Real-estate revolution

Keith Preston

2 years ago

March 17, 2024 • 3 min read

Welcome back to our Sunday edition, a roundup of some of our top stories. Want to live a long and healthy life? A 101-year-old former CEO has some advice to share.

On the agenda:

Investors got rich looting needy hospitals. Patients paid the price.
Ken Griffin’s move to relocate Citadel to Miami is paying off.
Realtors’ monopoly over home buying just ended. Now comes the fun part.
Ambition got him everything. Then it nearly destroyed him.

But first: Struggling to keep track of what’s what at TikTok? Here’s a download in under 200 words.

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up now

TikTok; Samantha Lee/Business Insider

Dispatch

What’s going on with TikTok?

The House of Representatives last week passed a bipartisan bill that would effectively force a sale of TikTok’s US operations or ban the social media platform entirely if Chinese owner Bytedance refuses to divest.

President Biden has said he’d sign the bill into law if it passes the Senate. Former President Donald Trump has defended TikTok, despite having tried to ban it himself when he was in the White House. Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s former treasury secretary, wants to buy it.

Got that? It took me a moment, too.

TikTok’s CEO urged users to contact their Senators. TikTok employees say that it’s still “business as usual” internally. Some users say a ban would hit their business hard.

China says a ban will “backfire on the US,” rhetoric that’s likely to put Tesla and Apple on high alert. China was already putting the squeeze on Western companies.

The bill now faces an uncertain future in the Senate. Ban or no ban, TikTok is under pressure. User growth has gone into reverse, and an emphasis on e-commerce is putting some users off.

Anson Chan for BI

The plundering of America’s hospitals

Several hospitals that serve low-income communities have shut down or gone bankrupt after their wealthy owners sold their land to Medical Properties Trust.

The deals forced the hospitals to pay rent on what had always been their own property — adding to their already massive debts.

Inside private equity’s hospital heist.

SeventyFour/Getty, sarayut Thaneerat/Getty, Tyler Le/BI

Citadel is winning its Miami bet

Nearly two years ago, Ken Griffin, founder of Citadel and Citadel Securities, decided to uproot his companies’ headquarters from Chicago to Miami. It was a shocking move at the time — but one that appears to be paying off.

BI spoke with four employees who shared what the move to Wall Street South has been like. Workers described an exciting city scene and peaceful commutes to work.

Here’s what else they told us.

Also read:

Wildfire-detecting balloons and justice nonprofits: How new Citadel hires are spending their garden leaves

Chelsea Jia Feng/BI

It’s about to get weird for homebuyers and sellers

On Friday, the National Association of Realtors agreed to a $418 million settlement to end a series of class-action lawsuits over agent commissions. The agreement could encourage more buyers and sellers to start negotiating the commissions they pay their agents — potentially saving buyers as much as $30 billion a year.

Now, we’re about to enter a new age of experimentation as buyers and sellers start thinking hard about how they’ll pay their agents, and how much.

What that means for the future of homebuying.

Also read:

America’s hidden homes

Sophi Gullbrants for BI

The dark side of ambition

Ambition got the author into a great college, helped him start a successful newsletter, and even earned him a fellowship at Oxford.

But his will to succeed kept pushing him harder and harder, transforming ambition into burnout and depression. It took a hellish toll on his life, nearly killing him.

Why he chose to break up with ambition.

This week’s quote

“If you’re an employee being put on a PIP, that’s your opportunity to start looking around at other jobs. Somebody is saying they don’t want you there.”

— Theresa Sue Mubenga, a former tech manager who’s had to put employees on performance-improvement plans.

More of this week’s top reads

A Michelin-starred restaurant says a startup stole its name and is ruining its reputation.
Lil Wayne got $9 million in pandemic aid by claiming to run a “drug-free workplace.”
Costco’s CFO reveals what you can learn by arriving 30 minutes early to a job interview.
Google employees learned they’re getting smaller pay bumps this year.
San Antonio experimented with giving people $5,108 — no strings attached.
Angela Chao’s death came after years of complaints about Tesla’s reverse gear shift.
Polls are fueling “pessimism inflation” — and that’s going to wind up hurting all of us.

The Insider Today team

Matt Turner, deputy editor-in-chief, in New York. Jordan Parker Erb, editor, in New York. Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York City. Lisa Ryan, executive editor, in New York.

Get in touch. Email us at insidertoday@insider.com

Get more Business Insider

Subscribe for unlimited articles.

Never miss a story when you download our app.

Attack the System