Despite Headwinds, Disney Reappoints Chapek as CEO Through 2025

Despite a very rough patch of late, Disney CEO Bob Chapek has won reappointment as top Big Mouse exec. Chapek “could remain at the helm of Disney until at least 2025” and has a lot to tackle, including a flagging stock price, low employee morale, and major challenges in China - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch                                                                                            

Meanwhile, over at Pinterest, CEO Ben Silbermann is stepping down as part of a transition to executive chair role. Silbermann founded the company in 2010. His replacement, Bill Ready, is a Google alum who “had served as president of commerce since 2020” - WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch and NYTimes

Stocks fell again on Tuesday, as recession fears once again took hold of traders and helped prompt the selloff - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg

For the record, those recession chances are now, according to an array of economists, “uncomfortably high” - NYTimes

Also uncomfortably high at the moment—mortgage rates, which have used the Fed’s recent hikes as an excuse to jump to the near 6% range, the highest since just after the 2008 financial crisis - NYTimes

The FTC has accused Walmart of “repeatedly failing to protect its customers from falling prey to fraudsters when using the retailer’s money transfer services.” In a Chicago-based federal lawsuit, the Commission accused the retailer of failing to implement anti-fraud policies “for many years” even as it expanded its money transfer business, prompting some $200 million in payments “that were the subject of fraud complaints” - NYTimes and WSJ

Hollywood giant Creative Artists Agency has completed its acquisition of smaller rival ICM Partners (initially announced last September) as part of a “blockbuster deal set to reshape the landscape for representation in Hollywood and beyond.” The merger represents the biggest shake-up in the industry “since the William Morris Agency merged with Endeavor in 2009, essentially turning Hollywood into a two-agency town” - NYTimes

Social media companies are putting their lobbyists to work in an effort to keep government attorneys in California from leading lawsuits against them for “features that allegedly harm children through addition under a first-in-the-nation bill that faces an important vote in the state Senate [t]here.” The measure would “allow lawsuits if a prosecutor believes a company employed features it knew or should have known would addict minors” - WSJ

Despite all the talk of digital currencies leveling the playing field for ordinary investors, the crypto crash has shown how the entire industry is just a microcosm of the U.S. economy, with the Winklevii as poster boys: as “employees of crypto companies lose their jobs and ordinary investors suffer huge losses, top executives have emerged relatively unscathed” - NYTimes

Loving this walk through the world of Foley artists—the “craftspeople who create custom sound effects for film, television, and video games”—an often delightfully analog profession in a decidedly digital world  - NewYorker

Stay safe,

MDR

The Robins Kaplan Financial Daily Dose features top stories and latest news headlines in financial markets, banking, securities and technology topics.