Odd Lots

At the end of October, seemingly overnight, a major law firm called Weil Gotshal announced it was winding down after a number of partners departed and talks of a merger with another firm failed. So how did a $2 billion big law firm collapse in the span of a few weeks? In 2015, Yale Law professor John Morley published a paper called "Why Law Firms Collapse," that now looks very prescient, with his idea of a “partner run," or the law firm version of a bank run. What is especially interesting about Morley's paper is his forensic examination of partner-led businesses and the idea that the model might be inherently fragile. In this episode, we talk to Morley about his newly relevant paper, the collapse of Weil Gotshal, whether AI will really change how law firms are run, and the future of big law.
Read more:
Weil Gotshal Says Remaining Partners Can Resign Now, Keep Profit
Weil Gotshal Partners Vote to Dissolve Firm, Name Committee
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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s extramarital relationship with a woman named Alice Huang, whom US intelligence reportedly identified as a Chinese intelligence asset, is one of the biggest stories in the world right now. Bloomberg News tech reporter Mackenzie Hawkins has been paying close attention to Megaspeed, the Singapore-based neocloud that Alice Huang was a former executive at — and one of Nvidia’s largest buyers of chips in Southeast Asia. Hawkins is an expert when it comes to the geopolitics of chips, and she tells us that the story that blew up in the last week has been brewing for a while. The US government was investigating suspected chip diversion involving Megaspeed as early as last year. (Megaspeed denies wrongdoing and Nvidia says it found no evidence of chip smuggling.) On this episode, we talk to Hawkins about how she and our Bloomberg News colleagues began investigating Megaspeed and its relationship to Nvidia, the raging debate in Washington over chip export controls, and the incredibly sophisticated and opaque mechanics of chip smuggling itself.

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Even before the US midterms, the AI trade was weakening. Just look at all the headlines from October in the hedge fund world — it was one of the bloodiest periods the industry has faced in recent memory. Now, after the blue wave, things continue to look uncertain. So what's going to happen with the AI buildout now? And what about the big Anthropic IPO? Today's episode is a two-parter, one that examines both the hedge fund carnage of the last few weeks and the broader macro conditions we find ourselves in after the midterm elections. We speak with two of our Bloomberg News colleagues — Nishant Kumar, chief correspondent for hedge funds, and macro strategist Michael Ball — and they help lay out why October was a historic month for hedge funds and what they are paying attention to now as jitters from the AI trade continue to work their way through the market.

Read more: Crowded Hedge Fund Trades Unwind Fast After Ugly October
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According to Joshua Goodman, trash collection in New York is one of the last services the city offers that is not yet touched by neoliberalism. What he means is that it's the last free and unlimited city service — there is no opt-in; it is not means tested. Goodman — who is the DSNY's deputy commissioner for public affairs and customer experience — tells us that the city deals with 24 million pounds of trash every day, and on today's podcast, he explains the logistical dance required to sort through all that garbage. We also get into why NYC produces less trash than you might think, the DSNY's new containerization program (and the new side-loading trucks they built in less than 18 months), and why recycling is not a scam.
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We don't need to tell you that the midterm elections were historic: The Democrats won bigger than even they imagined. But as the dust settles, an open question we are puzzling over is the market's ongoing reaction to this massive political sea change. Democratic control of Congress — and control over a number of formerly red statehouses, like Texas and Iowa — will influence everything from the composition of the FOMC to data center construction. And what we're seeing right now, with stocks like Tesla and SpaceX tumbling, is a direct response to these conditions. To get a better sense of this macro moment, we turn to Odd Lots regular, Employ America's executive director Skanda Amarnath to talk about how the midterms will influence the Fed's battle with inflation, Elon Musk's political instincts, and what a Democratic majority means for the market, tariffs, and AI.
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