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Markets have been going haywire.And according to Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, that has the potential to lead to layoffs through the first half of the year.BlackRock is the world's largest investor, with about $4.5 trillion under management.Fink said in an interview Friday morning with CNBC that the market volatility of late could affect CEO confidence and could lead to more layoffs.He said (emphasis ours):Having a market decline like this in the first couple of weeks of the year really, in my mind, puts a negativity across the economy. A negativity to every CEO who is looking at his or...

Morgan Stanley just announced fourth-quarter earnings, and it is providing detail to investors on a cost-saving plan called Project Streamline. During a conference call, CEO James Gorman uttered a sentence that will most likely make the bank's staff shudder. "Too many employees based in high-cost centers are doing work that can sensibly be done in LOWER-COST CENTERS," he said. "Now is the time to tackle head-on our infrastructure costs." The mention of "lower-cost centers" most likely means the bank is looking to shift jobs overseas or to low-cost locations in the US. His comments echo a line in his presentation,...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Wal-Mart is closing 269 stores, more than half of them in the U.S. and another big chunk in its challenging Brazilian market. The stores being shuttered account for a fraction of the company's 11,000 stores worldwide and less than 1 percent of its global revenue. More than 95 percent of the stores set to be closed in the U.S. are within 10 miles of another Wal-Mart. The Bentonville, Arkansas, company said it is working to ensure that workers are placed in nearby locations. The store closures will start at the end of the month.

Wal-Mart said Friday it will close 269 stores across the globe, including 154 in the U.S. The world's largest retailer also will open as many as 405 stores globally in the coming fiscal year, as it shifts its focus toward Supercenters and Neighborhood Markets in profitable locations. In all, 16,000 employees will be impacted by the store closings, about 10,000 of whom are in the U.S. Also domestically, Wal-Mart will also close 23 Neighborhood Market stores, 12 Supercenters, seven stores in Puerto Rico, six discount centers and four Sam's Clubs.

Macy's is slashing jobs, a harbinger of hard times for retailers after a holiday season that saw a noticeable shift to online shopping and away from physical stores. The nation's largest department store chain, which also operates Bloomingdale's, said late Wednesday it is cutting up to 4,800 jobs and trimming its profit outlook after a miserable holiday season. "I think Macy's is likely to be a canary in a coal mine," said Ken Perkins, president of Retail Metrics, a retail research firm. He said retailers witnessed an acceleration of the shift toward online and mobile holiday spending in 2015. About...

U.S. cities that implemented big minimum-wage hikes to $10 an hour or more in 2015 have seen a strikingly similar aftermath: Job gains have fallen to multiyear lows at restaurants, hotels and other leisure and hospitality venues. The data aren't, for the most part, stark and reliable enough to amount to smoking-gun proof. But Chicago, Oakland, San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. — all on the leading edge of the push for big minimum wage hikes — all show worrisome job trends.

The news on Morgan Stanley's job cuts continues to roll in. The US bank is cutting 1,200 staff, including about 470 front-office staff in its fixed income and commodities business, according to Michael J. Moore at Bloomberg, who cited a person briefed on the matter. Mark Lane, a spokesman for the bank, said the bank would take a $150 million charge in the fourth quarter, according to the Bloomberg report. Business Insider reported Monday that emerging markets sales and trading was one of the areas hardest hit by the cuts.

MATT GENTRY | The Roanoke Times A Volvo truck with its iconic diagonal grill slash drives past the Volvo New River Valley Plant in Dublin Tuesday. Volvo Trucks' Dublin plant will lay off 734 employees in February. DUBLIN - Those in and around Pulaski County's Volvo truck plant, one of the largest employers in Western Virginia, were coming to terms Tuesday with another announcement of a mass layoff. Volvo will lay off 734 production employees over a three-week period in February, news that county officials first learned after a notice the company filed Tuesday. That represents a quarter of...

.... Walt Disney Co. has revealed that it lost three million subscribers to its sports network ESPN within one year..... ....Based on that, the loss of 3 million subscribers in one year would be taking around $216 million away from Disney's coffers.....

Macy's is blaming "warm weather" and "low spending from tourists" for a massive drop in sales and excessive on hand inventory, which has now caused them to cut their full year sales forecast.

Kraft Heinz To Close Seven Plants, Cut 2,600 Jobs Thu, 11/05/2015 - 9:37am Andy Szal, Digital Reporter Kraft Heinz on Wednesday announced that it will close seven facilities and cut 2,600 jobs as part of its continued efforts to reduce costs. The plan includes shuttering the nearly century-old Oscar Mayer plant in Madison, Wisconsin, which houses the company's U.S. meats business. The meats operation will instead move to Chicago along with about 250 of the plant's workforce of more than 1,000. Kraft Heinz will move its Illinois office from the former Kraft headquarters in suburban Northfield to downtown Chicago early...

Technology companies across the country are replacing American employees and “transferring” their knowledge to foreign guest workers, according to Sara Blackwell, an attorney for Disney employees replaced by foreign workers, and Leo Perrero, a former Disney employee. “Right now all of the technology jobs, 90 percent of them are being filtered to H-1B visa holders here and then off-shoring to other countries. Knowledge transfer is what we’re doing,” Blackwell said during an interview with SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily. Blackwell argued that technology is the future but that Americans are not the ones getting those coveted tech jobs. “Twenty-six percent right...

Target plans to close 13 stores nationwide, most in the Midwest where the store has its roots. The Minneapolis, Minnesota-based retailer says a decision to close a store usually follows several years of decreasing profitability. The retail giant plans to close the stores on January 30, 2016. The 13 are among Target's nearly 1,800 stores in the U.S.

I am sorry to have to do this, but as a representative of the mainstream media, I hereby declare war on GOP presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz. In the media's defense, Cruz started it. Literally. -- snip -- Strap on your boots, Teddy boy. We're comin' for ya now. And we've got the weapon you fear the most: the truth.

Jack is back and he's bringing company-wide layoffs with him. Twitter is said to be planning to announce layoffs across most departments of the company next week, according a report late Friday from Re/code. The precise number or percentage of staff affected is unclear. "We’re not commenting on rumor and speculation,” a spokesperson for Twitter told Mashable. Speculation about the move comes just days after Twitter announced that cofounder Jack Dorsey would take over as the permanent CEO, following a lengthy search. While the layoffs will almost certainly hit company morale, it should appease investors eager to see Twitter rein...

Biotech seed giant also gives a downbeat forecast for its fiscal year, as quarterly loss widens ___ Monsanto Co. , buffeted by a slumping global farm economy, outlined plans to slash 12% of its workforce and restructure its business as it reported a larger quarterly loss. The biotechnology-seed maker plans to cut 2,600 jobs while “streamlining and reprioritizing” commercial and research efforts as it grapples with declining crop prices that have pinched incomes for farmers, its main customers. Monsanto projected earnings in its fiscal 2016 that fell below analysts’ expectations. The St. Louis company also Wednesday unveiled a new stock-buyback...

Out of the thousands of people she worked with, why are only two giving Fiorina a reportable amount of cash? The employees at Hewlett-Packard, where Carly Fiorina was CEO for six years, don’t seem interested in seeing their old boss become commander-in-chief. Of the 302,000 employees at the company, not one has given a reportable amount to help Fiorina fund her 2016 presidential campaign, according to the campaign’s most recent FEC filings, which lists all donations over $200. HP’s corporate leadership also doesn’t seem keen on the idea of Fiorina in the White House. Among the 12-member board of directors,...

The table festooned with red “Carly for America” placards arrived hours before the candidate. Political operatives took up positions outside the front door to catch supporters of Carly Fiorina, the corporate executive-turned-Republican contender, and gather their contact information before steering them inside to the room where she would speak. But the table, the placards and the workers didn’t belong to Mrs. Fiorina’s campaign. They were there thanks to the “super PAC” supporting her run for president. The Federal Election Commission forbids direct coordination between campaigns and super PACs, lest candidates effectively rely almost entirely on the huge, unlimited donations of...

Carly Fiorina is surprising many Republicans with her meteoric rise to the top tier of the 2016 GOP race. But here in California, her sparkling performances on the campaign trail look more like a case of déjà vu. Before plummeting to a 10-percentage-point loss during a wave year for Republicans in 2010, the former chief executive mounted a fierce challenge to U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer with all of the same assets she is displaying now. She dazzled voters, particularly women, with her secretary-to-CEO life narrative. She impressed them with her toughness -- from her well-placed jabs at Boxer to her...

When Carly Fiorina ran for U.S. Senate, opponents depicted the former corporate executive as a cold-hearted job killer, using her past statements like a noose around her neck. Americans have no God-given right to a job, said the former Hewlett-Packard chief. When you’re talking about massive layoffs, sometimes they’re warranted. Off-shoring — shipping American jobs overseas — was “right-shoring.” Now, though, running for president, Fiorina has softened her tone, acknowledging the human toll of lost jobs and explaining at greater length and depth the actions she took as a powerful Silicon Valley executive, including overseeing tens of thousands of layoffs....