Tag: extends

Meme inventory AMC extends rally, jumps 17% as theater chain sells new shares

Post author By
Post date June 1, 2021

Shares of AMC Entertainment surged again Tuesday after the theater chain sold more than 8 million shares to an investment firm, the latest in a series of capital raises for the struggling company turned meme stock.

AMC said in a securities filing that it raised $230.5 million through a stock sale to Mudrick Capital Management. The theater company said it would use the funds for potential acquisitions, upgrading its theaters and deleveraging its balance sheet.

Shares were up 17% in premarket trading.

AMC’s business was effectively halted during the pandemic, with movie theaters shut in most of the country for months and major studios delaying releases during the pandemic. However, the stock became a favorite of traders on Reddit and has seen wild swings in recent months.

The shares doubled last week on incredibly high volume as the speculative activity by retail traders driven by the message board ramped back up once again.

The company has taken advantage of those price surges by selling additional shares to raise cash. The stock is up more than 1,000% year to date.

“Given that AMC is raising hundreds of millions of dollars, this is an extremely positive result for our shareholders,” said AMC CEO and President Adam Aron in a filing. “It was achieved through the issuance of only 8.5 million shares, representing less than 1.7% of our issued share capital and only a small portion of our typical daily trading volume.”

AMC has around $5 billion in debt and needed to defer $450 million in lease repayments as its revenue largely dried up during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Theaters were closed for several months to help stop the spread of the virus, and when the company reopened its doors, few consumers felt comfortable attending screenings, and movie studios held back new releases.

Now, as vaccination rates continue to rise and the number of coronavirus cases decline, consumer confidence in returning to movie theaters has spiked. Not to mention, studios are finally releasing new content.

Over the weekend, John Krasinski’s “A Quiet Place Part II,” the sequel to his 2018 blockbuster, garnered $48.4 million over Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the highest three-day haul of any film release during the pandemic.

For the full four-day Memorial Day weekend, the North American box office tallied nearly $100 million in ticket sales.

Still, while initial box-office receipts are promising, fundamental elements of the movie theater business have changed in the last year, including theater capacity, shared release dates with streaming services and the number of days that movies play in theaters.

The securities filing from AMC, which closed Friday with a $11.8 billion market cap, also has a risk warning for investors: “Our market capitalization, as implied by various trading prices, currently reflects valuations that diverge significantly from those seen prior to recent volatility and that are significantly higher than our market capitalization immediately prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to the extent these valuations reflect trading dynamics unrelated to our financial performance or prospects, purchasers of our Class A common stock could incur substantial losses if there are declines in market prices driven by a return to earlier valuations.”

—With reporting by Sarah Whitten.

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Tags AMC, chain, extends, jumps, Meme, rally, Sells, Shares, Stock, Theater

Business

Gucci Extends Lease in Trump Tower

Post author By
Post date February 25, 2021

On the day President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were inaugurated in Washington, DC, Melania and Donald Trump stepped off Air Force One in South Florida to reach the borders of the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach .

He wore a typically boxy suit of undetermined origin. She wore an orange-and-blue boldly patterned Gucci caftan worth $ 3,700, which was as symbolic as the famous “I really don’t care, do you” jacket she wore on a trip to children in 2018 in a border prison to visit in Texas.

With its laid-back lines and orange hexagons reminiscent of a David Hicks rug, the new dress telegraphed the idea of Mrs. Trump taking on a new role as a recreational person, seemingly carefree. It was also a global advertisement for a brand that is heavily linked to the Trump business, unwittingly or not.

For the past 14 years, Gucci has leased 48,667 feet at the base of Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan, making it the building’s largest commercial tenant.

Other companies that rented space with the Trumps have reduced their space or not extended their leases. One of them is Nike, which in 2018 closed its Niketown location at 6 East 57th Street – a building around the corner from Trump Tower for which the Trump Organization has signed a 100-year long lease – and opened a new flagship, the so-called House of Innovation, five blocks south. (A Nike spokeswoman then declined to reach out to Forbes about whether the move was political.)

In 2019, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China reduced its presence in Trump Tower. Tiffany, who temporarily took over the Niketown space in 2018 while her flagship was being renovated, is not extending its lease next year, Bloomberg reported recently.

But in 2020 Gucci renegotiated and renewed its lease, according to two people knowledgeable about the deal who both asked not to use their names because they are not authorized to speak about it.

The luxury company received a rent reduction in return for agreeing to extend its lease beyond 2026. Trump Tower had to keep an extremely desirable tenant: a brand that has been booming since designer Alessandro Michele took over creative direction in 2015, whose presence in the building helps counter the idea that its namesake is nothing more than the idea of a “poor person from a rich person, ”as Fran Lebowitz said.

However, the players involved do not speak about it publicly.

Four days after receiving a detailed list of questions about the deal, a Gucci representative called and said a statement was on the way within an hour. A little over an hour later the agent called back and said the explanation would not come.

The Trump Organization did not respond to two requests for comment.

One possible reason: According to the person who saw the new lease, Gucci asked Trump organization staff to sign confidentiality agreements regarding their terms.

Even so, the deal paid off for the Trumps for reasons beyond symbolism.

Numerous luxury brands occupying prime Manhattan retail space have renegotiated leases during the coronavirus pandemic as pedestrian traffic has decreased. Others simply sublet their space. That’s what Ralph Lauren did at its Fifth Avenue location last November, leasing 28,300 square feet to fast fashion retailer Mango for $ 5 million – that’s $ 22 million less than Ralph Lauren paid for it.

In recent years, the revenue from “The Apprentice,” Mr. Trump’s former reality show on NBC, has dried up. Debt payments across the Trump business are falling due. This has made the retail space in and around Trump Tower a lifeline. Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner wrote in the New York Times in January of last year that this is probably the most reliable and “largest long-term money producer” in his empire.

A 2012 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with Trump Organization finances described Gucci as a 20-year lease in 2006. Gucci paid $ 384.40 per square foot of rent per month. This equates to an annual base rate of $ 18.7 million and accounts for about two-thirds of the total of $ 29.53 million that the Trump Organization makes annually from its commercial tenants there, according to the filing.

Regardless of Gucci’s discretion, it is far from clear that news of the renegotiation could affect sales. The fashion industry tends to be politically liberal, but sometimes business is just business and aesthetics outweigh politics.

Oscar de la Renta jumped between first ladies with diametrically opposed worldviews. James Galanos pledged allegiance to Nancy Reagan despite the catastrophic neglect of AIDS by her husband’s government. In 2019, Bernard Arnault, whose company LVMH owns Tiffany, was accompanied by Mr. Trump at a Louis Vuitton factory in Texas and posed for photos with him.

But Mr Trump’s divisive behavior, especially since the beginning of the pandemic and elections, has strengthened activists’ determination to denounce him. Brands are more sensitive than ever to the threat of boycotts. Companies like Nike and Twitter have joined the Black Lives Matter movement.

Gucci’s latest incarnation was more racially inclusive than most high-end fashion brands.

Shortly after Mr. Michele became its lead designer and began shedding a high-profile and self-conscious snobby aesthetic for an ironic, referential style that could perhaps be described as Etsy Luxe, the company ran an advertising campaign with all black models.

But it also failed.

In 2017, the release of a jacket was announced that looked remarkably like one designed decades ago by Dapper Dan, aka Daniel Day, a black couturier based in Harlem. In response, the brand reached out to him, placed him in an ad for his men’s tailoring and worked with him in a luxury boutique.

Soon after, she announced an initiative called Gucci Equilibrium, which in part aimed to improve diversity and inclusion in the company.

But in 2019, Gucci pulled out a $ 890 sweater that was criticized for taking Blackface off the market. And its executive team, along with that of its parent company Kering, continues to be dominated by white men (Kering has a black board member).

Though Gucci’s decision to extend the 725 Fifth Avenue lease was made back in January before protesters carrying Confederate flags stormed the Capitol, Trump’s 2020 connection with white supremacists was little-known, Kailee Scales said. Ms. Scales is the former executive director of Black Lives Matter Global Network and a principal at ThinkFree Global Strategies, a boutique company that supports brands like Amazon and Sprite with marketing strategies on social justice issues.

“This is a time,” she said, “when brands, organizations and individuals around the world are counting on racial justice and are working to address and dismantle the systems that led us to one of the most terrifying moments in history – murder at.” George Floyd. “

As a result, it is “an odd choice” for Gucci to continue to bond closely with a man who “has openly refused to reject white supremacy” and “has built political justice by promoting racist conspiracy theories”.

Ms. Scales’ opinion was shared by Shannon Coulter, who launched the Grab Your Wallet campaign, which boycotted SoulCycle and New Balance after people with interests in these companies donated significant sums of money to Mr. Trump’s campaigns.

In an interview, Ms. Coulter said that she deliberately removed Gucci and Nike from the boycott list. “We were pretty generous knowing they had signed leases before his campaign,” she said.

Gucci’s decision to extend 2020 was something completely different.

“It’s disgusting,” she said. “You are essentially doing business with a white supremacist. That’s what this decision means. “

Still, few people directly related to the fashion world seem anxious to address the potential controversy. Editors like Samira Nasr from Harper’s Bazaar, Nina Garcia from Elle and Anna Wintour from Vogue have positioned themselves as administrators of racial justice. But they also rely on Gucci for advertising. Representatives for All declined to comment. Mr. Day did not respond to a request for comment.

Jeremy O. Harris, the author of “Slave Play”, has had a contractual relationship with the house since November 2020. In general, such arrangements involve wearing a branded clothing in public appearances and then keeping it safe. “I’m very proud of my relationship with them after meeting people and seeing them really listening and trying to change,” he said in an interview last Friday. And “while there are few real estate moguls who have risen to the level of semi-fascist leaders like Trump, as far as I know they are pretty much all deeply compromised people.”

Still, Mr. Harris admitted, “this is complicated.”

Fortunately, he added, “I really only go to the Wooster Street store.”

Ben Protess and Vanessa Friedman contributed to the coverage.

Tags extends, Gucci, lease, Tower, Trump

World News

China’s Crackdown on Muslims Extends to a Resort Island

Post author By
Post date February 15, 2021

SANYA, China – The call to prayer still echoes through the alleys of Sanya’s nearly 1,000-year-old Muslim quarter, with minarets with crescent moons rising over the roofs. The government’s crackdown on the tiny, deeply devout community in this southern Chinese city has been subtle.

Signs on shops and houses that read “Allahu akbar” – “God is the greatest” in Arabic – have been fitted with stickers an inch wide to advertise the “China Dream,” a nationalist official slogan. The Chinese characters for Halal, which means permissible in Islam, have been removed from restaurant signs and menus. The authorities have closed two Islamic schools and tried twice to exclude female students from wearing headscarves.

The Utsuls, a community of no more than 10,000 Muslims in Sanya, are among the recent targets of the Chinese Communist Party’s campaign against foreign influences and religions. Their problems show how Beijing is working to undermine the religious identity of even its smallest Muslim minorities in order to achieve a unified Chinese culture, the core of which is the Han ethnic majority.

The new restrictions in Sanya, a town on the holiday island of Hainan, mark a reversal of government policy. Until a few years ago, officials supported the Utsuls’ Islamic identity and ties to Muslim countries, according to local religious leaders and residents, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid government retaliation.

The party has stated that its restrictions on Islam and the Muslim communities are designed to curb violent religious extremism. She has used this rationale to justify cracking down on Muslims in China’s westernmost region, Xinjiang, after a series of attacks seven years ago. But Sanya saw little unrest.

The tightening of control over the Utsuls “reveals the real face of China’s communist campaign against local communities,” said Ma Haiyun, an associate professor at Frostburg State University in Maryland who studies Islam in China. “The point here is to strengthen state control. It is purely against Islam. “

The Chinese government has repeatedly denied that it is against Islam. But under Xi Jinping, its supreme leader, the party has demolished mosques, old shrines, and Islamic domes and minarets in northwestern and central China. The crackdown focused heavily on the Uighurs, a Central Asian Muslim minority of 11 million in Xinjiang, many of whom were held in mass detention camps and forced to renounce Islam.

Efforts to “sinize” Islam accelerated in 2018 after the State Council, China’s cabinet, issued a confidential policy instructing officials to prevent the belief from interfering with the secular life and functions of the state. The directive warned of “Arabization” and the influence of Saudi Arabia or “Saudiization” in mosques and schools.

In Sanya, the party is persecuting a group with a significant position in China’s relations with the Islamic world. The Utsuls have hosted Muslims from across the country seeking the mild climes of Hainan Province, and they served as a bridge to Muslim communities in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

The Islamic identity of the Utsuls has been celebrated by the government for years as China pushed for stronger ties with the Arab world. Such connections were key to Mr. Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative, a program to fund infrastructure projects around the world and strengthen Beijing’s political influence.

The Utsuls have become “an important base for Muslims who have moved abroad to find their roots and investigate their ancestors,” according to a 2017 government release that highlighted the role of Islam in Hainan in the belt- and street map was highlighted. “To date, they have welcomed thousands of scholars and friends from more than a dozen countries and regions and are an important window for cultural exchanges between people around the South China Sea.”

Although the Utsuls have been officially classified as part of China’s largest ethnic minority, the Hui, they see themselves as culturally different from other Muslim communities in the country.

These are Sunni Muslims believed to be descended from Cham, the long-distance fishermen and sea traders of the Champa kingdom that ruled the central and southern coast of Vietnam for centuries. As early as the 10th century, Cham refugees fled the war in what is now central Vietnam and traveled to Hainan, a tropical island the size of Maryland.

Over the centuries, the Utsuls maintained close ties with Southeast Asia and practiced Islam largely without restriction. But during the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s, wandering Red Guard groups devoted to Mao Zedong destroyed mosques in Utsul villages as they did across China.

When China opened to the world in the early 1980s, the Utsuls began to revive their Islamic traditions. Many families have reconnected with long-lost relatives in Malaysia and Indonesia, including a former Malaysian Prime Minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, whose maternal grandfather was a Utsul who grew up in Sanya.

To this day, many Utsuls, also known as Utsats, speak a particular Chamic language similar to the language used in parts of Vietnam and Cambodia, in addition to Chinese. A sour tamarind fish stew with Southeast Asian flavors remains the local specialty, and the elders pass on stories of their ancestors’ migration to Hainan. Women wear colored headscarves, sometimes beaded or embroidered, that cover their hair, ears and neck. This type is similar to headgear worn by Muslim women in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Yusuf Liu, a Malaysian-Chinese writer who has studied the Utsuls, said the group was able to maintain a distinct identity because they were geographically isolated and clinging to their religious beliefs for centuries. He noted that the Utsuls were similar to the Malaysians in many ways.

“They share many of the same qualities, including language, clothing, history, blood ties, and food,” said Mr. Liu.

As Sanya’s tourism economy boomed over the past two decades, so did the Utsuls’ relations with the Middle East. Young men traveled to Saudi Arabia to study Islam. Community leaders built schools for children and adults to learn Arabic. They began building domes and minarets for their mosques and turned away from traditional Chinese architectural styles.

Although there have been some clashes between the Utsuls and neighboring Han in the past few decades, they have largely lived in peace, with both groups benefiting from the recent surge in tourism. In contrast, Beijing has long tried to suppress Uighur resistance to Chinese violence, which has been violent at times. The party has said that its policies in Xinjiang have curbed what it calls terrorism and religious extremism.

But for the past two years, even in Sanya, authorities have been pressing to curtail overt beliefs and links with the Arab world.

Local mosque leaders said they should remove the speakers that broadcast the call to prayer from the minaret tops and place them on the floor – and, more recently, turn the volume down. The construction of a new mosque was halted after a dispute over its imposing dimensions and supposedly “Arab” architectural elements. The concrete skeleton is now collecting dust. The city has banned children under the age of 18 from studying Arabic.

Utsul residents said they wanted to learn Arabic not only to better understand Islamic texts but also to communicate with Arab tourists who came to their restaurants, hotels and mosques before the pandemic. Some residents expressed frustration at the new restrictions and questioned China’s promise to respect its 56 officially recognized ethnic groups.

A local religious leader who studied in Saudi Arabia for five years said the community had been told they were no longer allowed to build domes.

“The mosques in the Middle East are like that. We want to build ours so that they look like mosques and not just like houses, ”he said on condition of anonymity because some residents had recently been briefly arrested for criticizing the government. (As a sign of the sensitivity of the problem, half a dozen plainclothes police in Sanya questioned us about our reporting in mosques.)

The church has resisted at times. In September, Utsul parents and students protested outside schools and government offices after several public schools banned girls from wearing headscarves to class. Weeks later, authorities reversed the order, a rare bow to public pressure.

Still, the government sees the assimilation of China’s various ethnic minorities as the key to building a stronger nation.

“We need to use ethnic differences as a foundation to build a unified Chinese consciousness,” said Xiong Kunxin, professor of ethnic studies at Minzu University in Beijing. “This is the direction for China’s future development.”

The Utsuls are currently in an uncomfortable coexistence with the authorities.

In the center of the courtyard of the Nankai Mosque, a red Chinese flag flies at almost the same height as the tops of the minarets.

Keith Bradsher reported from Sanya and Amy Qin from Taipei, Taiwan. Amy Chang Chien contributed to coverage from Taipei.

Tags Chinas, Crackdown, extends, Island, Muslims, Resort

Business

Fb Extends Trump Ban ‘at Least’ By Finish of Time period: Stay Updates

Post author By
Post date January 7, 2021

President Trump at a rally in Dalton, Ga., this week.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Facebook will block President Trump on its platforms, including Instagram, at least until the end of his term, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on Thursday.

“The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden,” Mr. Zuckerberg wrote.

“We believe the risks of allowing the president to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great. Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.”

United States ›	United StatesOn Jan. 6	14-day change
New cases	255,728	+8%
New deaths	3,964	Flat

World ›	WorldOn Jan. 6	14-day change
New cases	785,681	+1%
New deaths	14,266	–5%

Where cases per capita are
highest

By: Ella Koeze·Source: Refinitiv

Stocks rose again on Thursday, after having maintained gains on Wednesday even as chaos erupted in Washington as a pro-Trump mob overran the Capitol building, as investors kept their focus on the prospects for increased federal spending by the incoming government.

The S&P 500 rose more than 1 percent in early trading, after a 0.6 percent gain on Wednesday. Shares in Europe and Asia were also mostly higher, oil prices and government bond yields edged higher.

The gains on Thursday reflect Wall Street’s eagerness to look past violence in Washington and to the impact of a government unified under Democratic leadership, analysts said. The rally began on Tuesday after it became apparent that Democrats would effectively control the Senate, after winning a pair of runoff votes in Georgia, and be able to more forcefully push forward with President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s plans to bolster the economy with government spending.

“As disturbing as these events were, markets were largely unfazed, which, we hope, points to this being an aberration,” equity analysts at J.P. Morgan wrote to clients on Thursday. “The longer-term cue for markets and policy comes from the result of the two Georgia senate runoffs, which both went to Democrats and thus enlivened the ‘blue wave.’”

After the order in the Capitol was restored, the Senate and House of Representatives voted early Thursday to certify Mr. Biden as winner of the 2020 presidential election.

Investors are also banking on the rollout of coronavirus vaccines to eventually energize business activity that has been dormant during the pandemic, and, as they have for months, also looked past fresh evidence of the economic catastrophe unfolding. On Thursday, the Labor Department reported that 922,000 workers filed new state claims for unemployment benefits last week, while another 161,000 new claims were filed under a federal program.

Treasury bond yields continued to rise, lifted by expectations that additional fiscal spending in Washington will generate more bond issues, reaching as high as 1.06 percent on 10-year notes. The yield climbed above 1 percent this week for the first time since March.

Economists at Goldman Sachs said they expected Democrats to pass $750 billion in fiscal stimulus in the first quarter of the year. The U.S. investment bank also raised its forecast for economic growth this year to 6.4 percent from 5.9 percent.

Oil was holding on to an 11-month high, after Saudi Arabia announced on Tuesday it would cut oil production. The U.S. crude benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, hit $51.28 a barrel before slipping a bit, while Brent crude reached $54.90.

Credit…Audra Melton for The New York Times

New claims for unemployment benefits remained high last week, the government reported on Thursday, the latest evidence that the pandemic-racked economy still has a lot of lost ground to make up heading into a new year.

A total of 922,000 workers filed initial claims for state benefits during the final week of 2020, the Labor Department said, while another 161,000 new claims were filed under a federal pandemic jobless program. Neither figure is seasonally adjusted. On a seasonally adjusted basis, new state claims totaled 787,000.

The labor market has improved since the coronavirus pandemic broke out and closed down the economy. But of the more than 22 million jobs that disappeared in the spring, 10 million remain lost.

With a recently enacted $900 billion relief package that includes an extension of federal unemployment benefits, most of the unemployed can at least look forward to more financial help.

Still, “this winter is going to be very difficult,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief U.S. financial economist at Oxford Economics. “We’re seeing overall economic momentum is slowing, and that feeds through to the labor market.”

“Employers are very cautious about rehiring at the same time they have had to increase layoffs,” Ms. Bostjancic said, “but the resurgence of the virus is really the main culprit here.”

A fuller picture of December employment will come Friday when the Labor Department releases its monthly jobs report, and most analysts are expecting minor payroll gains — or even the first net loss since April.

As for Thursday’s report, there was a sharp increase in claims for extended state benefits — payments to the long-term unemployed whose regular benefits have run out. But new claims under the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program fell, most likely reflecting the exhaustion of benefits before Congress acted.

Some fuzziness surrounding the count could be related to the difficulty of seasonally adjusting the numbers over the holidays, said Ernie Tedeschi, the head of fiscal analysis at Evercore ISI. The unadjusted number for new state claims was up by 77,000 from the previous week, while the seasonally adjusted number scarcely budged.

But longer-term trends, Mr. Tedeschi noted, are more meaningful than any week-to-week changes.

Credit…Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

While the availability of vaccines will speed the economy’s return to normal, employers remain wary about hiring, job recruiters say.

Job postings and hiring typically fall off at the end of December, and the trend after the latest holiday season has been more pronounced than usual. “Right now, employers are still cautious related to their work force strategy,” said Amy Glaser, senior vice president at the staffing firm Adecco USA.

The rebound has been bumpy, and employers have responded in kind, retaining flexibility to increase or reduce their staffing through the use of temporary workers, Ms. Glaser said. That could mean more people are cycling through jobs.

Julia Pollak, a labor economist at the online job site ZipRecruiter, has seen the same caution.

“Employers are being apprehensive, and job seekers are not yet flocking back to the market in droves, either,” Ms. Pollak said. “The virus is still spreading, hospitalizations have hit a new record, and there is a pullback in demand for certain services. A lot of stay-at-home orders and restrictions are causing a further decline.”

Some industries have managed to thrive. A key measure of manufacturing, for instance, rose this week to its highest level since 2018. Construction spending and employment have grown along with a surge in home buying. Staffing agencies say they have seen hiring in the automotive business and financial services. The demand for warehouse and delivery workers also remains strong.

One of the biggest trends has been the increase in customer service workers and call center representatives operating from home, Ms. Glaser of Adecco said. Those jobs require greater digital literacy than in the past, she said, because individuals must be able to set up their computers and solve problems themselves.

“There is no tech person sitting down the hallway,” she said.

Credit…Nathan Frandino/Reuters

The federal government released updated rules for lenders just before midnight on Wednesday for the next round of Paycheck Protection Program lending, but it did not set a date for when it expects to begin taking applications.

Lenders anticipate the program could restart as soon as next week. Last month’s stimulus package included $284 billion for new loans through the small-business relief program, which ended in August after distributing $523 billion to more than five million businesses. In this next round, the hardest-hit business — those whose sales have dropped at least 25 percent from before the pandemic — can qualify for a second loan. First-time borrowers will also be eligible for loans.

The Small Business Administration, which runs the program, plans to give small lenders a head start. In its first two days, the program will accept loan applications only from community lenders like Community Development Financial Institutions, which specialize in working with low-income borrowers and in areas underserved by larger lenders.

For second loans of more than $150,000, applicants will need to provide their lender with records proving their sales have declined. Lenders will need to do a “good faith review” of those documents, but will be allowed to rely on borrowers’ certifications that their claims are accurate — a win for lenders, which are concerned about being held liable for fraudulent claims.

For smaller loans, borrowers will not need to provide their sales records as part of their application, but the S.B.A. can request them later.

The S.B.A. is scrambling to release a variety of relief measures included in last month’s stimulus bill, including a $15 billion grant program for music clubs, theaters and other live-events venues. The agency has not yet released any details on that program, and it will not start until after President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. takes office.

When Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, issued a statement condemning the violence in Washington on Wednesday, he urged “our elected leaders” to call for an end to it. He did not directly mention President Trump.

Nor did the Charles Scharf, the chief executive of Wells Fargo (“The behavior in Washington, D.C., today is unacceptable”) or the chief executives of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America or Citigroup. Business leaders and organizations often instead referred to “leaders” or called for “the peaceful transition of power” to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Business leaders have rarely criticized Mr. Trump directly. When he announced, shortly before he was inaugurated, that Stephen K. Bannon would be his chief strategist in the White House, Democrats on the congressional committees that oversee the finance industry asked industry leaders to publicly oppose the appointment. The lawmakers called Mr. Bannon a “bigot beloved by white supremacists” and said the business leaders had “a moral obligation to speak out.”

None did.

After Mr. Trump took office, chief executives found themselves in the uncomfortable position of deciding whether to take part in so-called business advisory councils, common forums for business leaders to influence the policy of a new president, even as he was rolling out policies many saw as hateful. Several such councils disbanded after Mr. Trump declined in 2017 to condemn violence by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., and said there were “very fine people” and “blame” on “both sides.”

With the president’s increasing efforts to subvert the election, organizations have grown bolder. On Monday, for example, 170 business leaders signed their names to a statement, organized by the business advocacy organization Partnership for New York City, urging Congress to certify the result of the presidential election, though some prominent members were missing.

On Wednesday, as a mob stormed the Capitol, organizations not known for vocal statements seemed to no longer worry about the political ramifications of speaking up against Mr. Trump.

The research group High Frequency Economics suspended regular publication of its research notes for the first time since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and sent a note to its clients: “We at High Frequency Economics are disgusted by the role of the president of the United States in inciting this riot, and we are saddened that he cannot find the character to stand up in front of the mob he has created, quell the violence and send everyone home.”

And the Business Roundtable, a group of chief executives, including Mr. Dimon, from some of the nation’s largest companies, was direct as to the cause of the violence.

“The chaos unfolding in the nation’s capital is the result of unlawful efforts to overturn the legitimate results of a democratic election,” the group said. “The country deserves better. Business Roundtable calls on the president and all relevant officials to put an end to the chaos and to facilitate the peaceful transition of power.”

Credit…Mohamed Sadek for The New York Times

Several states say they are moving quickly to restore federal unemployment benefits that lapsed last month when President Trump delayed signing a second round of federal pandemic relief.

A handful, including New York, Texas, Maryland and California, say they have started sending out the weekly $300 supplement that was part of the legislation, while others like Ohio say they are awaiting more guidance from the U.S. Labor Department.

Michele Evermore, a senior policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project, said that “at least half of the states should have something up by next week.”

Congress approved 11 weeks of additional benefits, and the entire amount will ultimately be delivered to eligible workers even if payments are initially delayed.

“Any claims for the first week will be backdated,” said James Bernsen, deputy director of communications at the Texas Workforce Commission.

In addition to a $300-a-week supplement for those receiving unemployment benefits, the $900 billion emergency relief package renews two other jobless programs created last March as part of the CARES Act.

One, Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, covers freelancers, part-time hires, seasonal workers and others who do not normally qualify for state unemployment benefits. A second, Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, extends benefits for workers who have exhausted their state allotment.

This latest round also offers additional assistance for people who cobble together their income by combining a salaried job with freelance gigs. The new program, called Mixed Earner Unemployment Compensation, provides a $100 weekly payment to such workers in addition to their Pandemic Unemployment Assistance benefits.

Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. set aside plans to deliver a speech on the economy on Wednesday afternoon, instead calling for an end to violent protests in Washington and calling on President Trump to stop what he called an “insurrection.” Mr. Biden’s speech was expected to emphasize several of his economic priorities, including reiterating calls for another round of financial aid to help people, businesses and state and local governments weather ongoing economic pain from the virus. The president-elect is still expected to deliver economic remarks in the coming days, a transition spokesman said.
Federal Reserve officials were warily eyeing a surge in coronavirus cases at their Dec. 15-16 meeting, but they hoped that vaccine breakthroughs might set the stage for a strong economic rebound in 2021. “With the pandemic worsening across the country, the expansion was expected to slow even further in coming months,” according to minutes from the gathering of the Federal Open Market Committee, released Wednesday. “Nevertheless, the positive vaccine news” was “viewed as favorable for the medium-term economic outlook.”
The Labor Department on Wednesday released the final version of a rule that could classify millions of workers in industries like construction, cleaning and the gig economy as contractors rather than employees, another step under the Trump administration toward endorsing the business practices of companies like Uber and Lyft.

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California extends stay-at-home order for 2 areas

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Post date December 29, 2020

California extends stay-at-home order for two regions

Clinicians work in the former lobby of Providence St. Mary Medical Center, which was converted into a care area to treat suspicious COVID patients on December 23, 2020 in Apple Valley, California, Southern California.

Mario Tama | Getty Images

California will extend its home stay order for two regions of the state – Southern California and San Joaquin Valley – where intensive care capacity is being weighed down by a rush of Covid-19 patients, the state’s health minister. Dr. Mark Ghaly said on Tuesday.

The regional order, first announced by Governor Gavin Newsom on December 3 and due to expire on Monday, divides the state into five regions – the Bay Area, Greater Sacramento, Northern California, San Joaquin Valley, and Southern California. If the remaining ICU capacity in any region drops below 15%, a three-week home stay order will be triggered, Newsom said.

Ordering requires the temporary closure of bars, wineries, personal services, hair salons and barber shops. Personal services are available to businesses like nail salons, tattoo parlors, and body waxing, according to the state’s website. The order also prohibits gatherings of any size and requires “100% masking and physical distancing”.

As of Tuesday, all but the Northern California area were under the stay home order, Ghaly said. In the future, however, both the San Joaquin Valley, which includes the central portion of the state, and the regions of Southern California will remain under order, he said.

These two regions will continue to be subject to restrictions until state projections show ICU capacity is at least 15%, he said. Ghaly added that the projections will be calculated and updated daily in the future. Just because the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California regions stay under order doesn’t mean they will be there for the full three weeks, he said.

According to a slide that Ghaly presented at a press conference, these two regions did not show any available ICU capacity. Four-week projections from state health officials have shown that intensive care capacity is not improving in these two regions, Ghaly said.

“We are essentially assuming that ICU capacity in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley will not improve and that demand will continue to exceed capacity,” Ghaly said at a press conference.

Tags California, extends, order, regions, stayathome

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