#finance

As I write this, the Comcast stock dividend is at 5.85%. I don't know if Comcast can eliminate that dividend without further cratering the stock price, but maybe a trim is needed? That might be enough savings for now to preserve spots for some people that are on the fence for layoffs?

Only a million dollar bonus last year for VPs? Times is hard.

https://www.beckerspayer.com/legal/elevance-sues-former-network-exec-to-block-oscar-move/

It was good to see that Finance were taking budget control matters so seriously that they held a large, global F2F meeting in San Diego.

Hope the bbq at the boss's mansion limited the catering budget.

I got the memo.
I showed up.

I noticed HQ here in NY is still a ghost town.
I’m thinking we must have laid off the entire HR department because they are nowhere to be found.

I might think the same thing about finance, but there were so few to begin with I know better, they were already “insourced” to Mexico and India, so whoever shows up, is just a survivor.

But at least the global marketing team showed up. Must be nice to spend all that money on F1 sponsorships and a trip to Cannes.

The vacant spaces in Sales is fine since they are out and in the field.

But there is always hope- At $129/share, we have tons of opportunity to see that how even lower.

Anyone have much insight into how she operates?

You should buy a piece of bull sh-t for $200 each or a piece of bear sh-t for $20 after a layoff ?

I knew taxes would be taken out of my severance, but I wasn't prepared for the amount. Over ten thousand dollars disappeared before the payment even reached me. Does anyone know whether some of that can be recovered through a tax refund? I'm trying to figure out how much of the payment I can actually count on.

About $18 billion in loans tied to an Oracle-leased data center in New Mexico ​has come under pressure, with loans quoted at 89 ‌to 91 cents on the dollar by syndicate banks including Santander and Jefferies.

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/oracles-18-billion-data-center-debt-under-pressure-ft-reports-2026-09-18/

Finance employee. It is breaking us. Leadership knows and doesn’t care. Time to jump ship? Anyone else feel the same?

thought the company is turning the corner.

thought AgentOS and FiUSD are to come soon.

thought the message to the Street wa well-received.

then stock has given up another ~10% in the past week or so.

What is Marvin the marvelous doing about the stock sinking to new year lows.

Does anyone know how do we access our 401k accounts from home? I plan on moving it next year once we get this year’s contributions but I like to check the balance every so often. I would like to figure out how now that my access is being shutoff in a few hours.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/wells-fargo-cfo-bank-mergers-491878b5

Financial services firm Fiserv Solutions is implementing another round of layoffs. This latest action will impact 98 employees at its New Jersey location. These cuts add to previous job reductions, bringing the total for the year to 216. The company provides software and systems for financial transactions. This includes services for banks, credit unions, and merchants.

Berkeley Heights, New Jersey

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/major-n-j-financial-services-180050715.html

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2026/09/09/wells-fargo-ceo-charlie-scharf-on-dealmaking-now-is-the-time-to-get-it-done.html

Finance Layoffs??? Why be mad at Finance? Seriously. They can only play the shell game for so long before the truth catches up. If leadership is failing, if the products are failing, if sales is failing, that’s not on Finance. Finance didn’t create this mess. They just finally stopped covering it up.

Firing Finance?
For what , telling the Executive Team the truth?
Finance didn’t make the decision to jack up pricing across the catalog. They only executed what they were instructed to do by the same people who have been making bone‑headed decisions for years.

And if anyone wants proof of how reckless these price hikes are, go look at the actual numbers:

Pride Foundations of Business MindTap:
• 2024: $80
• 2025: $105
• 2026: $160 depending on the option
• As high as $214 if you choose the MindTap with Mike Bikes SmartSims — a repurposed relic that should’ve been retired years ago.

Intro to Psychology MindTap:
• 2024: $80
• 2025: $105
• 2026: $127

Sellnow Comm MindTap:
• 2024: $52
• 2025: $58
• 2026: $105

These aren’t strategic increases.
These are panic‑driven revenue patches designed to cover massive losses the Executive Team doesn’t want employees or Apollo , to see.

And the pattern is obvious:
The biggest price hikes landed exactly where Cengage has the most volume and the most market share. That’s not coincidence. That’s volume‑based revenue manipulation.

Meanwhile, leadership shoved all existing business into the hands of Customer Success , a team already drowning , and then rolled out these price hikes in August, when schools were closed and faculty were on summer break.

Who risks their entire installed base like that?
Who gambles the business that pays the bills?
Who destabilizes the only revenue stream keeping the company alive?

Only an Executive Team that is completely disconnected from Higher Ed and obsessed with forcing numbers to look good for an IPO.

Apollo cannot possibly think this is acceptable.
You don’t increase revenue by punishing existing customers.
You increase revenue by winning business, not by pricing your way into a retention crisis.

Finance didn’t cause this.
Finance didn’t design this.
Finance didn’t push this.

Finance just stopped hiding it.
And now leadership is scrambling because the truth finally broke through the shell game

Timeline: According to SEC filings, Ellison adopted this plan on June 22, 2026, and it is set to remain active through October 24, 2026.

https://stocks.apple.com/AMGHmaVspTB2Sa6MsXca_7Q

The new chain of command has to happen first. We have Angelakis’ reports, the new HR and the new Finance announcements. Now we need Croney’s. Who are his new directs? If we follow the pattern, this should be the next announcement. Everything else is premature. No doubt this will be the most significant restructuring in Comcast history, but we need Croney’s structure to understand how everything will newly align.

I normally get my check on Thursday but did not receive it today. Anyone know if they do something weird with the last check? I can usually see deposits 2-3 days in advance and I see nothing incoming.

So for the first time in nearly 20 years Verizon did not announce an increase in the dividend payout in September, something the company has done since 2007. And with treasury yields increasing, there's less of a risk/reward advantage to invest in Verizon as opposed to buying T-bills if you're a large institutional investor. You see today the reaction of Wall Street on that news. Going to be tough sledding to $60/share without a lot of growth.

Financial accuracy 99%
Payment accuracy 98%
Process accuracy 97%

But no bonuses….

Ah ha! The ole buy back your own stock to try and get some shareholder buying momentum going routine! The oldest trick in the book!

Was this a Fiserv conversion? Just saw that there’s an issue with customers not being able to access their money until Tuesday.

Some good news before we go into the long weekend.

I hope it keeps going down. All those company stock buy backs are wasted capital and creating a bigger doom loop.

better yet- outsource all of finance . watch the stock hit $65

I’ve seen a few comments that finance is coming next on here. Any word on that?

Where is the budget coming from for my agent? Now that the official rollout has started, teams are going to be billed. Do people know this? Gonna cost my org an extra 300k/yr at least

Guess you can’t trust the markets to fairly set the market price based on the merits of your corporation’s actual running of the business. So, you have to revert to playing three card monte, hide the Queen.

Keep out stock until at least October 30th and on November 27th you will get a whole $0.885 per share in CASH!!!

So, if you have 200 shares, you get a check for $177 (before taxes)! Yippee!!! Woo hoo!!!

Never mind, considering investing some place else where your money will grow at a much higher rate between now and October 30th.

Her replacement is stepping into the role effective immediately.

Will there be aftershocks throughout finance?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-01/wells-fargo-analysts-join-jpmorgan-traders-in-turning-cautious-on-us-stocks?srnd=homepage-americas

"The bank’s analysts, led by Ohsung Kwon, the firm’s chief equity strategist, warn of “broad cautiousness” heading into September as investors grow increasingly anxious about the sustainability of the AI-investment bo-m. The team expects capital expenditure fears around the AI build-out to peak. However, they note, their sentiment indicator remains more positive than negative after a mid-August selloff."

With such deep competence around WF, who even doubts this.

I have no doubt that if his Kwon's recommendations are bad, they will be stacked ranked, IMd and fired.

Thierry mentioned there was an extra week of selling this quarter resulting in additional $570 million. If we didn’t account for this extra week, we would be showing negative growth? Misleading to investors or par for the course?

I recently hard that H100 has so far signed up no payers besides Aetna. They must be burning through millions annually of Health 100.

Anyone see a path where Health 100 succeeds financially for the company?

Is Capitalism Failing America?

When the American Promise No Longer Feels Promised

There was a time when America made a remarkably simple promise: work hard, get an education, develop valuable skills, and you could build a good life.

A good job. A steady income. Health insurance. A home. A car. A family. Children. A retirement.

None of these things were guaranteed. But they were attainable—and, for generations, they were a reasonable expectation for someone willing to work hard and play by the rules.

Today, that promise feels increasingly broken.

A person can earn an MBA, a PhD, or multiple advanced degrees. They can spend 25 years developing expertise in a specialized profession, create enormous value for their employers, and still be laid off tomorrow. Experience, loyalty and education are no longer reliable paths to economic security.

That raises an uncomfortable question:

Is capitalism failing America?

I don't believe capitalism itself is the problem.

Capitalism is extraordinarily good at creating wealth. It rewards innovation, entrepreneurship and risk-taking. It gives people the opportunity to build something valuable and be rewarded for it. I have no resentment toward people who become wealthy. If someone builds a great company, creates jobs and generates enormous value, they should benefit from that success.

But somewhere along the way, something has been lost.

The modern corporation can eliminate thousands of employees because doing so improves profitability, and it can be entirely rational from a shareholder's perspective. Employees, meanwhile, can give decades of their lives to a company and discover that their relationship with that company is ultimately transactional.

The employee is told to invest in themselves.

Get educated.

Work hard.

Develop expertise.

Create value.

But the corporation makes no comparable promise in return.

That is a fundamental change in the American economic bargain.

And then there is the extraordinary concentration of wealth at the very top.

I don't begrudge billionaires their success. But there is something profoundly unsettling about a system that can produce individuals with fortunes so enormous that the numbers become almost incomprehensible, while millions of people who work hard every day struggle to afford housing, healthcare, education and retirement.

This isn't about envy.

It is about proportion, fairness and power.

Extreme wealth isn't simply about having a nicer house or a better car. At extraordinary levels, wealth becomes economic and political power. Ownership of enormous amounts of productive capital allows wealth to generate more wealth, often at a rate that someone dependent primarily upon wages can never hope to match.

That creates two very different economic realities.

For the person who owns billions in assets, the economy can work while they sleep.

For the person whose primary asset is their ability to work, losing a job can bring the entire economic engine to a halt.

That disparity doesn't mean wealthy people are evil, nor does it mean they haven't earned much of what they possess. Many have created extraordinary companies and changed the world.

But extreme success is never entirely the product of individual effort. It also depends upon opportunity, timing, education, infrastructure, markets, other people's labor—and, inevitably, some degree of luck.

Perhaps we should be willing to acknowledge that.

The problem isn't that someone has become extraordinarily wealthy.

The problem is that too few people have a realistic opportunity to become financially secure.

That is the distinction that matters.

I don't want to make the wealthy poor.

I don't want to eliminate the incentive to innovate, invest, build companies or take risks.

I don't want equality of outcome.

I want equality of opportunity—and an economic system in which hard work still provides a reasonable path to a secure and dignified life.

A young person who works hard and gets an education should have a realistic chance of buying a home.

A family should be able to survive an unexpected $10,000 expense without financial devastation.

Someone who has spent 25 years developing expertise should not feel that their entire economic security can disappear overnight simply because a corporation needs to improve its quarterly numbers.

And someone who works hard for decades should have a reasonable expectation of retiring with dignity.

Capitalism doesn't need to be destroyed.

It needs to be recalibrated.

The goal should not be to tear down the people who have reached the top.

The goal should be to rebuild the ladder so that everyone else has a realistic opportunity to climb it.

Because capitalism works only when people believe the game is worth playing.

When people believe that hard work, education, innovation and perseverance can lead to a better life, they participate. They build. They invest. They innovate. They believe in the future.

But when people begin to believe that the system is fundamentally stacked in favor of those who already possess the most wealth, they don't simply become frustrated with the economy.

They lose faith in the system itself.

And that may be the greatest threat facing American capitalism today.

500 call or 400 puts? =D

So I am still bitter about my time at USB Business Banking. I was recruited away from my previous employer, a solid place, to work on the Greatest Product Ever Imagined - Business Essentials!! Told the opportunities here were endless! Well wouldn’t you know that after almost 2 years I was part of a RIF…BE was released so why did they need me or most of the others on my team?? (50’s, white woman, everyone left on my team India , but I digress). I’m still pi---d that I was lied to and basically lured away with lies only to be laid off right before Christmas.
I used my network and landed a role before my severance ended, and I was not sad I was laid off. I was pi---d. Anyway, I’m still at that new job, it’s not with a big bank but is in finance, fully remote, and it’s solid and stable.

I guess my point is my bitterness lingers, but after reading about the cr-p you all are enduring here, I’m so glad I was laid off. Despite what you see about the market, there are opportunities! They may be with small, unknown businesses, but they’re out there. Nurture your network. It’s how I landed my new position and I’m convinced it’s how I will land in any future positions.

Sometimes, the grass is greener.

Scharf is so corrupt that his c-suite continues to lie, lie, lie that work produced by AI is not the product of the employees who know the subject matter to properly use AI. I will laugh when after Scharf is done firing everyone - big Tech price gouges Wells Fargo and takes it over.