Yesterday, Tesla, Inc. (Nasdaq: TSLA) shareholders overwhelmingly approved the controversial and historic pay package deal for the electric vehicle makers CEO, Elon Musk. That package is worth up to nearly $1 trillion in compensation for Muskprovided the company reaches certain milestones.
But if those milestones are met, it would make Musk, already the worlds richest man, the worlds first trillionaire. Heres what you need to know about the historic pay package and how investors and Teslas shares are reacting to the news.
Whats in Musks historic Tesla pay deal?
At Teslas investor meeting yesterday, over three-quarters of shareholders voted to approve Musks nearly $1 trillion compensation package. However, the package isnt a blank check filled with thirteen digits before the decimal place.
Instead, it is an agreement that includes a series of milestones Tesla needs to reach under Musks leadership. With each milestone reached, Musk receives some of the pay packages agreed-upon sum, mostly in the form of Tesla shares.
As Fast Company previously reported, those milestones wont be easy. They include the following:
20 million Tesla vehicles delivered
10 million active Full Self-Driving subscriptions
1 million robots delivered
1 million Robotaxis in commercial operation
A series of adjusted EBITDA benchmarks
A market cap for Tesla of at least $8.5 trillion
All of these are a tall order, particularly the last one. No company in history has ever come close to an $8.5 trillion market capitalization. Last month, NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) briefly became the worlds first $5 trillion company. Today, it retains its number one spot, with a market cap of around $4.4 trillion.
Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT) currently come in at numbers two and three, with market caps of $4 trillion and $3.6 trillion, respectively. As for Tesla, the company currently ranks as having the 10th largest market cap in the world, at $1.4 trillion.
That means Teslas stock price would have to increase by more than six times todays valuation if Musk is to get the full compensation deal payout. And thats not even to mention the other lofty milestones Tesla needs to achieve under Musk, including delivery of one million robots into the wild.
Still, the majority of voting shareholders seem to believe that the historic pay deal is not only appropriate to retain Musk as the companys leader, but that he, of all people, could take Tesla to a place itand no other companyhas ever been before.
How has Wall Street reacted?
As you would expect from such a controversial pay package, opinions on Tesla shareholders approving the $1 trillion compensation are mixed.
Reuters spoke to a number of Wall Street insiders. Among them was Mike ORourke, chief market strategist at Jones Trading, who said that given Musk could easily abandon the struggling Tesla to run his other private companies, it was worth it for shareholders to lock his leadership in.
Nonetheless, ORourke added, it is highly unlikely this works out well when a $1.5 trillion company needs to award a $1 trillion pay package to the richest man in the world.”
Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, told the outlet that given the demanding milestones required by the compensation package, Tesla investors had little to lose: If Musk does get the $1 trillion, shareholders will have done very nicely indeed.
As could be expected, many everyday retail investors on social media who are Musk fans and Tesla bulls cheered the passage of the compensation package.
How have TSLA shares reacted?
While Tesla shareholders have now approved the historic package, nothing much actually changes for Tesla today.
Still, shares in Tesla have fallen since the markets opened this morning, their first day of trading after shareholders approved the pay package.
As of the time of this writing, TSLA shares are currently down about 2.5% to $434.40. They had fallen by over 4.5% at one point right after the markets opened.
Yet its hard to take any meaning from TSLAs price drop this morning. A low single-digit drop could just be due to everyday profit taking, and not a signal that investors think the approval of the compensation package was bad news for the company (indeed, the majority of voting investors clearly thought the deal was a good thing).
Year to date, TSLA shares are now up around 6% as of the time of this writing. Over the past 12 months, TSLA shares have risen more than 44%.
As the longest government shutdown in U.S. history continues, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered flight reductions at 40 major airports, including Atlanta, New York, Boston, and Los Angeles.
The move begins with affecting 4% of flights, with plans to ramp up to impact 1 in 10 flights at those airports, disrupting travel plans for thousands of Americans every day.
But Patriotic Millionaires, a group of high-net-worth individuals who advocate for more progressive taxes in order to close the wealth gap, is suggesting an alternative that it says would spare commercial airline passengers and still offer relief for air traffic controllers: Just cancel all private flights.
Private jets specificallywhich are more expensive and hold more passengers than small private planesmake up one out of every six flights handled by the FAA, according to the Institute for Policy Studies.
Private jet use has also been soaring in recent years, and the U.S. is responsible for the most private flights.
If you need a 10% reduction [in flights], you can get 100% of your reduction from the private planes. You do not need to affect commercial flights, period, says Erica Payne, president and founder of Patriotic Millionaires.
To Payne, the FAA is choosing to have everyone suffer rather than grounding planes that are destroying the planet and flying one or two people at a time in the lap of luxury.
Some private flights may well end up being part of those 4% to 10% reductions happening at major hubs. But Patriotic Millionaires is suggesting that the FAA target private flights specifically, sparing commercial passengers.
Private jets and public resources
Everyone who flies pays toward the taxes that help fund the FAA, which then pays the salaries of its employees, including air traffic controllers. During the government shutdown, air traffic controllers are considered essential workers, and required to keep doing their jobs without pay.
That reality is now straining air traffic controllers, many of whom work mandatory overtime six days a week, and so arent able to take on other jobs. Theyve been increasingly taking six days.
Already, at least 3.4 million travelers have been affected by staffing shortages, according to the industry group Airlines for America.
For the average airline passenger, a 7.5% tax on their ticket price, plus a charge that can go up to $4.50, goes toward the FAAs Airport and Airway Trust Fund. Private jet flyers contribute just 2% of the taxes that make up that fund.
While some private flights take off from major airport hubs, there are also airports that only serve private air travel, like Van Nuys Airport in Los Angeles, one of the countrys busiest aviation hubs.
That airport is not on the FAAs list of affected high traffic airports.
In some cases, airports that mainly serve private jets have also collected taxpayer dollars, like the Napa Valley Airport in California, which collected $6.3 million over two years.
Private jet travelers have already gotten away with having the American taxpayers pick up their jet setting, Payne says. We are funding the jet-setting pollution-causing air travel of the richest people in the country.
Now were being asked to suffer cancellations and delays, when weve already been picking up their transportation costs for decades, she continues. And theres an easy way out of this. Patriotic Millionaires are saying: shut down private air travel during the government shutdown, and use that extra capacity.
Fast Company reached out to the FAA for comment. An automatic reply said the agency is not responding to routine press requests during the shutdown.
A highlight on wealth inequality
To Payne, this move to affect commercial flights while seemingly ignoring private jet travel is another example of the way issues around wealth inequality are being highlighted across the country.
The transportation secretary stands up there and says 1 out of every 10 people in America flying somewhere are going to suffer a delay or cancellation, while wealthy people are not even asked to park their planes and fly first class for a few days, Payne says.
President Trumps recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act also gives more than $1 trillion in tax cuts to the countrys top 1%.
Patriotic Millionairess suggestion to the FAA also comes the same week that Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral race. Mamdani ran on taxing the wealthy in order to fund programs like free childcare and buses. Billionaires spent millions of dollars opposing his campaign.
Patriotic Millionaires says it is reaching out to all members of the House and Senate committees to suggest they ground private planes rather than affect commercial flights. The group is also creating a series of social media posts to highlight the idea, including ones that feature Patriotic Millionaires member Abigail Disney.
This needs to become an issue, Payne says. We plan to do everything in our power to make it an issue.
The headlines are clear: AI is disrupting entry-level jobs across industries, including consulting and professional services.
There’s just one problem. Eliminating these roles overlooks a critical business needyour pipeline of next generation leaders. The rush from pyramid to diamond workforce models is short-sighted. In the pyramid model, you grow leaders from the ground up. In the diamond model, you cut the base and bet on later-stage talent to carry the weight. It may look efficient now, but it comes at the expense of long-term leadership development.
If we don’t shift the trajectory, it’s likely to worsen the leadership gender gap. Despite women outpacing men in college graduation rates, recent Russell Reynolds data finds men are still 2.5 times more likely to be executives than women, and 10 times more likely to be CEOs at S&P 100 organizations. Yet, women remain underrepresented in feeder roles to the top job.
The solution isn’t some new, fancy workplace tech platform or another mandatory training program. It’s intentional mentorship that directly addresses barriers women experience in advancing their careers.
WHY UPSKILLING PROGRAMS FALL SHORT
So why are companies still betting on upskilling programs? They look great on slides and earnings calls. They’re measurable, seemingly fair, and relatively simple to implement. They’re also not moving the needle.
The problem lies in traditional delivery. Put simply, classroom or lecture settings without immediate practice opportunities fall short. Online training will not build our next generation of leaders. The approaches overlook two human-centric barriers that many professionals, particularly women, face: representation and confidence. Seeing people in top positions who look like you proves you can make it there, too.
Harvard Business School research found that women are less likely than men to apply for advanced jobs because they think they aren’t qualified enough. I distinctly remember when a new leadership opportunity came my way. Instead of immediately jumping at it, I spent an entire day poring over role requirements and determining whether the position felt true to my identity. At that point, I just considered myself to fall squarely in the marketer role. Ultimately, I took a chance, accepting the new role.
In that critical moment, I was fortunate to have mentors who pushed me to think about myself and my capabilities more expansively. That push, more than any certificate, gave me confidence to take on the challenge. This mindset shift allowed me to then pay it back, leading to countless hours in the trenches, coaching team members on how to best deliver their tasks, regardless of how the members professionally defined themselves.
THE MENTORSHIP ADVANTAGE
Why is quality mentorship so effective? When done right, it’s deliberate and rooted in real experience. Here’s my playbook, as seen through a soccer lens, a sport near and dear to my heart:
1. Find the right fit. Building a team with myriad skillsets is essential to any winning soccer club. It’s ideal to have both male and female mentors. There’s value in someone who thinks differently and may have unique strengths you don’t have. And there’s value that can only come from someone who has walked in your shoes. Take maternity leave, for example. Women working with me tend to have easier transitions back because I have lived it and my philosophy is to always celebrate the small moments that carry outsized positive impact.
Mentors don’t have to be all things to mentees. Instead, seek mentors with specific strengths. You might seek a leader known for bold, creative thinking, and another leader strong in people management.
2. Get in the trenches. I believe in “learning in combat”education that comes from sitting in client meetings and sales calls, being in the room where tough conversations happen, and getting real-time feedback on actual work. Time spent on the field together always outweighs theoretical examples and 1:1 coaching.
3. Be vulnerable. For me, that means showing people the marshmallow I am on the inside of this executive exterior. Mentors should create an environment where mentees feel comfortable showing their strengths and weaknesses. Authenticity beats a fake front any day. This comes from celebrating your wins, but also asking your teammates for help when you are struggling. A defender under pressure passes back to the goalkeeper, trusting their teammate to help the team stay in controla reminder that asking for support keeps everyone moving forward.
4. Know when to listen and when to speak up. Real mentorship is about creating space for people to figure things out, not just giving advice without hearing what someone has to say.
When mentors are effective listeners, they can better advocate. Sometimes that means being the voice advocating for an idea others gloss over because you see the potential in the person surfacing it. Other times, it means understanding a mentee’s dream job and clearing the way for them to secure it. Any good coach can attest to the importance of this approach with their players.
5. Get out of the way. Too many leaders listen to junior colleagues talk about their dreams, then forget to give them the opportunity to reach them. In soccer, the left wing fights to let the striker take the shot. But if the striker never gets the ball, it’s useless to have that position. Say “ok” and let your players play.
There’s a delta between knowing mentorship works and building programs that deliver. The most effective programs have leadership buy-in, authentic matching, and accountability. Companies must expect leaders to coach, then create space and accountability for it. Not every leader needs to be a mentor, but you need enough who will and who want to.
DIAMONDS AREN’T FOREVER (IN THE WORKPLACE)
ROI and value creation remain paramount. Companies can continue chasing short-term gains and allow AI to eliminate their next generation of leadersmale or femaleor they can do the harder work of building intentional mentorship relationships that create a more level playing field.
Companies that over-index towards these diamond models will inevitably have to swing back. The importance of strong mentorship will never be obsolete. The question is whether companies realize this before or after losing a generation of strong, diverse talent to organizations that remained focused on their potential.
Casey Foss is chief commercial officer of West Monroe.
When Carly Kaprive left a job in Kansas City and moved to Chicago a year ago, she figured it would take three to six months to find a new position. After all, the 32-year old project manager had never been unemployed for longer than three months.Instead, after 700 applications, she’s still looking, wrapped up in a frustrating and extended job hunt that is much more difficult than when she last looked for work just a couple of years ago. With uncertainty over interest rates, tariffs, immigration, and artificial intelligence roiling much of the economy, some companies she’s interviewed with have abruptly decided not to fill the job at all.“I have definitely had mid-interview roles be eliminated entirely, that they are not going to move forward with even hiring anybody,” she said.Kaprive is caught in a historical anomaly: The unemployment rate is low and the economy is still growing, but those out of work face the slowest pace of hiring in more than a decade. Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG, calls it a “jobless boom.”While big corporate layoff announcements typically grab the most attention, it has been the unwillingness of many companies to add workers that has created a more painful job market than the low 4.3% unemployment rate would suggest. It is also more bifurcated: The “low hire, low fire” economy has meant fewer layoffs for those with jobs, while the unemployed struggle to find work.“It’s like an insider-outsider thing,” Guy Berger, head of research at the Burning Glass Institute said, “where outsiders that need jobs are struggling to get their foot in, even as insiders are insulated by what up until now is a low-layoff environment.”Several large companies have recently announced tens of thousands of job cuts in the past few weeks, including UPS, Target, and IBM, though Berger said it is too soon to tell whether they signal a turn for the worse in the economy. But a rise in job cuts would be particularly challenging with hiring already so low.For now, it’s harder than ever to get a clear read on the job market because the government shutdown has cut off the U.S. Department of Labor’s monthly employment reports. The October jobs report was scheduled for release Friday but has been delayed, like the September figures before it. The October report may be less comprehensive when it is released because not all the data may be collected.Before the shutdown, the Labor Department reported that the hiring rate the number of people hired in a given month, as a percentage of those employed fell to 3.2% in August, matching the lowest figure outside the pandemic since March 2013.Back then, the unemployment rate was a painful 7.5%, as the economy slowly recovered from the job losses from the 2008-2009 Great Recession. That is much higher than August’s 4.3%.Many of those out of work are skeptical of the current low rate. Brad Mislow, 54, has been mostly unemployed for the past three years after losing a job as an advertising executive in New York City. Now he is substitute teaching to make ends meet.“It is frustrating to hear that the unemployment rate is low, the economy is great,” he said. “I think there are people in this economy who are basically fighting every day and holding on to pieces of flotsam in the shark-filled waters or, they have no idea what it’s like.”With the government closed, financial markets are paying closer attention to private-sector data, but that is also mixed. On Thursday, the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas unnerved investors with a report that announced job cuts surged 175% in October from a year ago.Yet on Wednesday, payroll processor ADP said that net hiring picked up in October as businesses added 42,000 jobs, after two months of declines. Still, the gain was modest. ADP’s figures are based on anonymous data from the 26 million workers at its client companies.Separately, Revelio Labs, a workplace analytics company, estimated Thursday that the economy shed 9,000 jobs in October. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago estimates that the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4% last month.Even when the government was releasing data, economists and officials at the Federal Reserve weren’t sure how healthy the job market was or where it was headed next. A sharp drop in immigration and stepped-up deportations have helped keep the unemployment rate low simply by reducing the supply of workers. The economy doesn’t need to create as many jobs to keep the unemployment rate from rising.Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, has called in a “curious balance” because both the supply of and demand for workers has fallen.Economists point to many reasons for the hiring slowdown, but most share a common thread: Greater uncertainty from tariffs, the potential impact of artificial intelligence, and now the government shutdown. While investment in data centers to power AI is booming, elevated interest rates have kept many other parts of the economy weak, such as manufacturing and housing.“The concentration of economic gains (in AI) has left the economy looking better on paper than it feels to most Americans,” Swonk said.Younger Americans have borne the brunt of the hiring slowdown, but many older workers have also struggled.Suzanne Elder, 65, is an operations executive with extensive experience in health care, and two years ago the Chicago resident also found work quickly three months after she left a job, she had three offers. Now she’s been unemployed since April.She is worried that her age is a challenge, but isn’t letting it hold her back. “I got a job at 63, so I don’t see a reason to not get a job at 65,” she said.Like many job-hunters, she has been stunned by the impersonal responses from recruiters, often driven by hiring software. She received one email from a company that thanked her for speaking with them, though she never had an interview. Another company that never responded to her resume asked her to fill out a survey about their interaction.Weak hiring has meant unemployment spells are getting longer, according to government data. More than one-quarter of those out of work have been unemployed for more than six months or longer, a figure that rose sharply in July and August and is up from 21% a year ago.Swonk said that such increases are unusual outside recessions.A rising number of the unemployed have also given up on their job searches, according to research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. That also holds down the unemployment rate because people who stop looking aren’t counted as unemployed.But Kaprive is still sticking with it she’s taken classes abot Amazon’s web services platform to boost her technology skills.“We can’t be narrow-minded in what we’re willing to take,” she said.
Christopher Rugaber, AP Economics Writer
Despite its status as an architectural celebrity, the Breuer building, commissioned by the Whitney Museum in the 1960s, has never had an easy relationship with New York City. With a hulking, top-heavy build, brooding dark-gray granite cladding, and nearly windowless facade, its as introverted as buildings come, standing confrontationally against its traditional Upper East Side neighbors.
Either you love it or hate it. Critic Ada Louise Huxtable described the building as an acquired taste akin to olives or warm beer (how appetizing) yet celebrated the maximum artistry and almost hypnotic skill of its namesake architect, the Bauhaus-trained modernist Marcel Breuer.
Now the historic building, also known as 945 Madison, has entered its latest chapter as the new worldwide headquarters for the 281-year-old auction house Sothebys. After a careful and subtle renovation by Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, the space has now reopened to the public.
For Sothebys, the updated building demonstrates the future of auction houses as cultural destinations. It wants its new headquarters to be a place people come for exhibitions, art fairs, lectures, panel discussions, retail, and fine dining, while better serving its collector clients with bespoke, high-end art-buying experiences. What better place to bid on masterpieces than from inside one?
The hope is that the new building will bring a competitive edge to Sothebys. It arrives at a complicated time for the business, which has reportedly plunged into greater debt since billionaire Patrick Drahi took ownership in 2019. It’s also facing external headwinds as the art market slumps, prompting auction houses to diversify what they sell, cultivate new collectors, and digitize. Sothebys was responsible for $6 billion worth of sales in 2024, down from a record high of $8 billion in 2022.
Architecture to the rescue?
It’s museum quality, but it’s the art auction house philosophy, says Steve Wrightson, global head of real estate, facilities, and security for Sothebys. I think people who’ve been here before are going to be pleasantly surprised.
[Photo: Stefan Ruiz/courtesy Sothebys]
An untouchable history
Change hasnt come easy to the Breuer building, and throughout its history suggestions of alterations have been met with severe skepticism. Soon after the Whitney Museum opened in 1966, it outgrew the quarters Breuer built for it, ushering in an era of uncertainty for the building. Numerous failed expansion attemptsby Norman Foster in the 70s, Michael Graves in the 80s, and Rem Koolhaas in the aughtsignited battles royal between critics and architects that played out on the pages of dailies and weeklies.
Paul Goldberger, writing for The New York Times, described the building as a paradox: To add to it is to subtract from it. Eventually, the Whitney gave up on renovating and decamped for the Meatpacking District in 2015.
Then a series of adaptations came, demonstrating that something different might be for the better. In 2015, the Whitney leased the space to the Met, which commissioned a $15 million restoration by Beyer Blinder Belle that brought renewed luster to the buildings bluestone floors, concrete walls, and bronze fixtures. Then the Frick Collection moved into the space temporarily to critical appeal; turns out Breuers austere brutalism is a transcendent setting for traditional portraiture.
In 2023, the revolving door of tenants closed when the Whitney sold the building to Sothebys for an astounding $100 million. The acquisition was part of a real estate strategy that began at Sothebys about six years ago. Instead of housing all of its functions under one roof, as it did at its former York Street headquarters, the company decided to assemble a portfolio of spaces dedicated to a single purpose.
A building in Long Island City that Sothebys purchased in 2022 is now its processing and storage center. Though the company sold its York Street building to Cornell Universitys medical school in October, it will lease four floors for offices. For auctions and exhibitions, it sought a location central to collectors with a street-facing presence. The Breuer building was right at the bulls eye of the area the real estate team identified, Wrightson says. This was the heart of the arts and culture scene in New York City, he says.
[Photo: Max Touhey/courtesy Sothebys]
Same structure, new function
While museums and auction houses both display art, the shift in function from a space that stewards culture to a sales floor represents a major conceptual shift. Because of this, Sothebys and Herzog & de Meuron (who collaborated with the local architecture firm PDBW on the project) had their work cut out for them, even though they always intended to apply a gentle hand to the renovation.
Our deep respect for Breuer drove the project from the outset, says Wim Walschap, a senior partner at the firm. Portions of the building are still under construction, including a new freight elevator and Marcel, the Roman and Williams-designed restaurant on the lower level. But the majority of the renovation, which encompasses a refreshed lobby and four floors of gallery and auction space above, is complete.
Sothebys Breuer lobby gallery features works from the collection of Dorothy and Roy Lichtenstein. [Photo: Max Touhey/courtesy Sothebys]
Still, preservationists worried that the Breuer building would be permanently and unsympathetically altered; they successfully lobbied the city to designate it as an individual and interior landmark, which affects the exterior plus the lobby, staircase, and portions of the restaurant visible from the street. Moreover, even though Sothebys is keeping the building open to the public, theres a distinction between that notion and a public building, wrote Philip Kennicott in The Washington Post. Museums exist to preserve culture; the art market exists to make a profit off the exchange of a commodity. Going to the Breuer will be like going to a wake.
The actual experience is more like visiting your old home after the new owners have moved in: The spaces are familiar but different. For the Breuer, we kept what carries identity and public life: structure and spatial sequence, primary materials and tactility, calibrated light, and the way a building meets the street, Walschap says. We removed later accretions that cloud the original intent and revived lost spaces where they clarified the experience.
Limited-edition Herms Birkin bags [Photo: Stefan Ruiz/courtesy Sothebys]
All the features that made the building distinctivecrossing over the moat of the sculpture garden, the luminous lobby ceiling, the large windowsare still there. But the concrete benches in the lobby are now vitrines, and the coat check in the corner is a retail space selling luxury lifestyle products like Patek Philippe watches, first editions of literary classics like Alice in Wonderland, and limited-edition Birkin bags. The original galleries, which were not landmarked, are structurally the same as before. However, the second levels dark parquet floor has been changed to white oak. We tried to get it refinished and it was just splintering so we had to replace it, Wrightson says.
A bit like theater
The most major interventions to the Breuer involved modifying the building to better serve the logistical needs of Sothebys, which are more demanding than a museum due to the volume of objects and number of exhibitions it displays in a year. A museum might have a dozen special exhibitions over the course of a year; Sothebys averages 125. It’s a bit like theater, but it’s also like a Formula One event, Wrightson says of the precision turnover that happens. The goal is to be able to change an entire exhibition in 48 hours.
Most changes to the building that make this possible are completely out of sight from visitors: Herzog & de Meuron lengthened the loading dock and inserted a new freight elevator in what were formerly administrative spaces in the northeastern section of the building. This way, Wrightson says, we can maneuver in the background.
In the lobby: Frank Stellas Concentric Square (left) and Jean Arps Ptolémée III [Photo: Max Touhey/courtesy Sothebys]
Sothebys has 30% more exhibition space than the buildings previous incarnation as the Frick Madison. To find this room, Herzog & de Meuron converted back-of-house and administrative areas into galleries, which sometimes resemble typical white-box galleries that feel like they could be anywhere. Instead of replicating Breuers tectonic sensibility in the new exhibition spaces, the firm channeled his intentions. New work aligns with the existing rhythms and joints, remains legible and light touch, and, whre possible, is reversible, Walschap says.
From left: Dorothea Tannings Interior with Sudden Joy, Frida Kahlos El sueo, and Victor Brauners Maison hantée will be auctioned November 20, 2025. [Photo: Max Touhey/courtesy Sothebys]
Back when Breuer designed the building, the Whitneys collection primarily consisted of painting and sculpture, and his structure is well suited for those mediums. Sothebys sells a far wider range of objects and artwork, so having a blank canvas gives the exhibition teams more options for viewing experiences. We could have a dinosaur in a gallery one day and then the next day it could be a basketball jersey, Wrightson says. So we really have to be able to plan for all of those different needs.
The fifth floor, which the Frick used for offices, is now primarily gallery space, plus flexible work space for about 50 Sothebys employees who need to be on-site. The public hasn’t seen [this floors] windows and skylights for the better part of a decade, Wrightson says. He thinks jewelry and watches, which benefit from natural light, will look especially good here.
A site for desire
Adaptability was a critical element of the renovation to support the range of objects Sothebys sells but also the new formats it uses to sell them, like online auctions and livestreams. To make installations efficient, the design team created a metal-framed wall system that straps to the concrete coffered ceiling that Breuer designed. And to give curators more options to illuminate art, Herzog & de Meuron created custom LED track lighting, which nestles into the concrete ceiling, that can be operated remotely.
The ceiling also proved to be an ideal mount for cameras that Sothebys uses for virtual sales. When we first started doing livestreams back in June of 2021, it was an army of people who would come in with multiple giant boom cameras and we’d have massive control rooms set up with cables spread out everywhere. That’s gone, Wrightson says. Most of that is now happening remotely with what looks like joysticks.
The redesigned fourth floor of the Breuer currently holds works from the Leonard A. Lauder collection scheduled for auction on November 18, 2025. [Photo: Max Touhey/courtesy Sothebys]
The Breuer building gives Sothebys more options for what an art buying, shopping, or appreciation experience embodies. The buildings fourth floor, which is a double-height space, will serve as the main gallery space most of the time and convert into an auction room whenever there is a sale. (Sothebys is still working out what the auction room will look like.) This also means creating more opportunities for exclusivity.
The levels mezzanine, which also used to be offices, now features private viewing areas and skyboxes for clients who want a birds-eye view of the action. A former conservation studio is now a viewing area for works that require black lights to examine. Meanwhile, the auctioneers who prefer to have more intimate sales, like those who specialize in wine and watches, have the option to use the restaurant, which visitors will be able to access directly from Madison Avenue once its open next year. They like more of a banquet-style table and more of a playful experience, Wrightson says.
With its new headquarters, Sothebys architectural language is more aligned with the mass appeal of a major cultural institution than the art market. Its trying to make auction houses cool. I can imagine regular museumgoers who havent stepped foot in an auction house before will be thrilled about admission-free access to see Kahlos and Klimts before collectors squirrel them away, just as I can see the thrill collectors might take in going shopping in what feels like a museum. As its viral auctioneer Phyllis Kao told Ssense, Sothebys really sells desire; a pedigreed set and setting enhances that effect.
During the peak of the Breuer building style in the 1980s, Village Voice critic Michael Sorkin summed up the challenges of retooling an architectural darling. Adding to a masterpiece is always difficult, calling for discipline, sensitivity, restraint, he wrote. Above all, though, it calls for respect.
Thankfully, outstanding original architecture remains crucial to all the audiences Sothebys wants to welcome into its world. Whether or not visitors will be pleasantly surprised, as Wrightson hopes, may come down to how they feel about the art market itself.
When he takes office next year, Zohran Mamdani will be the first mayor of New York City in decades not to own a car.
Mamdaniwho bikes and rides public transit to workwants to make city buses both faster to ride and free, building on a fare-free pilot he helped run in 2023. He also plans to expand the citys network of bike lanes, add more car-free streets in front of schools, and wants to pedestrianize more areas in Manhattan as congestion pricing has reduced traffic.
“In a city where the majority of households are car-free, we haven’t had a car-free mayor in a really long time,” says Alexa Sledge, communications director at the nonprofit Transportation Alternatives. “It’s really exciting to see how he can prioritize the vast majority of the New Yorkers who do walk, bike, and take public transportation every single day.”
Mamdani inherits a city with streets that have massively transformed over the last two decades. “People have seen their streets change in real time,” says Janette Sadik-Khan, the former commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation under the Bloomberg Administration.
Sadik-Khan, now a principal at Bloomberg Associates, built nearly 400 miles of bike lanes, launched Citi Bike, introduced new rapid bus lanes, created dozens of plazas, and pedestrianized Times Square. The changes have continued to roll out. New York now has 1,500 miles of bike lanes, more than half a million daily cyclists, and a mile-long stretch of 14th Street dedicated entirely to buses.
Under the city’s Streets Plan, passed in 2019, Mamdani’s administration must add 50 miles of bike lanes and 30 miles of bus lanes each yeartargets the Adams administration missed. But he wants to go farther. He’s proposed making buses free to ride, though that’s likely to be a tough sell with the MTA. He also wants to bring true bus rapid transit to the city.
“A car-free bus lane can move 8,000 people an hour; meanwhile a busway on a car-free street can move 25,000 people an hour in each direction,” he told Streetsblog earlier this year. “This is an essential service that New Yorkers need, especially those in transit deserts or those forced to rely on the poor service of our current bus system.” Right now, he says, city buses only move at an average of 8 miles an hour.
The 14th Street Busway sped up buses by 30%, and other major roads across the cityincluding in the outer boroughscould see the same results with a similar design. “People walking and biking and taking transit far outnumber those in cars, but the street does not reflect that reality,” says Sadik-Khan.
Improving reliability matters as much as cost, she says. “New Yorkers don’t just want more affordable transit. They want more frequent and reliable service, so they’re not rolling the dice every time they go to and from work,” she says. Other than dedicated bus lanes, other tweaks to street design could help improve speeds, including “bulb-out” bus stops that allow buses to pick up passengers without pulling over to the side of the road. The city can also roll out more traffic signals that give buses priority at lights.
To improve the experience of biking, Sadik-Khan says that the city needs to find a way to deal with the surge of e-bikes and scooters that are too fast for bike lanes now. Mamdani could consider a new type of bike lane, she says. “New York City could be the first in the nation to dedicate lanes on avenues and in crosstown streets to faster bikes and scooters, which would take them out of the way for regular bike riders and pedestrians and make the streets much safer for everybody,” she says.
Mamdani wants to pedestrianize “vast swaths” of the new congestion pricing zone, along with streets near public open space and schools. It’s an ambitious vision, though not impossible. Paris has transformed even more radically than New York, turning a highway into park space, planting tens of thousands of parking spaces with trees, closing more than 100 streets to cars, charging SUVs extra to park, and making rush hour look more like Copenhagen, with streets filled with bikes. Other cities have also reshaped around pedestrians, like Barcelona, which now has several car-free superblocks.
The same scale of change could happen in New York. “There’s absolutely no reason we couldn’t do it here,” says Sadik-Kahn. “We have all of the scaffolding for it. I think it’s really a matter of imagination and implementation.”
Even after years of improvements in New York, it’s still a challenge to get support for new bike lanes and other changes. But Mamdani has one key advantage: he’s skilled at communicating a vision. “I think he’s done an extraordinary job of communicating the importance of change in this election,” she says. “He’s definitely laid things out. And now I think the implementation is the next step.”
The world’s richest man was just handed a chance to become history’s first trillionaire.Elon Musk won a shareholder vote on Thursday that would give the Tesla CEO stock worth $1 trillion if he hits certain performance targets over the next decade. The vote followed weeks of debate over his management record at the electric car maker and whether anyone deserved such unprecedented pay, drawing heated commentary from small investors to giant pension funds and even the pope.In the end, more than 75% of voters approved the plan as shareholders gathered in Austin, Texas, for their annual meeting.“Fantastic group of shareholders,” Musk said after the final vote was tallied, adding “Hang on to your Tesla stock.”The vote is a resounding victory for Musk showing investors still have faith in him as Tesla struggles with plunging sales, market share and profits in no small part due to Musk himself. Car buyers fled the company this year as he has ventured into politics both in the U.S. and Europe, and trafficked in conspiracy theories.The vote came just three days after a report from Europe showing Tesla car sales plunged again last month, including a 50% collapse in Germany.Still, many Tesla investors consider Musk as a sort of miracle man capable of stunning business feats, such as when he pulled Tesla from the brink of bankruptcy a half-dozen years ago to turn it into one of the world’s most valuable companies.The vote clears a path for Musk to become a trillionaire by granting him new shares, but it won’t be easy. The board of directors that designed the pay package require him to hit several ambitious financial and operational targets, including increasing the value of the company on the stock market nearly six times its current level.Musk also has to deliver 20 million Tesla electric vehicles to the market over 10 years amid new, stiff competition, more than double the number since the founding of the company. He also has to deploy 1 million of his human-like robots that he has promised will transform work and home he calls it a “robot army” from zero today.Musk could add billions to his wealth in a few years by partly delivering these goals, according to various intermediate steps that will hand him newly created stock in the company as he nears the ultimate targets.That could help him eventually top what is now considered America’s all-time richest man, John D. Rockefeller. The oil titan is estimated by Guinness World Records to have been worth $630 billion, in current dollars, at his peak wealth more than 110 years ago. Musk is worth $493 billion, as estimated by Forbes magazine.Musk’s win came despite opposition from several large funds, including CalPERS, the biggest U.S. public pension, and Norway’s sovereign wealth fund. Two corporate watchdogs, Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis, also blasted the package, which so angered Musk he took to calling them “corporate terrorists” at a recent investor meeting.Critics argued that the board of directors was too beholden to Musk, his behavior too reckless lately and the riches offered too much.“He has hundreds of billions of dollars already in the company and to say that he won’t stay without a trillion is ridiculous,” said Sam Abuelsamid, an analyst at research firm Telemetry who has been covering Tesla for nearly two decades. “It’s absurd that shareholders think he is worth this much.”Supporters said that Musk needed to be incentivized to focus on the company as he works to transform it into an AI powerhouse using software to operate hundreds of thousands of self-driving Tesla cars many without steering wheels and Tesla robots deployed in offices, factories and homes doing many tasks now handled by humans.“This AI chapter needs one person to lead it and that’s Musk,” said financial analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities. “It’s a huge win for shareholders.”Investors voting for the pay had to consider not only this Musk promise of a bold, new tomorrow, but whether he could ruin things today: He had threatened to walk away from the company, which investors feared would tank the stock.Tesla shares, already up 80% in the past year, rose on news of the vote in after-hours trading but then flattened basically unchanged to $445.44.For his part, Musk says the vote wasn’t really about the money but getting a higher Tesla stake it will double to nearly 30% so he could have more power over the company. He said that was a pressing concern given Tesla’s future “robot army” that he suggested he didn’t trust anyone else to control given the possible danger to humanity.Other issues up for a vote at the annual meeting turned out wins for Musk, too.Shareholders approved allowing Tesla to invest in one of Musk’s other ventures, xAI. They also shot down a proposal to make it easier for shareholders to sue the company by lowering the size of ownership needed to file. The current rule requires at least a 3% stake.-This story corrects that Rockefeller wealth was in oil, not railroads.
Bernard Condon, Associated Press
The United States has about 640 million acres of public land, covering national parks to conservation areas and wild rivers to lake shores.
These lands contain resources like oil and gas reserves, or minerals like lithium and copper that could be mined. But theyre also home to hiking trails, camping sites, fishing spots, and all sorts of outdoor recreational activitiesactivities that contribute billions of dollars to our economy.
Outdoor recreation specifically on federal public lands and waters generates $128 billion in economic activity every year, according to a new report by the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable (ORR), a coalition of trade associations and outdoor organizations.
That translates to $351 million a day from access to outdoor recreation on public lands and watersor $14.6 million in economic value every hour.
The ORR report is a first-of-its-kind assessment meant to highlight the value of keeping public lands open and available to such activities, rather than closing them off to outdoor enthusiasts so that they can be mined and drilled for resources.
The report comes amid the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, during which national parks have limited staff and so may also limit public access.
The study also follows multiple attacks on public lands by President Donald Trump, from considering selling off millions of acres to actually opening up public lands to more drilling and mining.
[Photo: Robert Cocquyt/Adobe Stock]
Outdoor recreation as an economic engine
Outdoor recreation in the U.S. is a $1.2 trillion industry, supporting more than five million jobs and made up of more than 110,000 businesses (plus the countless individuals who partake in all sorts of activities, from boating to RVing to hiking).
Whitney Potter Schwartz, ORRs senior vice president of communications and operations, calls this industry one of Americas greatest economic engines.
Yet, there hasnt been a comprehensive picture of exactly how federal lands specifically contribute to all those numbers, she adds, until the study out this week.
The $128 billion generated by such activities includes at least half a billion dollars that go straight to federal coffers through park passes, entrance fees, permits, and leases. Then theres federal taxes revenue, which totals $5.8 billion. State and local taxes add another $5 billion.
But outdoor recreation also benefits American businesses and American workers. Of the outdoor recreation industrys five million jobs, one in five depend on federal public lands.
When people visit public lands, they usually spend money on food, hotels, or recreational equipment. Direct annual spending by recreational visitors to federal public lands totals $72 billion, per the report.
Federal agencies, like the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service, produce their own economic reports, but this is the first time all the information has been pulled together to provide a collective picture of outdoor recreation on public lands, says Rob Southwick, a senior adviser at Southwick Associates, which conducted the study.
Economic models helped fill in the gaps, like to understand how much Americans spend outside of these sites.
[Photo: Mick Haupt/Unsplash]
A sustainable, long-term revenue source
Using federal public lands for outdoor recreation provides a value that is sustainable, recurring, and long term, the report shows. Thats counter to the idea of generating revenue from public lands through resource extraction including oil, gas, and minerals.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has proposed leveraging the countrys public lands to pay off its national debt, specifically by ramping up drilling and mining. He has said he views public lands and waters as part of the countrys balance sheet, full of valuable assets just waiting to be extracted.
But such resources are finite, the ORR report notes.
When the oil, gas, or minerals are gone, so are the associated jobs, income, and tax revenues, it reads. Furthermore, the land may require remediation before it is fit for other uses or it may never return as a revenue-bearing asset.
Outdoor recreation, in contrast, is a sustainable and appreciating asset, Schwartz says. Americans can hike, camp, and climb on the same piece of land over and over again, continuously generating money.
Recreation can also support more jobs than other activities. Its the largest source of economic returns from U.S. Forest Service lands, the report notes, supporting 161,000 jobs.
In comparison, forest products, livestock grazing, mineral extraction, and energy production support a combined 103,200 jobs.
Access to recreation is this economic powerhouse, Schwartz says, and it delivers these compounding returns year after year for the econoy.
In a new holiday ad for Starbucks, set to the tune of Im Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers, two adorable animated figures traipse across Starbuckss red holiday cups to reunite. Its a sweet video that highlights Starbuckss transition into the winter holidays, one of the biggest sales moments of the year for the company.
But while the iconic red cups are starring in Starbuckss early holiday promotion, theyve also become the center of an ongoing dispute with Starbucks Workers Unitedand a potential strike.
On November 6, Starbucks released its holiday menu in stores, including seasonal beverages, treats, and cups. The rollout heralds the arrival of Red Cup Day on November 13, an annual event when Starbucks offers free reusable cups to any customer who makes a holiday beverage purchase. Last year, an internal memo from Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol, obtained by The Wall Street Journal, showed that Red Cup Day 2024 was the companys best U.S. sales day of all time.
Meanwhile, on November 5, Workers United overwhelmingly voted to authorize a proposed strike, starting on November 13, if Starbucks fails to finalize a fair contract with the union by then. Union baristas are prepared to turn Starbucks Red Cup Day into the Red Cup Rebellion, a press release from the union reads.
Today, its been nearly four years since Starbucks workers organized their first store, with no contract agreement in sightand, as the holidays roll around, its becoming clear that while the red cup symbolizes a huge financial win for Starbucks, its become a symbol of frustration for the union.
Whats happened between Starbucks and its union?
Starbucks and its union have been embroiled in a dispute over the companys contracts since 2021. In the broadest of terms, the union is looking to secure better wages, benefits, and guaranteed hours for its employees. Starbucks, meanwhile, claims that it already offers the best overall wage and benefits package in retail.
In April 2025, the union rejected a contract proposal from Starbucks, which it says failed to improve wages or benefits in the first year of the contract and didnt put forth proposals to address chronic understaffing. Since then, negotiations between the two parties have broken down. Now, per a press release, Workers United says that union workers are prepared to strike in more than 25 cities as an “opening salvo, if Starbucks does not offer new contract proposals which address workers demands for better staffing, higher pay, and a resolution of unfair labor practice charges.
Jaci Anderson, Starbuckss director of global communications, says that the union represents a small percent of Starbuckss workforce, including 550 stores in total. Starbucks customers, she adds, should feel assured that the vast majority of the companys more than 10,000 company operated and 7,000 licensed locations in the U.S. will be open on November 13, regardless of the unions plans.
We are disappointed that Workers United, who only represents around 4% of our partners, has voted to authorize a strike instead of returning to the bargaining table, she says. When theyre ready to come back, were ready to talk.
In a letter published on Starbucks’s website on November 5 in response to Workers Uniteds strike authorization, chief partner officer Sara Kelly wrote, Starbucks offers the best overall wage and benefits package in retail, worth on average $30 per hour for hourly partners, going on to add, Workers United proposes pay increases of 65% immediately and 77% over three years with additional payments on top of this for almost every aspect of the job, including for working within three hours of opening or closing, for working on the weekend, for receiving inventory, or on a day when Starbucks runs a promotion.
A Workers United spokesperson told Fast Company that Kellys letter intentionally obfuscated the union baristas goals. They pointed out that the $30 an hour figure includes both wages and benefits togetherwhile, in 33 states, the starting wage for a barista is $15.25. Further, they added, the proposals that she attributes to the union are outdated and were never offered as a package deal, but rather as a variety of options available on the bargaining table.
Our fight is about actually making Starbucks jobs the best jobs in retail, Jasmine Leli, a three-year Starbucks barista and strike captain, said in the Workers United press release. Right now, its only the best job in retail for Brian Niccol.
Red Cup Rebellion 2.0
If the strike proceeds as planned, it wont be the first Red Cup Rebellion in Starbucks history.
Back in 2023, union baristas held a similar protest at more than 200 stores, which, at the time, was the largest strike in the unions history. At the time, the union explained that, due to its popularity, Red Cup Day is one of the hardest days for Starbucks workers, due to an explosion in foot traffic and chronic understaffing.
For this Red Cup Rebellion, a Workers United spokesperson told Fast Company, union workers are prepared to make a potential strike bigger and longer than any strikes in years past.
As the dispute between Starbucks and Workers United continues with no clear end in sight, the red holiday cup has become the ultimate symbol of how the company’s corporate goals clash with union barista’s demands.
Senate Republicans are moving to try to end the government shutdown by preparing a new bipartisan package of spending bills and daring Democrats to vote for it, but it was unclear if their plan would work.Many Democrats said they would continue to hold out for an extension of expiring health care subsidies, which was not expected to be part of the legislation.Senate Democrats, who have now voted 14 times not to reopen the government, left their second caucus meeting of the week Thursday with few answers about whether they eventually could find a compromise with Republicans or even with each other on how to end the shutdown.A test vote on the new package, which had not yet been publicly revealed, could come as soon as Friday. Democrats will then have a crucial choice to make: Do they keep fighting for a meaningful deal on extending health care subsidies that expire in January, while extending the pain of the shutdown? Or do they vote to reopen the government and hope for the best as Republicans promise an eventual health care vote, but not a guaranteed outcome?Emboldened by overwhelmingly favorable elections earlier this week, many Democrats say the fight isn’t over until Republicans and President Donald Trump negotiate with them on an extension.“That’s what leaders do,” said Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico. “You have the gavel, you have the majority, you have to bring people together.”Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz said Democrats are “obviously not unanimous” but they are unified that “without something on health care, the vote is very unlikely to succeed.”Other Democrats have been working on a deal that would reopen the government with only an agreement for a future vote on the health care subsidies. Lawmakers in both parties were feeling increased urgency to alleviate the growing crisis at airports, pay government workers and restore delayed food aid to millions of people now that the shutdown has become the longest in U.S. history.Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s decision to keep the Senate in session Friday, and perhaps over the weekend, came after Trump urged Senate Republicans at a White House breakfast Wednesday to end the shutdown. Trump said he thought the six-week impasse was a “big factor, negative” for Republicans in Tuesday’s elections.
A new effort to reopen the government
The bipartisan package Thune is proposing would fund parts of government food aid, veterans programs and the legislative branch, among other things and extend funding for everything else until December or January.The new package would replace the House-passed bill that the Democrats have repeatedly rejected. That legislation would only extend government funding until Nov. 21, a date that is rapidly approaching after six weeks of inaction.The details were still to be worked out, but the new legislation mirrors a tentative plan that moderate Democrats have been sketching out in hopes of finding agreement. The proposal led by New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen would also take up Republicans on their offer to hold a vote on extending the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies at a later date.It was still unclear what Thune, who has refused to negotiate while the government is closed, would promise on health care and if enough Democrats would agree to move ahead. Republicans have for weeks been five votes short of the 60 they need.
Johnson delivers setback to bipartisan talks
Democrats are facing pressure from unions eager for the shutdown to end and from allied groups that want them to hold firm. Many Democrats have argued that the results for Democrats in Tuesday’s election show voters want them to continue the fight until Republicans yield and agree to extend the health tax credits.A vote on the health care subsidies “has got to mean something,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, said this week. “That means a commitment by the speaker of the House, that he will support the legislation, that the president will sign.”But Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., made clear Thursday morning he won’t make any commitment to Democrats. “I’m not promising anybody anything,” Johnson said when asked if he could promise a vote on a health care bill.Johnson’s clear refusal was a setback for negotiators. Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, one of the moderate Democrats involved in negotiations, said the speaker’s comments were “a significant problem.”“We have to make sure we have a deal that we can get broad support for,” Peters said.Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has not yet weighed in on the latest push. He has repeatedly called for Trump to sit down with Democrats a meeting that seems unlikely to happen.“Donald Trump clearly is feeling pressure to bring this shutdown to an end,” Schumer said Thursday.
Closed-door negotiations become public
A group of Democrats and Republicans that has been quietly negotiating for weeks insisted they were making steady progress on a deal.In a new development Thursday, Republicans suggested they might be open to including language in a final agreement that would reverse some mass firings of government workers by the White House, according to two people familiar with the private talks granted anonymity to discuss them. But it was unclear if that proposal would be included in the new package of bills.Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, a moderate Republican who has been talking to Democrats, says she wants furloughed workers to be given back pay and workers who have been fired during the shutdown to be “recalled.”“We’re still negotiating that language,” she said.
Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti, Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
Mary Clare Jalonick, Associated Press
