On Thursday, Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette announced that the company hired consulting firm AlixPartners to explore separating its ecommerce and brick-and-mortar stores businesses. While Macy’s has not reached any conclusions about whether to proceed with a separation, activist investor Jana Partners announced last month that it had taken a stake in Macy’s and called for […]
On March 1st, I wrote in this space about a scarcity of shipping equipment and containers available for ocean freight from China to the U.S. and Europe impacting the supply chain for consumer goods and the costs companies were paying to import products. At that time, indexes tracking such container rates had surpassed $5,000 from […]
On May 7, Colonial Pipeline, the operator of one of the nation’s largest fuel pipelines, announced it had been hit with a ransomware attack, wherein a criminal group locks up computer systems and holds data hostage until the victim pays a ransom. The company was forced to shut down its pipeline, which delivers nearly half […]
The United States is the largest importer of goods in the world, totaling approximately $2.5 trillion in value annually. Before many of those goods are available to consumers on retailers’ shelves, they have taken a long journey across half the world. This journey often begins in a factory in China or somewhere else in Southeast […]
Last week I received an email from my town’s alert system: “The Health Department and City are advising any persons spending time in the bar area at [Restaurant]…between November 3 and November 12, 2020 to obtain a COVID-19 test. If dining in another part of the restaurant or outdoors, patrons are advised to consult a […]