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Investment banking giant, Goldman Sachs to lay off 3,200 employees

Goldman Sachs is expected to announce new layoffs this week, affecting approximately 3,200 employees. The process is expected to begin mid-week, and the number of job cuts should not exceed 3,200.

According to a Bloomberg report, the teams most affected by the layoffs will be core trading and banking units. Goldman CEO David Solomon had previously stated that the partnership was bracing for slower economic growth as central banks raised interest rates.

“We are conducting a careful review, and while discussions are still ongoing, we anticipate our headcount reduction will occur in the first half of January,” Solomon said, according to The Guardian and news agency IANS.

Following a record year in 2022, teams working on mergers and acquisitions are particularly vulnerable in the coming year as interest rates rise, increasing the cost of borrowing the cash required to fund new deals. Investment banks had a banner year in 2021, with companies launching a massive wave of mergers and acquisitions following coronavirus pandemic lockdowns.

Goldman Sachs and other banks expanded to capitalise, but the number of lucrative deals fell back in 2022 as global interest rates rose. “A number of factors are influencing the business landscape, including tightening monetary conditions, which are slowing economic activity,” Solomon said in the message.

“The focus for our leadership team is on preparing the firm to weather these headwinds.” Goldman is still expected to report significant profits this year and next.

It should be noted that the final job reduction figure is lower than previous proposals in management ranks, which could have resulted in the elimination of nearly 4,000 jobs. The last major layoff of this magnitude occurred in 2008, following the failure of Lehman Brothers. Goldman had embarked on a plan to cut over 3,000 jobs, or nearly 10% of its workforce at the time, and top executives had elected to forego bonuses.

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Walmart pays the majority of the tax bill associated with the relocation of PhonePe’s headquarters to India

US retail giant Walmart has paid the taxes associated with the relocation of PhonePe’s headquarters to India.

Following the acquisition of parent company Flipkart by Walmart, digital payments company PhonePe relocated its headquarters from Singapore to India.

According to reports, the bill is the result of the relocation and the increased value of PhonePe. According to some reports, Walmart Inc. and other PhonePe shareholders were hit with nearly USD 1 billion in capital gains tax after the digital payments company relocated its headquarters to India.

Related video: Walmart receives a $1 billion tax bill for relocating PhonePe’s headquarters to India (WION)

Walmart faces a $1 billion tax bill as a result of relocating PhonePe’s headquarters to India.

“We can confirm the tax has been paid,” Walmart said in response to an email from PTI. However, no specifics were provided by the company.

PhonePe, a FinTech platform, announced in October of last year that it had relocated its headquarters from Singapore to India.

All PhonePe Group businesses and entities were transferred and consolidated under PhonePe Pvt Ltd – India as part of this.

Bentonville, based in the United States, completed the acquisition of a 77% stake in Flipkart in 2018, becoming the majority owner of the Indian e-commerce company.

PhonePe was founded in December 2015 and has grown to become one of India’s largest payment apps, enabling digital inclusion for both consumers and merchants. With 400 million registered users, PhonePe now has one in every four Indians.

Bentonville, based in the United States, completed the acquisition of a 77% stake in Flipkart in 2018, becoming the majority owner of the Indian e-commerce company.

PhonePe was founded in December 2015 and has grown to become one of India’s largest payment app, enabling digital inclusion for both consumers and merchants. With 400 million registered users, PhonePe now has one in every four Indians.

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Twitter has banned several prominent journalists for covering Elon Musk’s Twitter antics

On Thursday evening, Twitter banned a number of prominent journalists who were covering Elon Musk and his various businesses from the platform. The platform appears to have done so without warning or explanation.

Normally, before an account is banned, Twitter will send a few notifications or warnings, informing users of the policies they have violated, unless they have broken local laws. However, since Musk took over, Twitter has been banning specific accounts with no prior notice. Welcome to Elon Musk’s interpretation of free speech.

The journalists were barred after Twitter suspended the Twitter account of Mastodon, the open-source social media alternative that exploded in popularity following Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. Twitter took action against Mastodon after the account linked to the Mastodon page of @ElonJet, a student-created bot that tracks Musk’s private jet’s location.

A few of the suspended journalists and accounts had shared screenshots and articles about Mastodon’s suspension. Drew Harwell, a Washington Post reporter, tweeted about Mastodon being kicked off the platform shortly before his suspension.

Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, The New York Times’ Ryan Mac, CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan, Mashable’s Matt Binder, and journalist Aaron Rupar are among the accounts that have been banned. All of the aforementioned names covered Musk on a regular basis and wrote extensively about Musk and his takeover of Twitter.

Rupar commented on his Substack suspension, noting that while he did not know why his account was suspended, he did share a link to ElonJet’s Facebook account while reporting on the subject. Mac shared the message he received from Twitter on an alternate account, noting that there was no warning before the permanent suspension.

Some of the suspended accounts shared the Twitter handles of Mastodon and ElonJet, as well as screenshots of the tweet that appears to have gotten the former account suspended.

Because Twitter’s human moderation teams have been reduced, automated systems enforcing Twitter’s new rules against accounts like @ElonJet were overzealous in this case. However, it’s just as likely that Musk is directing the moderation process.

Musk took to Twitter to explain his reasoning for the ban. He stated that the bans were deliberate, and that the same doxxing rules apply to “journalists” as they do to everyone else.

Musk stated that the suspensions would only be in effect for seven days. He later tweeted a poll asking his Twitter followers to vote on the fate of the banned journalists, who had previously been notified that their accounts had been suspended “permanently.” It should be noted that the journalists who were barred received no such notice.

Furthermore, it is standard practise at Twitter to notify users about posts and skim them to remove offensive or potentially harmful posts before they are banned. Furthermore, the policy that these accounts violated, which prohibited users from sharing “live location information,” is only 24 hours old, so they couldn’t have been notified and given enough time to act on it.

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Elon Musk says that Twitter Blue will relaunch in December with gold, grey, and blue checkmarks

Elon Musk has announced that Twitter will ‘tentatively’ relaunch its ‘Blue Tick’ enabling Twitter Blue service on Friday, December 2, 2022, after indefinitely suspending it.

The updated service will include distinct checkmarks for various entities.

“We apologise for the delay; we hope to launch Verified on Friday next week,” Elon said in a tweet. “Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue check for individuals (celebrity or not), and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before the check activates,” he added.

Musk described the transition as “painful but necessary.”

Musk was chastised earlier this month for allowing companies, individuals, and other entities to be impersonated on Twitter by bogus accounts. Elon Musk has set an $8 subscription fee for Twitter Blue, and according to a recent tweet, the price will remain $8 when the service relaunches in December.

Elon had previously stated that Twitter Blue would be delayed “until there is high confidence in stopping impersonation.” Many bogus verified accounts used Twitter Blue to become verified and impersonate well-known companies and individuals in order to commit fraud.

One user, impersonating the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, tweeted that the company will provide free insulin to its customers, causing the company’s stock to fall 5% in morning trading on Friday.

Several bogus verified Twitter Blue accounts disrupted Twitter. One user, impersonating the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, tweeted that the company will provide free insulin to its customers, causing the company’s stock to fall 5% in morning trading on Friday.

A fake Nintendo account later posted an image of Mario giving the middle finger.

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As Twitter struggles to deal with hate speech, Musk says he will grant ‘amnesty’ to banned accounts

Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, has taken another step toward dismantling the social media platform’s anti-hate speech mechanisms.

Musk announced on Thursday that he would grant “amnesty” to all suspended Twitter accounts that have not violated the law or “engaged in egregious spam.” Musk made the decision after a poll on the platform received 3.1 million responses. Approximately 72% of respondents voted in favour of restoring those accounts, while approximately 28% voted against it.

“The populace has spoken. The amnesty period begins next week. “Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” Musk tweeted, quoting a Latin phrase that translates as “the voice of the people is the voice of God.””

Since purchasing Twitter for $44 billion last month, Musk has continued to loosen the platform’s grip on enforcement around posts containing hate speech. Musk reactivated Donald Trump’s account last week after Twitter permanently suspended it following the Capitol insurgency, citing a “risk of further incitement of violence” at the time.

According to NBC News, European Union regulators published a report on Thursday that found Twitter removed fewer hate-speech posts than the previous year.

According to a sample analysed in the EU report, Twitter removed 45.5% of hate speech posts it was notified about, down from 49.8% in 2021 — and those numbers are worse than any other social media platform tested, including TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.

Not only has Trump’s account been revived. Other accounts that have been reinstated since Musk’s ownership include Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, controversial influencer Andrew Tate, who has a history of spreading misogynistic and violent comments about women, and Jordan Peterson, a psychologist who had his account was suspended after tweets targeting trans people.

Prior to assuming control of the social media company, Musk chastised it for “failing to adhere to free speech principles.” He previously stated his intention to form a “content moderation council.” However, given the recent employee exodus, Musk may find it difficult to carry out any vision he has for Twitter. Thousands of employees have left the company in recent weeks after Musk issued an ultimatum to his employees, telling them to either work long hours at high intensity or quit.

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Elon Musk failed to provide previously promised severance payouts to laid-off Twitter employees

Elon Musk: Twitter employees who were laid off are suing the company, claiming they were promised a variety of severance benefits.

According to the lawsuit, they were guaranteed that these perks would continue when Elon Musk purchased Twitter.

However, recently laid-off employees claim Twitter failed to pay them their promised severance money.

Employees who were laid off by Twitter are suing the firm, which is now owned by Elon Musk, alleging breach of previously agreed severance benefits.

Five employees who filed a class-action lawsuit against Twitter on November 1 now claim they were promised at least two months’ severance pay, bonus plan compensation, cash value of vested Twitter equity, and healthcare coverage, but that these promises were broken when Musk laid off about 3,700 employees on November 4.

The new charges were presented in court files to the San Francisco federal court on Tuesday, which Insider also saw.

According to the Tuesday update, Twitter’s management previously said at many all-hands meetings, in a recent FAQ, and in a merger agreement that if staff were laid off after Musk acquired the firm, they would receive at least the equivalent of the originally promised amount.

According to the lawsuit, Twitter employees “reasonably relied” on this guarantee in the weeks preceding up to Musk’s purchase and elected not to look for work elsewhere.

This claim appears to contrast a November 4 tweet from Musk, which said that all exited employees were offered three months’ severance.

According to the revised lawsuit, Twitter later informed employees affected by the November mass layoffs that they would only receive one month’s base pay after their departure.

This claims appears to contradict Musk’s November 4 tweet, which stated that all departing employees were given three months’ severance pay.

Musk has worked every day to find new methods to screw over Twitter employees, according to his counsel.

According to Shannon Liss-Riordan, the attorney who brought the lawsuit, Musk is adding an extra two months of severance compensation because certain employees were advised on November 4 that they would be laid off in two months.

According to their lawsuit, these employees, which included three of the plaintiffs, were locked out of their corporate accounts on November 3, but were informed they would be paid until January 4, 2023.

“This is not severance compensation,” Liss-Riordan argued in the case, accusing Musk of just using this term of payment to comply with federal and state labour rules. The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, also known as the WARN Act, is a federal law that requires businesses with 100 or more employees to provide 60 days’ notice of mass layoffs or other work disruptions.

“It appears Elon Musk has laboured every day since assuming control of Twitter barely two weeks ago to find new and imaginative methods to screw over the company’s workers,” Liss-Riordan said in a statement to Insider. “We recently filed an emergency request to protect the employees Twitter is laying off from signing away their rights to receive what they are due by the corporation.”

Twitter’s previous top four executives — Parag Agrawal, Ned Segal, Vijaya Gadde, and Sarah Personette — stood to profit by being dismissed by Musk for a total of $88 million. Musk disputed on October 31 that he fired the senior executives “for cause” in order to avoid paying them large severance packages.

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Meta Fires 11,000 Employees, while Redfin Fires 862—Here Are the Biggest Layoffs in the United States This Year

Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc has opted to reduce 13% of its staff and lay off around 11,000 employees, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a blog post. The layoffs at Meta, one of the largest in the social media industry, are anticipated to begin on Wednesday, according to Zuckerberg, who also stated that staff departing today will not be able to access most Meta systems in order to secure sensitive information.

TOPLINE On Wednesday, Facebook parent company Meta confirmed a massive round of layoffs affecting 13% of its workforce (11,000 employees), and real estate company Redfin announced plans to cut 862 jobs—the latest major companies to implement layoffs as employers fear rising inflation and a cooling housing market will push the economy into recession.

Meta will also take more efforts to build a “leaner and more efficient” organisation, including eliminating discretionary spending and extending the employment freeze through the first quarter of 2023, according to Zuckerberg.

Meta reported over 87,000 employees in September. In September, Zuckerberg announced a hiring freeze as well as intentions to restructure teams in order to cut costs.

Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc has opted to reduce 13% of its staff and lay off around 11,000 employees, according to **CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a blog post**

“I got this wrong, and I accept responsibility,”: Meta Layoffs.

Mark Zuckerberg has published remarks explaining why Meta will be laying off thousands of people. This blog post is about Meta layoffs and addressing all employees. Previously, Zuckerberg indicated that the layoffs will be done to reduce expenses and boost efficiency. Overstaffing was another issue that contributed to huge layoffs.

Meta will be laying off personnel across the board, including the Family of Apps and Reality Labs. According to the CEO’s blog post, certain teams will be more affected than others. According to reports and netizen comments, the Meta layoffs were among the worst tech layoffs ever.

Severance pay, stock compensation, and other benefits are offered in the case of a layoff.

In a blog post shared by Mark Zuckerberg indicated that staff would receive 16 weeks of base compensation plus two additional weeks for every year of service they have provided to Meta, with no cap. Employees will also receive compensated time off.

All employees who were laid off would get their stock compensation (RSU Vesting) on November 15, 2022.

Lay off Employees would also receive six months of health care and insurance coverage for themselves and their families.

Meta will also provide three months of career coaching to employees through an external partner, allowing them early access to unpublished employment leads.

For the Meta layoffs in the United States, the tech company will provide immigration assistance to those who joined on an H-1B visa. According to Zuckerberg’s announcement, employees would have a notice period, as well as visa grace periods, to give them time to work through their immigration situation.

We’re also extending our hiring freeze through the first quarter, with a few exceptions. I’ll be watching our business performance, operational efficiency, and other macroeconomic aspects to see if and how much recruiting should resume at that point. This will allow us to control our cost structure in the event of a prolonged economic downturn. It will also put us on track to attain a more efficient cost structure than we recently presented to investors.

Earlier News by Research Editorial: Meta is to lay off thousands of employees beginning this week, according to a report

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Google increases ‘Workspace Individual’ free storage from 15GB to 1TB

Workspace Individual, an enhanced version of the suite, was released at the same time to attract you into paying the company money. With its expanded storage space, Workspace Individual has become a little more appealing. Last year, Google made its Workspace productivity application free to all users.

Thanks to a recent Google update, new capabilities are now available in Workspace Individual. The most significant is expanded cloud storage without an increase in pricing. Previously, 15GB of space for individual accounts—equivalent to a basic Gmail account—was offered, but this has since been extended to a dependable 1TB of online storage.

Individual users are immediately upgraded from 15GB to 1TB. Simply sit back and wait for it to appear in your bank account, assuming you have one.

*Google increases ‘Workspace Individual’ free storage from 15GB to 1TB*: **Research Editorial**

Expanding firms, according to the corporation, require as much storage as feasible. Furthermore, Google Drive allows users to access their data “securely from any device,” according to Google. Furthermore, the idea that Workspace Individual clients would not use other services (like as OneDrive or Dropbox) since they already have so much storage doesn’t harm. When it comes to purchasing additional storage, the search engine behemoth plans to be the frontrunner.

Individual Workspace is still fairly local, at least for the time being. Recently, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Greece, and Argentina were granted access.

What exactly is Google Workspace?

It is a single, integrated service from Google that provides everything in one place – Gmail, Chat, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Meet, and more.

You may use Google Chat to set up a secure collaboration space to keep everyone up to date, discuss ideas, and keep track of all your vital information in one spot, from videos and photos from your last vacation to a Google Sheet of your family’s annual budget. Whether you’re drafting a message in Gmail to the entire group or booking a meeting invite in a shared Calendar, smart suggestions let you bring in recommended files and swiftly include the right people using @-mentions.

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Nvidia to Sell New Chip in China: Says Meets US Export Ban

Nvidia Corp., the world’s most valuable chipmaker, has begun manufacturing a processor for China that complies with new laws intended at limiting that country’s access to artificial-intelligence computing.

Nvidia announced in a statement Monday that the A800 GPU, or graphics processing unit, entered into production in the third quarter and will be an alternative to the A100 model. “The A800 fulfils the US government’s explicit test for reduced export restriction and cannot be programmed to exceed it,” stated the chipmaker based in Santa Clara, California.

Nvidia shocked investors earlier this year when it announced that it would be banned from selling the A100 and upcoming H100 devices to Chinese consumers unless special US government approval was obtained. The adjustment jeopardised hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. According to Nvidia in an August regulatory filing, the US is afraid that the CPUs would be used by the military.

Last month, the Biden administration tightened the limits, raising tensions between the two countries and creating new obstacles for US chipmakers already facing a fall in demand. Nvidia has lost more than half of its value this year, after three years of growth.

Data centres rely on graphics hardware from companies like Nvidia to conduct AI tasks and process massive amounts of data. The US government’s limits on China exports limit the speeds at which such chips may communicate with one another, limiting their utility.

According to Reuters, Nvidia has began selling the A800.

According to a Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis, “the White House is attempting to limit the controls to chips that are designed to be networked together in data centres or supercomputing facilities that train and run large AI models by only targeting chips with very high interconnect speeds.”

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Twitter fires more than 90% of its Indian employees, leaving about a dozen

Twitter Inc. let off more than 90% of its employees in India over the weekend as part of Elon Musk’s global layoffs, significantly depleting its engineering and product personnel in a prospective growth region.

The company employed slightly over 200 workers in India, and the cuts reduced it to about a dozen employees, according to persons familiar with the situation, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the situation.

India is an important growth engine for global internet companies like Twitter, Meta Platforms Inc., and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, which rely on its vast potential pool of new online users. However, the companies are also subject to more stringent content laws aimed at limiting the country’s large digital firms.

According to one source, over 70% of the employees lost in India were from the product and engineering team, which worked on a worldwide mandate. Positions were also reduced in functions such as marketing, public policy, and corporate communications, according to the sources. Globally, the San Francisco, California-based company Twitter cut its workforce by approximately half, or 3,700 employees.

*Twitter Inc. let off more than 90% of its employees in India over the weekend as part of Elon Musk’s global layoffs*

Twitter did not respond immediately to an email requesting comment

On Twitter, India has one of the most heated political debates, with rival parties frequently hurling accusations at each other and accusing each other of spreading misinformation. On the service, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has over 84 million followers. It’s unclear how Twitter plans to manage that debate with its newly decreased employees in the country, which speaks more than 100 languages.

Twitter’s India offices are in New Delhi, Mumbai’s financial capital, and Bengaluru, India’s southern IT hub.

According to Bloomberg News, the company still employs approximately 3,700 people worldwide. Musk is pressuring those who remain to produce new features swiftly, and in some cases, employees have even slept at the office to fulfil new targets.

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