Day: August 17, 2016

Executive Pay

Three top Amazon execs sell nearly 9,000 shares, but Bezos way out ahead

The trades were all on Monday, according to a series of Securities and Exchange Commission filings this afternoon, after stock markets closed. They were:

But their sales were dwarfed by the 1 million shares founder and CEO Jeff Bezos sold Aug. 2 for $757 million, his SEC filing showed. That brought to $1.4 billion his total sales in the past three months, according to GeekWire. But he still owned 80.9 million shares after that big trade, worth $62 billion.

Jeff Bezos
Bezos

Bezos’s SEC filing said the most recent sale was made under a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan, which allows company insiders to sell a predetermined amount of stock at a set time, to avoid the appearance of insider trading.

The retailer’s AMZN shares closed today at $764.63, up 59 cents. The three executives sold for prices ranging from $768 to $771.

Amazonpays its top executives far more in stock than cash. See how much they got paid last year and in 2014 in Boulevard’s highest-paid executives databases.

Diversions

In films this weekend at the Speed, Herzog asks: ‘Have the monks stopped meditating? They all seem to be tweeting’

In this year’s “Lo and Behold,” The Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Werner Herzog “dissects the virtual world from its beginnings to its speculative future possibilities,” according to the Speed Museum Cinema. “Always asking provocative questions, Herzog investigates the ways the online world has transformed virtually every aspect of the way contemporary life is conducted — from business to education, space travel to healthcare and to how we as humans interact with each other.”

98 minutes. Rated PG-13. A selection of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival; BAM Cinefest and 2016 AFI Docs. Watch the trailer:

Tickets: $9, adults (non-Speed members); $7 members. Click on a showtime below for more details and to buy tickets.

About the cinema

Speed Art Museum logoThe 142-seat theater is part of the newly renovated museum’s expansion. It’s equipped with state-of-the-art technology, including 16-mm, 35-mm and DCI-compliant 4K digital projection systems.

Latest Headlines

Diese geniale Pizzaschachtel ist gleichzeitig ein DJ-Deck!

Wer braucht schon sein eigenes Mischpult, wenn er Pizza haben kann? Wer in Zukunft in Großbritannien bei Pizza Hut bestellt, könnte in den Genuss eines eigene DJ-Decks aus Karton kommen.*

Pizza Hut playable DJ box 600
Diese box ist wunderbar!

* This post about Pizza Hut U.K.’s new DJ-mixable pizza box is for our German-speaking readers via Musik Express. (Google’s translation here.)

Latest Headlines

Urgent: Aetna threatened to quit exchanges if DOJ challenged $37 billion merger with Humana, according to CEO Bertolini letter

That’s according to a new Huffington Post story, which today cited a letter Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini sent to the Obama Administration on July 5 — 16 days before the Justice Department sued to block the merger on antitrust grounds.

Mark Bertolini
Bertolini

The Post obtained the letter through a Freedom of Information Act request. Aetna’s letter was in response to a Justice Department question about how any decision on the proposed merger would affect Aetna’s willingness to offer insurance through health-care exchanges under Obamacare.

The letter appears to contract a Bertolini statement late Monday, where he blamed anticipated losses on the Hartford insurer’s decision to exit nearly 70% of the exchange markets it’s been serving; that pullout will come next year.

When reporters asked Aetna whether it was also reacting to DOJ’s attempt to stop its merger with Humana, “company officials brushed off the questions,” the Post says, citing accounts in the Hartford Courant, Politico and USA Today.

A spokesperson for Aetna said the decision to roll back the coverage was not because of the DOJ’s lawsuit, but rather realizing the full details of the losses, according to a separate story by Business Insider based on the Post account.

Paired with some looming rate increases for next year’s health plans, the Post story today says, “the abrupt departure of Aetna has triggered new worries that Obamacare ― a subsidized public-private system of health insurance plans competing for beneficiaries ― is in serious trouble and may even be unsustainable.”

Letter: Aetna supports ACA, but…

Continue reading “Urgent: Aetna threatened to quit exchanges if DOJ challenged $37 billion merger with Humana, according to CEO Bertolini letter” →

Latest Headlines

Music to our ears: Pizza Hut U.K. offering five boxes doubling as playable DJ decks; today-only giveaway is latest to capture more young techie consumers

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 2:37 p.m.

PIZZA HUT: Using Bluetooth to connect a computer or smartphone, the playable cardboard decks mix digital music using a special conductive ink design from printed electronics specialist Novalia, according to Digital Spy. (Watch DJ Vectra demo it in the video, above.) Starting today, the pizza maker is offering them in a promotion rolling out via the @PizzaHutUK Twitter feed, where it will announce which of only five restaurants will have one box each. The decks feature two turntables, a cross-fader, pitch volumes, cue buttons and the ability to rewind music, all like traditional mixers. What’s a deck?

Watch DJ Vectra demo it in the video, above; he’s playing “P Money 10/10,” according to music and media identification app Shazam.

This isn’t the first Yum unit to create electronic packaging to grab the attention of technology-loving young consumers. In June, KFC India gave away Watt a Box, a 5-in-1 meal box with a lithium-ion battery cellphone charger. The chicken chain has also fitted photo printers inside buckets and Bluetooth keyboards onto paper tray covers.

Today’s promo will surely boost U.K.’s Twitter traffic. Right now, its feed has 53,700 followers. The U.S. site has far, far more: 1.46 million; how other companies’ Twitter count compares. Pizza Hut teased customers about the cardboard gadget via Twitter yesterday:

HAIER, which bought GE Appliances in June, is pumping about $10 million into 9KaCha, a Chinese wine information app and e-commerce platform whose database and label recognition software will power its new smart wine cooler. It’s unclear whether the cooler will be offered in the U.S. (China Money Network and Decanter China).

HUMANA: Insurance companies “keep pretending” that participating in the Affordable Care Act exchanges is killing their business model, says Haider Javed Warraich, a cardiovascular disease fellow at Duke University’s Medical Center, in a Guardian newspaper column today. Humana merger partner Aetna was the latest, announcing late Monday it will withdraw from 70% of the Obamacare exchange markets where it operates by next year, including 10 Kentucky counties. Humana disclosed a similar pullback earlier this month. But, Warraich writes, “this corporate hardship story couldn’t be further from the truth. Aetna’s overall profits surged last year, and its share prices have risen consistently since the ACA passed in 2010” (Guardian).

Humana and Aetna logos 250Aetna’s Kentucky exit leaves consumers in Boone, Campbell, Owen and Kenton counties with only two exchange plans. Other counties affected are Continue reading “Music to our ears: Pizza Hut U.K. offering five boxes doubling as playable DJ decks; today-only giveaway is latest to capture more young techie consumers” →