Biden Looks to Step Up Federal Disaster Aid for Texas

Plenty of companies are cutting costs to weather the pandemic recession. Few are trying to do so while also spending billions of dollars to satisfy their regulators. These are the tasks facing Wells Fargo WFC 5.17% & Co. Chief Executive Charles Scharf, who is attempting to slash at least $8 billion from the San Francisco bank’s annual budget. The bank’s expenses last year were $57.63 billion. Wells Fargo is simultaneously shelling out money to remake the vast risk-and-control systems that regulators have said were inadequate to catch the fake-account scandal that got it in hot water more than four years ago. Wells is still subject to 10 regulatory penalties known as consent orders. The harshest, from the Federal Reserve, has capped the bank’s growth for three years.

How to Slash Costs Without Angering Regulators

Severe weather conditions hitting much of the U.S. have caused some semiconductor companies to idle production capacity, threatening to exacerbate a chip shortage that has already prompted car makers to curtail output at some plants. South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. , one of the world’s biggest chip makers, operates two factories in Austin, Texas, and was asked by local authorities to shut those down on Tuesday, said a company spokeswoman. Samsung expects to resume production as soon as possible and, the spokeswoman said, was waiting for electricity provider Austin Energy to advise when the chip maker’s operations could start up again. Texas has suffered widespread power disruptions that began early Monday amid a severe winter storm. The outages have prompted local officials to ask companies to reduce operations to minimize demand on the region’s power grid. The Austin facilities represent about 28% of Samsung’s overall production capacity, according to Citi analysts. Austin is a manufacturing hub for Samsung, which is considering a $17 billion plan to expand its operations there or in other parts of the U.S.

So You’ve Bought a House in the ’Burbs. Here’s How to Make Good With Your Neighbors.

As more of you flee the cities for the suburbs, exurbs and not-at-all-urbs, here are some things your new neighbors would like you to know. When you marry someone, you marry their whole family. It is the same with buying a house. You buy the whole neighborhood. And the neighbors. Like in-laws, your new neighbors will be watching you. You screw up, they won’t forget. They will be talking about that time your garbage can fell over and dumped dirty diapers on the street until that diapered child is married. My neighbors are still giving me grief about the year we left our Christmas wreath up until March, a shame we wear like a brownish, crumbly Scarlet Letter “O.” The ways you can alienate your new community are endless. Making too much noise, owning aggressive pets, driving too fast down the street, cutting down trees that don’t belong to you, leaving major appliances in your front yard, acting like a total Karen, selling drugs out of your garage, burning crosses on your lawn—these obvious infractions will earn you neighborhood pariah status and, potentially, jail time. But even if you are not a jerk or a criminal, are thoughtful, kind and leave your major appliances in the house where they belong, here’s a secret: There is a whole list of neighborhood crimes you won’t even know you’re committing. Here are some: Gratuitous shoveling: Shovel your driveway, shovel the sidewalk on both sides of your driveway, shovel out the elderly person across the street. Don’t shovel the driveway of your able-bodied next door neighbor. That is virtue signaling and it will not be received well by the able-bodied owners, who have egos that you just bruised. The only time it is acceptable to shovel the driveway of the able-bodied is when they have a boat, pool and/or awesome outdoor entertainment area, in which case someone else probably beat you to it. Failure to wave: You’re walking down the street. Someone you don’t know waves from their porch as you pass. You don’t see it. Or maybe you do and you don’t wave back, or you wave back in an insufficiently enthusiastic way. The talk will have started before you even set foot back in your house. “He’s stuck up.” “Is that the new guy?” “Ya. He’s from New York, right?” “Yes. Of course.” “I knew it.” If a neighbor waves at you, wave back like they are a beloved relative risen from the dead.

Biden Looks to Step Up Federal Disaster Aid for Texas

The Texas Division of Emergency Management said it had transported 1.7 million bottles of water and assisted in delivering ready-to-eat meals. It said the Texas Military Department had deployed six units in North Texas earlier in the week to assist with rescuing stranded motorists and conducting welfare checks. The division said Friday it had requested water, meals, blankets and generators from FEMA, but didn’t provide details on when it had done so. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s office referred questions about the pace of the response to Emergency Management Chief W. Nim Kidd, who said icy roadways had made it impossible to move commodities such as water across the state. Mr. Kidd said ice had kept officials from accessing an emergency warehouse in Fort Worth until Thursday night. “We continue to make tremendous strides to overcome the challenges over the past week,” Mr. Abbott said Friday. “We’re working nonstop with local and federal partners. After a request from Mr. Abbott, Mr. Biden declared a state of emergency on Sunday night for all 254 counties in the state, allowing FEMA to make generators and fuel available to maintain critical infrastructure. The governor then asked the president on Thursday for major disaster assistance, which would allow local communities to seek federal help to pay for damage to infrastructure and state residents to recover payments for property damage. Local governments said they still haven’t received the aid they requested from the federal government via the state. Former Harris County Judge Ed Emmett, who was in office during Hurricane Harvey and numerous other natural disasters, said he hadn’t seen the same level of coordination that is routine for responding to hurricanes. “Nobody saw this coming—OK,” he said. “But once it occurred, why didn’t people start thinking about what’s really needed out there.” As of Friday afternoon, an estimated 14.6 million Texans were without safe drinking water, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. A winter storm had burst pipes across the state, leading to dry faucets and an order from city governments to boil any accessible tap water to make it safe to drink. The water crisis came after days of blackouts across the state in subfreezing temperatures.

IBM Is the Biggest Gainer in the Management Top 250

 

A big improvement in the tech giant’s score for innovation helped boost its overall score.

IBM is No. 3 overall in the Management Top 250, and No. 2 for innovation.

PHOTO: LOREN ELLIOTT/REUTERS

Feb. 9, 2021 3:11 pm ET

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International Business Machines Corp. posted the biggest increase in overall score of any company in the Management Top 250 ranking for 2020. DexCom Inc. DXCM 1.97% and General Electric Co. GE 3.35% had the second- and third-largest gains, respectively.

The Management Top 250 ranking, developed by the Drucker Institute, measures corporate effectiveness by examining performance in five categories: customer satisfaction, employee engagement and development, innovation, social responsibility and financial strength.

EXPLORE THE MANAGEMENT TOP 250

• See how all the ranked companies perform across five areas.
• See the full Management Top 250 Report

IBM IBM -1.44% ‘s overall score rose 14.9 points from 2019 to 2020. The company is third in the 2020 overall ranking with a score of 95.7. Microsoft Corp. is the highest-ranked company overall, with a score of 103. IBM’s biggest improvement came in the innovation category, where it finished second among the more than 800 companies Drucker studied.

DexCom’s overall score rose 12.6 points to 57 in 2020, placing the company at No. 185 overall. Its biggest gain was in financial strength, where it is ranked No. 33. GE gained 11.7 points to 72.6 and is ranked No. 20 overall. Its biggest gain was in innovation, where it ranks No. 6.

You can explore the full, detailed rankings here, and a list of the 2020 Management Top 250 all-stars, companies that excelled in all five categories, here. In the coming weeks we’ll take a look at the leaders in each of the five categories and the companies whose scores improved the most from the previous year in each category.

–Gerard Yates

Biggest Gainers Overall

The companies in the 2020 Management Top 250 with the biggest gains from 2019 in their overall scores

	COMPANY	GAIN FROM 2019	2020 OVERALL SCORE	2020 OVERALL RANK
1	International Business Machines Corp.	14.9	95.7	3
2	DexCom Inc.	12.6	57	185
3	General Electric Co.	11.7	72.6	20
4	Target Corp.	10.9	71.5	26
5	Hologic Inc.	9.7	58	165
6	Xerox Holdings Corp.	9.4	57.5	177
7	Merck & Co.	9.3	77.9	11
8	Ford Motor Co.	9.1	73.1	19
9	Gilead Sciences Inc.	8.8	62.2	95
10	PerkinElmer Inc.	8.6	56.5	197

Source: Drucker Institute

U.N. Report Accuses Blackwater Founder Erik Prince of Libya Weapons Ban Violations, Diplomat Says

 

Mr. Prince likely to be referred to the U.N.’s Sanctions Committee, which could order a freeze on his assets or a travel ban

Blackwater founder Erik Prince in 2017.

PHOTO: JACQUELYN MARTIN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

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Updated Feb. 19, 2021 9:27 pm ET

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DUBAI—A United Nations report accuses Blackwater founder Erik Prince of assisting in violations of an international arms embargo on Libya, placing the military contractor at risk of U.N. sanctions, according to a diplomat with access to the report.

The report by the U.N. Panel of Experts that monitors the ban on transfers of weapons to Libya says companies controlled by Mr. Prince provided three aircraft to assist in sending helicopters and military contractors to help Russian-backed Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar in 2019.

The plan to send Western mercenaries to Libya developed as foreign weapons and fighters poured into the country in 2019 and 2020 from a variety of outside powers, including Russia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, deepening a conflict that has been ongoing since 2014, the report says, according to the diplomat.

Mr. Prince is likely to be referred to the U.N.’s Sanctions Committee, which could order a freeze on his assets or a travel ban, according to the New York-based diplomat and a former official with knowledge of the situation. The permanent members of the Security Council, including the U.S., Russia, or China, could veto any potential sanctions against Mr. Prince, who has had dealings with all three countries.

“Erik Prince had absolutely nothing to do with any operation in Libya in 2019, or at any other time,” a spokesman for Mr. Prince said in an email.

A U.N. spokesman said the organization had no specific comment on the Panel of Experts report.

“It is incumbent on our member states to ensure that the sanctions are respected and enforced,” said U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric De La Rivière.

The report itself has been finalized and submitted to the U.N.’s headquarters in New York. It is unlikely to be altered before it is released to the public in the coming weeks, according to diplomats.

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Mr. Prince, a former Navy SEAL, came to prominence during the Iraq war, when Blackwater provided private security guards to U.S. officials and contractors working for the company shot dead more than a dozen Iraqi civilians in a 2007 mass killing in Baghdad. Blackwater has since changed its name to Xe Services and later Academi.

Mr. Prince’s financial and political ambitions rose because of his close relationship to the Trump administration. Mr. Prince is the brother of Mr. Trump’s former education secretary, Betsy DeVos. In December, Mr. Trump pardoned the four Blackwater guards accused in the 2007 killings.

According to the diplomat, the forthcoming U.N. report says companies controlled by Mr. Prince sold three aircraft to people who sent Western mercenaries and military hardware to aid Mr. Haftar in the opening months of the commander’s failed assault on Libya’s internationally recognized government in Tripoli. Launched in April 2019, Mr. Haftar’s attack on the capital plunged Libya into its worst fighting since the armed rebellion that overthrew Col. Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

According to the diplomat, the U.N. panel’s report says that firms controlled by Mr. Prince sold three aircraft through a series of shell companies to a Dubai-based company, Lancaster 6, which sent helicopters and a group of Western mercenaries to Libya to support Mr. Haftar. The plan unraveled, and the fighters left Libya.

A member of the Libyan National Army commanded by Khalifa Haftar at a site west of Sirte, Libya, controlled by the warlord last August.

PHOTO: ESAM OMRAN AL-FETORI/REUTERS

One of the planes, a Pilatus PC-6, was delivered to Libya for use in reconnaissance and intelligence operations for Mr. Haftar’s forces, according to the diplomat with access to the report. A U.S. company, TST Humanitarian Surveys, controlled by Mr. Prince through a U.S.-based attorney, sold the plane to another company in Austria partly owned by Mr. Prince, which then sold it to Lancaster 6 in June 2019, the diplomat with access to the report said. The plane arrived in Libya days later, according to the diplomat.

The other two planes, including an Antonov An-26 cargo plane intended to transport helicopters, arrived in Jordan and didn’t fly to Libya, but were identified in the report as part of a broader plan to send military aid to Mr. Haftar.

The plan also involved several associates of Mr. Prince, according to the diplomat and the former official with knowledge of the situation. The operation was first reported last year by Bloomberg and the New York Times. Until now, U.N. investigators hadn’t directly accused Mr. Prince of being involved in the scheme.

Using funds from a Dubai-based company and a cover story involving a fake plan for a geospatial survey in Jordan, the team later obtained in South Africa three Aérospatiale Gazelle helicopters and three Super Puma helicopters. At least one of the helicopters was transported to Libya. The helicopters were purchased for a total of more than $13 million, a price well above their market value and one that suggested profit was a key motive behind the operation.

“This is basically a scheme where they wanted to make money around procurement of weapons,” said the former official with knowledge of the situation.

The role in the effort of companies based in Dubai also highlights Mr. Prince’s close ties to the United Arab Emirates and its ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed. Mr. Prince has been linked to a range of mercenary efforts on behalf of the Emirates, including an effort to combat Somali pirates, according to a previous U.N. report. The U.A.E. also has been a key military backer of Mr. Haftar, sending air defenses, armed drones, ammunition and airplanes to support the militia leader’s campaigns, according to multiple U.N. reports. Mr. Prince visited Abu Dhabi in recent weeks, according to the diplomat.

The U.N. report, the diplomat said, also accuses Mr. Prince of violating a U.N. Security Council resolution by failing to provide information about the alleged violations of the arms embargo when contacted by the Panel of Experts.

In addition to naming Mr. Prince in the report, the U.N. Panel of Experts is also expected to separately refer Mr. Prince to the United Nations’ Sanctions Committee, which will make a decision about whether to impose an asset freeze or travel ban to be implemented by individual countries including the U.S., the diplomat said.