Sycamore Partners Leads Bid to Acquire Bankrupt JCPenney for $1.75B

Private equity firm Sycamore Partners is leading a bidding war to acquire bankrupt J.C. Penney Company, the New York Post reported Monday.The New York-based firm has made an offer of $1.75 billion to the veteran retailer, according to the Post. It has also proposed a merger of JCPenney with Belks...

By Lauren Muskett • July 28, 2020

Machine Learning Accuracy Assessment and How to Improve Outputs

This article is the fourth in a series of articles called “Opening the Black Box: How to Assess Machine Learning Models.” The prior columns were What Kind of Problems Can Machine Learning Solve?, Selecting and Preparing Data for Machine Learning Projects, and Understanding and Assessing Machine L...

By Devin Rochford and Chandu Chilakapati • July 27, 2020

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Top 5 stories from CFO.com

From CPA licensure changes to undergoing a digital transformation, these are the most popular stories CFOs are reading. 

By CFO.com staff

Under Armour CFO Warned of Possible SEC Action

After a three-year investigation, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has indicated Under Armour CFO David Bergman could be facing an enforcement action over the sneaker company’s accounting practices.Under Armour disclosed Monday that the company, Bergman, and founder and Executive Chair...

By Matthew Heller • July 27, 2020

Li Auto Offers EV Future to U.S. Investors

Chinese startup Li Auto is seeking to raise up to $950 million in a bet that U.S. investors will support its vision for an electric vehicle future in China, the world’s largest auto market.The five-year-old automaker, formerly known as CHJ Automotive, said it will 95 million American depositary s...

By Matthew Heller • July 27, 2020

SAP to Take Experience Management Unit Qualtrics Public

SAP announced Sunday it is planning to take its experience management (XM) software unit Qualtrics public in the United States.The German multinational software corporation will hold on to the majority ownership of Qualtrics and said the primary objective for the IPO is to “fortify Qualtrics’s ab...

By Lauren Muskett • July 27, 2020

First American Title Charged Over Cybersecurity Lapses

The New York State Department of Financial Services has filed administrative charges against First American Title Insurance Company, alleging the real-estate title insurer failed to secure tens of millions of documents containing sensitive personal information of consumers.In a statement of charg...

By Lauren Muskett • July 24, 2020

CFOs On the Move: Week Ending July 24

Joanne Crevoiserat Tapestry, the parent company of Coach, Kate Spade, and Stuart Weitzman, named CFO Joanne Crevoiserat as interim chief executive officer. Crevoiserat takes over for chairman and CEO Jide Zeitlin, who resigned from the company and its board of directors for personal reasons. Crev...

By Lauren Muskett • July 24, 2020

The New York Times Acquires Podcast Company Serial Productions

The New York Times is acquiring the maker of the “Serial” and “S-Town” podcasts, it announced Wednesday.The newspaper didn’t disclose the terms of the deal. People familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal that the transaction could be worth as much as $50 million “depending on milest...

By Lauren Muskett • July 23, 2020

Now Is the Time to Change Redundancy Strategy

The COVID-19 crisis has resulted in layoffs on a scale that the U.S. has never seen before. In just 17 weeks, nearly 51 million Americans have filed for unemployment insurance — that’s more than the number of claims filed during the Great Recession. We recently surveyed more than 100 C-suite lead...

By Vincent Ryan • July 23, 2020

Parent of Ann Taylor, Lane Bryant Files for Chapter 11

Ascena Retail Group, the company that owns Ann Taylor and Lane Bryant, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and plans to close a significant number of stores, the company said.The company has posted operating losses of $2.4 billion with only one year of positive operating profit since t...

By Lauren Muskett • July 23, 2020

Pfizer, BioNTech to Supply U.S. Government Up to 600M Doses of Coronavirus Vaccine

Pfizer and BioNTech have announced the award of another contract to supply their jointly-developed coronavirus vaccine candidate that’s currently in Phase 1/2 development.On Wednesday, Pfizer and BioNTech said the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Defense have exe...

By Lauren Muskett • July 22, 2020

Frequent Worker Reporting Lowers Worker Performance

Among the many changes COVID-19 has forced upon the world of work, high in importance is the physical distance it has effected between managers and workers.With a recent survey estimating that 20% of American adults in the COVID-ravaged economy work from home, it has become common for employees w...

By Vincent Ryan • July 22, 2020

Vertex to Offer 21.2M Shares in IPO

Vertex has announced terms for an initial public offering.The Pennsylvania-based tax-software provider said it plans to raise $317 million by offering 21.2 million shares priced between $14 to $16.The deal is expected to price the week of July 27. Vertex is listing on the Nasdaq Global Market und...

By Lauren Muskett • July 22, 2020

EBay Sells Classifieds Ad Business for $9.2B

EBay agreed to sell its online classifieds business to Norway-based digital marketplace owner Adevinta.The deal, valued at $9.2 billion, includes eBay getting $2.5 billion in cash and 540 million Adevinta shares. EBay will become a 44% owner of Adevinta with a 33.3% voting stake.The combined comp...

By Lauren Muskett • July 21, 2020

Machine Learning Startup Was a Sham, Says SEC

On Glassdoor, one former employee described YouPlus as “a circus meets a nuthouse.” But YouPlus was even more than that — according to the  Securities and Exchange Commission, it was an outright fraud.On Monday, the SEC charged the Mountain View, California-based technology start-up and its chief...

By Vincent Ryan • July 20, 2020

Chevron to Buy Noble Energy for $5B

Oil giant Chevron has reached a deal to buy all outstanding shares of Noble Energy at $10.38 per share or about $5 billion, a premium of nearly 12% to the 10-day average based on closing stock prices on July 17.Under the terms of the deal, Noble shareholders will receive 0.1191 shares of Chevron ...

By Lauren Muskett • July 20, 2020

CFOs On the Move: Week Ending July 17

Ed Record Ed Record is stepping down as CFO at Hudson’s Bay Company. Record will remain with the company until his replacement is onboarded. Record joined the retail group as chief financial officer in August 2017 from J.C. Penney, where he was CFO for three years. Before J.C. Penney, Record work...

By Lauren Muskett • July 17, 2020

Facebook Preparing To Launch TikTok Rival In U.S., 50 Other Markets

Facebook says it is getting ready for the launch of Instagram Reels, a rival to short-form video app Tiktok, in the United States and 50 other countries in August.What HappenedFirst launched in Brazil in November, Reels was launched in France and Germany in June. It became available in India last...

By Vincent Ryan • July 17, 2020

Trump Administration Pushes for Payroll Tax Cut

The Trump Administration has signaled it will oppose new relief legislation during the COVID-19 pandemic unless an aid bill includes a “payroll tax holiday.”In early May, President Donald Trump said he would not support a relief bill without such a measure.“I want to see a payroll tax cut on both...

By Lauren Muskett • July 17, 2020

GoHealth Shares Drop 9% on Day One Trading After $913M IPO

The shares of GoHealth dipped more than 9% on the first day of trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market on Wednesday.The online health insurance marketplace had sold 43.5 million shares priced at $21 each in its initial public offering earlier this week, raising $913.5 million.The public offering was o...

By Lauren Muskett • July 16, 2020

Electric Automaker Fisker to Go Public

The electric automaker Fisker has reached a deal to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a merger with Spartan Energy Acquisition, an affiliate of Apollo Global Management.The companies said the deal would provide gross proceeds of more than $1 billion that will fully fund the development ...

By Lauren Muskett • July 16, 2020

Zoom Launches Hardware for the Home Office

Will home offices have room for a new piece of equipment? Videoconferencing company Zoom is entering the hardware business with a $599 tablet-like device for scheduling meetings, making video calls, and annotating and sharing content.The device, called Zoom for Home-DTEN ME, has a 27-inch touchsc...

By Vincent Ryan • July 15, 2020

Tech Giants Sued Over Photos in Facial Recognition Database

Several leading technology companies in the United States are facing lawsuits filed by two Illinois residents Tuesday on allegations of violating a state law governing biometric privacy.Steven Vance and Tim Janecyk have alleged that Amazon, Alphabet’s subsidiary Google, and Microsoft used photos ...

By Lauren Muskett • July 15, 2020

Luckin Coffee Ousts Chairman Amid Accounting Scandal

Luckin Coffee appointed a new chairman and directors to its board following an extraordinary general meeting held Monday.Acting chief executive officer and existing board member, Jinyi Guo, has been appointed the chairman and the CEO of the Chinese coffee chain company.Charles Zhengyao Lu, the fo...

By Lauren Muskett • July 14, 2020

Tuesday Regulatory Update: The Winds of Fraud

On Monday, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged California-based app developer Abra and a related company in the Philippines for offering and selling security-based swaps to retail investors without registration. It also failed to transact those swaps on a registered national exchange.A...

By Vincent Ryan • July 14, 2020