Fatherhood used to be invisible in the conversation about entrepreneurship. The story was always the same: A founder celebrated for sacrifice, for grinding through the night, taming fortune one day at a time. The world championed the grind. But that archetype is now deeply outdated.
The successful founder is no longer the one sleeping under their desk. Thats not simply dedication; its a symptom of poorly designed systems. If your company requires your constant, heroic presence, you haven’t built a businessyouve built a cage.
Today, elite performance is not measured by the hours you log, but by the resilience of the organization you leave behind. The best entrepreneurs build things that thrive when they are gonesay, to simply make breakfast or see a Little League game. The new true flex is to be out of office and unreachable.
THE STRESS TEST
Fatherhood is the ultimate stress test for an entrepreneur’s systems.
This isn’t about the impossible concept of balance. That word implies separation. This is about deep integration. Its about simply sitting on the floor with your childthe ability to be fully present for simple things. Being a father is not a distraction from ambition; it is a profound competitive advantage. The quiet moments demand tools like empathy and grace. These are the exact skills required to lead a high-trust, modern team. It forces you to operate from a position of systemic strength, not perpetual effort.
The perspective is that days are long, but the years pass like a train in the night. This accelerated sense of time, which spans decades not quarters, is the masterclass both fatherhood and entrepreneurship teach.
3 PARALLELS FOR RAISING HUMANS AND A VISION
The following three core disciplines run parallel between raising humans and scaling a vision.
1. Patience and long-term vision
You must learn to ignore the immediate market tantrums, the noise of instant feedback, and the urge to sprint. You invest, guide, and trust the process. You build, break, and grow.
2. Nurture autonomy
True leadership is not about commanding; its about creating an environment where othersyour children, your employeeslearn to lead themselves. Curiosity is the path to growth. We must empower self-sufficiency, giving room for the inevitable failure and iteration required for competence.
3. Active presence
I recall a day fishing on the Harpeth River. The August downpour had left the water swollen, filled with snags and debris. Laughing turned to silence as each child found their hole. In that stillness, I learned more about patience and waiting for the right moment to guide than I did in any boardroom. The stakes were suddenly real. The humility to wait for the fish, and the willingness to let others find their footing, perfectly mirrored the trust I had to place in my leadership team during a turbulent launch.
ACCEPTANCE
The elite leader of the next decade is the one who accepts that lifes non-negotiable anchorslike familyforce an excellence that the constant grind never could. Fatherhood demands you delegate ruthlessly and focus only on the high-leverage work. This forces a vision for the future and its unknowns that is built for endurance, not a flash.
The most successful companieslike the most resilient familiesare those built to last, not to sprint. They are sustained by presence, not absence.
So I look to the horizon. We are ready for what comes next.
Logan Mulvey is CEO of Cinq Music.
The world economy has proven surprisingly durable in the face of President Donald Trumps trade wars, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Tuesday, upgrading its outlook for global and U.S. economic growth this year.
The 38-country OECD now forecasts that the world economy will grow 3.2% this year, down a tick from 3.3% in 2024 but an improvement on the 2.9% it had predicted for 2025 back in June. The organization, which does economic research and promotes international trade and prosperity, expects global growth to slow to 2.9% next year.
The OECD also raised its forecast for U.S. growth this yearto 2%, up from the 1.6% it had forecast in June. Still, even with the upgrade, the American economythe worlds largestwould have grown considerably more slowly than it did in 2024 (2.8%).
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has overhauled U.S. trade policy, imposing taxes on imports to build a protectionist wall around the previously open American economy.
The trade barriers were widely expected to slow growth and push up costs. But his tariffs have come in lower than the ones he threatened to impose in the spring. Many companies beat the levies by importing foreign goods into the United States before they took effect. And the U.S. and world economies are getting a boost from massive investments in artificial intelligence.
The global economy has been resilient this year, despite concerns about a sharper slowdown in the wake of higher trade barriers and significant policy uncertainty, OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann wrote in a commentary accompanying the forecasts. Still, he added: We expect higher tariffs to gradually feed through to higher prices, reducing growth in household consumption and business investment.
The OECD expects China, the worlds No. 2 economy, to grow 5% this year, the same as in 2024. It sees the 20 economies that share the euro currency collectively expanding 1.3% in 2025, lackluster but up from 0.8% in 2024.
India, which has supplanted China as the worlds fastest-growing major economy, is expected to generate 6.7% growth this year, up from 6.5% in 2024.
Paul Wiseman, AP economics writer
More than 1 million workers in America have been laid off so far in 2025, according to the latest tally of announced job cuts from the executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
The jobs span nearly every major industry, but layoffs have hit tech and government jobs the hardest. Heres what you need to know, and which tech companies have had the largest round of layoffs in 2025.
2025 layoff announcements surpass 1 million
Nearly every week this year, there have been headlines about layoffs hitting Americas workers.
The latest report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas adds up layoff announcements from U.S. employers through the end of October. According to the report, 1,099,500 workers have lost their jobs due to layoffs.
Given that those numbers dont include November layoffs, and we are only at the beginning of December, it’s a certainty that the figure will rise before the end of the year.
Worse, the 1,099,500 job cuts are 65% higher than the 664,839 job cuts announced through October 2024.
This year’s figure also exceeds the 761,358 full-year 2024 job cuts by 44%. And to put the 2025 figures into greater perspective, Challenger, Gray & Christmas says this years job cuts are at their highest levels since 2020, when there were 2,304,755 through that Octobermany spurred by the pandemic.
Government and tech account for most layoffs
While layoffs have hit nearly every industry in 2025, two sectors were impacted more than others: government and tech.
Government worker layoffs account for the most job losses, many stemming from cuts made by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), then led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Challenger, Gray & Christmas calls this the DOGE Impact and states that it remains the leading reason for job cut announcements in 2025.
In total, those cuts amount to 307,638 for the year through October. That figure includes 293,753 direct layoffs of federal workers and contractors, along with an additional 20,976 layoffs due to a DOGE Downstream Impact.”
Challenger, Gray & Christmas says these additional layoffs are a reflection of the loss of federal funding to private and non-profit entities.
After government-related layoffs, the sector next most affected by job cuts was the tech industry. Challenger, Gray & Christmas says that through October 2025, 141,159 tech workers lost their jobs due to layoffs.
Overall, the top five sectors with the most job cuts in 2025 through October are:
Government: 307,638
Technology: 141,159
Warehousing: 90,418
Retail: 88,664
Services: 63,580
Tech companies lead private-sector layoffs in 2025
After removing sweeping federal government job cuts from the figures, the tech industry accounted for the most layoffs so far in 2025.
Thats little surprise considering that hardly a week went by this year without additional rounds of tech layoffs making the news.
Meanwhile, some Big Tech companies made an outsized contribution to 2025s tech layoffs. According to data from layoff tracking website Layoffs.fyi, the largest rounds of job cuts from U.S. tech companies so far in 2025 have come from the following:
Intel
Amazon
Microsoft
HP
Salesforce
Meta
Hewlett-Packard Enterprise
Its worth noting that while any layoffs this year are devastating to the workers involved and their families, Layoffs.fyis data shows that 2025 has so far seen fewer tech layoffs than in years past.
Layoffs.fyis data currently shows that 120,444 tech employees were laid off globally by 239 tech companies in 2025 so far. That compares to 152,922 tech employees laid off from 551 tech companies in 2024, and 264,220 tech employees laid off from 1,193 tech companies in 2023.
Since the launch of ChatGPT three years ago, almost everyone has used Artificial Intelligence in some fashion to help with their work and the world collectively believes AI holds potential. I have written on AI subjects three times before in this series on strategy & AI, on AI investment, and on AIs impact on entry level hiring. The third was co-authored with friends Ahmad Zaidi, co-founder and CEO of AI start-up TransforML, and Gui Loureiro, Regional CEO Walmart Canada, Central America, Chile and Mexico and co-author of Reinventing the Leader. That team returns for this Playing to Win/Practitioner Insight piece on leadership and AI. And as always, you can find all the previous PTW/PI here.
Substitution vs. augmentation
Every new technology that has or will come along has the potential to both substitute for humans and augment humans whether wheel, printing press, electricity, internal combustion engine, telephone or digital computer. For example, the printing press put lots of scribes out of jobs, but it also massively augmented the ability of humans to communicate their ideas, starting with the worlds first publishing mogul, Martin Luther! It is irrefutable that the printing press augmented humans to a vastly greater extent than it substituted for them. And that has been the case with every truly important technology the world has seen, including the list above.
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The overwhelming public concern about AI is that it will become the first major technology to have its biggest impact by way of substitution. We dont know how the balance between substitution and augmentation will play out. But it is clear that the easiest path is substitution and lots of people will provide advice on that front. We sincerely hope that those with the power to influence the direction of AI wont focus their energy on spurring its substitution for humans. One way to guard against that negative outcome is to demonstrate the power of augmentation and that is our greatest interest because augmentation of humans with AI is what will really advance society and within it, business.
We believe that it will take strong leadership to tilt the balance toward augmentation. To realize the potential value and make AI an augmentation superpower, modern leaders need to master each of the following five layers, each a deeper and more sophisticated augmentation that builds on the layer before.
First level: How AI augments knowledge & research
AI is now a common first-pass research assistant. It can map a space, surface sources, and draft a structured brief in minutes. Sophisticated deep research tools like iterative question decomposition, source triage, and synthesis passes that are incorporated into AI products help analysts quickly collect information that would have earlier taken days. That even includes the time it takes to verify sources and detect and correct the Achilles heel of AI, hallucinations.
For example, a mid-level manager might prompt AI to: Size the Mexican hard-discount grocery market and identify three expansion risks. On a task like this, AI can (1) outline demand drivers and competitor set, (2) pull public data points (market sizes, growth rates, store counts), (3) generate a comparison table, (4) list interview questions for two customer segments, and (5) draft a 1-page brief with assumptions and confidence levels. The human then validates numbers, adds confidential insights, and finalizes the narrative augmented by AI.
Second level: How AI augments through task automation
Beyond research, AI can quietly take work off the plate of busy leaders, leveraging their time for other higher-value activities. AI can capture and crystallize notes, summarize meetings, tag decisions, extract owners and due dates, and push them to your tracker. It can cascade strategy, translating top-level objectives into team-level initiatives, propose KPIs, and keep a living single source of truth to ensure value delivery. This is the focus of the TransforML platform, which connects strategy choices to projects. It provides risks and weekly updates so leaders see progress, and accumulates blockers and deltas in one place. AI can automate routine operations such as converting emails to tickets, standardizing brief templates, generating weekly roll-ups, and pre-drafting stakeholder communications.
In this layer, leaders get leverage from AI by eliminating the necessity for countless monitoring meetings thanks to more and better machine-assisted follow-through.
Third level: How AI augments through skill leveling-up
AI is a force multiplier for uneven skill profiles. Very few of us have completely consistent skill levels across the spectrum required in our jobs. Each of us has our stronger and weaker skill areas. AI can be used to level-up those weaker skill areas to give us a more consistent skill set through AI augmentation.
For example, we have seen a front-end engineer, who is brilliant in user experience design but less confident with logic structuring, use AI o propose architecture options and trade-offs, generate scaffolded components and tests, and help with complex logical flows. As a result, the front-end engineer has been able to add a disproportionate amount of impact through her unique strengths in developing user experiences that truly delight customers, without being held back by her skill deficits.
Fourth level: How AI augments through blind spot detection
AI is relentless at checklisting the things we forget. Thanks to Atul Gawande and The Checklist Manifesto, we know that even highly skilled professionals need checklists to avoid blindspots. But AI can go far beyond a simple standard checklist. Point AI at a plan and ask: Whats missing? What could fail? It will probe dependencies, non-obvious stakeholders, compliance constraints, and capacity cliffs. It will test for coverage gaps. Used well, it becomes a second pair of eyes that flags risks early and attaches mitigation options with owner, time requirements, and resulting cost estimates. AIs ability to sift through innumerable documents in minutes allows it to do this at a scale and speed that augments beyond human capacity.
Fifth level: How AI augments through counterbalancing groupthink
Groupthink is a well-documented problem (popularized by Yale professor Irving Janis in a 1971 article and 1972 book) by which teams converge too quickly on suboptimal decisions. To counterbalance groupthink, leaders can assign AI the role of devils advocate. Prompt it to argue the strongest opposing case, quantify downside scenarios, and stress-test assumptions. Which single assumption, if wrong, breaks this plan? This keeps debate vigorous and constructive without putting the interpersonal burden on a single brave colleague.
What leaders can do to move teams through the five layers of augmentation
Set the strategy for AI
The leader must set the overall role of AI in fulfilling the companys strategy. For example, Guis boss (Walmart corporate CEO) declared that Walmart will be people led, powered by technology. That helped Walmart employees understand that it wasnt going to be technology first and people second which would have indicated a substitution rather than augmentation agenda. As strategy evolves, it is important that people know what the company is ultimately trying to accomplish, and how.
Set the bar & the ritualsBe specific on what good looks like for AI augmentation. For example, mandate AI-first drafts for research memos, require AI-generated action lists after meetings, and add a devils advocate AI check before big decisions. Make these part of the operating rituals, not optional extras. Once it becomes part of the ritual, people will quickly overcome any initial fear or hesitation.
Pair tools with training & metricsThe challenge is less with intelligent use that will come quickly with practice and more with adoption. Provide training on the approved tools to ease and sped adoption. Set guardrails to help users avoids unpleasant and unproductive downsides. Set and track usage with simple metrics such as percentage of meetings with AI action summaries or percentage of projects with AI risk reviews. Celebrate wins and coach the laggards.
Role-model and de-risk.As with most things in company life, this wont take root unless leaders set a positive example. That lowers the implied risk for everybody else in the company. For example, leaders should show their own AI-assisted work (redlines, drafts, risk logs) and make it safe to iterate. Create a sandbox for sensitive work, define guardrails (privacy, IP, accuracy checks), and reward teams for using AI to improve outcomes, not just for using AI.
Practitioner insights
Strategy is choice and as a leader (whether at the top or somewhere in the middle of your organization) in the modern era, you have the choice to focus on substitution or augmentation in your utilization of AI. It is a true strategic choice because the opposite is not stupid on its face. Some will focus more on substitution while others on augmentation. And we predict both will succeed in creating value though in very different ways with differing societal implications.
That having been said, we believe the greatest upside will come setting goals focused on augmentation. That will require cleverness in defining how AI can most powerfully augment your business and then demonstrating the leadership to take advantage of all five levels of augmentation.
AI can give teams superpowers, but only leaders can help unlock them.
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A few blocks from my home sits a small Japanese grocery store that has been in the neighborhood for years. Its the kind of place that once felt irreplaceablecarefully sourced ingredients, shelves stocked with items I couldnt find in mainstream supermarkets, and an owner who knows her regulars.
But much as I love this store, it has been in steady decline for a few years now. Whole Foods opened up nearby and it now stocks all the basicsmiso paste, kombu, dashi packets, norithat I, or anyone else, could want for weeknight Japanese cooking. Suddenly, the extra trip to the specialty shop felt unnecessary most of the time. The big chain became good enough, and in a world where convenience dictates behavior, good enough tends to win.
What happened to that shop isnt really about Japanese groceries. The same story is playing out across sectors as the mass market parts of many businesses are being swallowed up by bigger players. If a small business competes on anything that a large company can copy and make money from, you can bet your bottom dollar that a large company will eventually start providing those goods or services. And thanks to globalized supply, online storefronts, and the ever-increasing speed of information flows about trends and consumer needs, that copying can happen almost instantly.
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Thats why many small businesses need to rethink their business models. Market segments that once seemed niche are quickly becoming part of the mass market. And small businesses have never been able to compete in broad market sectors on the provision of products or services alone. In todays environment, the only defensible strategy is to go narrowmuch narrower than often feels comfortable.
Taking this path can be particularly difficult because when times are tough. The instinct of a small business owner is normally to try harder at everything: better service, longer hours, more products, lower prices. But thats a trap. When you compete broadly against players with structural advantages, youre fighting a war of attrition you cannot win. So, instead of trying to beat big companies at their game, SMEs should play a different game altogether, a game they have advantages that the big beasts cant replicate.
The three shifts that define survival
Small businesses that want to thrive in the future need to make three fundamental shifts in how they operate.
1. From Generalist to Specialist: The Power of Expertise
When business gets tough, owners often broaden the offeringthey add more products and try to serve more customer types to become all things to all people. This is understandable but counterproductive. Instead, the path to survival runs through radical specialization: owning a territory so narrow and deep that competition becomes nearly irrelevant.
The point is that while generalist businesses compete with everyone, specialists compete with almost no one. An accounting firm serving all small businesses faces constant price pressures from the commoditization of services in their sector. The same firm focusing exclusively on assisting craft breweries as they navigate excise tax regulations, inter-state distribution challenges, equipment depreciation schedules, and seasonal cash flow patterns can add value in ways that a large firm selling generalized services never could. They are not competing on price anymorethey are competing on irreplaceable expertise.This matters now more than ever because AI and automation are rapidly commoditizing general knowledge. ChatGPT can generate useful general marketing advice. But it cannot replicate 15 years of navigating the specific regulatory environment of biotech fundraising or identifying which Japanese suppliers source sustainably today. Only the deepest moats can be defended when breadth can be automated.
2. From Customers to Community: Building Tribal Loyalty
In an age in which more and more interactions are becoming digital and transactional, the hunger for genuine connection intensifies. People will pay premiums and make extra trips for businesses that make them feel they belong to somethingbusiness that dont just sell products but that create communities.
Radical specialization creates the conditions for community, because the people who walk through the door arent just customers anymore. They are people who share something in common: a deep focus on and interest in a specific activity, product, or type of knowledge. This is the foundation on which small businesses can build their tribes.
For example, instead of simply selling products, the Japanese grocery store in my neighborhood could cultivate a community of serious home cooks who care about authentic Japanese cuisine. It could organize monthly sake tastings, knife skills workshops, cooking demonstrationsanything that helps create a community of people who come to the store because its their store, a place where people like them hang out and shop. In this way, the business becomes not just a vendor but the center of a shared identity.
3. From Corporate Speak to Real Humanity: The Power of Authenticity
Small businesses often try to sound like big companies. The irony is that this erases the one advantage small businesses will always have over their larger competitorsthe ability to be distinctively, recognizably human.
Big companies have no choice but to be bland, because when a business serves millions of customers with diverse values and preferences, it cannot afford to be polarizing. Every piece of marketing content, branding, and presentation is smoothed into a form that is maximally inoffensive, and which almost inevitably tends to fade into forgettable corporate messaging. But small businesses that specialize do not face this constraint. They can afford to have opinions, quirks, and personality. And in a world where AI can generate perfectly polished content and every brand sounds the same, being recognizably yourself becomes a competitive advantage that cannot be replicated.
This isnt just about being quirky for its own sake. An authentic voice does three thins that corporate polish cannot. First, it makes expertise tangiblestrong opinions come from deep knowledge, and customers can sense the difference between an earned perspective and generic advice. Second, it attracts the right people while repelling everyone else, which is exactly what a specialized business needs. Third, it creates connection before transaction. When someone has been following the grocery store owners social media posts for months, seeing her passion for real ingredients and deep knowledge of the products she sells, the first visit feels less like shopping and more like finally meeting someone they already know.
Three things to do right now
Here are three concrete steps you can take immediately as a small business owner to help your business survive into 2026 and beyond.
1. Map your territory
Pick your top 10 customers and write down what they have in common. What do they care about that others dont? What expertise do they value that general competitors cant provide?
This exercise reveals where the business already has traction with a specific groupthe foundation for radical specialization. Most small businesses discover theyre already serving a niche without realizing it. The work is recognizing it and leaning into it fully rather than hedging with broader offerings.
2. Choose one thing to stop doing
Radical specialization requires subtraction. This week, identify one product line, service offering, or customer segment that pulls the business away from its core expertise.
Then stop serving it.
This can feel terrifying. The instinct is to worry about lost revenue. But the store that stops trying to compete as a general grocer and embraces a new identity as a specialty shop for serious home cooks isnt limiting itselfits claiming territory it can actually defend.
3. Show up as a human being
Pick one platformInstagram, LinkedIn, a blog, whatever feels naturaland commit to posting three times this week as an actual person with actual opinions.
The goal isnt to go viral or be provocative for its own sake. It is to demonstrate that there is a real human with real expertise and real opinions behind the businesssomeone worth paying attention to and someone eventually worth paying to do business with.
This may feel uncomfortable at first. That discomfort is a good sign. If it feels too polished and safe, its not quite working yet.
The path forward
That Japanese grocery store near my house is still therefor now. But if it wants to survive in the long term, it will need to make choices that feel counterintuitive: going narrower instead of broader, becoming smaller instead of bigger.
In a world in which large companies are serving broader and broader markets, small businesses need to lean into becoming specialists. This gives them not just something feasible to defend but the tools they will need to fight for their territory.
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A shooting last weekend at a children’s birthday party in California that left four dead was the 17th mass killing this year the lowest number recorded since 2006, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.Experts warn that the drop doesn’t necessarily mean safer days are here to stay and that it could simply represent a return to average levels.“Sir Isaac Newton never studied crime, but he says ‘What goes up must come down,'” said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University. The current drop in numbers is more likely what statisticians call a “regression to the mean,” he said, representing a return to more average crime levels after an unusual spike in mass killings in 2018 and 2019.“Will 2026 see a decline?” Fox said. “I wouldn’t bet on it. What goes down must also go back up.”The mass killings defined as incidents in which four or more people are killed in a 24-hour period, not including the killer are tracked in the database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. Fox, who manages the database, says mass killings were down about 24% this year compared to 2024, which was also about a 20% drop compared to 2023.Mass killings are rare, and that means the numbers are volatile, said James Densley, a professor of at Metropolitan State University in Minnesota.“Because there’s only a few dozen mass killings in a year, a small change could look like a wave or a collapse,” when really it’s just a return to more typical levels, Densley said. “2025 looks really good in historical context, but we can’t pretend like that means the problem is gone for good.”
Decline in rates of homicide and violent crime might be a factor
But there are some things that might be contributing to the drop, Densley said, including an overall decline in homicide and violent crime rates, which peaked during the COVID-19 pandemic. Improvements in the immediate response to mass shootings and other mass casualty incidents could also be playing a part, he said.“We had the horrible Annunciation School shooting here in Minnesota back in August, and that case wouldn’t even fit the mass killing definition because there were only two people killed but over 20 injured,” Densley said. “But I happen to know from the response on the ground here, that the reason only two people were killed is because of the bleeding control and trauma response by the first responders. And it happened on the doorsteps of some of the best children’s hospitals in the country.”Crime is complex, and academics are not great at assessing the reasons behind crime rate changes, said Eric Madfis, a professor of criminal justice at University of Washington-Tacoma.“It’s multicausal. It’s never going to be just one thing. People are still debating why homicide rates went down in the 1990s,” Madfis said. “It is true that gun violence and gun violence deaths are down, but we still have exceedingly high rates and numbers of mass shootings compared to anywhere else in the world.”More states are dedicating funding to school threat assessments, with 22 states mandating the practice in recent years, Madfis said, and that could be preventing some school shootings, though it wouldn’t have an impact on mass killings elsewhere. None of the mass killings recorded in the database so far in 2025 took place in schools, and only one mass killing at a school was recorded in 2024.
Most of those who die in mass killings are shot
About 82% of this year’s mass killings involved a firearm. Since 2006, 3,234 people have died in mass killings and 81% of them were shooting victims.Christopher Carita, a former detective with the Fort Lauderdale Police Department and a senior training specialist with gun safety organization 97Percent, said the Safer Communities Act passed in 2022 included millions of dollars of funding for gun violence protection programs. Some states used the money to create social supports for people at risk of committing violence, and others used it for things like law enforcement and threat assessment programs. That flexibility has been key to reducing gun violence rates, he said.“It’s always been framed as either a ‘gun problem’ or a ‘people problem’ and that’s been very contentious,” Carita said. “I feel like for the first time, we’re looking at gun violence as a ‘both, and’ problem nationally.”Focusing on extreme events like mass killings runs the risk of “missing the forest for the trees,” said Emma Fridel, an assistant professor of criminology at Florida State University. “If you look at the deaths from firearms, both in homicides and suicides, the numbers are staggering. We lose the same number of people every year to gun violence as the number of casualties we experienced in the Korean War. The number one cause of death for children is guns.“Mass killings should be viewed as one part of the issue, rather than the outcome of interest,” she said.
Rebecca Boone, Associated Press
The Prada Group closed the purchase of Milan fashion rival Versace in a $1.375 billion cash deal that puts the fashion house known for its sexy silhouettes under the same roof as Prada’s “ugly chic” aesthetic and Miu Miu’s youth-driven appeal.The highly anticipated deal is expected to relaunch Versace’s fortunes, after middling post-pandemic performance as part of the U.S. luxury group Capri Holdings.Prada said in a one-line statement that the acquisition had been completed after receiving all regulatory clearances. Capri Holdings, which owns Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo, said the money would be used to pay down debt.Donatella Versace welcomed the deal in an Instagram post, which also marked the birthday of the brand’s late founder, her brother, Gianni Versace.“Today is your day and the day Versace joins the Prada family. I am thinking of the smile you would have had on your face,” she wrote in a post that also featured a 1996 photo of Gianni Versace with Miuccia Prada.
Versace’s future
Prada heir Lorenzo Bertelli is set to steer Versace’s next phase as executive chairman, in addition to his roles as group marketing director and sustainability chief.The son of co-creative director Miuccia Prada and longtime Prada Group chairman Patrizio Bertelli has said he doesn’t expect to make any swift executive changes at Versace, although he also noted that the company, which is among the top 10 most recognized brands in the world, has long been underperforming in the market.Prada has underlined that the 47-year-old Versace brand offered “significant untapped growth potential.”The appeal of the deal is that it combines “the minimalist Prada (with) a maximalist Versace,” said Luca Solca, an analyst at Bernstein Group consulting firm, meaning that the brands don’t compete for the same customers.Versace is “long past its heyday,” Solca said. “The challenge and the opportunity is to make it relevant again. . . . They are going to have to invent something which is going to make the brand attractive, desirable, and interesting again.”Versace already has begun a creative relaunch under a new designer, Dario Vitale, who previewed his first collection during Milan Fashion Week in September. He was previously head of design at Miu Miu, but his move to Versace was unrelated to the Prada deal, executives have said.The runway show received mixed reviews, but the collection itselfa colorful, revealing riff on the 1980sgot good feedback from buyers. “I think that this seems to be a promising first step,” Solca said.
Breaking from the past
Capri Holdings paid $2 billion for Versace in 2018, but had been struggling to position the brands’ bold profile in the recent era of “quiet luxury.”Capri Holdings chairman John D. Idol said in a statement that “Prada is the ideal partner to guide this celebrated luxury house into its next era of growth.”Versace represented 20% of Capri Holdings’ 2024 revenue of 5.2 billion euros.Prada said when the deal was announced in April that Versace would represent 13% of the Prada Group’s pro forma revenues, with Miu Miu coming in at 22% and Prada at 64%. The Prada Group, which also includes Church’s footwear, reported a 17% boost in revenues to 5.4 billion euros ($6.3 billion) last year.
Prada’s in-house manufacturing
The Prada Group has already begun preparations to incorporate crosstown rival Versace into its Italian manufacturing system, a point of pride for the group.“Making a bag for one brand or another, the know-how is the same,” Bertelli told reporters last week at the group’s Scandicci leather goods factory, which already makes bags for the Prada and Miu Miu brands and will soon add Versace.Artisans stitched handles onto leather bags, and cut leather with laser machines inside the leather goods factory, where trainees were learning the trade as part of Prada’s 25-year-old academy. It has trained some 570 new artisans in an in-house training program in the Tuscany, Marche, Veneto and Umbria regions of Italy.Last year, Prada hired 70% of the 120 artisans who trained in the academy. The number of trainees rose by 28% to 152 this year.The Prada Group has invested 60 million euros ($69.6 million) in its supply chain this year, including a new leather goods factory near Siena, a new knitwear factory near Perugia, as well as increasing production at its Church’s footwear factory in Britain and expanding another Tuscan factory. That’s on top of 200 million euros ($232 million) in investments from 2019 to 2024.
Colleen Barry, Associated Press
As 2025 winds down, here are some moves to help you finish the year strong financially. Morningstar’s director of personal finance and retirement planning, Christine Benz, discusses strategies.This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Benefits of rebalancing your portfolio
What are the benefits of portfolio rebalancing, and who most needs to do it?
The main benefit of rebalancing is risk reduction. You trim securities that have performed really well, presumably ones with higher valuations today. And you redirect the money into securities where returns have lagged, but valuations might be more attractive. It’s also important to rebalance on an ongoing basis as you get closer to your spending target.As retirement approaches, we need to spend that money, so you want to de-risk your portfolio and build safer asset reserves. Investors age 50 and above really need to take notice of rebalancing. It’s time to take some winnings and build safer assets that you could access if you needed to spend from your portfolio. Moving money into high-quality bonds removes risk and takes advantage of current attractive yields.
Why investors saving for retirement should check their international allocation
What do you recommend for people who are still working and saving for retirement?
They should rebalance as well, but their main consideration should be their U.S. versus non-U.S. exposure. Most investors are underallocated in international stocks. Consider your style diversification as well, paying attention to underperforming areas.Review your retirement contributions, to see if you can boost or even max out your company retirement plan for the year. People over 50 can make catch-up contributions, and there are special catch-up contributions this year for people between 60 and 63. You can contribute to IRAs and HSAs until the tax filing deadline.
How to use RMDs to help with rebalancing
How can people over 73 connect their RMDs with portfolio rebalancing?
Required minimum distributions (RDM) must be taken on time, but they can also help meet your rebalancing. By using appreciated securities to meet your RMD, you de-risk your portfolio, satisfy the IRS’s obligations, and may free up assets to supply your cash flow needs for next year.
Why investors should check their insurance coverage
Is it also a good time to look at your insurance coverage?
Whether you are doing open enrollment for employer-provided health care or for Medicare, it’s important to shop around. Take stock of what has changed in your situation, and in the plans on offer. This is particularly important for employer-provided plans, which change frequently. Married couples often select whichever spouse’s plan looks better and most affordable, but sometimes it’s more cost-effective for each partner to be covered by their own company’s plan.
How qualified charitable contributions can help with RMDs
How can charitable donations connect with RMDs and lessen your portfolio risk?
Investors with highly appreciated holdings in taxable accounts should consider giving appreciated assets directly to charity or sending them to a donor-advised fund. You can disburse from the donor-advised fund to charities over multiple years. Donating removes a highly appreciated asset from your portfolio, which can lessen risk, and removes the tax liability associated with that holding. You won’t owe taxes on donated funds, and you could get a tax deduction.People age 70.5 and older can use the qualified charitable distribution to donate part of an IRA to charity. The amount donated is not taxable to you, and it will satisfy your RMD. If you’re not yet subject to RMDs, it will at least shrink the amount of your IRA that will be subject to RMDs.
This article was provided to the Associated Press by Morningstar. For more personal finance content, go to https://www.morningstar.com/personal-finance
Margaret Giles is a senior editor of content development for Morningstar.Christine Benz is director of personal finance and retirement planning for Morningstar.
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Margaret Giles and Christine Benz of Morningstar
Costco has sued the U.S. government to ensure it will receive refunds if the Supreme Court rejects President Donald Trump’s bid for sweeping authority to impose tariffs.
In a complaint filed on Friday in the U.S. Court of International Trade in Manhattan, Costco said Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs left it uncertain whether businesses can recoup sums they should not have paid.
The nation’s largest warehouse club operator said U.S. Customs and Border Protection denied its request for more time to make final calculations of tariffs owed, threatening its right to complete refunds even if the Supreme Court rules against Trump.
Customs and Border Protection had no immediate comment. Costco did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Based in Issaquah, Washington, Costco joined dozens of companies suing to safeguard potential refunds. It is also among the largest, with $275.2 billion of revenue in its fiscal year ending August 31.
Other companies that have sued to preserve refunds include Bumble Bee Foods, Ray-Ban eyeglass maker EssilorLuxottica, Kawasaki Motors, Revlon, and Yokohama Tire, court records show.
During oral arguments on November 5, Supreme Court justices from both sides of the political spectrum asked skeptical questions about whether Trump legally used the 1977 emergency powers law to impose tariffs.
The justices took the case on an accelerated basis, but have not said when they will rule.
Costco has taken multiple steps to address tariffs, including by reducing the number of suppliers, and relying more on local sourcing and its in-house Kirkland brand.
Jonathan Stempel, Reuters
To Trina Spear, cofounder and CEO of medical apparel brand Figs, change for the healthcare industry has to start with a focus on healthcare workers.
We believe if you serve the provider, they will be able to better serve the patient, she says. And that drives better outcomes. That drives a better healthcare system.
As part of that focus, Figs gave away hundreds of thousands of scrubs, organized healthcare worker retreats, and donated some $510,000 to healthcare nonprofits in 2024 alone.
Now its expanding that work by launching its own nonprofit, the Awesome Humans Foundation, which will provide financial support, training, and resources to healthcare professionals.
Our mission is to serve those who serve others, so impact has always been ingrained into the center of the company, Spear says. The big vision that weve always had is, How do we make the experience of being a healthcare professional, no matter where you live around the world, the best it can possibly be?
How Figs has helped healthcare workers
Figs has long called its customers (and generally every healthcare worker) awesome humans. And the company has done more than just sell those workers scrubs and lab coats.
For instance, Figs launched a healthcare advisory board focused on policy solutions around pay, mental health, workplace safety, reduced administrative burdens, and more. The Santa Monica-based company wrote checks to healthcare professionals after the Los Angeles fires to help them get food, support local relief efforts, or get medical essentials for their hospitals.
And its donated thousands every yearto nonprofits like the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes Foundation, which focuses on mental well-being for healthcare workers, and the Student National Medical Association, which provides mentorship and training.
With its own foundation, though, Figs hopes to have an even bigger impact. It also now has the ability to fundraise for that work.
Were going to be able to donate multiples [of Figss annual charitable giving], because well be basically crowdsourcing the world, Spear says. If you care like we care, were going to be able to do big things together.
The nonprofits focus
The Awesome Humans Foundation will have four main focus areas. The first, dubbed Rapid Relief for Awesome Humans, will provide direct financial support to healthcare professionals (who live or study in the U.S. or its territories) who face any sort of monetary hardship.
The way Figs supported L.A.-area healthcare workers after the wildfires would fit into that bucket, for example, but through a nonprofit instead of the company writing checks off its balance sheet.
Next, the foundation will offer Future Icons grants of $10,000 to help cover tuition costs and fees for U.S. healthcare students. Coming out [of school] with a ton of debt is super debilitating and very hard, and how can we relieve that burden? Spear says.
That burden may soon grow for some healthcare workers, too.
The Trump administration recently removed an array of healthcare titlesincluding nursing, physical therapy, and dental hygienefrom the Department of Educations professional graduate degree program list, meaning those degrees now face stricter student loan limits.
The nonprofits third pillar will be its Ubuntu Grant, which will fund other nonprofitsin the U.S. and internationallythat support healthcare workers. (Unbuntu is an African philosophy that has been translated as I am because we are.)
Its fourth piece, called the Healthcare Is Human Award, will reward healthcare leadership and advocacy. For that, anyone can nominate a healthcare professional they see making an impact. (Nominations will be open July 1 to August 31, 2026.)
Figs expects the Awesome Human Foundation to make its first grants shortly after its launch on Giving Tuesday, December 2.
To the company, this nonprofit aims to fill a void it saw in the philanthropy space. There was no organization that was really focused on all healthcare professionals that served all their needs, Spear says. So we had to build it ourselves.
