Men’s Wearhouse Owner Announces Layoffs and Store Closures: Live Business Updates

Jide Zeitlin, the chief executive of Tapestry, the owner of Coach and Kate Spade, and one of only four Black chief executives in the Fortune 500, resigned on Tuesday. The unexpected move came after the company’s board was made aware of a misconduct allegation involving Mr. Zeitlin and hired a law firm to investigate, according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Though Tapestry announced that Mr. Zeitlin was stepping down for “personal reasons,” Mr. Zeitlin later acknowledged in a statement to The Wall Street Journal that the exit was related to a past relationship.

“In the past month, a woman I photographed and had a relationship with more than 10 years ago reached out to various media organizations to express her concerns about what had occurred,” Mr. Zeitlin said in the statement. “I felt compelled to resign today because I do not want to create a distraction for Tapestry, a company I care deeply about.”

The company hired Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson after the allegation recently came to light, the person familiar with the matter said.

In March, Tapestry said that Mr. Zeitlin would remain at the helm for at least three more years.

Tapestry, which is based in New York, said that Joanne Crevoiserat, its chief financial officer, would serve as interim chief executive and that it had started a search for a permanent replacement.

The unexpected departure comes as the retail industry grapples with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Tapestry, like other retailers, has been forced to close stores and adjust operations in China and in the United States as the virus continues to spread.

The company, which also owns Stuart Weitzman, is a giant with about $6 billion in annual sales, but had seen its shares drop by roughly 50 percent this year. It next reports earnings on Aug. 13.

Mr. Zeitlin became the Tapestry chief in September 2019, and had been the company’s chairman since 2014 and was a board member before that. As part of his exit, he also resigned from the board.

Mr. Zeitlin had previously been a private investor overseeing the Keffi Group, an investment office, and had spent two decades at Goldman Sachs. Born in Nigeria and adopted by an American family as a child, he attracted praise and attention last month for a staff letter later published on LinkedIn about civil rights and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Mr. Zeitlin said in the company announcement on Tuesday that it had been “a privilege to lead Tapestry with its powerful brands and outstanding people.” The company praised Mr. Zeitlin for his leadership at Tapestry, including his “key role in driving the development of Tapestry’s strategic growth agenda.”

Walmart said on Tuesday that it would not open on Thanksgiving Day, pushing back the traditional start of the holiday shopping season as a show of appreciation for its workers.

“We know it’s been a trying year, and you’ve stepped up,” John Furner, the head of Walmart’s U.S. operations said in a memo to employees. “We want you to enjoy the day at home with your loved ones.”

That large retailers like Walmart have opened their doors on Thanksgiving has been a sore spot for labor groups, who have said that additional shopping day comes at the expense of employees and their families.

A Walmart spokeswoman said the retailer had been open on Thanksgiving since “the 1980s.”

The company, which is the world’s largest retailer, said it made the decision to close on the holiday after one of its employees wrote a letter suggesting it.

Walmart has experienced a surge in demand during the pandemic, ranging from groceries to bicycles and electronics. The company has also been growing its e-commerce business, as more of its customers stay home.

It’s unclear whether traditional shopping events like Black Friday, when retailers try to attract as many customers to the store as possible with sales, can take place this year amid social distancing requirements.

“We know holiday shopping will be different this year, and we will be managing sales events differently,’’ Mr. Furner said in his memo.

At the same time, the company has had to find ways to incentivize its workers, thousands of whom have taken leaves because of health concerns. Also on Tuesday, Walmart gave another round of bonuses, including $300 to full time workers and $150 to part time employees.

Investors turned their focus once again to the need for more government stimulus to keep the economy afloat months into the global coronavirus pandemic.

Around the world stocks gained ground on Tuesday, buoyed by fresh plans by governments to boost deficit spending. Major markets in Europe rose on an agreement by European Union leaders to support the bloc’s countries with 750 billion euros ($857 billion) in grants and loans.

Stocks also climbed in the United States on signs of progress toward another package of tax cuts and government spending to prop up the economy.

The S&P 500 rose more than half a percent, adding to gains on Monday that had lifted the index back into positive territory for the year.

The European Union’s stimulus package announced early Tuesday was notable because, for the first time, countries will raise large sums by selling bonds collectively, rather than individually. Spearheaded by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Emmanuel Macron of France, the agreement sends a signal of European solidarity, while also exposing fault lines.

The deal comes as lawmakers in Washington are also trying to reach an agreement on another economic aid package, as millions of Americans are about to see their expanded unemployment insurance benefits expire. That new spending plan is still some way off, with Democrats and Republicans still disagreeing about the size and scope of the spending.

Still, economic optimism buoyed commodities markets. Gold and silver both rose. The price of benchmark American crude oil climbed about 3 percent, its biggest gain in over a month, to more than $42 a barrel.

Elsewhere on Wall Street, shares were also lifted by a round of better than expected earnings results. International Business Machines jumped after it said it had strong demand for its cloud computing business. IBM’s quarterly earnings and sales both topped analyst expectations.

Coca-Cola rose as the company reported a 28 percent drop in sales but delivered better than expected profits thanks to cost-cutting measures. Coca-Cola executives reported ongoing improvement in demand from customers but warned that fresh flare-ups of the virus could once again disrupt business.

“We cannot discount there might be further waves of lockdowns, partial or full,” James Quincey, the company’s chief executive, told analysts after the company published its results.

The beverage giant Coca-Cola reported a big drop in revenue and profit in the second quarter as many consumers remained at home during the coronavirus pandemic.

Revenue fell 28 percent in the quarter to $7.2 billion, while net income dropped 33 percent to $1.759 billion, the company said in an earnings report. Executives said, however, that they believed the second quarter was likely to be the most challenging of the year.

Coca-Cola attributed much of the declines in the quarter to continued weakness in its away-from-home channels, such as restaurants and theaters, which either remained largely closed or had limited capacity in the quarter globally. That segment of the market makes up about half of Coca-Cola’s total revenue.

But executives said they started to see improvements in the away-from-home segments as lockdowns around the world began to ease.

EBay said on Tuesday that it planned to sell its classified advertising division for about $9.2 billion in cash and stock, the latest effort by the company to refocus on its mainstay online sales business.

In agreeing to sell the unit to Adevinta, a Norwegian ad company, eBay agreed to demands from activist investors, including Elliott Management, who urged it to slim down its operations. The classified ads business is largely international, with footholds in Europe, Africa and other regions, and reported $1.1 billion in sales last year.

Under the terms of the transaction, eBay will receive $2.5 billion in cash and about 540 million shares in Adevinta. That will give eBay a roughly 44 percent stake in Adevinta and a 33 percent voting stake, letting it keep some exposure to what will become the world’s biggest online classifieds company.

“This sale creates short-term and long-term value for shareholders and customers, while allowing us to participate in the future potential of the classifieds business,” Jamie Iannone, eBay’s chief executive, said in a statement.

Late last year, eBay shed another unit, the ticket reseller StubHub, to a smaller rival, Viagogo of Switzerland, for $4.05 billion.

Shares in Adevinta, which beat out a number of rivals for the eBay business, were up 33 percent in trading on Tuesday.

The transaction is expected to close early next year, but must still be approved by regulators and shareholders in Adevinta.

• The pilots union for Alaska Airlines said that enough members had volunteered for buyouts or early retirement to avert the threat of furloughs. The union did not provide figures, but Alaska’s president had reportedly said that the airline would need to cut 3,000 jobs, more than a tenth of its work force. Industrywide, tens of thousands of airline workers are face the threat of furloughs this fall when federal stimulus funds expire.

• Southeastern Grocers, the owner of the Winn Dixie chain of supermarkets, joined the growing list of retailers that are now going to require customers to wear masks, as did Publix. In a statement on Monday, Southeastern said it would require the masks starting on July 27, while Publix will require masks starting Tuesday.

• LinkedIn is planning to cut about 960 jobs globally, 6 percent of its work force, as the pandemic has severely reduced demand for its key service: helping companies with hiring. The professional social network said it also planned to work with small businesses online rather than through a field sales team, meaning this team was no longer needed.

• The cost of the British government’s economic response to the pandemic is becoming clear. Between April and June, the Treasury borrowed about 128 billion pounds ($162 billion), more than double the amount borrowed in the whole of the previous fiscal year, which ended in March, the government reported Tuesday. Last month alone, the government needed £47 billion in cash more than it took in tax receipts. The net cash requirement was nearly £34 billion more than the same month a year ago. The nation’s debt pile is just under £2 trillion, about the same size as the British economy.

• Warner Bros. announced on Monday that it was abandoning its Aug. 12 release date for Christopher Nolan’s film “Tenet.” That date had been the one-time marker for when Hollywood hoped moviegoing would return in earnest. Warner Bros. did not offer concrete details for the release of “Tenet,” but it is likely that the studio will open the movie in the locations around the world where it is safe to do so before unveiling it in the United States.

• Chevron, the American oil giant, said on Monday that it had agreed to acquire Noble Energy, a Houston-based oil and gas explorer with an international dimension, for $5 billion. Noble would bring Chevron properties in shale drilling regions in the United States.

Judy Shelton, an unorthodox economist who was an adviser to President Trump’s 2016 campaign, could move one step closer to a seat on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors this week.

The Senate Banking Committee is expected to approve Ms. Shelton’s nomination on Tuesday, putting her one simple-majority vote in the full Senate away from confirmation at a moment when the central bank is employing vast powers that she has a track record of questioning.

Opponents of Ms. Shelton’s nomination say confirming her would place the Fed at risk of politicization while it tries to rescue the pandemic-hit economy. Democrats on the committee have called for a second confirmation hearing in light of the crisis so that they can get her views on the current response.

Her nomination seemed shaky in the wake of her mid-February Banking Committee hearing, but Republican opposition has slowly crumbled.

Ms. Shelton’s bid can advance to the full Senate without any support from the 12 Democrats on the committee as long as all 13 Republicans back her. Her nomination will come to a vote alongside Christopher Waller’s. Mr. Waller, the research director at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, was also nominated by Mr. Trump to the seven-seat Fed board. Mr. Waller, a more traditional nominee, is expected to clear the committee easily.

There may be a pandemic and a recession. But in the past day, there has also been plenty of action among deal makers, as reported in the DealBook newsletter.

• EBay announced on Tuesday that it would sell its classified-ads business for $9.2 billion in cash and stock to Adevinta of Norway. It is one of the biggest tech deals of the year, and will create the world’s largest online classifieds company.

• Ant Group, the financial arm of China’s Alibaba, said Monday that it planned to go public this year in Hong Kong and Shanghai, in what could be one of the biggest initial public offerings on record.

• Chevron struck a $5 billion deal to buy Noble Energy on Monday, in what may be the first of a wave of oil giants buying smaller, weaker rivals.

• Walmart has restarted talks about selling most of Asda, its British grocery division. Competition regulators blocked a merger of Asda and J Sainsbury last year; Walmart restarted discussions in February, then suspended them during the crisis.

This suggests corporate boardrooms still have confidence in deal-making, perhaps more than could be expected during a pandemic.

Some 22,600 takeovers had been announced so far this year, according to Refinitiv, down 18 percent from the same time last year. But the total dollar value of deals was down even more, 38 percent, implying some caution. And then there are the buyers who have gotten cold feet, as when Sycamore Partners successfully got out of an agreement to buy control of Victoria’s Secret.

Buoyant equity markets have also coaxed companies to resume planning for stock listings. The I.P.O. hopefuls include Airbnb and Palantir, the data-mining consultancy.

Nearly 900,000 public workers in Britain, including teachers, doctors and security forces, will receive raises in recognition of the “vital contribution” they have made during the coronavirus pandemic, Britain’s finance ministry announced Tuesday.

Salaries for teachers in England will increase 3.1 percent, and dentists across Britain will get raises of 2.8 percent. The salaries of police and military forces, along with members of the judiciary and other civil servants, will also increase from 2 to 2.5 percent. But nurses and other National Health Service staff will not be included in the deal because they negotiated a three-year pay increase in 2018.

“These past months have underlined what we always knew — that our public sector workers make a vital contribution to our country and that we can rely on them when we need them,” Rishi Sunak, chancellor of the Exchequer, said in a statement.

The announcement was welcomed as deserved news for thousands of workers who have battled the pandemic, including many in the revered National Health Service, but opposition politicians said the raises would not make up for a decade of austerity during which a Conservative government froze salaries or granted small increases.

“Many other public sector workers — including those working on the front line in social care — won’t get a pay rise out of this,” said Anneliese Dodds, the Labour Party’s economic minister, because they are paid by local governments that have not seen their budgets increase.

At least 300 health workers and caretakers for adults had died of the coronavirus as of late May, according to numbers provided by Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Britain has been one of the worst-hit countries in the world, with more than 45,300 confirmed deaths and 295,000 cases.

A new public service announcement debuting on Tuesday seeks to raise awareness of the surge of harassment faced by Asian-Americans.

The somber ad includes testimonials describing being told to “go back to China” or having people spit in their direction.

Anxiety about the coronavirus, which originated in Wuhan, China, has fueled xenophobia and bigotry toward people of Asian descent. A list of recent cases compiled by the Anti-Defamation League chronicles “surging reports of xenophobic and racist incidents,” including Asian-owned stores defaced with racist graffiti, video chats disrupted by anti-Asian comments and people being beaten or denied entry to businesses.

But the issue has been largely ignored by federal leaders — President Trump has repeatedly described the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” — and the fight against pandemic-related harassment of Asian-Americans has largely fallen to civil rights groups, marketing agencies, social media accounts and nonprofit organizations, which have promoted hashtags like #IAmNotCovid19, #RacismIsAVirus, #HealthNotHate and #MakeNoiseToday.

The nonprofit Advertising Council, which also introduced a face mask initiative with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York this month, will roll out the new anti-harassment campaign online and on television.

The issue of racism toward Asians hit “very close to home,” said the Emmy-winning writer Alan Yang, who is known for popular shows like “Parks and Recreation” and “Master of None.”

“This wasn’t an abstract idea to me, something theoretical,” Mr. Yang said. “I knew people this was happening to.”

Even as the Covid-19 death toll rises in the nation’s most dense urban cores, economists still mostly expect cities to bounce back, once there is a vaccine, a treatment or a successful strategy to contain the virus’s spread.

And yet, this pandemic threatens the assets that make the country’s most successful cities so dynamic — not only their bars, museums and theaters, but also their dense networks of innovative businesses and highly skilled workers, jumping among employers, bumping into one another, sharing ideas, powering innovation and lifting productivity.

Covid-19 is not the deadliest disease to have ravaged cities through the ages. But it is showing us that they might not be as essential as they once were. “Cities are more in danger than in the 19th century even though this plague is less severe,” said the Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, “because we are rich enough to imagine a deurbanized world.”

Paradoxically, America’s big cities are becoming more valuable, churning out an increasing share of the nation’s economic output.

They have benefited from the rise of economic complexity and the explosive growth of technologies that reward the most highly educated workers. Complex industries like information technology, biotechnology and finance concentrate in large cities where they can find the most skilled employees.

These cutting-edge businesses don’t mind paying top dollar for the talent, not least because — research has found — highly skilled workers tend to be more productive and innovative when they are surrounded by others like them.

But if big-city businesses find that work from home doesn’t hit their productivity too hard, they might reassess the need to pay top dollar to keep employees in, say, Seattle or the Bay Area. A survey by the market research firm Reach Advisors found that companies facing high real estate and labor costs were the most interested in pursuing remote work into the future.