The fall of WeWork shows the deepening cracks in real estate | American banks now offer customers a better deal | OpenAI Blames ChatGPT’s Intermittent Outages On ‘Abnormal Traffic’ That Suggests Potential Cyber Attack | China’s 100 Richest 2023: Billionaires Hit By Global Tensions, Domestic Troubles

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� � � � � � You Might Like � � � � � � � � � The fall of WeWork shows the deepening cracks in real estate - The Economist    Since it was founded in 2010, WeWork has not once turned a profit. For years its cash-torching ways went unchallenged, thanks to the reality-distorting powers of its flamboyant founder, Adam Neumann, who succeeded in convincing investors, most notably SoftBank, that it was not an office-rental business but a zippy tech firm on a mission to “elevate the world’s consciousness”. At the height of the silliness in early 2019, in the lead-up to an initial public offering (IPO), the company was valued at $47bn. The unravelling began soon after, as outside investors balked at its frothy valuation and questioned an unorthodox governance arrangement that gave Mr Neumann an iron grip on the company. The IPO was shelved, and Mr Neumann was offered $1.7bn to leave. Sandeep Mathrani, a real-estate veteran brought in to run the company, did his best to right the ship by cutting costs and renegotiating leases. In 2021 he succeeded in listing the firm through a special-purpose acquisition company, at a valuation of $9bn. Yet his efforts were undone by the slump in the office market brought on by the pandemic and an enduring shift towards remote working. On November 6th WeWork, which leases office space in 777 locations across 39 countries, filed for bankruptcy. It is not the only property business in turmoil. Days earlier, on the other side of the Atlantic, René Benko, a once celebrated Austrian property magnate, was ousted from Signa, the €23bn ($25bn) property empire he built. Its portfolio includes the Chrysler Building in New York; the KaDeWe, a posh department store in West Berlin; and a stake in Selfridges, another ritzy temple of consumption in London; as well as luxury hotels, high-end developments and a grab-bag of other retail businesses. Continued here American banks now offer customers a better deal - The Economist    When the Federal Reserve began to raise interest rates more than a year ago, American banks enjoyed a nice little boost. They increased the interest they charged on loans, while keeping the rates they offered on deposits steady. In other countries this move attracted public opprobrium and politicians floated measures to ensure that customers were not swindled. Americans were happy to rely on a more American solution: competition. It has done its job. Average yields on interest-bearing bank deposits have soared to more than 2.9%, up from 0.1% when the Fed began to raise interest rates. The extent to which higher rates have been passed on to customers—known as the “deposit beta”—has been a popular subject on recent quarterly earnings calls. Despite assurances by bank bosses that they have peaked, betas are likely to keep rising in the coming months, pinching profits. The process is being driven by customers shifting their money from low-yielding products to higher-yielding ones. Data from quarterly filings show that the share of bank deposits held in interest-free accounts has fallen from 29% at the end of 2021 to 20%. Had this figure remained constant, bank interest costs would be roughly 10% lower than they are now. Quarterly filings also show that banks which have lost more than 5% of their deposits since the start of the year have increased the average rate on interest-bearing deposits by 2.7 percentage points, compared with a more miserly 2.1 percentage points at those institutions with more secure deposits. Continued here Don't like ads? Go ad-free with TradeBriefs Premium OpenAI Blames ChatGPT's Intermittent Outages On 'Abnormal Traffic' That Suggests Potential Cyber Attack - Forbes    ChatGPT continued to face intermittent outages late Wednesday, which the platform's maker OpenAI blamed on a potential cyberattack, hours after the AI chatbot platform recovered from a wide outage that the company initially attributed to a surge in interest for its new features. Early on Thursday, OpenAI's service status page displayed a notification saying both ChatGPT and its API services—which are used by developers on the platform—were facing "periodic outages." The company says the outages are a result of "an abnormal traffic pattern" that bears the signs of a "DDoS attack." Continued here China's 100 Richest 2023: Billionaires Hit By Global Tensions, Domestic Troubles - Forbes    This story is part of Forbes' coverage of China's Richest 2023. See the full list here. It's been a flat year for the richest people in mainland China. Blame shrinking manufacturing and an export slowdown amid heightened U.S.-China tensions. A prolonged downturn in real estate prices - plus some high-profile defaults - also took a toll. Overall, the collective wealth of the 100 richest was down to $895 billion from $907.1 billion. Bottled water billionaire Zhong Shanshan is No. 1 for the third year in a row, though his fortune fell to $60.1 billion from $62.3 billion. His Nongfu Spring's strong position in the domestic market offset a decline in Zhong's investment in Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy, a vaccine and diagnostics firm for infectious diseases, including Covid-19. ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming retained the second spot but his net worth also dropped to $43.4 billion from $49.5 billion, as the tech giant's video-sharing platform TikTok continued to face regulatory hurdles in international markets. Continued here

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