US Airports Rush to Bond Market With $10 Billion of New Sales
Airports across the US have borrowed more than $10 billion from municipal-bond investors in the first six months of 2025, the largest first half since at least 1990, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The surge marks a 51% increase over last year's volume and is outpacing the broader 20% uptick in state and local government bond sales, the data shows.
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Forbes
20 minutes ago
- Forbes
Why Hiring Executives First Is Killing Your Scale-Up
Do you hire executives or front line people first? Jim Collins' insight from "Good to Great" remains foundational: Getting the right people on the bus is fundamental to business success. But Theo Saville, CEO of CloudNC (providing AI solutions for Computer Aided Manufacturing) adds nuance from his company's nine-year journey: "You can have an army of geniuses. But if you don't have good product-market fit, you won't make any money. It's actually the most important thing in business. However, once you achieve product-market fit, the right people become your scaling superpower.' After solving deep technical problems to create a product which matched market demand, CloudNC has been doubling revenue every quarter, largely through a contrarian US expansion strategy that hired proven performers first rather than executives. Saville's core insight challenges conventional wisdom: The traditional approach of hiring executives first to build new teams or functions is "a terrible idea" - instead, "hire the people that produce the actual frontline value first." Saville's point of view is contrarian but has some logic - front-line first hiring creates healthier organizational dynamics that prepare the engine of growth more effectively than traditional hierarchical approaches. Why Front-Line First Beats Executive First When Scaling or Entering New Markets Once you have product-market fit, speed of execution becomes critical. Yet most companies fall into the traditional executive-first trap. As Saville explains: "One month to pick the search firm, three to six months for the search... then maybe 12 months later, you have the frontline workers actually doing the work. And what if you got that hire wrong? You spent 50 grand on a search firm, huge salary, big exit package. It is a terrible idea." The organizational readiness cost extends beyond time and money. During this hierarchy-building process, the invisible dynamics that drive growth remain unprepared. Companies are essentially building management structures before they have the operational foundation to require them. CloudNC took a different approach by creating new functions and geographies with proven front line workers who could start generating value and strengthen organizational dynamics. According to Saville when hiring their sales team: "Almost every single one of our sales people made it. They nearly all paid for themselves within 30 days compared to the industry standard of 12 months.' This approach wasn't just about individual performance. Front-line performers who fit culturally strengthen the organization's growth engine, while poor fits are naturally rejected. As Saville notes, "the company, almost like an immune system, tends to reject them." This creates a self-reinforcing cycle that builds organizational strength from the ground up. The A Method: A 4-Step System for Finding Proven Performers CloudNC's approach stems from applying "The A Method for Hiring" framework from Geoff Smart and Randy Street's book "Who." This systematic approach has four key steps: Step 1 - SCORECARD: "I write deliverables that only a top 10% candidate could achieve - then find somebody who can deliver on that" explains Saville. The key is defining specific, measurable outcomes for any function, not just creating job descriptions. Step 2 - SOURCE: Identify proven performers. Saville's approach: "We're going to find people who work at companies that sell to our target buyers directly... and offer them an easier product to sell with bigger commission potential." Step 3 - SELECT: Again Saville's approach: Focus on proven track records over potential. "I want to see that they have achieved it more than once in their career. Because if I'm hiring... people who've done it three times before, chances are they're going to be able to do it a fourth time as well." Step 4 - SELL: Apply the Five F's framework to close top performers. The Five F's: What Top Performers Really Want The A Method's "Five F's" framework identifies what proven performers care about when switching jobs: Fit: Matching their goals with company vision - letting them be "A players" where they can excel Family: Making the transition work for their personal situation and loved ones Freedom: Saville notes "A players don't like being micromanaged. They look for positions where they'll be given space to excel" Fortune: Competitive compensation that reflects their proven value Fun: Engaging, challenging work environment with meaningful outcomes This framework was prescient. Written in 2008, these Five F's to attract 'A Players' have become increasingly aligned with what today's workforce prioritizes as found in surveys such as the Deloitte Global Gen Z and Millennial Survey. Using Smart and Street's methodology, CloudNC addresses these priorities through what Saville lists as 'premium pay, autonomy, clear challenging outcomes, and an entrepreneurial culture for people used to working in an environment without much bureaucracy." This approach creates what Saville describes as the scaling advantage: "You can keep recycling that money into more hires and grow grow grow." The Future of Strategic Hiring The invisible advantage of front-line first hiring extends beyond revenue acceleration - it prepares the organizational engine for sustainable growth by building the right internal dynamics from the start. However, Saville's approach is expensive as you are paying for proven talent. Whilst more difficult, 'hire attitude, train skills' can be an alternative approach - more risky but lower upfront cost. Whichever approach is taken, it is necessary to identify core value-creating roles, define specific outcomes and ensure new hires strengthen rather than weaken the organization's growth engine. In an era where scaling speed often determines market success, the companies that master front-line first hiring may find a scaling edge when growing or entering new markets.
New York Times
20 minutes ago
- New York Times
‘Big money, big times' as Bills' new stadium harkens memories of 1970s rollout
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — No need to consult an inflation calculator. We've done the math for you. But if you want a quick reminder of how much things have changed since the last time the Buffalo Bills opened a new ballpark, then we can simply refer to Page 4 of the first game program. That's right: You could buy a brand-new Datsun 1200 Fastback from Tunmore Oldsmobile for $2,195. Advertisement That was August 1973, when Rich Stadium opened in Orchard Park. It cost $22 million to build, which would be $174.2 million in today's dollars, almost exactly half of what the Cleveland Browns paid to all their players last year. At a working figure of $2.2 billion, the stadium being erected across Abbott Road is projected to cost 13 times as much as the adjusted-for-inflation total it took to build the previous one. But the stadium number Adam Ziccardi considers totally kablooey pertains to the job he once held. Ziccardi was the Bills assistant ticket director when they transitioned from War Memorial Stadium in the city to Rich Stadium in the suburbs. Buffalo's ticket office back then handled the task with four people in the span of four months. The most recent Bills team directory listed 20 people in the ticket department, six of them with titles of 'director' or higher. Then the Bills in 2021 contracted Legends Global Partnerships to pick up additional sales needs, an army of 44 more to help over five years until the stadium opens in 2026. While not all 44 troops are directly selling tickets, the most recent Bills front office directory (the team has scrubbed a rundown of every position and name from its website, but an archived version from December exists) shows Legends added a sales director, two ticket sales managers, four PSL coordinators and 19 account executives among the crew. So let's say 50 people are currently selling Bills PSLs and tickets and suites. 'That is definitely crazy,' Ziccardi said from his retirement home in North Carolina. 'Sounds like, with that many people, they got one person for each section of the stadium. 'Big money, big times.' Rich Stadium, although eventually downscaled, opened with a gargantuan inventory of 80,023 possible seats compared to The Rockpile's 46,206 at-the-seams capacity. And the turnaround was swift. Dignitaries broke ground in April 1972 with one last season planned in the city. Advertisement Yet there were no guarantees Rich Stadium would be completed in time for the 1973 campaign. The final 1972 game program mentioned nothing about a farewell. The Bills in January 1973 requested a provisional, one-year lease extension for The Rockpile just in case. Four months later, the Bills still were worried enough to pay $5,000 to resod the neglected, patchy field because their new home might not be ready. But as soon as the 1972 season ended with a 4-9-1 record and a sixth straight failure to reach the playoffs, Ziccardi and his crew couldn't wait around. Season tickets for the as-yet-unnamed stadium had to be sold. While the current Bills have a battalion, the 1972-73 staff was a lean, mean dialing machine. Ziccardi worked with ticket director Jim Cipriano and staffers Pat Shaughnessy and Adrianne Kolesar at the team's 69 W. Mohawk St. office. Working off index cards, they phoned season-ticket holders in order of seniority and told them their options: stay in roughly the same seat or upgrade to the club level. 'I had the lucky privilege of numbering the whole damn stadium,' Ziccardi said. 'The architect gave me the sections and how many rows there were and how many seats in each. I made the seating charts and numbered each seat. As people would take the seats, we would X them out, write up the change order that would go into the computer, and that would put them in the seat so it couldn't be given to somebody else. 'We called everybody, working from 8 in the morning until 10 or 11 at night, seven days a week. It was a real effort, but we got it done. I think we were done by April or May.' As Ziccardi recollected, Bills vice president Patrick McGroder and administrative assistant Bill Munson handled sales of 34 'business suites,' as they were called. Those cost $60,000 on a five-year lease. Advertisement As for courting new season-ticket holders, they essentially waited for their phone to ring. 'Exactly,' Ziccardi said. 'That was it. The stadium marketed itself.' That's nowhere near the case today. In addition to beefing up the personnel, selling for a significantly smaller stadium and years of transition time, the new PSL-based sales operation has been sweetened with the Bills Stadium Experience at 5110 Main Street in Williamsville. The initial budget to build the preview center in the Tony Walker Plaza — with touchscreens, intricate scale models and a virtual-reality theater — was $4 million. The Bills' promotional materials in 1973 consisted of a four-page folder on cardstock (the cutout cover showed the upper deck; open it up to isolate the club level and lower bowl) and a 16×20-inch poster of an artist rendering. Lower-level end zone season tickets went for $55 ($399 adjusted for inflation), corner stadium and club end zone for $70 ($508), sideline for $85 ($617) and club level for $120 ($871). Oh, you also could borrow from the Bills a 16 mm highlight film, 'A Year to Cheer,' for your stag parties, smokers, church groups and any other 'organization of 25 or more persons and is free of charge.' But you had to supply the sound projector and screen. 'It was so unsophisticated, even as recently as the 1980s,' Rice University sports management professor Tom Stallings said. 'You would just call in, and the reps would be more for service than for sales.' Stallings formerly sold group and season tickets for the Houston Astros and was an award-winning executive with the Houston Aeros of the International Hockey League before entering academia. One of the classes he teaches at Rice is sales and revenue generation in sport. With so much money on the line in the major leagues, especially the NFL, all these sales reps are not overkill in the 21st century. Advertisement 'Every year, you've got to do more and more,' Stallings said, 'because people have so many options on how to spend their money and how to watch the games. Do I want to buy season tickets and force myself to go to 10 games, including the preseason which nobody cares about anyway, or sit on my couch and watch everything in high-definition with no restroom lines and beer in my fridge? 'There are retention reps. There's ticket ops. Some are new-sales reps. There are sales assistants. You have premium reps. There are inside-sales reps that always try to upgrade existing customers. They all have specialties. 'You break your staff up into hunters and farmers. The farmers are great at retention. They grow the business. Then there are your hunters, who are always looking for the companies that don't have tickets with us and why not. Who should we be going after? It's not like they have 20 people all doing the same thing.' PSLs add another important dimension to the Legends dynamic. Buffalo is one of the last big-league markets to mandate these licenses, and potentially aggravated fans need to be educated about why they're inevitable. By all accounts, Legends is doing well in this regard. Bills executive vice president and chief operations officer Pete Guelli repeatedly has remarked how swimmingly the PSL rollout has gone for the new Highmark Stadium. 'It's all to maximize that golden opportunity for sales,' Stallings said. 'That's the big picture. This stadium didn't come free. You have to pick up the prices somehow. People might say 'No,' but the team will just go find someone else who will say 'Yes.' That's just the way it is.' The first seats at New Highmark Stadium have been successfully installed. 😍 | #BillsMafia — Buffalo Bills (@BuffaloBills) May 10, 2025 Stallings said breaking down PSL information for Bills fans is 'Real World 101.' Ziccardi called it something else. 'It's gouging,' said Ziccardi, who grew up in East Lovejoy and worked for the Bills until 1987. 'I don't like it. To make someone pay 10 grand or whatever they're asking before they even buy a ticket? There's more than enough TV revenue. Even when I was there, Ralph didn't spend a dime because TV was enough. The owners got a check from TV that paid all their expenses, and everything else went into the owners' pockets. Advertisement 'Revenues and player salaries are all higher, but it's all a mathematical equation, a percentage that guarantees massive profits.' Definitions of what's sufficient, what's fancy, what's unnecessary and what's overkill have changed in the past 52 years. The April 1973 edition of the 'Buffalo Bills Bulletin' fan newsletter trumpeted the luxuries of the stadium that was being built. 'Every one of the 80,000 seats will have an unobstructed view of the playing field,' the front-page article read. 'The seats are individually contoured aluminum with comfortably contoured backs. The new club level seating can be described as chair-style seating with arm rests.' The Buffalo Courier-Express reported in August 1973 that 'Wisely, the designers built the benches hanging in mid-air, with no legs, giving the fans a convenient place to stash their coats and stadium blankets.' That, of course, was at a time when many of the program ads featured fans wearing neckties. What happens under those seats today is no place to put anything you don't plan on fumigating later. And let's not forget the $1.25 million scoreboard 'composed of a set of nearly 10,000 light bulbs … The scoreboard will combine sight and sound with vivid, high-definition images, all created with modern computer techniques.' Imagine that. 'People weren't really excited about it like they are this new one,' Ziccardi conceded. The Bills, more or less, simply shuttered The Rockpile and told fans not to forget to show up in Orchard Park next season. Rich Stadium's rollout was minimal, partially due to concerns it wouldn't be completed in time, but also because ballparks back then were more utilitarian than loaded with accoutrements. Even so, Ziccardi and his skeleton crew sold a whopping 52,474 season tickets for Rich Stadium's launch and in 1974 raised the total to 54,146 – a club record until 1991, the year after their first Super Bowl appearance. 'If they went to the Super Bowl this year, imagine how high the season tickets would climb,' Ziccardi said. 'The prices would be absolutely astronomical. 'But they would sell out. That's just how Buffalo is.'
CNN
20 minutes ago
- CNN
3 ways Trump trying to fire Powell could backfire
If President Donald Trump were to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, it could have unintended and severe consequences that reverberate throughout the US economy and global markets. For now, the likelihood of the president actually moving to oust the head of the central bank remains low, due to the legal hurdles required. That's partly why investors have seemingly grown numb to Trump's ongoing admonishment, even after the president brandished a draft of a termination letter for the Fed chair in front of lawmakers on Tuesday night. Another reason is that Trump's own economic advisers have warned of the market chaos that could ensue if he makes good on his threats. But if he does, it would backfire spectacularly, experts say, rattling Wall Street, potentially imploding the bond market and sabotaging the Fed's ability to manage the economy. Markets on Wednesday briefly dropped after reports that Trump was likely to fire Powell soon. The US dollar index, which measures the dollar's strength against six major foreign currencies, swiftly dropped almost 1%. The dollar index pared its losses after Trump told reporters at the White House that he has no plans to fire Powell. Long-term bond yields moved higher, the dollar was lower and stocks fell midday on a 'sell-America trade' before Trump told reporters he had no plans to fire Powell, tempering the market's concerns, Krishna Guha, vice chairman at Evercore ISI, said in a note. 'Financial markets sent a warning shot Wednesday as to what would happen if President Trump actually tried to fire Fed Chair Powell,' said Guha. Jason Furman, a Harvard University economist who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers during the second Obama administration, wrote in a New York Times opinion piece Thursday that: 'Federal Reserve independence is the closest thing to a free lunch that macroeconomists have identified. Firing Powell would unleash a massive amount of uncertainty, litigation and market turmoil.' Trump has repeatedly criticized Powell for not lowering interest rates fast enough. But a move to oust the Fed chair could itself lead to higher rates — and higher borrowing costs for Americans. Markets prefer an independent central bank that can focus on price stability and the labor market without political interference. A Fed that loses its independence and is perceived to lower interest rates prematurely to meet political demands could cause investors' inflation expectations to surge and cause bond holders to demand higher yields. Despite Trump wanting lower yields, the market could push long-term yields higher, raising borrowing costs across the economy, including for the government. A rise in yields could also signal investors are selling or refusing to buy bonds in order to voice displeasure about the assault on the Fed and the perceived added risk to US markets. The yield on the 30-year Treasury on Wednesday briefly jumped to 5.05% — the highest level in over a month — as investors digested whether Trump was serious about firing Powell. It was a clear signal that there could be a revolt in the bond market if the president tries to compromise the Fed. 'That hammers home the point that any gain for the administration in influencing the policy rate risks being offset by higher long-term yields, as investors price in higher inflation expectations or demand a higher-term premium to hold longer-dated debt,' Stephen Brown, deputy chief North America economist at Capital Economics, said in a note. Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana told CNN Wednesday that if Powell during his term as Fed chair were to bend to Trump's demands and 'unilaterally cut interest rates' as much as 3%, the bond market would 'go into a fit.' 'You would see interest rates rise dramatically and it would have a huge impact on us borrowing money to fund the government,' Kennedy said. The US dollar's value and status as the world's reserve currency could take a severe hit if Trump tried to oust Powell, according to Francesco Pesole, an FX strategist at ING. A move to fire Powell would be 'a highly toxic mix for the dollar,' Pesole said. 'Powell's removal or resignation is likely to trigger a new round of severe downward volatility in the dollar, and the damage would be there to stay.' Investors consider the United States the premier place to invest largely because of its stable institutions, checks on government overreach and strong rule of law. A move by Trump to compromise the Fed's independence could yield a short-term win for the president but destabilize the foundations of what makes America exceptional. 'An independent Fed is a key foundation of the dollar's reserve currency appeal,' Pesole said. The dollar has broadly weakened this year against other currencies amid concerns about investors' appetite for American assets. A flight from the dollar could exacerbate concerns in the bond market, as foreign investors would get less of a return on holding US debt. While an erosion of the Fed's independence would lead to a swift exodus from the dollar and bonds, the stock market is a less certain picture. Sen. Kennedy told CNN that if Trump were to actually fire Powell, markets could crash. 'If you fire the chairman of the Federal Reserve, you will see the stock market crash, and you will see the bond market crash,' Kennedy said. But Peter Ricchiuti, a senior professor of finance at Tulane University, told CNN he thinks there would actually be a 'short-term increase in stock prices' because the assumption is that the new Fed chair would lower interest rates, which can be a boon for stocks. However, if inflation were to then pick up, 'investors will realize that an independent Fed is vitally important to both the markets and the world economy,' Ricchiuti said. Rampant inflation would eat into corporate earnings, be a headwind for stocks and punish American consumers just as prices were beginning to level out after a bout of decades-high inflation. If Trump's unrelenting attacks start to make Americans have doubts about the Fed chief's role as a 'wise steward' of the economy, that could make it difficult for the central bank to tame inflation or stimulate the economy where required. 'The biggest outcome of the very public criticism from President Trump of Chair Powell and ongoing threats of removing him is the possibility of erosion of the Fed's credibility and their policies,' said Dominic Pappalardo, chief multi-asset strategist at Morningstar Wealth. That's important now more than ever with Trump's tariffs expected to have wide-ranging effects on the US economy, affecting prices, employment and business investment. 'Trump's continued criticism does nothing to aid the current conundrum of the Fed, trying to prevent runaway inflation while still supporting the economy,' he added. Last month, there were already signs of tariffs starting to push up prices of some goods. It's crucial for Americans to have faith that the Fed is setting rates with the economy's best interests in mind because it directly influences the effectiveness of monetary policy, according to longstanding research. 'Undermining trust in the Fed for short-term political gain is a recipe for higher costs and lower living standards for all Americans over time,' wrote Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the Budget Lab at Yale University, in a July 16 column on Bloomberg. 'When policymakers are less effective at achieving the central bank's mandates, everyday Americans pay more for groceries and rent as prices rise, while also getting less than otherwise would be expected on mortgages and other loans.' CNN's Nicky Robertson contributed reporting.
