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    After Fierce Lobbying, Regulators Soften Proposed Rules on Banks

    A top Federal Reserve official said that blowback to proposed rules on capital requirements led him to “relearn the lesson of humility.”Regulators on Tuesday watered down an effort to layer new oversight on banks to protect against losses, which led to a fierce outcry from big banks and their lobbyists.The new standards, known as “Basel III endgame,” had been debated for years. They would have raised the amount of capital banks were required to maintain, funds intended to ensure stability and provide a financial cushion. Banks argued that the stricter rules would force them to crimp lending.The newly proposed rules will largely erase extra requirements on banks with between $100 billion and $250 billion in assets. It also slashes in half the capital reserve requirements on the largest, so-called systematically important lenders.Michael S. Barr, the Federal Reserve vice chair who is no favorite of the bank lobby, acknowledged the blowback in a speech laying out the changes: “Capital has costs, too,” he said in a speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington. In its statements pushing against the rules over the years, the banks’ main lobbying organization has said that “capital isn’t free.”“Life gives you ample opportunity to learn and relearn the lesson of humility,” Mr. Barr said.This is a developing story. Check back for updates. More

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    Inside the Funeral Home for New York’s Elite

    Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. John Lennon. Greta Garbo. Jean-Michel Basquiat. Mae West. Arthur Ashe. Ivana Trump. Luther Vandross. Heath Ledger. George Balanchine. George Gershwin. Mario Cuomo. Biggie Smalls. Nikola Tesla. Celia Cruz. Joan Rivers. Aaliyah. Ayn Rand. Lena Horne. Norman Mailer. Philip Seymour Hoffman. Logan Roy.What do these people have in common?The answer is that, shortly after their deaths, they passed through the Frank E. Campbell funeral home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.For over a century, Frank E. Campbell has been the mortuary of choice for New York’s power brokers and celebrities. In some circles, to end up anywhere else would be a fate even worse than death.The writer Gay Talese, a longtime Upper East Sider, has lost count of how many services he has attended there.“For a certain kind of person, they must end up at Campbell as a matter of honor and status,” Mr. Talese, 92, said. “And Campbell is the rare New York business that might never close, because it will never run out of customers — because everyone dies.”“Eventually, sure, I’ll probably have my own moment at Campbell,” he continued. “I’ll enter reclined on my back and have a moment of silence there while friends and relatives come to stare at me. It’s the final stop. The last picture show.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Southwest Airlines Agrees to Board Changes After Pressure From Elliott

    The airline has been under pressure from the hedge fund Elliott to replace its top management and make other changes to increase its profits.Southwest Airlines on Tuesday announced an overhaul of its board of directors, including the planned departure of its executive chairman, Gary Kelly, after a meeting with a hedge fund that has called for sweeping changes at the company.The board announced the changes while expressing unanimous support for the airline’s chief executive, Bob Jordan, who with Mr. Kelly had been the target of sharp criticism from the hedge fund, Elliott Investment Management. In a statement, the airline said its board was “confident that there is no better leader” for Southwest than Mr. Jordan, who became chief executive in February 2022.“Bob has a proven track record over decades and, most importantly, he has what it takes to lead Southwest through a significant transformation and usher in a new era of profitable growth, innovation and industry leadership,” Mr. Kelly, who was chief executive before Mr. Jordan took over, said in a letter to shareholders.Southwest presented its plan to Elliott at a meeting in New York on Monday. It was not clear whether the overhaul would satisfy Elliott, which has a roughly 11 percent stake in the company. Elliott has called for both Mr. Kelly and Mr. Jordan to step down and has sought to replace most of the directors on the company’s board.Shares of Southwest were down nearly 3 percent in morning trading on Tuesday.“We are pleased that the board is beginning to recognize the degree of change that will be required at Southwest, and we hope to engage with the remaining directors to align on the further necessary changes,” Elliott said in a statement. “The need for thoughtful, deliberate change at Southwest remains urgent, and we believe the highly qualified nominees we have put forward are the right people to steady the board and chart a new course for the airline.”Mr. Kelly, who was the airline’s chief executive for nearly two decades before Mr. Jordan took over, said that he planned to retire after the airline’s annual meeting in the spring. Six other mostly longstanding board members plan to step down after a meeting in November.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Lincoln Center Theater Chooses Lear deBessonet as Artistic Director

    DeBessonet, currently the artistic director of Encores!, will work alongside Bartlett Sher, who will serve as executive producer.Lincoln Center Theater, a leading nonprofit theater with a long track record of producing luxe Broadway musical revivals as well as contemporary plays, has chosen new leadership for the first time in more than three decades.The theater’s next artistic director will be Lear deBessonet, 44, a stage director who specializes in musical revivals as the artistic director of the Encores! program at New York City Center. DeBessonet will succeed André Bishop, who has led Lincoln Center Theater since 1992, most recently with the title of producing artistic director; he is retiring in June.DeBessonet will work with Bartlett Sher, 65, a Tony-winning director who is a resident director at the organization, and who will now assume the title of executive producer. DeBessonet will select and oversee the theater’s shows and its day-to-day operations; Sher will focus on strategic planning, fund-raising and global partnerships. They will both report to the board’s chairman, Kewsong Lee.In an interview, DeBessonet said that “there is no greater job I can imagine” than running Lincoln Center Theater. “The American theater is the great passion of my life,” she said. “I’ve wanted to be a director and to run a theater since I was a 5-year-old in Baton Rouge.”The changes come amid a tidal wave of turnover throughout the American theater, prompted by a variety of factors, including the retirements of many regional and Off Broadway theater pioneers, as well as the ousters of some leaders who lost support. Across the industry, leaders are facing a new reality: These jobs have become increasingly challenging as nonprofits face rising costs, dwindled audiences, pressures to feature programming that advances social justice but also sells tickets, and changing entertainment consumption habits.Bartlett Sher, who has been directing at Lincoln Center Theater for two decades, will become the nonprofit’s executive producer. Cindy Ord/Getty Images For Tony Awards ProWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    5 Climate Questions for the Candidates Ahead of the Presidential Debate

    Here’s what the Times climate team would ask Harris and Trump about climate change, energy policy and the environment.As Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump take the stage for their first, and possibly only, debate ahead of the election on Nov. 5, it’s unclear whether or not climate change will be one of the topics they address.The two candidates have diametrically opposed views on the broad outlines of that central issue. Harris has referred to global warming as a “crisis” that needs to be addressed with urgency. Trump has called climate change a hoax and vowed to “drill, baby, drill.”On a number of more specific points, however, Harris and Trump have offered clues to their policy priorities that provide insights into how each might govern should they win.If Times climate reporters and editors were moderating the debate, which is hosted by ABC News, here are five questions we would ask, and some background to inform how each candidate might answer.The United States is currently the world’s biggest producer of both oil and gas, the burning of which are the main contributors to global warming. Would your administration continue working to expand fossil fuel production, or is it time for the U.S. to start moving away from fossil fuels?Harris has walked back her 2019 pledge to ban fracking, a key way of producing oil and gas. Her softening of this stance reflects economic concerns. While the Biden-Harris administration has worked to promote clean energy, it has also benefited from an economy buoyed by record fossil fuel production. Besides fracking, another key area of focus is liquefied natural gas exports. The Biden administration said it would ban new liquefied natural gas export permits, but that decision is being challenged in court.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Art Institute of Chicago Receives $75 Million Gift

    The donation from Aaron I. Fleischman and Lin Lougheed will support the museum’s new galleries.The Art Institute of Chicago on Tuesday announced a gift of $75 million that will support new galleries for its collection of late-19th-century, modern and contemporary art.The new building will bear the names of Aaron I. Fleischman and Lin Lougheed, the married couple whose donation is the largest individual naming gift in the museum’s history.“This converts what has been an aspiration into a reality,” said James Rondeau, the president and director of the Art Institute.“It is just about access to collections,” he continued. “Only about 16 percent of our modern and contemporary collection is on view.”The museum has yet to announce the total cost of the building project, the square footage or a completion date, Rondeau said. While the addition will increase the Art Institute’s $115 million annual operating budget, Rondeau said the museum had prepared for that by building its endowment by $200 million over the past five years.The new galleries are part of a project that began in 2019 to enhance existing spaces and explore how to make the most of the museum’s campus. The Art Institute is working with the architecture firm Barozzi Veiga.Fleischman, formerly a prominent lawyer in Washington, began collecting in the mid-1980s and has been a trustee of the Art Institute for nearly 15 years. Lougheed received a doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University, and he has specialized in international education.“Touring the collections on view and in storage I came to believe that more of the museum’s extraordinary collection needed to be available to visitors and presented in world-class architecture,” Fleischman said in a statement, adding that he was excited “for the museum to tell a more complete story of modern and contemporary art.” More

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    Tory Burch, Rachel Scott, and the Female Fashion Figures Making Waves

    One year ago, when it was announced that Sarah Burton was leaving Alexander McQueen after 26 years (13 as creative director), that she would be replaced by a young guy named Seán McGirr, and that that meant that all of the designers at Kering, the second largest fashion group in the world, would be men, the news caused a rare moment of breast-beating and introspection in the fashion world. Why were all the big jobs going to men? Why did there seem to be so few women designers?Well, on Monday it turned out that Ms. Burton, and her special kind of poetic power-through-tailoring, would be staging a return, when LVMH named her creative director of Givenchy. That happened to be the same day Tory Burch held a show in New York that solidified her position as one of the tent-pole labels of the week. It was the same day Rachel Scott unveiled a Diotima show that confirmed her as one of the most exciting young designers in the city.All three events functioned as a reminder that not only are there women designers — there are great ones. Perhaps it’s time to focus on them. You see interesting things when you do. Ms. Burch being a prime example.For the last few years she has been pushing herself out of the comfort zone of Lee Radziwill-on-vacation caftans and ballet flats on which she made her name, surprising a fashion world that had largely pigeonholed her as a designer of suburban chic. Instead she has made an increasingly convincing case that she is the Claire McCardell of her generation, a legitimate heir to the woman who helped invent American sportswear.This season was no different, the combination of her main lines and Tory Sport, which used to be designed as two separate collections, leading her to … well, a combination of sport and style that seemed particularly apropos in a post-Olympics, post-WFH world.Tory Burch, spring 2025Swipe for More →Tory BurchYuki Iwamura/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSlaven Vlasic/Getty Images For Tory BurchSlaven Vlasic/Getty Images For Tory BurchSlaven Vlasic/Getty Images For Tory BurchSlaven Vlasic/Getty Images For Tory BurchWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More