John McAfee’s death, BuzzFeed going public, JPMorgan’s vaccination policy
Julie Hyman breaks down Thursday’s business headlines, including: John McAfee committing suicide in prison after court approved extradition to the U.S., BuzzFeed nearing a deal to go public with a SPAC, JPMorgan possibly requiring employees to get vaccinated before returning to the office, and the tragic apartment building collapse in Miami Beach which left one dead and many injured.
Video Transcript
- Time to check on some other business headlines we're watching. Eccentric tech entrepreneur John McAfee died after hanging himself in a jail cell in Barcelona. That's after the Spanish High Court said he would be extradited to the US to face tax evasion charges. McAfee was 75. He had also been charged with cryptocurrency-related fraud in New York.
After selling his eponymous antivirus software company in 2011, McAfee's behavior became increasingly erratic. He fled Belize in 2012 after police sought to question him over the murder of a neighbor. He married a woman he'd hired as a prostitute while on the run. And he ran for president as a libertarian in 2016.
Well. BuzzFeed is going public. It's combining via merger. It's doing it via merger with SPAC 890 Fifth Avenue Partners, which was founded by Adam Rothstein and is named after the Marvel headquarters in the comics. It's aiming for a valuation of $1.5 billion and expects to do it in the fourth quarter of this year. BuzzFeed's also planning to buy Complex Networks, another digital publisher, as it seeks greater scale. The ticker, by the way, will be BZFD.
JPMorgan employees have to inform the bank about their vaccination status by the end of the month, Bloomberg reported. And may be required to get shots if they haven't already done so. All JPMorgan workers should plan to return to the office by July 6. This follows on Morgan Stanley saying employees cannot return to the office unless they are vaccinated.
