Wells Fargo sued JPMorgan Chase to recover losses for investors in a $481 million commercial real estate loan that was allegedly based on a fraudulently inflated financial metric. The lawsuit pits the fourth-largest U.S. bank against the largest, with Wells Fargo accusing JPMorgan of turning a blind eye during due diligence in pursuit of millions of dollars in fees.
JPMorgan made the loan to finance the 2019 purchase by the Chetrit Group, a private Manhattan real estate development firm, of 43 multifamily properties with 8,671 apartments in 10 U.S. states. Wells Fargo, in its role as the investors' trustee, said JPMorgan and Chetrit learned before the $522 million purchase closed that the seller overstated the properties' historical net operating income, a key commercial real estate metric, by 25%. But according to the complaint in Manhattan federal court, JPMorgan went ahead with the loan, knowing it would eventually be sold in pieces to unwitting investors.
Social media platform X went down for nearly 12,000 users, which owner Elon Musk said was the result of a cyberattack. "There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X. We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved," Musk said in a post on the platform. A source in the internet infrastructure industry said X had been hit by several waves of denial of service beginning around 9:45 UTC. The number of outage reports rose to around 26,579 after falling briefly, user- submitted data on the outage-tracking website showed. The number was as high as 40,000 earlier in the day.
IBM won a London lawsuit against U.S. tech entrepreneur and philanthropist John Moores' company LzLabs, which the IT giant accused of stealing trade secrets. IBM sued Switzerland-based LzLabs, two English subsidiaries and their ultimate owner Moores, who previously owned Major League Baseball's San Diego Padres team and founded information technology company BMC Software in 1980, at the High Court. The company alleged LzLabs' UK subsidiary Winsopia purchased an IBM mainframe computer and agreed a licence with IBM in 2013, before using the access to reverse-engineer IBM's mainframe software. Separately, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up a contract dispute between IBM I and rival BMC Software that previously resulted in a $1.6 billion judgment for BMC.
Beacon Roofing Supply is negotiating a potential $11 billion buyout from billionaire Brad Jacobs-run QXO, in a complete reversal after it rebuffed an earlier offer and adopted a poison pill to stave off a hostile takeover attempt. The companies confirmed they are in discussions about a combination in which QXO would acquire Beacon for $124.35 per share in cash. That is an increase of 10 cents from QXO's previous proposal, which Beacon had rejected saying it significantly undervalued the company. The company is postponing its investor day scheduled for March 13.
ServiceNow said it would buy AI firm Moveworks for $2.85 billion in cash and stock, marking the software maker's largest-ever acquisition when enterprises are spending heavily on the technology to enhance their IT operations. The rapid rise of generative artificial intelligence has pushed companies such as ServiceNow and Salesforce to augment their products, striking new deals to stay competitive in a fast-evolving software market. "We have no plans at this time to make any layoff announcements related to this deal," ServiceNow Chief Financial Officer Gina Mastantuono told Reuters. Mastantuono said the company does not expect any potential regulatory hurdles for the deal.
