Insider Finance - Business - Salt Bae's dark empire

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April 26, 2023

Hello, Insiders. Matt Turner, editor in chief for business, here. Salt Bae (aka Nusret Gökçe) is an Instagram-famous steakhouse impresario known for his over-the-top antics. His meme-ification happened in 2017, when he posted a now-infamous video that showed him sprinkling salt on a piece of meat. A new investigation reveals a darker side of his culinary empire. That's today's big story.

Here’s what else we’re covering:

First Republic handed out ultra-low-rate mortgages to the wealthy. It backfired horribly.
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— Matt Turner

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THE BIG STORY

Inside Salt Bae’s empire

Marianne Ayala/Insider

Tip theft. Discrimination. Labor violations. Polyester uniforms. These are just some of the allegations made against Salt Bae by lawsuits and former workers.

Nusret Gökçe, known around the world as Salt Bae, has an online persona that oozes wealth.

He often travels across his culinary empire — which spans three continents — taking selfies with excited guests as he performs his signature-salting technique. At his New York restaurant, you can even expect to pay $300 for a "Golden Burger."

But all the glitz and showmanship may just be a charade. Lawsuits and interviews with former staff members depict another side to Gökçe: a petty tyrant whose obsession with wealth and excess extends only to himself.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

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End of coding, First Republic, & more

Arif Qazi / Insider

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First Republic is racing to strengthen itself. The bank is teetering, with the stock down 93% in 2023. It had won wealthy clients with the offer of jumbo mortgage loans that required no principal payments for a decade. Now, First Republic is reversing course. More here.
Charlie Bell, one of the godfathers of cloud computing, is ready to go after Amazon. Bell helped create Amazon Web Services, and worked there for 23 years. Now, he's at Microsoft — and set to take on his former employer. We got a rare interview with Bell. Read it here.
Vladimir Putin has spent two decades rebuilding and reforming Russia's military — “and then just simply destroyed it,” according to Mark Galeotti, a Russian-security expert. The security-affairs scholar broke down how Putin squandered it all in his devastating war in Ukraine. Read our interview.
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This edition was curated by Matt Turner, and edited by Hallam Bullock, Lisa Ryan, Nathan Rennolds, and Jack Robert Stacey. Get in touch: insidertoday@insider.com.

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Insider Finance - Business - Salt Bae's dark empire

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