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    Gov. Jim Justice Faces Heavy Business Debts as He Seeks Senate Seat

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    The Justice companies have long had a reputation for not paying their debts. But that may be catching up to them.Jim Justice, the businessman-turned-politician governor of West Virginia, has been pursued in court for years by banks, governments, business partners and former employees for millions of dollars in unmet obligations.And for a long time, Mr. Justice and his family’s companies have managed to stave off one threat after another with wily legal tactics notably at odds with the aw-shucks persona that has endeared him to so many West Virginians. On Tuesday, he is heavily favored to win the Republican Senate primary and cruise to victory in the general election, especially after the departure of the Democratic incumbent, Joe Manchin III.But now, as he wraps up his second term as governor and campaigns for a seat in the U.S. Senate, things are looking dicier. Much like Donald J. Trump, with whom he is often compared — with whom he often compares himself — Mr. Justice has faced a barrage of costly judgments and legal setbacks.And this time, there may be too many, some suspect, for Mr. Justice, 73, and his family to fend them all off. “It’s a simple matter of math,” said Steven New, a lawyer in Mr. Justice’s childhood hometown, Beckley, W.Va., who, like many lawyers in coal country, has tangled with Justice companies. Mr. Justice and his scores of businesses would be able to handle some of these potential multimillion-dollar judgments in isolation, Mr. New said. But “when you add it all up, and put the judgments together close in time, it would appear he doesn’t have enough,” he said.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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      Oil Prices Rise as the West Imposes a Cap on Russian Crude

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      Energy traders pushed crude prices higher on Monday following Europe’s embargo of seaborne Russian crude and a price cap by Group of 7 nations went into effect.Will Russia find buyers for its crude?Sergei Karpukhin/ReutersOil prices climb despite efforts to cap Russian exports Crude oil prices rose this morning after a whirlwind of events that could drastically alter the supply and pricing of energy this winter.An E.U. embargo on Russia’s seaborne oil imports went into effect on Monday, following a decision on Sunday by OPEC producers and Russia to keep production quotas unchanged. Those developments, together with an agreement on Friday by Group of 7 nations to impose a $60 price cap on Russian crude and the emergence of more signs that China is easing its Covid restrictions, set off a modest buying spree among energy traders.By 6 a.m. Eastern, Brent crude, the global benchmark, climbed 2.7 percent, topping $87 per barrel, and West Texas Intermediate was above $82 a barrel.Crude prices have whipsawed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, rocketing above $100 per barrel in the spring, only to fall over the summer on fears of a global recession. A slowdown in China in particular had capped demand, but prices have remained volatile.Analysts have been scrutinizing fallout from the oil price cap, a move designed to punish Russia for the war in Ukraine — but also meant to avoid significant distortions in the energy markets that would force consumers and businesses to pay even higher prices for fuel.Unsurprisingly, Moscow said this weekend that it wouldn’t accept the Western price cap, and that it would cut sales to countries that participate in the arrangement. How much of an effect that will have is unclear: Even before Monday, European countries have systematically reduced their Russian crude purchases since the start of the war in Ukraine — only for China to step in and buy more oil, often at a discount. But in recent weeks, China has paused some purchases as it waited for details of the price cap to be announced.Helima Croft, the head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, warned in an investor note this weekend that prices could be even more volatile in the weeks ahead as traders watch for signs that Russia could fully cut off oil exports to former trading partners in retaliation for the price cap.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING Chinese cities ease zero-Covid restrictions. Shenzhen and Shanghai were the latest big cities to scrap requirements like testing before traveling on public transport, following widespread protests against Beijing’s tough pandemic rules. Shares in Hong Kong and Shanghai jumped amid investor hopes of a broader easing of Chinese Covid restrictions, though analysts warned such a move would take time.Lachlan Murdoch is set to testify in a Fox News lawsuit on Monday. The C.E.O. of Fox will be deposed as part of a lawsuit against the network by Dominion Voting Systems. He is the highest-ranking executive to be ensnared in the lawsuit, in which Dominion argues it was defamed by Fox News anchors repeatedly amplifying false claims about the company’s voting machines in the 2020 election.Wall Street banks weigh cutting bonuses. Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase may cut bonus pools for investment bankers by as much as 30 percent, Bloomberg reports, amid a steep drop in M.& A. activity. That follows plans by Goldman Sachs to cut bonuses for its traders, even though their division posted strong results.Credit Suisse’s investment bank spinoff reportedly draws big new backers. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and a merchant bank run by the former Barclays C.E.O. Bob Diamond may invest in CS First Boston, which is set to be spun off from Credit Suisse, The Wall Street Journal reports. The spinoff is a key part of the Swiss bank’s planned revamp.Delta reaches a nearly $8 billion pay-raise deal with pilots. The agreement in principle would raise pilots’ pay by 31 percent over four years, as well as include a one-time payout. If finalized, the agreement will set a baseline for other airlines in their negotiations with pilots.Crypto’s false calm If this is the crypto apocalypse, investors see a buying opportunity. The price of Bitcoin is up nearly 7 percent, or almost $1,200, in the past week, to just under $17,400.But that market calm does not mean the crypto contagion is contained. The fallout from the collapse last month of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange, FTX, has spread to other firms, setting off a wave of layoffs, lawsuits and investigations. Shareholders of Silvergate, the U.S. bank that processed payments and money transfers for FTX, sued the bank for negligence, calling the exchange a Ponzi scheme.Meanwhile, customers of Gemini, the crypto exchange owned by the Winklevoss twins, are owed as much as $900 million from Genesis, the crypto lender that has faced severe financial distress since FTX’s collapse, according to The Financial Times. And ByBit, a major crypto exchange, announced this weekend that it would cut 30 percent of its staff, the latest firm to cut its head count as digital asset prices sink.Here’s what else is happening in crypto:Mr. Bankman-Fried said on Sunday that he would be willing to testify before the House Financial Services Committee. The catch: S.B.F., as he is known, probably won’t be ready to speak with lawmakers in time for Dec. 13 hearings into the implosion of FTX.Mr. Bankman-Fried’s media tour shows no signs of slowing down. He told The Financial Times that he regretted giving Alameda Research, the trading affiliate of FTX, favorable borrowing limits.S.B.F.’s father, the Stanford law professor Joseph Bankman, has canceled a class he was set to teach next year. Bankman did work for FTX’s philanthropic efforts and is helping with his son’s legal defense.FTX’s bankruptcy has international regulators, including those in Cyprus, Turkey and the Bahamas, squabbling over the company’s assets, potentially complicating which customers get repaid and how much.Andrew Vara, the U.S. bankruptcy trustee for FTX’s case, called on the Delaware court to appoint an independent examiner into the exchange’s sudden collapse, saying there is substantial evidence to suggest that misconduct and fraud were involved.Even though calls for investigations are intensifying, that doesn’t mean Bankman-Fried’s arrest is imminent.On the light side: S.B.F., an eager player of the League of Legends video game, has been getting shade from the likes of Elon Musk and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for being a mediocre player.Have normal times returned to Twitter? Elon Musk is still running Twitter, so naturally, there is still plenty of drama around the social network — notably in the billionaire owner’s decision to actively promote the release of internal documents about executives’ 2020 decision to restrict tweets linking to a news report about Hunter Biden.Despite that, it appears that some major advertisers are slowly returning to Twitter’s platform, after many hit pause following Musk’s promise to revamp how the site moderates user content.Amazon plans to resume buying ads on Twitter, to the tune of $100 million a year, according to Zoë Schiffer of Platformer. Although the e-commerce giant, unlike others, had not quit its ad spending altogether since Musk’s takeover, it had paused some of its campaigns.Meanwhile, Mr. Musk said in a live audio event on Twitter over the weekend that Apple had “fully resumed” ad spending on the social network. The iPhone maker has long been one of the biggest ad purchasers on Twitter. Last week, Mr. Musk said that he had resolved a feud with Apple, chalking up the disagreements to a misunderstanding.That’s a rare bit of welcome news for Twitter’s business. The Times reported last week that the company had rapidly cut revenue projections, as U.S. ad sales continued to come in well below internal expectations. Advertisers have been alarmed by Mr. Musk’s pledges to lessen restrictions on user content, as well as a botched rollout of revamped verification badges that briefly let paying subscribers impersonate brands. Automakers like G.M. have also been concerned that Twitter could share their ad data with the Musk-owned Tesla, a key rival.Mr. Musk introduced a new bit of drama into Twitter over the weekend, when he touted the release of the so-called Twitter Files. The independent journalist Matt Taibbi — who famously called Goldman Sachs a “vampire squid” — published internal documents showing executives’ deliberations about how to handle dissemination of a New York Post story based on files from a laptop stolen from Hunter Biden.The move rankled some former Twitter executives, including the company’s former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, who said publicizing unredacted documents was “fundamentally unacceptable.” (Musk later conceded, “I think we should have excluded some email addresses.”)“It’s like a cake that was dropped on the table and it looks more or less fine, but inside it’s all blown up.” — Vladislav Inozemtsev, the Washington-based director of the Center for Post-Industrial Studies, a Russian research group, on the state of the Russian economy following sanctions and an exodus of Western firms.The week ahead Politics, inflation data and a trickle of earnings reports will be in focus this week. Here’s what to look for:Tomorrow: A key Senate seat is up for grabs in the Georgia runoff election. Early-voting tallies have smashed state records.Wednesday: New data on the health of the world’s two largest economies will be published, with U.S. consumer credit and China trade data scheduled for release.Thursday: Costco and Broadcom release quarterly results.Friday: The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index and Producer Price Index data are set to come out. China will also release a fresh batch of inflation data.THE SPEED READ DealsOne of the Democratic commissioners at the F.T.C. reportedly favors a less-confrontational approach to Microsoft’s $69 billion takeover of Activision Blizzard, potentially undercutting efforts to block the deal. (New York Post)The private equity firm CVC is said to be weighing options, including a sale, of the computer accessories maker Razer, less than a year after buying the business. (Bloomberg)Assa Abloy will sell its Emtek and Yale security brands to Fortune Brands Home & Security for $800 million. (Reuters)PolicyMeta faces a trio of E.U. privacy fines that could exceed $2 billion, a record. (Politico)The European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, said that Europe needed to overhaul its public investment rules so its firms could better compete against American counterparts who receive Inflation Reduction Act funding. (FT)New Zealand plans to force Meta’s Facebook and Google to pay news publishers for the content hosted on their platforms, taking a cue from Australia and Canada. (WSJ)Best of the restIt’s not just Big Tech: Big media companies are cutting jobs, too. (WSJ)“Goblin mode,” an Elon Musk favorite, was named Oxford Languages’ 2022 word of the year. (NYT)Activision Blizzard game testers unanimously voted to form a union. (Reuters)“The 4-day week: does it actually work?” (FT)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More

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      Big Tech and the Fed

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      Some tech companies’ earnings are flagging, in what could be a positive sign for the Federal Reserve.Still big.Noah Berger/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhat tech earnings say about the economy The long-booming bottom lines of major tech companies are all of a sudden smaller than expected. That might be a good thing. Big Tech sailed through the pandemic with its profits mostly intact. The fact that some firms’ results are now flagging could be a positive sign for the Federal Reserve, which is trying to engineer a slowdown as it fights the nation’s worst bout of inflation in four decades.The big question for investors, and perhaps the Fed, is whether the profits of Apple, Alphabet, Amazon and the other tech giants, along with corporate America in general, have fallen enough.Microsoft and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, kicked off what appears to be a disappointing round of quarterly reports for the U.S.’s largest tech companies yesterday. Meta will release its results this afternoon, with Apple and Amazon rounding out Big Tech’s earnings announcements tomorrow.Microsoft’s profits, while below expectations, were still up. Sales of its signature software products, like Office, rose 13 percent. Its cloud services were up 40 percent. And LinkedIn, the professional social network Microsoft bought in 2016, grew 26 percent from a year ago, continuing to benefit from the tightest job market in decades.Alphabet’s sales rose 13 percent. In another good sign for the economy, the jump was driven by better-than-expected sales in its core Google search engine business, while results were mixed elsewhere. A jump in expenses and an exit from its Russian-related businesses caused profits to slump 14 percent.The results were positive enough for investors. Alphabet’s shares rose nearly 5 percent on the earnings news to $110. Microsoft’s shares jumped $10, or nearly 4 percent, to $262. Executives at both companies said they saw evidence of a weaker economy. “We are not immune to what is happening in the macro broadly,” Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, said on a call with analysts. Alphabet’s chief financial officer, Ruth Porat, told analysts that a pullback in spending by some advertisers reflected “uncertainty about a number of factors.”Few are betting that the earnings reports will change the Fed’s approach. Its policymakers are meeting this week, and they are widely expected to continue raising benchmark interest rates. While central bankers “will likely acknowledge a recent weakening in economic momentum, the Fed will likely feel the need to appear resolute in battling inflation until there are clear signs that it is abating,” wrote David Kelly, the chief global strategist of J.P. Morgan Asset Management, in a note to clients earlier this week.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING Kraken, the crypto exchange, is under investigation for possible sanctions violations. The Treasury Department is looking into whether Kraken illegally allowed users in Iran and elsewhere to buy and sell digital tokens. Shares of Coinbase, a larger crypto exchange, plunged yesterday after reports that the S.E.C. was investigating whether it allowed trading in unregistered securities. Cathie Wood’s Ark funds reportedly dumped Coinbase shares yesterday for the first time this year.Antitrust legislation aimed at Big Tech may be off the table for now. Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, told donors at a Capitol Hill fund-raiser yesterday that the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which he had promised to bring to a vote this summer, lacks the support needed to get it to the Senate floor, Bloomberg reported. The bill’s bipartisan backers have been pressuring Schumer to act fast, before midterm elections that could change the balance of power in Congress.One America News, once a dependable Trump promoter, is struggling to survive. The network is being dropped by major carriers and faces a wave of defamation lawsuits for its outlandish stories about the 2020 election. OAN’s most recent blow is from Verizon, which will stop carrying the network on its Fios television service this week. It is now available to only a few thousand people who subscribe to regional cable providers.Teva Pharmaceuticals reaches a tentative $4.25 billion settlement over opioids. The proposed settlement, which is with some 2,500 local governments, states and tribes, would end thousands of lawsuits against one of the largest producers of the painkillers during the height of the opioid epidemic.Florida’s largest utility secretly funded a website that attacked its critics. Florida Power & Light bankrolled and controlled The Capitolist, a news site aimed at Florida lawmakers, through intermediaries from an Alabama consulting firm, an investigation by The Miami Herald found. The site claimed to be independent, but it advocated rate hikes and legislative favors in efforts that were directed by top executives at the utility.BlackRock downshifts on E.S.G. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, slashed its support for shareholder proposals on environmental and social issues this year, backing only 24 percent of such resolutions in the proxy season that ended in June, down from 43 percent in the previous period. The firm, which has long led the conscious investing movement, said this year’s proposals were “less supportable” and cited new regulatory guidance that opened the door to a broader range of policy-related proposals.The firm has criticized overly “prescriptive” resolutions. In a May memo, BlackRock signaled that Russia’s war in Ukraine was straining global energy supplies and shifting its calculations. “Many climate-related shareholder proposals sought to dictate the pace of companies’ energy transition plans despite continued consumer demand,” wrote the firm’s global head of investment stewardship, Sandy Boss. She noted that shareholders generally supported fewer environmental and social proposals this year as well, voting for 27 percent of resolutions, down from 36 percent in the previous proxy period.Opposition to E.S.G. is mounting. The environmental, social and governance investment push has been labeled “woke capitalism” by critics and is under fire from executives like Tesla’s Elon Musk, major investors like Bill Ackman and Republican politicians. In a speech yesterday, former Vice President Mike Pence, a possible 2024 hopeful, said that big government and big business were together advancing a “pernicious woke agenda.”E.S.G. supporters say critics may have a point. Andrew Behar, C.E.O. of the shareholder advocacy group As You Sow, agrees that many supposed E.S.G. investments don’t reflect true sustainability — with ever more capital directed toward the idea and many funds failing to live up to their promises. Behar argued that more corporate disclosures — which anti-E.S.G. groups oppose — would help to ensure that green investing actually works. He argues that critics also ignore a key financial incentive driving investor interest: knowing and lowering the costs of environmental issues throughout company operations, including risks from changing weather and the transition to more sustainable models. “We don’t have an E.S.G. problem,” Behar told DealBook. “We have a naming problem.”“I quit Starbucks. I had to. I just didn’t feel like that was justifiable. It’s like a small car payment.” — Fontaine Weyman, a 43-year-old songwriter from Charleston, S.C., on changing her coffee habits. Many Americans are dealing with the fastest inflation of their adult lives across a broad range of goods and services.Instagram tries to explain itself Instagram responded yesterday to criticism from some of its most popular users, including Kylie Jenner, about new features that made it more like its top rival, TikTok, the fast-growing video app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.Adam Mosseri, Instagram’s head, said that it was experimenting with several changes, and that he knew users were unhappy. “It’s not yet good,” he said of some of the tweaks in a video post. He stressed Instagram’s commitment to photos, the app’s original focus, but said, “I’m going to be honest, I do believe that more and more of Instagram is going to become video over time.”Reels, a short-video product, is one of the six main investment priorities at Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, according to an internal memo last month from Chris Cox, the company’s chief product officer. Cox said that users had doubled the amount of time they spent on Reels year over year, and that Meta would prioritize boosting ads in Reels “as quickly as possible.” Last week, Instagram announced that almost all videos in the app would be posted as Reels.The changes come as Meta heads into a new phase. Mark Zuckerberg, its founder and chief executive, has cut costs, reshuffled his leadership team and made clear that low-performing employees will be let go, writes The Times’s Mike Isaac. “Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here,” Zuckerberg said on a call late last month. In recent months, profit at Meta has fallen and revenue has slowed as the company has spent lavishly on augmented and virtual reality projects, and as the economic slowdown has hurt its advertising business.The high-profile complaints about Instagram’s revamp started in recent days, when Kylie Jenner, the beauty mogul with 361 million Instagram followers, shared an image on the site that read: “Make Instagram Instagram again. (stop trying to be tiktok i just want to see cute photos of my friends.) Sincerely, everyone.”“PRETTY PLEASE,” Kim Kardashian, Jenner’s half sister and the seventh-most-followed Instagram user, echoed in a later post. Yesterday, Chrissy Teigen, a model and author with 39 million followers, responded to Mosseri in a tweet, saying, “we don’t wanna make videos Adam lol.”Companies have reason to listen when social media stars speak up, writes The Times’s Kalley Huang. In 2018, after Snapchat overhauled its interface, Jenner tweeted: “sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me….” Within a week, Snap, the app’s parent company, had lost $1.3 billion in market value.THE SPEED READ DealsThe activist investor Elliott Management reportedly has a stake in Paypal and is pushing it to cut costs faster. (WSJ, Bloomberg)Twitter shareholders will be asked to vote on Elon Musk’s potential acquisition in September. (Bloomberg)PolicyThe Senate advanced an industrial policy bill that includes more than $52 billion in subsidies for chip makers building U.S. plants. (NYT)The short seller Carson Block is being sued over a $14 million award from the S.E.C. that raised questions about the agency’s whistle-blower program. (Bloomberg)After Apple launched a “buy now, pay later” service, the top U.S. consumer finance regulator warned Big Tech about undermining competition in the sector. (FT)A federal judge ruled that Uber doesn’t have to offer wheelchair-accessible cars in every city. (The Verge)Best of the restCredit Suisse, which reported larger second-quarter losses than expected, replaced its C.E.O. (FT)Customers are paying billions of dollars in fees for “free” checking. (Bloomberg)The default settings in Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft products that you should turn off right away. (NYT)This man sells mud to Major League Baseball. (NYT)“The Case of the $5,000 Springsteen Tickets” (NYT)R.I.P., Choco Taco. (NYT)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More