Latest news with #Goldfarb
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
G-III Finds a Way Forward, Building With Donna Karan and Boosting Q1 Earnings
Morris Goldfarb is finding new retail territory to explore as he hits the accelerator on Donna Karan and his other brands, filling the void left as licenses for Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger transition back to PVH Corp. The effort is starting to pay off, even as the trade war scrambles the market and supply chains. More from WWD PVH's Weaker Profit Outlook Takes 18% Bite Out of Its Stock Jodie Comer Keeps Footwear in Step With Sculptural Silhouettes Across '28 Years Later' Appearances in New York and Paris Tommy Hilfiger Teams Up With 'F1 the Movie' on the APXGP Collection G-III Apparel Group, which Goldfarb has led for more than 50 years as chief executive officer, saw first-quarter sales fall 4 percent to $583.6 million, but made up for it on the bottom line, with earnings rising to $7.8 million, or 17 cents a diluted share, from $5.8 million, or 12 cents, a year earlier. Adjusted earnings per share rose to 19 cents from 12 cents. 'I can't control the tariffs, but it's not unique to G-III,' Goldfarb told WWD in an interview. 'It's a global issue that nobody's got their arms wrapped around.' China, which is most impacted by President Donald Trump's trade war, will represent less than 20 percent of the firm's production by the end of the year, down from nearly 90 percent several years ago. But Goldfarb said despite the tariffs, macroeconomics and some unfavorable weather, business is manageable. 'We are finding that price points are not an issue,' the CEO said. 'Our brands — Donna Karan and Karl Lagerfeld, particularly — have higher price points….They are unique, well-crafted, quality product and they're paying for it. There's no pushback at all. We're expanding the categories in Donna Karan and certainly further penetrating the categories that we've launched. We've found our way back into people like Nordstrom's and Saks and their full-price areas. Historically, we've not shipped pretty much any product from the PVH assets into full-price, Nordstrom's or Saks.' G-III, which relaunched the Donna Karan business once PVH started to withdraw, sees the potential to grow the business up to $1 billion over the long run. 'There's a world that goes beyond the current distribution that we're penetrated in,' Goldfarb said. 'It's opened up a new field for us on our own acquired brands. We will be in approximately 50 doors of Nordstrom's full-price for Donna Karan. We have no distribution in the off-price channel, which is an attraction to people like Nordstrom's and Dillard's and even Macy's. 'We like that,' he said. 'It kind of inhibits a little bit of the top-line sales, but bottom line, if you look at the margins that we're attaining, they are significantly improved over the portfolio that we managed prior.' G-III has also been strengthening its financial base. Total debt fell by 96 percent to $18.7 million after the firm redeemed $400 million in senior secured notes last year. Given the uncertainy in the back half, the company pulled its profit forecast for the year, as many other companies have. But G-III also reaffirmed its sales outlook at $3.14 billion, down slightly from $3.18 billion last year. If the tariffs put in place held at their current rates, G-III said it would have an 'unmitigated cost' of about $135 million — a number the company would look to bring down with supply chain tweaks. 'We are shifting production into different countries,' Goldfarb said. 'We're making the best of what's retained in China through price concessions from our vendor base and some increased prices for our customers, our retail customers. And we're achieving some success doing that. And I guess maybe part of the advantage we have is the new brands that don't have established price points. We're not raising prices, we're establishing price points that work with reasonable margins. 'We're doing well and building market share and delivering the most amazing product on the floor,' he said. 'Those are good formulas for the future. And as we stabilize pricing, as our retailers and our customers and consumers get acclimated to our price points and the industry's price points, we will do well. I have no doubt that we'll do well. It might be a hiccup for a quarter, but it all goes away as the world levels out.' Best of WWD Harvey Nichols Sees Sales Dip, Losses Widen in Year Marred by Closures Nike Logs $1.3 Billion Profit, But Supply Chain Issues Persist Zegna Shares Start Trading on New York Stock Exchange
Boston Globe
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Ronald Goldfarb, legal reformer who battled Mafia for RFK, dies at 91
Many of his nearly a dozen books stemmed from work done by his Washington law firm, which specialized in public interest cases, taking on subjects such as farm laborer rights in 'Migrant Farm Workers: A Caste of Despair' (1981) and the penal system in 'After Conviction: A Review of the American Correction System' (1973), written with law partner Linda Singer. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Following the leaks of National Security Agency files by contractor Edward Snowden in 2013, Mr. Goldfarb edited essays from policy experts and ethicists for the 2015 book 'After Snowden: Privacy, Secrecy and Security in the Information Age.' Advertisement 'National security and constitutional liberty are not an either-or proposition,' Mr. Goldfarb said at the Miami Book Fair that year, 'but we have to strike an exquisite balance.' His time in the Justice Department under Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy also came to represent competing priorities, he contended. Mr. Goldfarb was recruited in 1961 and assigned to the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section — a once tiny unit that grew to more than 70 members under RFK. Advertisement Meanwhile, President John F. Kennedy had ordered an all-out effort to depose Cuban leader Fidel Castro after the calamitous Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. The anti-Castro plans, overseen by Robert Kennedy, included the CIA seeking possible hit men among mobsters, who were eager to bring back their gambling operations in Cuba, according to later disclosures by congressional investigations and leaked documents. 'They thought they could burn their candle at both ends, and both work with the Mafia at the same time that we were harassing them, and prosecuting them, and investigating them and making their lives miserable,' Mr. Goldfarb told an audience in Alexandria, Va., in 2002. This double standard became one of subplots in Mr. Goldfarb's 'Perfect Villains, Imperfect Heroes: Robert F. Kennedy's War Against Organized Crime' (1995), a part memoir and part analysis of RFK's single-minded drive to mobilize federal law enforcement agencies against the Cosa Nostra and others. Mr. Goldfarb's path to the Justice Department began with a chance meeting. He had come to Washington to pay a social visit to Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. On the way, Mr. Goldfarb stopped to see a law school friend, who introduced him to a recruiter for RFK's team. His pitch to Mr. Goldfarb was direct: Toss out your plans to go into academia and stay in the courtroom. Mr. Goldfarb had served in the Judge Advocate General's Corps, or JAG Corps, in the Air Force defending airmen in court-martial hearings and other cases. 'And I ended up in the 'New Frontier,'' he said, using a term coined to describe the youthful President Kennedy and his policies. Advertisement Mr. Goldfarb, however, was initially wary of RFK over his past work. In the early 1950s, Robert Kennedy was assistant counsel for the 'Red Scare' subcommittee led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, a Wisconsin Republican, that waged career-crushing inquests into suspected communist sympathizers. 'I just thought, like other people, that he was brash, and a bully, and that it was strictly nepotism that he was made attorney general,' Mr. Goldfarb told the Washington City Paper. But he soon began to admire Robert Kennedy's uncompromising style, he said. Mr. Goldfarb was sent to Newport, Ky., a Cincinnati suburb he described as a 'classic sin city' that at the time was notorious for its political corruption and mob-run vice. Mr. Goldfarb aided in investigations that led to the conviction of nearly the entire Newport city government and dozens of others. He also worked closely with the county's reform-minded sheriff, George Ratterman, a former professional football player who had been drugged and photographed in bed with a stripper in a blackmail attempt during the campaign for sheriff in 1961. The caper was exposed and Ratterman surged to victory. The crime syndicates in northern Kentucky eventually moved out. In his book, Mr. Goldfarb adopted much of RFK's views that organized crime was a direct threat to the rule of law and confidence in the political system. 'These were predators, often totally asocial animals, who preyed on society, had no socially redeeming ends, who used the vilest means to get their way, and whose actions, if unchecked, would lead to anarchy,' he wrote. 'They were perfect villains.' Advertisement Yet Mr. Goldfarb also recounted RFK's shortcomings, which included an obsessive pursuit of Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa. Hoffa was convicted in 1964 of jury tampering and other charges and began serving a 13-year sentence in 1967. (The sentence was commuted in 1971 by President Richard M. Nixon and Hoffa was last seen in 1975, but details of his presumed slaying remained unsolved.) On Nov. 22, 1963, Mr. Goldfarb was part of a meeting with Robert Kennedy that ended shortly before lunch. About an hour later, news broke that President Kennedy had been shot while his motorcade drove through Dallas. For decades, Mr. Goldfarb staked out a position at odds with the Warren Commission's conclusion that the gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, acted alone in a self-hatched plot. In his book and later articles, Mr. Goldfarb left open the possibility that organized crime bosses — angered by RFK's crusading fervor — had a hand in planning the JFK assassination. 'The most compelling evidence concerns conversations among leading organized crime figures in 1962 and 1963 who were outraged by [Robert] Kennedy's crusade against them,' Mr. Goldfarb wrote in a 1995 opinion piece in The Washington Post. 'There was a conspiracy to kill the attorney general; there is ominous evidence that they switched their wrath to the president.' His stance brought some derision from book reviewers even as his profile was raised among JFK conspiracy theorists. Mr. Goldfarb remained unmoved but conceded that too much time had passed to either validate or debunk his speculation. 'There is a haunting credibility to the theory that our organized crime drive prompted a plan to strike back at the Kennedy brothers,' he wrote, 'and that Robert Kennedy went to his grave at least wondering whether — and perhaps believing — there was a real connection between the plan and his brother's assassination.' Advertisement Ronald Lawrence Goldfarb was born in Jersey City on Oct. 16, 1933, and was raised in North Bergen. His father was a building manager, and his mother cared for their home. At Syracuse University, Mr. Goldfarb was part of a law-school-track program, finishing his undergraduate studies in 1954 and receiving a law degree in 1956. After serving in the Air Force JAG Corps for three years, he enrolled at Yale Law School for advanced legal degrees. Robert Kennedy resigned as attorney general in September 1964, and Mr. Goldfarb joined him as speechwriter in a long-shot — but ultimately successful — run for US Senate in New York, defeating the incumbent Republican, Kenneth Keating, that November. 'My personal contacts with him, especially after his brother was killed, showed him to be a very tortured human being feeling very human things and not at all the machinelike person that he was depicted as,' Mr. Goldfarb said in a 1981 oral history for the John F. Kennedy Library. Mr. Goldfarb formed his law practice, Goldfarb & Associates, in 1966. Two years later, as Kennedy campaigned in the Democratic presidential primaries, Mr. Goldfarb planned to seek a seat as a New Jersey delegate for Kennedy at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. 'And before I could do anything,' Mr. Goldfarb recalled, 'he was killed.' Kennedy was shot on June 5, 1968, as he was leaving the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, shortly after winning California's Democratic presidential primary. He died the next day. The gunman, Sirhan Sirhan, remains in prison. Advertisement Mr. Goldfarb's other books include 'The Contempt Power' (1963) about use of contempt of court provisions; 'Ransom: A Critique of the American Bail System' (1966) and 'TV or Not TV: Television, Justice, and the Courts' (1998). As a documentary producer, he helped develop 'Desperate Hours' (2001), an account of Turkey's role in rescuing Jewish refugees during the Holocaust, directed by Victoria Barrett. Survivors include his wife of 68 years, Joanne Jacob Goldfarb; sons Nick and Matt; daughter Jody; and seven grandchildren. In 1963, the Mississippi governor, Ross R. Barnett, was charged with federal criminal contempt for obstructing court orders to desegregate the University of Mississippi. Barnett's supporters in Congress cited passages from Mr. Goldfarb's book 'The Contempt Power' to claim judicial overreach. Mr. Goldfarb was so troubled that he asked for a meeting with Robert Kennedy to apologize. Kennedy listened and then asked Mr. Goldfarb to sign a copy of his book. (The charges against Barnett were dropped years later.) 'Instead of it being a heavy moment where conceivably he was going to ask for my resignation,' he recalled in the 1981 oral history, 'it converted into an act of friendship.'
NBC News
09-05-2025
- Business
- NBC News
Something 'striking' is happening with apartment renters
Renting has its benefits. It's usually cheaper than buying a home, and it offers the freedom of moving without much hassle. That's why about half of apartment renters in large urban markets usually move when their leases expire. But that is not happening now. The low turnover is 'striking,' according to real estate analyst Alex Goldfarb at Piper Sandler. He said some of the largest landlords are seeing turnover at just 30% compared with the industry norm of 50%. He cited reasons including an unaffordable for-sale market, lack of rental supply on the coasts, nervousness about the economy and tariffs, the cost of moving and a shift to suburban apartments, which tend to be larger and more comfortable. 'The consequence is landlords are getting better pricing from renewals, as people don't want to leave,' said Goldfarb. 'It also improves [their] cash flow, because of lower turnover costs.' Those costs would include repairs, painting and cleaning. As a result, in the multifamily REIT sector, Goldfarb likes Essex Property Trust, with its large West Coast footprint. Equity Residential also benefits from that regional presence. He noted the rebounds of San Francisco and Seattle, driven by artificial intelligence and tech companies like Amazon issuing return to office mandates, have helped real estate. He's neutral on the Sunbelt, which had been a hot pandemic play. Names like Camden Property Trust and Mid-America Apartment Communities had strong performances in the first quarter of this year, but could be hit hardest if there is a recession that leads to job losses. As for the overall multifamily market, after declines last year due to record levels of new supply, rents are now coming back, up 0.9% year over year in the first quarter, according to CBRE. That is thanks to the strongest positive net absorption, or the change in the number of occupied units, since 2000 and more than triple the pre-pandemic first quarter average. It marks the fourth consecutive quarter in which demand surpassed new construction completions, and that pushed the multifamily vacancy rate down to 4.8%, below its long term average of 5%. 'The first drop in vacant units in more than two years signals a crucial turning point in the multifamily sector,' said Kelli Carhart, leader of multifamily capital markets for CBRE. 'This boost will lead to increased investment activity in 2025 as improving fundamentals continue to drive investor confidence capital deployment.'
CNBC
09-05-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Something 'striking' is happening with apartment renters
Renting has its benefits. It's usually cheaper than buying a home, and it offers the freedom of moving without much hassle. That's why about half of apartment renters in large urban markets usually move when their leases expire. But that is not happening now. The low turnover is "striking," according to real estate analyst Alex Goldfarb at Piper Sandler. He said some of the largest landlords are seeing turnover at just 30% compared with the industry norm of 50%. He cited reasons including an unaffordable for-sale market, lack of rental supply on the coasts, nervousness about the economy and tariffs, the cost of moving and a shift to suburban apartments, which tend to be larger and more comfortable. "The consequence is landlords are getting better pricing from renewals, as people don't want to leave," said Goldfarb. "It also improves [their] cash flow, because of lower turnover costs." Those costs would include repairs, painting and cleaning. As a result, in the multifamily REIT sector, Goldfarb likes Essex Property Trust, with its large West Coast footprint. Equity Residential also benefits from that regional presence. He noted the rebounds of San Francisco and Seattle, driven by artificial intelligence and tech companies like Amazon issuing return to office mandates, have helped real estate. He's neutral on the Sunbelt, which had been a hot pandemic play. Names like Camden Property Trust and Mid-America Apartment Communities had strong performances in the first quarter of this year, but could be hit hardest if there is a recession that leads to job losses. As for the overall multifamily market, after declines last year due to record levels of new supply, rents are now coming back, up 0.9% year over year in the first quarter, according to CBRE. That is thanks to the strongest positive net absorption, or the change in the number of occupied units, since 2000 and more than triple the pre-pandemic first quarter average. It marks the fourth consecutive quarter in which demand surpassed new construction completions, and that pushed the multifamily vacancy rate down to 4.8%, below its long term average of 5%. "The first drop in vacant units in more than two years signals a crucial turning point in the multifamily sector," said Kelli Carhart, leader of multifamily capital markets for CBRE. "This boost will lead to increased investment activity in 2025 as improving fundamentals continue to drive investor confidence capital deployment."
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Officials surprised to find major public works project completed by wild animals: 'Better than when we design it on paper'
Nature stepped in after a crucial project in the Czech Republic stalled, surprising local authorities and saving them the equivalent of nearly $1.5 million. As reported by Radio Prague International, a beaver colony in the Brdy region became an overnight sensation when officials realized the creatures had built a dam exactly where they needed it. "Beavers always know best. The places where they build dams are always chosen just right — better than when we design it on paper," said Jaroslav Obermajer, head of the Central Bohemian office of the Czech Nature and Landscape Protection Agency, or AOPK. Despite the beavers' sudden fame, Gerhard Schwab, the Federal Nature Conservation Association's beaver manager for the southern part of Bavaria, told National Geographic he didn't buy the idea that the creatures completed the dam in one night. "I could as well believe that the pyramids were built in one week," he said, suggesting that the construction likely occurred over several weeks before people noticed. While beavers can sometimes create problems for humans — like when a Lanškroun-area dam ended up flooding fields and a railway line, as AOPK spokeswoman Karolína Šůlová pointed out to Radio Prague International — they can also help prevent flooding and create firebreaks, which protect property by stopping or slowing wildfires. And as opposed to human-built dams that frequently disrupt the protective natural balance of ecosystems, reducing water quality and biodiversity, the new no-cost Brdy dam is expected to support numerous wetland species, including frogs and the rare stone crayfish. Beaver-built dams can provide benefits beyond what may be initially apparent, too, according to science journalist Ben Goldfarb, who discussed the matter with National Geographic. "At this point, nothing that beavers do surprises me," said Goldfarb, who explained that an Oregon beaver dam filtered heavy metals and other toxic pollutants around two times better than a multimillion-dollar stormwater treatment facility. In Europe, native beavers were on the verge of extinction from hunting, but reintroduction efforts have helped them bounce back from the brink. Goldfarb gave local Czech authorities props for recognizing how the creatures' dam was a boon to the nearby community. Do you think governments should ban the production of gas-powered lawn equipment? Absolutely Yes — but not yet I don't know Heck no Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. "Instead of saying, 'That wasn't what we planned originally,' they recognized that these animals are filling that ecological function very well and said, 'We're going to let them keep doing it,'" he said. Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
