The Wall Street Journal - 19.08.2019

B2| Monday, August 19, 2019 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

INDEX TO BUSINESSES

These indexes cite notable references to most parent companies and businesspeople
in today’s edition. Articles on regional page inserts aren’t cited in these indexes.

A

Airbnb..........................B6

Alphabet......................B4
Amazon.com..........B3,B4
Anheuser-Busch InBev
B1
AppDirect....................B4
AT&T............................B1

B

Bloomberg...................B9

C

Capital One Financial.B4
Care.com....................B10
Corinthian Colleges....A3

CVS Health..................B9

D

Deere ........................B10
Delta Air Lines...........B4
Didi Chuxing Technology
A2
Domino's Pizza.........B10

E

Electronic Arts............B4

F

FedEx...........................B3

H

Hired............................B4

HMH Media.................B2

Home Depot..............B10

Huawei Technologies

A2,B3

I

Intel.............................B4

J

J.C. Penney..................B3

Juul Labs.....................B6

M

Macy's.........................B3

MarketAxess Holdings

B9

Microsoft.............B4,B10

N

Netflix.........................B2

Nordstrom...................B3

Novartis.......................B3

P

Pacific Investment

Management.............B1

PIMCO Income Fund...B1

S-T

Salesforce.com............B4

Silicon Valley Bank.....B4

Slack Technologies.....B6

SoftBank Group..........A1

Sony.............................B4

Spotify Technologies..B6

Standard Chartered....A2

Take-Two Interactive

Software...................B4

thinQ Technologies.....B2

Tradeweb Markets......B9

[24]7.ai........................B4

U

Uber Technologies.B4,B6

W

Walt Disney................B1

WeWork Companies...B6

INDEX TO PEOPLE

BUSINESS & FINANCE

Fox’s marketing and publicity

departments depleted, resulting

in advertising campaigns that

some employees describe as

creatively uninspired, paint-by-

numbers operations. As Fox

continues to release movies left

on its calendar, there are still

some employees remaining in

those divisions, but many of-

fices look abandoned, said cur-

rent and former Fox employees.

Some employees announced

their intention to leave Fox just

hours after news of the Disney

deal broke. Others left more

gradually, many decamping to

the competitor that inspired

Disney to buy Fox in the first

place: Netflix.

On his call with analysts, Mr.

Iger laid most of the blame on

the extended lag before the deal

closed. “That’s a long period of

time for a business that relies

on constant decision-making

and constant attention to de-

tail,” he said. “Often, decision-

making can grind to a halt or

certainly slow down.”

Current and former Fox exec-

utives don’t dispute that work

at the studio slowed, but several

said it was also due to a lack of

communication on Disney’s part

about how the Fox studio would

fit into the larger company and

which executives would stay af-

ter the deal closed. Disney exec-

utives didn’t address large

groups of Fox employees to out-

line the way forward, these peo-

ple say. With many Fox execu-

tives unsure of their future at

Disney, their subordinates were

also left weighing whether to

stick around.

Disney was barred from dis-

cussing hiring plans or any

broader strategy with Fox be-

fore the deal closed due to rules

tied to the acquisition, a person

familiar with the situation said.

Since the closing, Disney execu-

tives have been meeting with

their Fox studio counterparts,

and Mr. Iger said his company is

at work “applying the same dis-

cipline and creative standards

behind the success of Disney,

Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm.”

Fox’s woes are partly a re-

sult of Disney’s own success.

The latter’s record-setting

year of megahits—“Captain

Marvel,” “Toy Story 4” and

“The Lion King” among

them—have sucked up so

much box-office oxygen that

many midsize movies released

by rivals have struggled.

The rest of the year could

brighten up for Fox. The car-

racing drama “Ford vs. Ferrari,”

starring Matt Damon and Chris-

tian Bale, is building good buzz

among awards pundits, but it

isn’t the type of movie that can

generate blockbuster returns

like “The Martian” or “Dead-

pool,” previous Fox hits.

Disney is likely to mine

Fox’s extensive library of older

movie titles for shows on Dis-

ney+, its forthcoming family-

oriented streaming service. It

already has reboots of Fox

movies like “Home Alone” and

“Night at the Museum” in de-

velopment for the service,

which will launch in November.

Mr. Iger, for one, is looking

ahead. “As I said a few times, he

told analysts, “we analyzed the

21st Century Fox opportunity

entirely through the lens of our

future business.”

Street Journal.

It was one of the few de-

tailed communications Fox

workers had received in the

roughly year-and-a-half since

Disney agreed to buy the en-

tertainment assets of 21st Cen-

tury Fox for $71.3 billion, in-

cluding Twentieth Century

Fox. So when Disney Chief Ex-

ecutive Robert Iger told Wall

Street analysts this month that

Fox films had dragged down a

record year for his studio,

some Fox executives pointed

the finger back at Disney.

Mr. Iger said the Fox studio’s

performance “was well below

where it had been, and well be-

low where we hoped it would be

when we made the acquisition.”

He put most of the blame on

a protracted acquisition process,

with 17 months passing from

when the deal was announced in

late 2017 to its closing in March.

Fox executives, however,

privately say it had more to do

with uncertainty and indeci-

siveness stemming from Dis-

ney’s lack of communication

during that time.

The clashing views high-

light an issue common in large

acquisitions, particularly ones

that drag on due to regulatory

scrutiny or other complica-

tions. Such delays and uncer-

tainty often lead to a talent

exodus, employee anxiety and

corporate paralysis at the

company being acquired.

In this case, Disney was

preparing to absorb not only a

movie studio, but a major tele-

vision-production operation,

overseas subscription-TV pro-

Continued from the prior page

Fox P ro ves

To Be Tough

Adaptation

Estimated Box-Office Figures, Through Sunday

SALES, IN MILLIONS

FILM DISTRIBUTOR WEEKEND* CUMULATIVE % CHANGE

1.Good Boys Universal $21 $21 --

2.Fast & Furious

Presents: Hobbs

& Shaw

Universal $14.1 $133.7 -44

3.The Lion King Disney $11.9 $496.1 -41

4.The Angry Birds

Movie 2

Sony $10.5 $16.2 --

5.Scary Stories to

Tell in the Dark

Lions Gate $10.1 $40.2 -52

*Friday, Saturdayand Sunday Source: Comscore

‘The Lion King,’ with a $496.1 million domestic box office, was among Disney’s string of movie successes this year.

WALT DISNEY/EVERETT COLLECTION

blocks numbers when it de-

tects a high volume of calls

per second, and responds

when law enforcement or in-

dustry officials request help

tracing a robocall. But the 40-

employee company, based in

Raleigh, N.C., has limited re-

sources and can’t listen to

calls to discern if a scammer is

dialing, he said.

“We work very hard to try

to eliminate it,” Mr. Leon said

of robocall traffic. “That

doesn’t mean people don’t

take advantage of our system.”

Another company that said

it received robocall-tracing re-

quests was R Squared Telecom

LLC, based in Akron, Ohio. The

company was launched in 2014

as an intermediary connecting

Philippines-based call centers

to the U.S. telephone system,

an R Squared executive said in

a YouTube interview posted in

January 2018.

The company knows little

about where the calls come

from.

“They send us calls and we

don’t know if it’s an office

with 1,000 people who each

make four calls a day or if it’s

an office of 20 people who are

placing a call every two min-

utes,” he said in response to a

question. R Squared said

through a lawyer that it coop-

erates with efforts to trace il-

legal calls and “weeds out any

illegal calls.”

The FCC and the Federal

Trade Commission have

stepped up actions against

robocallers in recent years,

but each agency appears to

have adopted a relatively nar-

row view of its authority to go

after intermediary phone com-

panies that help originate and

transmit calls, particularly

those known as Voice over In-

ternet Protocol providers.

The FCC has asserted lim-

ited jurisdiction over VoIP

providers, an agency spokes-

man said. For example, one-

way carriers—those that place

calls but don’t receive them—

aren’t subject to certain re-

quirements. Many internet-

based phone companies are

set up this way.

The FTC has broad author-

ity to go after deceptive busi-

ness practices, but the agency

believes some robocall inter-

mediaries, including VoIP pro-

viders, fall outside its jurisdic-

tion. In a recent memo to a

congressional committee,

viewed by The Wall Street

Journal, the FTC cites a May

2018 enforcement action re-

lated to scam callers where it

declined to sue an internet-

based phone company “for its

knowing participation in the

illegal robocalls.”

The FTC memo pointed the

finger at the FCC, saying the

company in question was

likely a “common carrier” ex-

clusively under the jurisdic-

tion of the FCC.

An FCC spokesman declined

to discuss specific enforce-

ment cases but disputed the

FTC’s legal interpretation, say-

ing the FTC has authority to

go after robocallers and “mid-

dlemen that facilitate them.”

Some courts have said car-

riers and call-platform provid-

ers aren’t liable for their cli-

ents’ violations of telephone

consumer-protection rules,

while others have found them

liable depending on the extent

to which they were involved in

or knew about an illegal cam-

paign, said Daniel Delnero, a

senior attorney at Squire Pat-

ton Boggs.

the DNA of the phone system:
It is set up to make sure that
calls get through, no matter
what. Carriers don’t look at
the content of calls before
connecting them, and multiple
companies touch each call.
The Federal Communica-
tions Commission in Novem-
ber sent notices to eight small
telecom carriers and internet-
based calling companies urg-
ing their cooperation in fight-
ing illegal robocalls.
In response to questions
from The Wall Street Journal,
representatives for most of
those companies said they
shut down suspected fraud
calls or sever ties with cus-
tomers that abuse their ser-
vices.
All eight companies ac-
knowledged getting call-trac-
ing requests from U.S. Tele-
com’s TraceBack Group and
said they respond to them
with details about the calls in
question.
Such traces typically start
when the group observes a
large scam campaign and tries
to follow it back to its origin.
Aaron Leon, chief executive
of thinQ Technologies Inc.,
one of the companies that has
received robocall trace re-
quests, said his company

Continued from the prior page

Robocall

Remedies

Are Elusive

Call to Action

Americanshavebeenreceivingmoreandmorerobocalls,

increasingpressureonWashingtontocrackdown.

Estimated robocalls, 12-month average

Source:YouMail Robocall Index

Note: Robocalls estimated from calls observed each month in YouMail's call-blocking app.

5

0

1

2

3

4

billion

2017 ’ 18 ’ 19

A

Allen, Samuel...........B10
B

Balsillie, Jim...............B4
Bertsche, Rachel.........B6
Blostein, Alexander....B9
Bose, William.............B4
G

Gersch, Kathy.............B3
Grom, Chuck................B3
I

Ivascyn, Daniel............B1
J

Jolly, Ieuan..................B4

K

Khasin, Jeff.................B9

Kramer, Stephen.......B10

Kudlow, Lawrence......A9

L

Liwanag, Allan............B6

Lohmeier, Josh............B9

Loncar, Brad................B3

Lutter, Sonya..............B6

M

McVey, Rick.................B9

Meier, Sandro.............B9

N

Nordstrom, Blake.......B3

Nordstrom, Erik..........B3

Nordstrom, Pete.........B3

P

Piscatella, Mat............B4

R

Robinson, Gary...........B9

Ruskin, Alan...............A4

S

Sharma, Rajeev...........B9

Sheehan, John............B1

W

Whitacre, John...........B3

claims are likely to receive

about $1.3 million at most un-

der the agreement. Two other

pension plans are also part of

the settlement.

The proposed debt-repay-

ment plan also calls for former

Boston Herald publisher Pat-

rick Purcell to waive various

claims, including severance, in

exchange for a release, or a

grant of legal immunity.

An independent director for

HMH Media has reviewed the

Purcell claims “and assessed

whether Mr. Purcell might be

liable” to the reorganized

businesses, Thursday’s court

filing said. That director rec-

ommended that the agreement

resolving the claims of Mr.

Purcell and the pension plans

be approved.

HMH Media sought chapter

11 protection in December

2017, seeking to reorganize. A

few months later, in a court-

approved sale, virtually all of

its assets were sold to Medi-

aNews Group Inc. in a deal

that included a $9.6 million

cash payment and $1 million

to be paid to employees for

accrued paid time off.

Pension plans claiming they
were owed about $40 million
from the bankruptcy of the
Boston Herald have reached a
settlement with the remnants
of the newspaper company
and with its former publisher.
Terms of the agreement in-
clude allowing the New Eng-
land Teamsters & Trucking In-
dustry Pension Fund to have a
$13 million claim, less than
half of the $29 million claim
originally sought, according to
papers filed Thursday in U.S.
Bankruptcy Court in Wilming-
ton, Del. In bankruptcy, a
claim is a right to payment,
whether it is eventually re-
duced or disputed.
William Baldiga, a Brown
Rudnick LLP lawyer represent-
ing the paper’s former owner
HMH Media Inc. and related
affiliates, said the pension
plans’ claims, which are
mostly unsecured in the set-
tlement, will likely receive
about 6 cents to 10 cents on
the dollar of the allowed
claims.
That means the Teamsters’

BYBECKYYERAK

Pension Plans Settle

With Boston Herald

viders and a controlling stake

in Hulu, the streaming service.

Disney is leaning on the Fox

film and television library to

bolster the separate streaming

service it is creating to com-

pete against Netflix Inc.

After the deal closed, the

challenge of integrating Fox was

compounded by the poor per-

formance of its movie lineup.

The collective box-office gross

of Fox’s six 2019 releases—

about $240 million—is still

around $100 million less than

Disney’s “Avengers: Endgame”

made in its opening weekend.

“Dark Phoenix” flopped, forcing

Disney to take an impairment

charge. It was the biggest bomb

on a Fox slate that also included

the misfires “Stuber,” “The Kid

Who Would Be King” and last

week’s “The Art of Racing in the

Rain,” all of which came and

went with dismal showings.

Layoffs and attrition since

the deal’s announcement left

Several former and

current employees

point to a lack of

communication.

F