Bloomberg - Evening Briefing - Middle manager mayhem

Middle managers—defined as non-executives who oversee employees—make up almost a third of terminations, up from 20% in 2018. In January, United Parcel Service said it would save more than $1 billion by slashing 12,000 manager jobs. Citigroup aims to eliminate 20,000 roles over the next several years, shrinking to eight management layers from 13. And more might be coming; mentions of “operational efficiency” in the US hit the highest on record this earnings season, according to an analysis by Morgan Stanley.

The allure of a “slimmer” organization has been around for decades: The ideal of the “lean and mean” company was popularized in the 1980s by General Electric’s Chief Executive Officer Jack Welch. The use of “efficiency” follows other corporate euphemisms for firing someone, like streamlining and downsizing. But of late, these HR-department key words appear increasingly directed at middle managers. —David E. Rovella

Nvidia’s historic 2024 rally keeps piling on records. The stock rose 0.4% over the latest week making for the chipmaker’s 10th straight positive week, the longest such winning streak in its history. Nvidia gained about 80% over the 10-week rally, with the streak being the latest example of how investors have continually bid up the company amid sky-high demand for chips used in artificial intelligence.

After years of managing household budgets through the stress of high inflation both during and after the pandemic, US families are increasingly pressured by a different kind of financial squeeze: The cost of carrying all the debt they’ve taken on. Two years after the Federal Reserve began hiking interest rates to tame prices, delinquency rates on credit cards and auto loans are the highest in more than a decade. For the first time on record, interest payments on those and other non-mortgage debts are as big a financial burden for US households as mortgage interest payments.

US prosecutors are said to have widened their probe of India’s Adani Group to focus on whether the company may have engaged in bribery—as well as the conduct of the company’s billionaire founder. Investigators are digging into whether an Adani entity, or people linked to the company including Gautam Adani, were involved in paying officials in India for favorable treatment on an energy project.  

Hertz Global Holdings is replacing its chief executive in the wake of a disastrous bet on electric vehicles that the company began unwinding in recent months. Stephen Scherr, who ran Hertz for just over two years after three decades at Goldman Sachs, has decided to step down. The car renter is replacing him with Gil West, the former chief operating officer of General Motors’s Cruise robotaxi unit.

Stephen Scherr Photographer: F. Carter Smith/Bloomberg

The Chinese government has quietly asked electric-vehicle makers from  BYD to Geely to sharply increase their purchases from local auto chipmakers, part of a campaign to reduce reliance on Western imports and boost China’s domestic semiconductor industry. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology asked carmakers this year to expand their buying of homegrown components to accelerate the adoption of Chinese chips.  

Disruption to internet services for millions of users in Africa could take weeks or even months to fix following damage to undersea cables off the continent’s west coast. Eight West African countries were suffering a second day of major connectivity issues on Friday with users in South Africa also affected after damage to four sub-sea cables. The cause of the cable cutting was still not known, though a shifting of the seabed was among the likely possibilities.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can continue overseeing Donald Trump’s election-interference and racketeering prosecution in Georgia after Nathan Wade, the lead prosecutor with whom she had a romantic relationship, stepped down to satisfy a judge’s ruling that one of them must go. The ruling came two days after the judge dismissed some of the charges in the sprawling case. In Trump’s prosecution for accounting fraud in New York, a judge ordered a delay of the trial until at least April. 

• FBI agents angrily opposed raid on Trump’s estate for top secret files.
• Fed seen sticking with three rate cuts through the end of the year.
• Brevan Howard terminates about 10% of traders amid losses.
• An influential economics forum has a troubling surplus of trolls.
• Have we seen this film before? Bitcoin retreats as talk of a bubble rises.
• Peter Thiel unloads $175 million of Palantir shares.
• Biden officials mull quicker death for US coal power plants.

While scientists and engineers race to find new ways to slow global warming, individuals and communities all over the globe are looking beyond the climate crisis to change their way of life. In this episode of the Bloomberg Originals series An Optimist’s Guide to the Planet, host Nikolaj Coster-Waldau travels to Gemany, Greenland and Kenya to reveal the dual strategies of slowing global warming and adapting to a changed world.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau travels to Kenya in the final episode of An Optimist’s Guide to the Planet

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