Plus: ‘The Most Hated Guy On Wall Street’: The Unspoken Story Around Howard Lutnick, Trump’s Pick For Commerce Secretary |
Good morning,
Black Friday is a great time to score deals, but beware: It’s also “prime time” for scams. The most common type of scam is through email, such as those advertising sales from what appear to be legitimate retailers. But they can also come from social media ads, text messages that purport to be from a delivery service, or advertising links that pop up in search results. Aided by artificial intelligence, such schemes increasingly appear more realistic and thus are more difficult to spot than in the past. Consumers reported around $95 million in losses from online shopping scams to the FTC between October through December last year. For the latest on verified Black Friday sales and early offers, bookmark Forbes Vetted for the best deals this holiday season.
Let’s get into the headlines, |
|
| Nvidia’s hotly anticipated earnings report exceeded expectations on multiple metrics, as the world’s biggest company continued its streak of explosive financial growth. Still, shares slipped about 3% in limited afternoon trading shortly after the release, reflecting the sky-high expectations for the AI giant. Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, the world’s 22nd-richest person, was indicted in New York on Wednesday in connection with what prosecutors called a large-scale bribery scheme that sought to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to Indian officials to secure lucrative government energy supply contracts. Adani allegedly raised more than $750 million during the scheme, $175 million of which came from U.S. investors, according to the SEC. Shares of the Adani Group’s flagship firm Adani Enterprises slumped around 21.55% to $26.22 after markets opened in India on Thursday. |
|
| | | ‘The Most Hated Guy On Wall Street’: The Unspoken Story Around Howard Lutnick, Trump’s Pick For Commerce Secretary |
| |
|
|
| Longtime Wall Street executive Howard Lutnick rebuilt his firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, after losing hundreds of employees, and his brother, on 9/11. Twenty-three years later, Lutnick, who President-elect Donald Trump just nominated to be commerce secretary, still sees himself as a model of patriotism and determination. But Lutnick has a darker side, which emerges in court documents and conversations with people who have done business with him. For years, they say, he and his firm have been pulling money from people, making Lutnick, according to one former partner, “the most hated guy on Wall Street.” His multibillion-dollar empire—which includes two publicly traded companies and a privately held investment bank—is a tangle of self-dealing, with recordkeeping issues that date back decades and infighting that continues to the present day. Lutnick runs his firm through a partnership, but there is no doubt who has the ultimate say. Now worth more than $1.5 billion, Lutnick pays himself like a king, cutting into partnership profits. Through a spokesperson, Lutnick declined to be interviewed. He does have defenders, who suggest some people just aren’t tough enough to handle him. Even those who support Lutnick, however, aren’t eager to share their thoughts on the record. “People are very scared of him,” says a former colleague. Trump and Lutnick have known each other for years and share plenty in common, both having made early fortunes in New York during the 1980s, one in real estate, the other on Wall Street. They operate similarly, too—flitting from one moneymaking scheme to the next, sometimes attracting the attention of authorities for issues involving fraud, poor recordkeeping and money laundering. Both tough guys, they share a taste for finer things—Lutnick once lived in a Trump Palace apartment, staffed with an English butler, before purchasing a 10,600-square-foot townhouse directly next door to Jeffrey Epstein. Trump and Lutnick also have one key difference. The president-elect tends to avoid details—during his first term, aides learned to dumb down their presentations with bullet points. Lutnick, by contrast, obsesses over minutiae, having made a career slicing small profits from massive transactions, exploring virtually every nook and cranny on Wall Street. |
|
|
| “Howard Lutnick is, suddenly, one of the most powerful people in the country,” says Forbes senior editor Dan Alexander. “The commerce secretary nominee is also serving as co-chair of the Trump transition team, helping staff nearly 4,000 government workers. This story lays out what people who have previously worked for Lutnick think of him—offering clues about how he might behave in Washington.” |
|
|
 | | Illustration by Alex Castro for Forbes; Photos by C.J. Burton/ Getty Images; iStock / Getty Images; tiaramaio / Getty Images |
|
| After sluggish dealmaking under the Biden Administration, Wall Street anticipates that Donald Trump’s second term could usher in a new era of merger and acquisition activity. Goldman Sachs’ chief U.S. equity strategist says the dollar-volume of M&A activity will rise 20% in 2025, and Forbes rounded up 20 stocks that are prime targets for takeovers. Target stock tanked 21% Wednesday, its worst day in more than two years, after third-quarter earnings and revenue fell below analyst expectations. The retailer’s CEO said the company’s latest quarter “presented several challenges,” and though foot traffic increased across Target’s stores, shoppers were less interested in discretionary goods like clothing and household items. |
|
| WEALTH + ENTREPRENEURSHIP |
|
| Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the world’s third-richest person and his partner Lauren Sánchez donated $110.5 million to nonprofits working to end homelessness for families. The grants come at a time when homelessness is rising, and families now represent almost a third of the country’s homeless population. Aubrey Preston, the son of the founder of the country’s largest privately held nursing home chain, has won a petition to gain temporary control over his father’s nursing home empire, with $3 billion in revenue. Aubrey has argued in an ugly legal battle that his 91-year-old father is no longer capable of running the company, alleging the elder Preston is being abused and robbed by his much younger wife and former caregiver. Archegos founder Bill Hwang was sentenced to 18 years in prison Wednesday related to charges of fraud and market manipulation tied to the 2021 fall of his family firm that caused banking shares to decline. Prosecutors alleged that Hwang and the firm’s former chief financial officer “lied to banks to obtain billions of dollars that they then used to inflate the stock price of a number of publicly-traded companies,” leading “billions of dollars of capital (to evaporate) nearly overnight.” |
|
| The U.S. government on Wednesday requested a federal judge order Google to sell its Chrome web browser and make significant changes to how search works on its Android mobile operating system. The proposal seeks to prevent Google from reentering the browser market for five years after the Chrome sale. The DOJ also wants the court to prohibit Google from entering any deals with companies like Apple to make Google’s search engine the default on their devices. |
|
| Real estate tycoon Steve Witkoff campaigned alongside President-elect Donald Trump, and was named as his special envoy to the Middle East. Forbes estimates the previously low-profile developer to be worth at least $1 billion, making him one of at least half a dozen billionaires in Trump’s second administration. The House Ethics Committee did not come to an agreement Wednesday on whether to release the report on its investigation into Trump’s attorney general pick, former Rep. Matt Gaetz. Gaetz resigned from Congress days before the committee was reportedly expected to vote on releasing the report from its investigation into whether he engaged in sexual misconduct, among other allegations. |
|
| As cable sports networks shut down or go bankrupt, NBA, NHL and MLB teams are now forced to get creative with their TV rights. So far, tech giants have stayed on the sidelines, leaving several smaller streaming tech companies—including ViewLift, Deltatre, Endeavor Streaming and APMC—vying to be major players in the red-hot, competitive marketplace. |
|
| Celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, who President-elect Donald Trump has tapped to lead the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, holds millions of dollars in stock at healthcare companies, including insurer UnitedHealth, pharmacy giant CVS and Johnson & Johnson. Such investments, revealed in his 2022 financial disclosure from his Pennsylvania Senate candidacy, raise questions about potential conflicts of interest as he is poised to take control of the government agency that oversees healthcare for more than 160 million Americans. |
|
| Top strategists largely expect another strong year for the S&P 500 in 2025, according to early prognostications from major banks. It’s a welcome sign as investors are already enjoying a historic bull market: |
|
|
