• Warner Bros. Discovery's board says shareholders should reject Paramount Skydance's bid.
• Paramount CEO David Ellison said last week that WBD's leadership likely couldn't accept his offer.
• Read the WBD board's full letter to shareholders favoring Netflix.

Warner Bros. Discovery still isn't interested in Paramount Skydance's offer.

Paramount's latest bid "is inadequate, with significant risks and costs imposed on our shareholders" compared to Netflix's bid, which "represents superior, more certain value for our shareholders," said Samuel Di Piazza, the chair of WBD's board of directors, in a statement to shareholders on Wednesday morning.

In a letter to shareholders, WBD's board recommended that shareholders reject Paramount's all-cash bid of $30 per share in favor of Netflix's cash-and-stock offer. Paramount wants to buy all of WBD, including its cable channels, while Netflix's bid of $27.75 per share is for WBD's studio, HBO, and HBO Max. A key difference between the two bids revolves around the value of WBD's TV networks, such as CNN, which Netflix isn't interested in buying.

Di Piazza said that Paramount's seventh proposal "once again fails to address key concerns that we have consistently communicated," including about Paramount's financing.

While Paramount has said its bid is fully backstopped by Larry Ellison — one of the richest people in the world and father to Paramount CEO David Ellison — the WBD board said in a letter to shareholders that it relies "on an unknown and opaque revocable trust."

Meanwhile, Netflix is paying with cash and stock. Its shares have fallen recently but surged more than 600% from mid-2022 to mid-2025. Netflix has a market cap of over $400 billion.

And while Paramount has said that it would have an easier time securing regulatory approval than Netflix, the WBD board says it "does not believe there is a material difference in regulatory risk" between the two proposals.

Not even Paramount can be surprised by WBD's decision to stick with its Netflix deal.

David Ellison was overheard saying last week that if WBD's leadership were to "accept the offer exactly as it is today, right, then they're admitting breach of fiduciary duty," Business Insider previously reported.

That's because Paramount said its $30-per-share hostile bid was nearly identical to its previous offer to WBD. Public companies are obligated to act in the best interests of shareholders. So if WBD's board had changed its mind, it could have opened itself up to shareholder lawsuits.

WBD had said in a statement after Paramount's hostile bid that it would "carefully review and consider Paramount Skydance's offer" in a way that was "consistent with its fiduciary duties and in consultation with its independent financial and legal advisors."

Now that WBD's board has given Paramount the cold shoulder again, it's Ellison's move.

The aspiring media mogul told CEO David Zaslav that Paramount's latest offer wasn't its "best and final," which suggests that a higher bid could be coming. Just how much appetite Paramount has to escalate the bidding war is the key question.

Read the full letter to shareholders here:

Dear Fellow Shareholders,

As your Board of Directors, we are committed to acting in your best interest. In this spirit, in October, we launched a public review of strategic alternatives to maximize shareholder value. This followed three separate proposals from Paramount Skydance ("PSKY"), as well as interest from multiple other parties.

That thorough process, overseen by the Board with the assistance of independent financial and legal advisors, as well as our management team, led to the company entering into a merger agreement with Netflix on December 4, with the substantial benefits to WBD shareholders described below. Having failed to submit the best proposal for you, our shareholders, PSKY launched an offer nearly identical to its most recently rejected proposal.

As a Board, we have now conducted another review and determined that PSKY's tender offer remains inferior to the Netflix merger. The Board continues to unanimously recommend the Netflix merger, and that you reject the PSKY offer and not tender your shares.

Below, and in more detail in our 14D-9 filing, we highlight the many reasons for the Board's determination. None of these reasons will be a surprise to PSKY given our clear, and oft-repeated, feedback on their six prior proposals.

The terms of the Netflix merger are superior. The PSKY offer provides inadequate value and imposes numerous, significant risks and costs on WBD.

The value we have secured for shareholders through the Netflix merger is extraordinary by any measure.

Our agreement with Netflix gives WBD shareholders $23.25 in cash, plus $4.50 in shares of Netflix common stock (based on a collar range of $97.91 – $119.67 in the Netflix stock price at the Ume of closing), plus the additional value of the shares of Discovery Global and the opportunity to participate in future potential upside following Discovery Global's separation from WBD. The entire Board is confident in our recommendation that Netflix represents the best value-creating path for shareholders.

PSKY has consistently misled WBD shareholders that its proposed transaction has a "full backstop" from the Ellison family. It does not, and never has.

PSKY's most recent proposal includes a $40.65 billion equity commitment, for which there is no Ellison family commitment of any kind. Instead, they propose that you rely on an unknown and opaque revocable trust for the certainty of this crucial deal funding. Despite having been told repeatedly by WBD how important a full and unconditional financing commitment from the Ellison family was — and despite their own ample resources, as well as multiple assurances by PSKY during our strategic review process that such a commitment was forthcoming — the Ellison family has chosen not to backstop the PSKY offer.

And a revocable trust is no replacement for a secured commitment by a controlling stockholder. The assets and liabilities of the trust are not publicly disclosed and are subject to change. As the name indicates, revocable trusts typically have provisions allowing for assets to be moved at any time. And the documents provided by PSKY for this conditional commitment contain gaps, loopholes and limitations that put you, our shareholders, and our company at risk.

Amplifying the concerns about the credibility of the equity commitment being offered by PSKY, the revocable trust and PSKY have agreed that the trust's liability for damages, even in the case of a willful breach, would be capped at 7% of its commitment ($2.8 billion on a $108.4 billion transaction). Of course, the damage to WBD and its stockholders were the trust or PSKY to breach their obligations to close a transaction would likely be many multiples of this amount.

WBD's merger agreement with Netflix is a binding agreement with enforceable commitments, with no need for any equity financing and robust debt commitments. The Netflix merger is fully backed by a public company with a market cap in excess of $400 billion with an investment grade balance sheet. The debt financing for the PSKY bid relies on an unsecure revocable trust commitment as well as the credit worthiness of a $15 billion market cap company with a credit rating at or only a notch above "junk" status from the two leading rating agencies. The financial condition and creditworthiness of PSKY, which, if its proposed transaction were to close, would have a high gross leverage ratio of 6.8x 2026E debt to EBITDA with virtually no current free cash flow generation before synergies, raise substantial risks for its acquisition of WBD. Such debt levels reflect a risky capital structure that is vulnerable to even potentially small changes in the PSKY or WBD business between signing and closing.

Additionally, PSKY contemplates $9 billion in synergies from the mergers of Paramount/Skydance and their offer for WBD. These targets are both ambitious from an operational perspective and would make Hollywood weaker, not stronger.

The Board's review was full, transparent and comprehensive — establishing a level playing field that fostered a rigorous and fair process.

The Board repeatedly engaged with all parties, including extensive engagement with PSKY and its advisors over the course of nearly three months. We held dozens of calls and meetings with its principals and advisors including four in-person meetings and meals between David Zaslav and David and/or Larry Ellison and provided multiple opportunities for PSKY to offer a proposal that was superior to those of the other bidders, which PSKY never did.

After each bid, we informed PSKY of the material deficiencies and offered potential solutions. Despite this feedback, PSKY has never submitted a proposal that is superior to the Netflix merger agreement.

Despite PSKY's media statements to the contrary, the Board does not believe there is a material difference in regulatory risk between the PSKY offer and the Netflix merger.

The Board carefully considered the federal, state, and international regulatory risks for both the Netflix merger and the PSKY offer with its regulatory advisors. The Board believes that each transaction is capable of obtaining the necessary U.S. and foreign regulatory approvals and that any difference between the respective regulatory risk levels is not material. The Board also notes that Netflix has agreed to a record-setting regulatory termination cash fee of $5.8 billion, significantly higher than PSKY's $5 billion break fee.

The PSKY offer is illusory.

The offer can be terminated or amended by PSKY at any time prior to its completion; it is not the same thing as a binding merger agreement. The first paragraph of the offer states it is "subject to the conditions set forth in this offer to purchase (as it may be amended or supplemented from time to time)" and continues on the next page, "we reserve the right to amend the Offer in any respect (including amending the Offer Price)". In addition, the offer is not capable of being completed by its current expiration date, due to the need for, among other things, global regulatory approvals, which PSKY indicates may take 12-18 months. Nothing in this structure offers WBD shareholders any deal certainty.

The PSKY offer provides an untenable degree of risk and potential downside for WBD shareholders.

There will be additional costs associated with PSKY's offer that could impact shareholders.

When considering the PSKY offer at this juncture, it is important to note that its acceptance could incur significant additional costs to shareholders — all of which PSKY has ignored in their communications. WBD would have to pay Netflix a $2.8 billion termination fee, which PSKY has not offered to reimburse. In addition, WBD would incur approximately $1.5 billion in financing costs if we do not complete our planned debt exchange as agreed to with certain of our debtholders, which would not be permitted by the PSKY offer. This additional $4.3 billion in potential costs represents approximately $1.66 per share to be borne by WBD shareholders if the offer does not close.

We look forward to moving ahead with our combination with Netflixlix and delivering the compelling and certain value it will create for shareholders. We urge you to carefully read the 14D-9 filed with the SEC this morning and available on our website, which more fully details the strategic review process and the Board's reasons for its recommendation to you.

Sincerely,

The Warner Bros. Discovery Board of Directors

• Nike cofounder Phil Knight made the biggest publicly recorded charitable donation of 2025.
• Knight and his wife, Penny, pledged $2 billion to cancer research.
• Billionaire Warren Buffett was also a top donor, giving over $1.3 billion.

Nike cofounder Phil Knight topped the list of the biggest charitable donors this year.

The billionaire and his wife, Penny, pledged $2 billion to Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) to support the Knight Cancer Institute — more than double the size of the second-largest donation.

That's according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, which released its annual list of the largest publicly announced gifts this week.

Knight, whose net worth sits at $31.2 billion, per Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has a decadeslong philanthropic relationship with OHSU.

The Knight Cancer Institute was named in honor of Phil and Penny Knight after they donated $100 million to the institute in 2008. They have since donated millions more.

"Wealthy donors often give their largest donations to nonprofits with which they've built long-term relationships, and this gift is a good example of that," Maria Di Mento, a senior editor at the Chronicle of Philanthropy, told Business Insider.

Warren Buffett dominated the list with four megagifts, donating more than $1.3 billion across the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, the NoVo Foundation, and the Sherwood Foundation.

At 95, Buffett remains one of the world's leading philanthropists. Despite ranking among the wealthiest people on the planet with a net worth of about $150 billion, he is famous for his frugal lifestyle, from living in the same Omaha home he bought in the 1950s to eating McDonald's breakfasts and driving a modest car.

Jackie and Mike Bezos — Jeff Bezos's mother, who died in August, and stepfather — also ranked among the year's biggest donors with a $500 million gift to UNICEF USA for its Child Nutrition Fund.

They aren't new to large-scale philanthropy — in 2022, the couple committed $710.5 million to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle to boost cancer research and care.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy tracks only publicly announced gifts to nonprofit organizations, excluding anonymous or unconfirmed contributions.

• The surge of drones in Ukraine has made it extremely difficult to pull off traditional casualty evacuations.
• A Ukrainian officer said troops often have to wait for darkness, bad weather, or smoke to obscure the battlefield.
• Drone surveillance has eliminated the "golden hour," a critical period in which a life can be saved.

Ukrainian soldiers can’t always rush out to rescue their wounded comrades. Instead, they often have to wait for inclement weather or for someone to stir up a bit of chaos to cloak their evacuations, a senior military officer told Business Insider.

The significant drone presence means that the "battlefield is visible 100%," making it all but impossible for Kyiv's forces to pull off traditional casualty evacuations, Ukrainian Col. Valerii Vyshnivskyi said in an interview, reinforcing warnings about the effect that uncrewed systems have on front-line medical care.

Vyshnivskyi, Kyiv's senior representative to the NATO-Ukraine Joint Analysis Training and Education Centre, an initiative which uses real-time lessons from the conflict to inform Western defense planning, said that soldiers sometimes have to wait for nighttime, fog, or rain — when visibility is difficult — to evacuate their wounded comrades.

He said that soldiers also manufacture poor visibility with smoke grenades, but this tactic risks drawing Russia's attention.

Drones are surging on the battlefield, giving both Ukrainian and Russian forces persistent surveillance options and the ability to carry out precision strikes in a miles-wide kill zone that extends in either direction along the front line.

Movement in the kill zone has become extremely dangerous and has effectively erased the long-held hope of getting wounded troops critical life-saving trauma care within the "golden hour" — the first 60 minutes after a severe injury when medical treatment determines whether a soldier lives or dies.

Vyshnivskyi said that the situation has "changed dramatically" since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion; golden hour has been replaced by a golden day, or some longer stretch of time.

Although it can be difficult, there are ways to get wounded troops out of the kill zone. Ground robots, for instance, have become an increasingly popular choice for Ukraine because they lower the risk for medical crews. Vyshnivskyi said that Kyiv's forces plan out routes for the small vehicles, sometimes working at night under the cover of darkness.

However, Russian drones will also track the robots. And Ukrainian troops have said that they experience technical issues at times, which could leave wounded soldiers exposed and vulnerable.

Further complicating the situation is that evacuation and logistics routes are increasingly under attack. Ukraine has tried to remedy the threat by covering key roadways with anti-drone netting, but soldiers have told Business Insider that Russia can still find small holes to stage attacks.

Even farther back from the front lines, there is still a risk. Combat medics and soldiers have told Business Insider that Russia attacks medical vehicles, while international governing bodies have accused it of striking healthcare facilities. Moscow has denied these allegations.

"We know how to resist enemy artillery," Vyshnivskyi said. "We have counter-battery measures — we implement them and are quite successful in that. But drones are still a big challenge."

His assessment reflects past warnings from combat medics and soldiers fighting in Ukraine, as well as Western officers training Kyiv's forces, that drones have made immediate casualty evacuations nearly impossible, forcing a change in the approach to medical treatment.

American generals predicted years ago that high-intensity future warfare could upend the type of combat medical care that US forces enjoyed when they could achieve air superiority and send in helicopters to whisk injured troops away for treatment.

With small drones now threatening just about anything that moves near the front line and advanced surface-to-air missiles positioned to shoot down aircraft, those grim predictions have become a deadly reality in Ukraine.

Both sides in this war have taken heavy losses since the full-scale Russian invasion began in 2022, though neither has publicly disclosed any official figures. Ukraine is believed to have suffered some 400,000 casualties, while Western officials think Russia has surpassed a staggering 1.1 million dead and wounded.

Vyshnivskyi said that, in a war against Russia, NATO would face the same casualty evacuation challenges and likely see more soldiers killed and wounded than in the war in Ukraine.

NATO leaders, warning that the alliance could find itself at war with Russia, are taking into account the possibility of heavy losses and are pushing to find solutions to the problem of life-saving care in a battlespace infested with drones.

Earlier this month, NATO hosted an event in London for companies to showcase medical technology that could solve some of the issues Ukraine is facing on the battlefield, including how to conduct casualty evacuations under constant surveillance.

British Army Col. Niall Aye Maung, the medical branch head for NATO's ACT and the medical advisor to the alliance headquarters in Brussels, told Business Insider that some of the solutions featured at the event have a dual purpose — for use in Ukraine in the immediate term and in the West during a potential future high-intensity conflict.

"NATO is certainly posturing itself to be able to manage that scenario because of the lessons learned" in Ukraine, he said.

• OpenAI has joined the Silicon Valley trend of hiring former British politicians.
• George Osborne, who previously ran the UK Treasury, said on Tuesday he was joining the ChatGPT maker.
• Osborne will lead OpenAI for Countries, the global arm of the startup's $500 billion Stargate initiative.

Tech companies are snapping up former world leaders and politicians — and OpenAI is the latest to join the party.

The ChatGPT maker has hired former British chancellor George Osborne to run the global arm of its Stargate AI infrastructure initiative.

"I recently asked myself the question: what's the most exciting and promising company in the world right now? The answer I believe is OpenAI," wrote Osborne, who ran the UK Treasury from 2010 to 2016, in a Tuesday X post confirming the move.

Osborne takes the role of managing director and head of OpenAI for Countries, an initiative launched by the AI startup in May that will see OpenAI partner with nations to build data centers and expand its $500 billion Stargate project beyond the US.

The former finance minister, who was a member of parliament in the right-leaning Conservative party until 2017, is the latest ex-British political heavyweight to join a US tech firm.

Rishi Sunak, the former UK prime minister, took on roles at OpenAI rival Anthropic and Microsoft as an advisor in October, while ex-deputy prime minister Nick Clegg worked as a senior executive on Meta's global affairs team from 2018 until stepping down at the start of 2025.

British political salaries are dwarfed by the earnings of even midlevel employees at US tech companies. British prime ministers earn an annual salary of around £174,000 ($232,000), while salaries for research engineers at Meta can be as high as $400,000.

Osborne's arrival comes as OpenAI continues to bulk up its executive ranks. The AI startup hired former Instacart and Meta exec Fidji Simo as its new CEO of applications in May, and this week hired veteran Google executive Albert Lee to lead its mergers and acquisitions team.

• At least 10 affiliates of the world's biggest HR group, SHRM, have posted statements clarifying their independence.
• The messages followed an $11.5 million discrimination verdict against the main org, which it plans to appeal.
• "The intent is to inform our audience," said Rafael Rivera, CEO of SHRM's largest affiliate.

Some of the largest affiliates of the Society for Human Resource Management have publicly reaffirmed their operational independence from the trade group after it lost an employee-discrimination lawsuit in a $11.5 million verdict.

Business Insider identified LinkedIn posts from 10 US affiliates that reference the case that led to the so-called "nuclear" verdict on Dec. 5. That includes SHRM's largest affiliate, in Southern California, which has roughly 3,500 members. All the posts stress how the groups operate independently from SHRM international, which is based in Virginia.

"While we are an affiliated chapter of SHRM, we are not governed by SHRM's management, and we were not involved in this case," said New York City SHRM.

"We have our own bylaws, board, finances, programming, and strategic priorities," wrote Chicago SHRM.

NYC SHRM and Chicago SHRM say they have around 1,400 and 1,000 members, respectively.

Similar statements were posted on LinkedIn by SHRM affiliates in the northeastern US, Texas, Oregon, Illinois, and California. The vast majority of affiliates have not publicly commented on the legal situation.

SHRM says it has 556 chapters worldwide. The organization sends some funds to its chapters, which may encourage local members to get certified and may also require members to pay dues to the international organization. Chapters are one kind of affiliate; state councils, of which there are 51, are another.

The organization said in response to Business Insider's questions that the independence of its affiliates "has always been the case."

"We actually make a point of reminding our chapters and state councils that they are separate legal entities and make their own operational decisions," SHRM representative Eddie Burke said in an email. He didn't respond to questions about the substance of the posts.

The lawsuit that SHRM lost earlier this month was filed in 2022 by Rehab Mohamed, an Egyptian woman who worked at the association as an instructional designer from 2016 until 2020. She said in her complaint that she was racially discriminated against by a white supervisor and faced retaliation for complaining to management.

A Colorado federal jury found SHRM liable on both fronts. The association was hit with $1.5 million in compensatory damages and $10 million for punitive damages. SHRM has said it plans to file an appeal and that the jury's decision "does not reflect the facts, the law, or the truth of how" it operates.

Jane Billbe, president of Washington State SHRM, told Business Insider in an email that its post "was intended to provide clarity for our members and stakeholders — not to distance ourselves from SHRM."

The California affiliate, the Professionals In Human Resources Association, wrote on LinkedIn that its code of ethics requires "that everyone involved with PIHRA act with integrity, comply with applicable laws, and treat others with dignity and respect, free from discrimination, harassment, or retaliation."

Rafael Rivera, the affiliate's CEO since 2010, told Business Insider that he couldn't recall ever issuing a statement like it and believed some of his group's members were unaware of the distinction between the affiliate and main branch, or that SHRM had just lost an employee-discrimination case.

"The intent is to inform our audience that may not have the information," he said. "They may assume that we're one and the same."

It's not the first time SHRM and its chapters haven't seen eye-to-eye. In 2016, SHRM sued a Northern California chapter for planning to hold its "HR West" event out of state without buy-in from SHRM chapters covering the cities where the event was to be held. The suit was dropped after the judge suggested that the agreement between the two parties wasn't as airtight as SHRM had asserted.

Burke, the SHRM spokesperson, said that chapter "is no longer part of our affiliated network."

Some of the SHRM affiliates that posted on LinkedIn after the recent verdict wrote that they were speaking out because they'd been receiving inquiries from members concerned about the lawsuit and their affiliate's relationship to SHRM international. Some chapters require their members to also be members of SHRM, which increased its annual fee by 13% earlier this year, to $299. Burke said SHRM wouldn't be increasing dues this year.

In addition to membership, SHRM sells access to HR educational materials and credentialing programs, and bills itself as "the foremost expert, researcher, advocate, and thought leader on issues and innovations impacting today's evolving workplaces."

Ahead of the trial, SHRM made an unsuccessful bid to have the plaintiff's lawyers barred from portraying it as a specialist in HR best practices. During the proceedings, the plaintiff argued that SHRM botched its own HR investigation into Mohamed's accusations of discrimination and retaliation.

One SHRM affiliate, DallasHR, said in its statement on LinkedIn that the verdict underscored the need for HR professionals to support and learn from one another.

"This is a validation of one of the core reasons DallasHR exists," the group said. "Too often we assume in our organizations we are 'all trained up' and 'that would never happen here.' But none of us should rest on yesterday's knowledge."

• My Gen Alpha sister's Christmas list highlights the cyclical nature of teen fashion choices.
• Y2K brands like Ed Hardy and Hollister have caught her 15-year-old eye this year.
• Her wish list aligns with some Gen Alpha trends and the recent surge of brands like UGG.

Every year, my 15-year-old sister sends my family her Christmas list, and it gives me a snapshot into the hallways of high schools for Gen Alpha.

As the youngest of three sisters, she sends the list to our mom, our eldest sister, and me to divvy up how we see fit. I've come to expect it to be long and detailed down to the exact style and color she's looking for.

However, this year I was caught off guard by the presence of some brands that my 30-year-old sister and I, a 26-year-old, were obsessed with at her age. Fashion is cyclical, but it's always interesting to see it unfold in real time, even if it makes me feel like I'm ancient.

My little sister is a dancer, so I wasn't shocked to see workout gear from popular athleisure brands, such as Lululemon, Alo, and Nike. The big surprises came from her requests for items I hadn't thought about since middle school. She asked for Victoria's Secret vanilla-scented body mist, flair leggings, and Ed Hardy sweatsuits, which were hot when I was growing up, for example.

Brands like Hollister and UGG have each had a strong year in 2025, with double-digit year-over-year sales growth in their most recent quarters. They're making big comebacks with Gen Alpha teens, according to Piper Sandler's semi-annual Taking Stock With Teens survey, published in April.

My sister is no different, with multiple styles of UGG shoes and a specific Hollister item making the long list.

Although a lot of the items sparked nostalgia for me — the Nike Elite backpack was a must-have when I was growing up — she also requested some brands that have popped off more recently. Fast-fashion brand PrettyLittleThing and Kim Kardashian's Skims are still establishing themselves as go-to options for young shoppers, such as my sister, for example.

Here's the full list of what my sister wants to see under the tree this year.

• Pink iPad
• Light pink Beats Studio Pro headphones
• Lululemon exercise set
• Lululemon backpack and keychain
• Skims tops
• Nike Elite backpack (pink or black)
• Black Alo workout set
• Nike workout gear (socks, leggings, and a jacket)
• Pink Stanley tumbler
• Victoria's Secret flair leggings and jacket
• Bare Vanilla Victoria's Secret body mist
• Goddess by Burberry perfume
• Carolina Herrera Good Girl Blush perfume
• Pandora bracelet
• UGG shoes (mini, slippers, or Lowmel)
• "NOOO PLATFORM Tazz Uggs"
• PrettyLittleThing set
• Ed Hardy sweatsuit (pink, red, white, black)
• Light pink Moon Boots
• Deer print blanket
• Hollister pink puffer jacket
• Ferrero Rocher chocolate

Her one caveat: We don't have to buy everything on the list. Thank goodness.

• Kirsty Craig was named a Tech Fellow at BlackRock, one of the firm's highest technical honors.
• She helped build Asimov, an agentic AI platform for the firm's investors.
• Craig, the only woman to become a fellow this year, said her advocacy has informed her success.

For 15 years, BlackRock's Kirsty Craig has operated as a kind of "translator" inside the world's largest asset manager, sitting between portfolio managers making big bets and engineers building the systems that help inform those decisions to get both sides aligned on driving returns.

This skill set is part of what earned Craig, head of research, data, and AI strategy for portfolio management tech, the title of Tech Fellow, one of the firm's high technological distinctions, held by only two dozen of its thousands of engineers. Craig is one of five new fellows that the firm announced on December 16, recognized for supercharging the asset manager's investment team. This year, she is the only woman and the only fellow who works outside of Aladdin, the lucrative spine of BlackRock's investment technology.

When it comes to her impact on how $13.5 trillion money manager BlackRock uses AI, Craig said she's especially proud of her role in Asimov, the agentic AI platform for the firm's fundamental equity business. The "virtual investment analyst" was unveiled by Chief Operating Officer Rob Goldstein at the firm's investor day in June.

It leverages AI to automate workflows and research, as many firms race to adopt the technology to speed up what were once monthslong investment processes.

Now, as a fellow, Craig is even more embedded in BlackRock's efforts to stay ahead, as the firm continues to center on technological prowess.

'Tip of the spear'

At first, Craig wasn't sure she'd become a tech fellow, largely because her work is different than most of the other fellows who work squarely within BlackRock's data analytics and risk platform, Aladdin. Her team of around 60 software engineers, data engineers, and data scientists "sits at the horizontal" across various investment capabilities to help drive investment research.

She found out about the honor at the beginning of the month when a meeting was added to her calendar.

When she heard the news, Craig started by telling the manager who had nominated her, her sponsor during the application process, her team, and her family, "but they've got no idea what it means," she told Business Insider.

Nish Ajitsaria, BlackRock's co-head of Aladdin product engineering and the co-executive sponsor of the fellows program, said that existing tech fellows knew Craig not only for her innovation with AI in investing, but for her collaborative efforts. He described Craig as an "AI native," and added that her team is at the "tip of the spear" when it comes to applying AI to investment.

Craig's time at different offices — Edinburgh, San Francisco, and now Philadelphia — has, she thinks, given her a strong foundation of horizontal leadership across teams.

"I am responsible for really trying to find the dial movers across data, AI, and technology that really help our investment pillars drive investment research," she said of her work.

Craig has learned how to communicate with both investors and Aladdin technologists, and said that building deep trust with both groups has been key to her success.

"If you put both of those different personalities or personas together, quite often they're talking above or below each other. They struggle to connect. So for me, it's really been being able to translate both and then come up with a strategy in the middle," she said.

Visible leadership

For Craig, being a woman in a position of visible leadership is "a huge honor." Of the 24 tech fellows, five are women, including Craig. Women make up 43.8% of BlackRock's global workforce and 33.1% of senior leadership, according to data from January 1, 2025, posted on the firm's site.

Craig said being involved in BlackRock's women and LGBTQ+ resource groups has informed her other work at the firm, especially in how they've taught her how to collaborate with people from across divisions and explain complicated topics.

"If anything has probably helped me with, one, building my network; two, softer presentation skills; and then three, around how to communicate with impact," Craig said. With the title, she hopes to help more junior female technologists "lean in."

For Ajitsaria, it's also important to have a diversity of expertise in the program and ensure that fellows represent all arms of BlackRock.

Expectations beyond the title

When it comes to driving technology strategy itself, Craig said she's excited to keep figuring out how to leverage AI in active investing. Right now, her team is thinking about how to expand the scope of agentic research, potentially to areas like fixed income and macro investing.

As she continues to soak up the news, Craig is also preparing for a very different big life change. Her partner is scheduled to give birth in early January, so, with the due date mere weeks away, Craig said they've kept all celebrating fairly tame so far.

"We did go out for a meal. Nothing has been purchased, apart from cribs and bottles," she said. "Definitely some more celebrating will be done post January 6."

• Where does Wall Street like to eat lunch?
• We set out to find some of the hot spots — besides all of the slop bowl chains.
• Favorites ranged from fine dining to casual delis.

For lunch on most days, the average Wall Streeter might opt for what has affectionately come to be known as a slop bowl. Think Cava, Chipotle, Sweetgreen: $18 for some combination of vegetables, chicken, and rice.

But on occasion, either with clients or colleagues, New York's finance workforce still likes to spend their midday break somewhere that's not a fast-casual chain.

I asked around to find out what some of their favorite spots are these days.

While the list below is by no means exhaustive — there are over 23,000 restaurants in New York — it offers a glimpse into where Wall Street likes to eat, from high-end joints to deli counters.

• The CMO at Monday.com has held executive marketing roles at Google, Amazon, and Vimeo.
• Harris Beber said he uses 3 P's to determine if a job is the right fit: people, product, and position.
• The CMO said he uses those criteria so he doesn't get swayed by whatever offer is in front of him.

It's human nature to reach for the shiny object in front of you — but Monday.com's CMO says it's worth pausing before you accept the first job offer that comes along.

Harris Beber has acted as the CMO of Vimeo, Global CMO of Google Workspace, and also held marketing executive positions at other companies including Amazon. He's no stranger to changing jobs — and he believes switching roles can be the right move when the work no longer feels fulfilling.

In the past, Beber told Business Insider that he's explored new roles in times when he was doing really well at work but feeling unfulfilled. That feeling can't last forever, he said.

"Eventually your work will suffer, your performance will suffer, and it doesn't end well for anyone," Beber said.

To avoid acting out of desperation or necessity, Beber said he tries to map out his next role before he gets to the point of needing a new job. The CMO said it's important to know your criteria for success when thinking about what's next.

"What is really important to you? What are your non-starters? And if you can look at those objectively, then when you have opportunities, you can measure it against something objective," Beber said.

He said he's used 3 P's to determine if his last few roles were the right fit: people, product, and position.

In regards to the first P, Beber said he tries to evaluate whether the people he's going to work with are right for him. He said it's "not easy to get up every day" and work with people you don't like or who don't treat others well.

In one job, Beber said he worked for a difficult leader who yelled, "put intense pressure" on the team, and treated him and others poorly. He said he would never work in that kind of environment again.

Beyond working with respectful coworkers, Beber said it's also important to make sure that the people you work alongside have complementary skills that will help you work well together.

If you're a marketer, when it comes to evaluating the product you're selling, Beber said, it's important to understand the user base and product offerings.

"Do you care about it? Does it excite you? It's really hard to sell something to other people if you don't understand it or aren't excited by it," the CMO said.

Beber said he made the mistake of once taking the wrong role at a sports tech startup. He said he really liked the people, but he's "not a sports person," and didn't understand the product. Beber said he ultimately didn't find happiness in that job.

When it comes to evaluating the position, Beber said he wants to find a role where he feels aligned and can add value to the company.

"Is what I'm great at? What the company needs?" Beber said.

Beber said he's felt the most fulfilled in his career when those three criteria line up. People are "really good at selling themselves" on why an opportunity seems perfect in the moment, he said, which is why measuring the offer against something objective is critical.

When someone makes you a job offer, "they're going to tell you every reason why you're perfect for the role and why it's going to be great," Beber said. "But as anyone goes into a new role, very rarely is it exactly what you thought it would be."

In 2020, the Department of Health and Human Services released "Healthy People 2030," a set of objectives designed to improve the nation's health outcomes. This year, at the halfway point, Business Insider decided to check how the country was doing against its goals.

One topic stood out. When it came to reducing low-risk cesarean sections, the US was "getting worse," a bright red banner warned.

"It's a cesarean epidemic," said Dr. Emiliano Chavira, a practicing obstetrician and maternal-fetal medicine specialist in Los Angeles. "There's a minimization of what the long-term risks are, what's happening to our public health, and how this affects mothers."

The more we dug, the more we realized there was a gap between the procedure's public perception as a routine, normal part of giving birth and what experts were saying. We set out to figure out why.

We also wanted to better understand the complexity involved in a procedure that can be life-saving and is also performed around double the rate the World Health Organization says is "ideal" for maternal and infant health.

We interviewed more than 30 practicing and retired obstetricians, nurse midwives, and labor and delivery nurses. We spoke with more than 25 academics who study C-section rates and maternal health outcomes.

Because hospitals don't always publicly disclose how frequently their doctors perform C-sections, we compiled our own data. We requested information from every state and Washington, DC. By the time of publication, we had answers from 29 states and DC. We compiled findings from over 1,700 hospitals.

We learned that doctors delivering babies have to make tough calls, and that the immediate and widespread availability of cesarean surgeries is critical to safe maternal care.

At the same time, dozens of providers told Business Insider that concerns for the health and safety of women and their newborns aren't the only influences. Doctors told us they performed C-sections because they feared lawsuits, or because there weren't enough staff, available beds, or time to support safe vaginal deliveries.

In reviewing decades of research, Business Insider also learned that indirect financial incentives appear to drive higher C-section rates since the surgeries are more profitable, cost-effective, and perceived to be more protective in the event of a lawsuit.

These interviews and our data analysis underlined a common theme: Too many C-sections endanger the health of women and their newborns, but a higher C-section rate appears to be better for a hospital's bottom line.

First, we set out to get C-section rate data from hospitals across the US

Early in our reporting, we learned that the rate at which doctors performed C-sections in the US skyrocketed since the late 1960s, when the surgery first became widespread. It tripled within the first decade, then doubled again by the early 2000s.

We wondered if elective C-sections were driving up the rate, and then found that only about 2.5% of babies are delivered in the US that way.

We learned that researchers in the 2000s found that pregnant women in the US are increasingly older, more likely to be obese, and are more frequently diagnosed with other complications, such as diabetes — all factors increase the chance that a baby will be most safely delivered by C-section.

That didn't explain one of the most surprising lessons: Doctors at different hospitals perform C-sections at wildly different rates, studies repeatedly found.

Controlling for a constellation of factors — hospital obstetric care levels, delivery volume, urban or rural location, maternal age, race, health, and income — multiple studies show one of the biggest risks for undergoing a medically unnecessary C-section is the hospital a woman delivers in.

A woman looking for the C-section rate at her nearby hospital may not find it. Some hospitals voluntarily disclose their rates in response to annual consumer surveys; many do not. Business Insider set out to build a more complete picture.

State health departments collect data on all babies born in their state, including when, where, and whether they're born vaginally or by cesarean surgery. Business Insider requested this data from all 50 states and Washington, DC.

Eleven states would not produce data that identified individual hospitals. Of those, 10 — Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Dakota — said the data was confidential by department policy or state law. The Louisiana Department of Health said the state does not track C-section rates by hospital, the only state in the country to say this.

Twenty-eight states require a formal public records or data request, sometimes for fees that reach $1,500. By the time of publication, 18 states and Washington, DC, produced data for Business Insider.

Kentucky's first-time and low-risk C-section hospital rates produced state-wide averages that differed significantly from those reported by federal agencies, so Business Insider excluded them from our analysis.

Eleven states release C-section rates by hospital on publicly accessible websites, which Business Insider pulled directly.

In total, 29 states and Washington, DC, provided at least one of three types of C-section rates for hospitals that delivered, on average, 100 or more babies a year: overall, first-time, and low-risk.

All regions produced hospitals' overall C-section rates, which include women undergoing their first C-sections and women who have undergone the procedure before.

Twenty-three states and Washington, DC, produced first-time C-section rates at 1,242 hospitals. We analyzed this rate because maternal health experts stress the importance of limiting first-time surgeries. Her first surgery almost always leads to others, which in turn increases her risk of developing more severe complications.

Eighteen states and Washington, DC, provided low-risk, or NTSV, C-section rates at 1,097 hospitals. Experts look at the rate doctors perform surgeries on women with low-risk, NTSV pregnancies — women who are pregnant for the first time, are at full term, are not delivering twins, and whose babies are head-down rather than breech — since they are the least likely to require surgery to most safely deliver their babies.

Relying on expert guidance, Business Insider considered low-risk C-section rates to be the most authoritative for comparing across different hospitals. Women with low-risk pregnancies may still have other complications, such as preeclampsia, which would most likely require a C-section to safely deliver their newborns. Experts overwhelmingly agree that low-risk C-section rates are still the best available metric.

For states that did not produce low-risk C-section rates by hospital, Business Insider relied on first-time C-section rates. If neither low-risk nor first-time C-section rates were available, we used the overall C-section rate.

In total, we analyzed at least one of three types of C-section rates from 1,744 hospitals that collectively delivered an average of over 2.6 million babies annually — around 70% of the babies born nationwide each year.

Nearly one in three were delivered by C-section, Business Insider's data shows, around the same as the national C-section rate over the last two decades.

Then we calculated each hospital's average C-section rates

Health departments provided annual C-section rate data over different time periods. Twenty-six states and Washington, DC, provided data for at least five years, all since 2018. Florida's data is the oldest, ranging from 2015 to 2019. Public websites for California and New York each provided one year of hospital C-section rates in 2024 and 2022, respectively. Hospital C-section rates may have since changed.

Guided by input from maternal health experts, Business Insider calculated individual hospital overall, first-time, and low-risk C-section rates as an average over all years provided. This helped ensure that the rates we examined weren't outliers.

Since we used a hospital's average, the rates Business Insider used may still reflect higher rates for hospitals with some years of high C-section rates, even where they have worked to curb their C-section rates year-over-year.

Next, we mapped the hospitals' locations and compared their C-section rates to others close by

We found that hospital average C-section rates swung to extremes, dipping as low as 4% overall at a hospital in Alaska and as high as 62% overall at a hospital in Florida.

To track how individual hospitals impact care, we first matched each hospital to addresses in the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' hospital general information database. Using the latitude and longitude of each address, Business Insider then deployed a Python programming script that used geospatial data to identify each hospital's nearest neighboring hospital in our dataset.

Next, we compared C-section rates across each hospital and its nearest neighbor. Business Insider identified hundreds of hospitals with higher rates than the next closest hospital, including 158 hospitals with an average low-risk C-section rate at least 25% higher than that of the next closest hospital.

Business Insider created a searchable map, which, for the first time, maps hospitals across 29 states and Washington, DC, and makes C-section rates publicly available to compare across nearby hospitals.

Hospitals change ownership — and names — frequently. Business Insider used the hospital name provided by each state's department of health. Hospital names in our database may have since changed.

We determined whether a hospital was for-profit, and whether that impacted C-section rates

What's the difference between neighboring hospitals with wildly different C-section rates? Decades of studies show a correlation between profits and higher C-section rates. Dozens of doctors, nurse-midwives, and labor and delivery nurses told us hospitals looking to maximize revenues and keep operating expenses low are indirectly incentivized to keep surgery rates high.

To investigate further, Business Insider used the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' hospital general information data to determine if a hospital is nonprofit, for-profit, or public. Business Insider used SEC filings, court filings, and previous news coverage to further determine and confirm operational model and ownership of individual hospitals across the 29 states and Washington, DC.

Business Insider also confirmed that the hospital's operational model had not changed at some point during the analyzed data period. If it had, we factored that change into the analysis.

We found that across nearly all 29 states and Washington, DC, for-profit hospitals, on average, performed C-sections at higher rates than other hospitals. Collectively, for-profit hospitals across Business Insider's analysis overall had a 20% higher first-time C-section rate and a 14% higher low-risk C-section rate than other hospitals.

C-sections are more profitable and more cost-effective than vaginal deliveries, experts and repeated studies found. Our findings are consistent with many studies that found that indirect financial incentives appear to drive higher C-section rates.