Companies

Investors place bet on cruise operator shares even though tourism is still banned

Shares of cruise-line operators sailed to big gains on Wednesday as investors placed a bet that improving relations between the U.S. and Cuba could lead to new opportunities for tourism.

Shares of Carnival, Norwegian Cruise Line and Royal Caribbean all rose in early trading Wednesday, outpacing the Dow Jones Industrial Average, after the Obama administration said it plans to lift many of its existing travel restrictions on Cuba.

The new regulations will make it easier for Americans to visit to Cuba under the 12 categories of travel that are currently allowed, The Wall Street Journal reported, though it isn’t immediately clear if or when the island will be open for mass tourism. Some kinds of tourism are still banned, according to various media reports,.

Still, Cuba is appealing to companies with the most to gain from the increased travel. The tropical island’s attractive beaches and proximity to the United States makes it a potential vacation hotspot. The Caribbean is already the largest cruise line market in the world, and Americans hop on the industry’s bulky ships more than any other nation.

Some of the cruise line operators already have strong links to the Caribbean. For example, nearly all of Norwegian’s ships serve the region. The Caribbean also makes up roughly 35% of Carnival’s passenger capacity, more than any other region. That means that if the U.S. were to allow its citizens to freely visit Cuba, many of the cruise industry’s ships are already in prime position to dock at Havana and other Cuban cities.

This article originally appeared on Fortune.com

The rum maker says it supports the restoration of human rights in Cuba

Bacardi, the spirits maker that was founded in Cuba and later exiled from the country in 1960, says it hopes for better lives for Cubans following the Obama Administration’s decision to normalize diplomatic relations with the Caribbean island.

“We hope for meaningful improvements in the lives of the Cuban people and will follow any changes with great interest,” Bacardi said in an e-mailed statement. “In the meantime, we continue to support the restoration of fundamental human rights in Cuba.”

Bacardi says it’s taking a wait-and-see approach on Cuba after the United States on Wednesday said it would open an embassy on the island nation following the release of a U.S. government subcontractor from prison. It marked the most significant change in the U.S.-Cuba relationship in decades.

Bacardi, which makes rum, Dewar’s Scotch and Grey Goose vodka, has close historic ties to Cuba even though it hasn’t operated there for more than five decades. The company was founded in Santiago de Cuba in 1862, and in 1910, became the nation’s first multi-national company when it opened bottling operations in Spain.

When Prohibition started in 1920, Cuba and Bacardi benefited from increased influx of Americans to the island for a stiff drink.

But relations between the company and Cuba soured greatly in 1960, when Bacardi’s operations were nationalized by the government following the Communist takeover there. At that point, Bacardi had operations in five other countries, including the U.S. and Mexico, and was able to bounce back. The company is now headquartered in Bermuda, but still touts its Cuban history.

“Bacardi is proud of its Cuban roots,” a company representative said in a statement on Wednesday. “We have the utmost respect and sympathy for the Cuban people with whom we share a common heritage.”

This article originally appeared on Fortune.com

The ride-hailing app will have to work on a new maps system and faces a stiff challenge from local rivals

China’s Baidu Inc. confirmed Wednesday it had taken a stake in ride-hailing app Uber Technologies Inc., but still refused to say how much it had invested, and what kind of stake it had got in return.

Chinese public radio had speculated that Baidu’s investment could be up to $600 million, representing half of the $1.2 billion it raised in a new round of funding earlier this moth.

At a joint press conference in Beijing, Baidu’s founder Robin Li and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said that they would work together to build a presence in the Chinese car-booking market, which is growing fast from a low base but is currently dominated by Baidu’s biggest internet rivals, Alibaba Group Inc. and Tencent Holdings Ltd.

In a joint statement, the two companies said Baidu will connect its map and mobile-search features with Uber’s service. The Google map app that Uber runs on across the rest of the world is banned in China.

“The goal of this agreement is not for the sake of investment alone, it is more for strategic cooperation and commercial cooperation,” Bloomberg reported Li as telling a joint press conference in Beijing. “Some people think that for investments, Baidu only goes for the full acquisition or taking a controlling share and that Baidu would not take a minority investment. This is a misunderstanding.”

So far, Uber is only present in nine Chinese cities and focuses on the premium segment of the market. It said in July it would expand to 14 cities in the near future.

The start of what could be a major new departure for the U.S. company is a welcome break from the governance scandals and regulatory problems it has been embroiled in recently across the world.

Kalanick told the press conference that Uber is working “pretty well” in China today and doesn’t have any pressing regulatory issues in the nation, according to Bloomberg.

This article originally appeared on Fortune.com

The tech giant fears the currency is too volatile

Apple halted online sales of its iPhones, iPads and other products in Russia after this week’s “extreme” ruble fluctuations. The Russian currency lost over 20% this week and bonds and stocks also tumbled.

“Our online store in Russia is currently unavailable while we review pricing,” wrote Alan Hely, an Apple spokesman, in an email to Bloomberg.

Apple had earlier tried to deal with the fluctuations by increasing its prices in Russia by about 25%. Apple doesn’t have any of its own stores in the country, so the online store is its main outlet for Russian consumers. But now with the ruble’s value at an all-time low, Apple believes the currency is too volatile to set prices.

[Bloomberg]

Read more: Putin watches Russian economy collapse along with his empire

The suit says the company “failed to effectively encrypt sensitive information”

In a suit similar to one filed on Monday, two former Sony employees are suing Sony Pictures Entertainment for not only failing to protect their private information but also putting employees at risk by moving forward with The Interview while knowing it would cause backlash.

In Tuesday’s suit, Susan Dukow and Yvonne Yaconelli claimed that executives had “expressed apprehension” about The Interview, which depicts the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The suit claims that the original script included a fake villain, but that Sony “specifically” changed the script to make that villain Kim Jong-un.

Dukow and Yaconelli’s lawyer, Neville Johnson, claims that Sony was aware that there was “real and imminent risk of backlash” if they decided to move forward with The Interview, pointing to the Center for Korean-American Peace leader ‘s public criticism of the film, and North Korea’s U.N. ambassador equating it to “an act of war.”

They say “Sony’s actions and inactions related to the forthcoming release of The Interview created an unreasonable risk” that employees’ private information would be exposed.

The suit also addresses the company’s failure to protect private employee information, including their Social Security numbers, salaries, and medical history. It claims that the company was warned “multiple times” that its security policies were inadequate, pointing to several prior instances when the company was hacked, including 2011’s hacking of PlayStation Network.

“Upon information and belief, prior to the Breach, Sony was aware of reports that it was vulnerable to a security threat and that it could do more to reduce specific attacks,” the suit claims. It adds that the company stored thousands of passwords in a file named “password” and “failed to effectively encrypt sensitive information.”

The suit claims that Sony Pictures Entertainment violated the California Data Breach Act, the Constitutional Invasion of Privacy and the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act. Dukow and Yaconelli are seeking unspecified monetary damages.

A rep for Sony did not immediately return EW’s request for comment.

This article originally appeared on EW.com

Schultz talks with employees after grand jury announcements in Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases

American Apparel has fired CEO Dov Charney six months after suspending him for alleged misconduct.

The clothing retailer said on Tuesday that it had appointed Paula Schneider, a veteran fashion executive, as his replacement. Schneider has previously worked at clothing group Warnaco and women’s apparel company Big Strike, will take the reins of the struggling clothing retailer on January 5, 2015.

American Apparel says it has terminated Charney, who was removed from the CEO role in June after the company alleged he had misused corporate money and violation of sexual harassment policies. Over the years, Charney has faced repeated accusations of sexually harassing employees and of discriminating against less attractive staff on the grounds that they undermined the corporate aesthetic.

Charney had been serving as a consultant to the company in recent months, but American Apparel said on Tuesday that he has been terminated for cause.

Charney, who founded American Apparel 25 years ago, was initially replaced by interim CEO John Luttrell, who also served as the company’s chief financial officer. But, Luttrell was removed from both roles in September, when turnaround expert Scott Brubaker of restructuring firm Alvarez & Marsal took over as the new interim CEO. Brubaker will continue in that role until Schneider takes over in early January.

David Danziger, co-chairman of American Apparel’s board, said in a statement that the retailer “needs a permanent CEO who can bring stability and strong leadership in this time of transition, and we believe Ms. Schneider fits the bill perfectly.”

Once one of the trendier, youth-focused retailers in the industry, American Apparel has seen its sales fall off in recent years. The company’s same-store sales declined 7% last quarter and it reported another net loss.

In a statement, Schneider said “My goal is to make American Apparel a better company, while staying true to its core values of quality and creativity and preserving its sweatshop-free, Made in USA manufacturing philosophy.”

This article originally appeared on Fortune.com

Two former employees claim the company didn’t do enough to protect their personal information

The ongoing fallout from last month’s cyber attack at Sony Pictures Entertainment continues this week as two former employees are suing the company after their personal information was exposed as part of the high-profile hack.

Michael Corona and Christina Mathis haven’t worked for Sony Pictures for years, but the former employees both claim that their sensitive personal information — including their names, Social Security numbers, former addresses and other info — was made public in the past month due to “security weaknesses in Sony’s Network.” That’s according to a lawsuit the two filed on Monday in California federal court in which they claim Sony Pictures failed in its legal duty to protect the personal information of current and former employees affected by the hack.

A group identifying itself as Guardians of Peace, or GOP,shut down Sony Pictures’ computer system just before Thanksgiving and have been releasing sensitive company documents on the Internet in subsequent weeks. The hackers posted documents revealing salary information and personal identifying information for thousands of the company’s employees along with other confidential financial documents and passwords for company accounts and computer systems. Over the past few weeks, the hackers have also leaked a mountain of embarrassing e-mail correspondence involving Sony executives — to the point that the company has asked the media to stop publishing excerpts from the once-private messages.

In their lawsuit, Corona and Mathis claim that their personal information was included in the documents the hackers revealed to the world, despite the fact that Corona left the company in 2007 and Mathis has not worked there for 12 years. (The complaint does not specify what the plaintiffs’ roles at Sony were, though it notes that Corona worked for Sony Pictures Entertainment while Mathis was employed by the company’s consumer products arm.) Both Corona and Mathis claim that the release of their information has forced them to spend hundreds of dollars on identity theft protection.

TIME’s Sam Frizell wrote last week about the possibility of employee lawsuits against Sony Pictures, noting that the company’s defense in such a legal action would hinge on whether the company could prove it took the appropriate steps to protect its employees’ personal data.

Monday’s lawsuit alleges that Sony Pictures failed to improve its security after what it describes as a history of data breaches. The suit refers to the 2011 hack of Sony’s PlayStation Network and calls the company “a longstanding and frequent target for hackers.” The complaint also references a recent Gizmodo report that Sony Pictures’ own corporate audit department warned the company about problems with its IT security just months before the November hack. Despite the alleged risk Sony Pictures faced, the company “made a business decision” to not step up its security, the lawsuit claims.

The plaintiffs are asking the court to certify the lawsuit as a class action, which would allow other current and former Sony Pictures employees to join the lawsuit. Corona and Mathis are seeking various damages from Sony Pictures, including at least $1,000 for each class member eventually attached to the lawsuit. They also want the company to pay for five years of credit and bank monitoring services as well as identity theft insurance for all class members.

Sony Pictures declined to comment on the lawsuit.

This article originally appeared on Fortune.com