This article is from: interface News , author: Tian Siqi, An Jing, Shawn, Liu Fang, Pan Jinhua, the picture from: worm creative
Protection of protectionism and continued slowdown in major markets, dare to say that there are not many entrepreneurs who have done well in 2019. Under adversity, the little negative news of these rich people will also be magnified infinitely.
How ever there were so many scenery, now there are so lonely. The well-known entrepreneurs continue to have lawsuits. When the long-time capitalists have fallen into the pits, the billionaires who seem to have a smooth career encounter another kind of “failure” due to the collapse of their brilliant image.
Bezos: Lost wife and richest man
2019 is a bad year for Bezos personally. Not only did he lose his 25-year-old wife because of derailment within the marriage, but the title of world’s richest man also passed on to Bill Gates because of the stock price crash.
Before the new year, Bezos, 54, announced his divorce from his wife, Mackenzie, because he derailed a married female anchor. The gossip magazine “National Enquirer” revealed the two men’s private text messages and erotic selfies. For a while, the private life of the world’s richest man became a talker after dinner, instead of caring about the breakthroughs in logistics automation that Amazon invested heavily in.
And most impressive in this farceYes, it is Mackenzie’s generosity. Not only did she give up all the shares in the Washington Post and the space exploration company Blue Origin, she also granted him voting rights on Amazon.
The divorce case has limited Bezos’ career, but his personal grievances with Trump are different. In October, the Pentagon awarded competitor Microsoft a $ 10 billion cloud project “JEDI” contract. Bezos believes that the most important reason for the loss is his long-term criticism of the President by his Washington Post. It is important to know that Amazon cloud services account for about 50% of the public cloud infrastructure market, far ahead of Microsoft Azure .
In November, Amazon brought the Department of Defense to court for six major reasons, including “violating the government procurement bill” and “illegal deprivation of competitive advantage.” During this period, Microsoft’s share price soared as a result of the “JEDI” contract, and Bill Gates regained the long-lost world’s richest man from Bezos.
Because the ground was six pence, Bezos did not forget to look up at the moon in the distance. On December 11, Bezos welcomed the good news. The Blue Origin successfully launched and recovered the New Shepherd rocket for the sixth time.
Musk: Let yourself go and your image collapses
Undeniably, Musk is a legendary successful entrepreneur. Continue to start a business and gain countless praises … Originally, it had a tall image, but it was completely destroyed due to the “big mouth” style.
Even with the SEC’s (SEC) , it failed to stop Iron Man. Just in 2019, Musk tweeted to tens of millions of fans on Twitter that Tesla could produce about 500,000 cars. The SEC jumped out immediately, accusing Musk of “contempt of court”, a violation of the agencyA settlement agreement reached last October.
Apart from the old grievances with the SEC, Tesla’s layoffs, closing of stores, delays in repaying loans, and collision investigations by government departments have made Tesla’s stock price fall to a three-year low in June this year.
At the recent CyberTruck conference of Tesla’s first electric pickup truck, Musk rolled over again: I wanted to show the strength of the pickup truck. When the iron ball hit the window glass, the glass broke on the spot.
Even outside of business, Musk has taken the initiative. Because Musk tweeted it as pedophile, the explorer Engsworth who participated in Thai cave rescue (Verne Unsworth) File a defamation lawsuit.
Ensworth’s lawyer revealed that Musk had hired a private detective to dig out Ensworth’s black materials, and also put pressure on the Thai authorities to say good things to Musk’s mini-submarine. Musk had suggested using a special mini-submarine to participate in the rescue, which was criticized by Unsworth as a “public relations show”.
But with the advent of Christmas, Musk ’s troubles are resolved: Tesla ’s stock price once surged to $ 422, affected by Tesla ’s third quarter earnings report, surpassing Musk ’s $ 420 privatization proposed last year. Price; in a lawsuit with Ensworth, the allegations of defamation were ultimately found to be untenable; in a dispute with the SEC, the two parties reached a settlement again.
So Musk was dispatched again, and wrote on Twitter, “Wow, the stock is too awesome” (so high) Words. This sentence is also regarded as a “marijuana joke”: April 20 is International Marijuana Day, and high is also a term related to cannabis smoking.
Musk is still that Musk.
Sun Zhengyi: The Disillusionment of Investment Myth
Invested in Alibaba many years ago and regarded as a myth in the investment world, Sun Zhengyi now encounters “Waterloo” because of the sharing economy.
On December 23, his SoftBank Group and Japanese banking industry’s $ 3 billion WeWork financing negotiations stalled. On the same day, the co-founder of UBER sold all of his stock and cashed in $ 2.5 billion, while SoftBank Group held 16.3% of its shares. By the last weekend of 2019, Yan Jing, an important ally of Sun Zhengyi and founder of Uniqlo, was leaving Softbank’s board of directors. This descendant of North Korean immigrants is in an unprecedented predicament.
Sun Zhengyi’s investment style that led to the bubble has been questioned: it makes young entrepreneurs lose their rationality in the face of large investments and spends no money to expand.
The WeWork and UBER valuations that he sees as “the next Ali” have shrunk sharply, and his net worth has evaporated by more than a third.
Alibaba is the highlight of Sun Zhengyi’s legendary life. He exchanged US $ 20 million for 34% of Ali’s equity, which swelled to US $ 78.4 billion after it went public in 2014. Sun Zhengyi, who had tasted the sweetness of success, couldn’t wait to “give a fire.”
In 2016, Zhengyi Sun officially announced the establishment of the Vision Fund, which raised 100 billion US dollars. This is the world’s largest technology fund. He couldn’t think of how the first batch of the fund’s first investment would be lost in three years. Except for WeWork and UBER, Didi’s valuation fell by more than 30% at one time, and the on-demand walking dog startup Wag’s market share was only about 16%.
When the 2020 financial report was announced in November, Softbank had an operating deficit of US $ 140 million, of which July-September saw a loss of approximately US $ 8.9 billion for the Vision Fund, the first time since the establishment of the fund. A deficit.
Sun Zhengyi had to admit that he looked away. At the same time, Softbank Empire has been controversially harassed by ex-employees, harassing startups and flattery office politics.
But “gambler” Son Zhengyi obviously won’t stop there. In July this year, Softbank announced the establishment of the second phase of the Vision Fund, which mainly invests in artificial intelligence technology, and is expected to reach USD 108 billion. Under the circumstance that the time, the place and the people are all “powerless”, can Sun Zhengyi create the next investment myth?
Millenberger: Fatal air crash overwhelms aviation veterans
After two crashes killed 346 people, Boeing CEO Mirrenberg (Dennis Muilenburg) has been “brewing” for more than six months Only to show an apology, but obviously can not calm the public, regulators and shareholders’ dissatisfaction. Finally on Christmas Eve, Mürnberg stepped down. Boeing’s stock price rose 3% that day, which may be the first step for Boeing to step out of the crisis of public opinion next year.
In less than half a year between October 2018 and March 2019, Indonesian Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines suffered successive air crashes. The crashed aircraft were Boeing 737MAX series airliners. Investigations revealed that Boeing test pilots had found the model’s anti-stall system as early as 2016, but Boeing ignored the loopholes in order to get it to market as soon as possible.
Milenberg, 55, has been with Boeing for more than 30 years and has focused on Boeing ’s defense business for the government. In several public appearances this year, he emphasized that the company has updated the software and completed large-scale testing to repeatedly ensure the safety of the aircraft, while at the same time bearing responsibility for the two accidents while in office. But U.S. lawmakers questioned: “The victims will never come back … What responsibilities have you taken, have you cut your salary?”
In response, Millenberger, who left the chairmanship of the board of directors, offered to cut salaries this year and next, and no longer accept bonuses and stocks. In 2018, his total compensation was $ 23.4 million, of which $ 20.4 million was in the form of stocks and bonuses.
But that doesn’t seem to help Boeing out of trouble. The Federal Aviation Administration’s review of the 737MAX will continue, and Boeing has announced that it will cease production of the airliner in January next year. Boeing has lost more than $ 9 billion after grounding its 37MAX aircraft in March this year.
U.S. and EU continue on subsidy caseAgainst the public hall, and rival Airbus’s largest passenger aircraft A380 has announced the suspension of production. Against the backdrop of slowing global economic growth and constant trade friction, demand for large aircraft is declining. 2019 has been the worst year for aviation manufacturing in recent years.
Although Carl Horn, chairman of Boeing’s new board, once pointed out that the board believes that Millenberg is the right person to continue to lead the company, there is no sign that Millenberg can regain the trust of lawmakers and consumers.
Zuckerberg: Digital currency empire frustrated
The “Prodigy” of that year is long past. But for Zuckerberg (Mark Zuckerberg) , 2019 is still full of challenges. The social “big Mac” Facebook, which has 2.4 billion monthly active users, has been repeatedly penalized for misusing data, and the subversive digital currency plan Libra has also been struggling due to opposition from regulators in various countries.
In early March, Zuckerberg announced that it would make Facebook a privacy-centric social platform. But just two weeks later, this beautiful vision of rebuilding the brand’s value was shattered by cruel reality.
Network security reporter Krebs broke the news that Facebook has stored the account passwords of hundreds of millions of users in clear text since 2012, and the company’s 20,000 employees can read them at will. Zuckerberg’s biggest public relations project has failed since the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
In July, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ended the investigation of Facebook ’s data breach scandal with a $ 5 billion fine, setting a record Set the highest record of fines for technology companies. In the same month, Facebook abused dataAnd “disclosure of false information” was fined $ 100 million by the SEC.
Zuckerberg, who has been frustrated in privacy protections, hasn’t had too much luck with the ambitious Libra project.
Since Facebook released the white paper in June, regulators represented by the U.S. Congress and the European Parliament have warned of this cryptocurrency project. The U.S. Senate Banking Committee said financial institutions will face scrutiny if they plan to participate in the Libra program. Under such pressure, seven founding companies led by Mastercard have announced their withdrawal from Libra. It is widely expected that once Libra succeeds, it will disrupt the global financial system.
In October, Zuckerberg was summoned to the United States Senate to testify. At the hearing, Zuckerberg promised that Libra would not be released without the approval of US regulators.
Although Facebook announced the second edition of Libra’s roadmap in December, the actual progress of the project is in the foreseeable future. The director of the Libra Association, Ellis, said that the launch of Libra depends on the outcome of negotiations with regulators: “At this stage, there is no established strategy for the market or product, nor how it will actually be launched.”
For Zuckerberg, how to regain the trust of users and regulators will be a top priority next year. Although Facebook, which owns Instagram and WhatsApp, now firmly holds the top spot in the social media empire, Facebook’s ultimate brand value may still start with the most basic privacy terms.
Burns: Capital Trader Folds the Breach of the Air
The e-cigarette industry has advertised it as helpful in quitting smoking in the propaganda offensive. The Guardian evaluates this fashionable consumption form as one of the main business trends in the past decade. Former US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott G