with the extraordinary dimensions of his crimes,” the prosecutors wrote in the 116-page document. The recommendation was made in a filing to Judge Lewis A. Kaplan in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Bankman-Fried was found guilty of seven fraud charges in November and is scheduled to be sentenced on March 28. The maximum possible penalty is 110 years. NEW —…
Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions dropped by one-tenth last year as renewable energy grew in importance, the use of coal and gas diminished and economic pressures weighed on businesses and consumers, official data showed Friday. Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, who is also the economy and climate minister, said Europe’s biggest economy is on course to meet its target for 2030 of cutting emissions by 65%, compared with 1990. Germany aims to cut its emissions to net zero by 2045 and is working to ramp up the use of solar and wind power and other renewable sources. The country’s environmental protection agency said that…
Eclipse-themed beer. Jewelry and ornaments. And doughnuts that capture the sun’s disappearing act with the help of buttercream frosting. With April 8’s total solar eclipse right around the corner, businesses are ready for the celestial event that will dim skies along a generous path across North America. There are oodles of special eclipse safety glasses for sale, along with T-shirts emblazoned with clever slogans and other souvenirs — just like the last time the U.S. got a big piece of the total solar eclipse action in 2017. Hotels and resorts along the prime path are luring in visitors with special packages and Southwest and Delta are selling seats on eclipse-viewing flights.…
Yet another chain is pulling back from self-checkout machines. Dollar General has announced plans to completely remove the self-checkout stations in 300 locations and has begun converting some or all of the registers in another 9,000 stores. The reasons are twofold. Customers, on a wide scale, are tired of having to scan and bag their own goods, especially given the numerous errors the machines encounter. Businesses, despite saving on labor costs with self-checkout, see the drawbacks of it, too. Northern England grocery chain Booths ended most of its self-checkout services in November, saying employees bagging groceries “delivers a better customer…