Financial Daily Dose 1.14.2021 | Top Story: Intel Ousts CEO Robert Swan After Just Two Years

Intel has ousted CEO Robert Swan “as the company faces pressure from an activist investor and grapples with the loss of leadership in producing ultrafast chips.” Swan had been at the helm since January 2019 - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and TechCrunch

Speaking of chips, a growing shortage in some of automobiles’ smallest pats—that would be semiconductors—has thrown automakers into disarray, with production lines slowing or stopping around the world and across brands. Early pandemic cuts and a shift by makers to chips for products like laptops, smartphones, and tablets is likely to blame - NYTimes

Period- and fertility-tracking app Flo has resolved federal charges from the FTC that it “misled users about its data-handling practices by sharing their intimate health details with Facebook and Google,” among other third parties, including analytics services. More than 100 million women currently use the app - NYTimes and TechCrunch

The Times on the rather stunning fall of toxic tort lawyer Thomas Girardi—a member of the real-life Erin Brokovich legal team against PG&E in 1993 and a spouse of a Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star. Girardi stands accused in state and federal lawsuits in Chicago and LA of legal misconduct, including “misappropriat[ing] money that was supposed to go to the families of victims of the 2018 Lion Air crash, which led to the groundings of Boeing’s 737 Max” - NYTimes

Cargill is in talks to sell its 50% stake in sugar trader Alvean in an effort refocus on food processing and meat - Bloomberg

BlackRock co-founder and leader of the firm’s public-policy efforts, Barbara Novick, is transitioning to a retirement role as senior adviser as of February 1. Novick tried to step away last year, but “her success in getting BlackRock heard by regulators made her too big to bail when the pandemic shook markets” last year - WSJ

Even as economies in the U.S., Europe, and rest of the world struggle to regain their pre-pandemic footing, China’s is powering forward—the “only major economy expected to report growth for 2020,” lifted along “by its quick recovery from Covid-19” - WSJ

Logistical nightmares aren’t helping the rest of the world catch up, either - Bloomberg

Connecticut’s AG has opened an antitrust probe into Amazon’s e-books business, including the “distribution agreements the company has for electronic books with some publishers” - NYTimes and WSJ

The OCC has “conditionally approved cryptocurrency custody provider Anchorage for a national trust bank charter,” paving the way for its Anchorage Digital Bank NA venture to “become what the startup is calling the first-ever federally chartered digital asset bank” – Law360

An appreciation of NYC’s new Moynihan Train Hall, an important civic architectural statement for a city still trying to atone for its treatment of the original Penn Station – NewYorker

Stay safe,
MDR