About $22 million is now available for New Yorkers who have medical conditions exacerbated by extreme heat to purchase air conditioning units this summer, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Tuesday.
Households with lower incomes that include people with conditions such as arthritis, respiratory conditions and migraines, children under 6 or adults over 60 will be eligible to receive financial assistance from the program, which gives people money to buy and install units at home. It is overseen by the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance and funded through the Home Energy Assistance Program, which is federally funded and state-administered.
Applications will be accepted through August 31 or until funding runs out. The state expects 27,000 households to receive assistance this year, according to Hochul’s office. Last summer more than 21,000 households got units through $17 million in federal help.
However, last year the program ran out of money just 24 days into summer, for the second year in a row. The state office stopped accepting applications on July 14, leaving vulnerable New Yorkers without a solution in extreme heat.
In response, Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance spokesman Anthony Farmer said the agency made a point to earmark an additional $5 million for the program so more people can buy units. It also allowed New Yorkers to begin applying for assistance earlier, on April 15, in the hopes that more people will secure air conditioning before the heat of the summer hits.
“If they're applying in August, that means they've suffered through the heat of the summer already. So we're trying to get this done ahead of time,” Farmer said.
New Yorkers outside of the city can apply for the financial help by contacting their local department of social services, according to Hochul’s office. City residents must apply by phone, online or in-person at a local Human Resources Administration Benefit Access Center, which can be found throughout the boroughs.
New York health giant Northwell Health has started to offer a promising new gene therapy that could provide a path to a cure for patients with a rare blood disorder.
Northwell Health will announce today that it treated the first patient in New York with Zynteglo, a gene therapy greenlit by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2022. An eight-year-old boy from Valley Stream was treated with the stem cell therapy at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in January.
The therapy, manufactured by Somerville, Massachusetts-based company Bluebird Bio, has garnered attention due to its novel mechanism and hefty $2.8 million price tag. Many have raised questions about how the cost of the therapy will impact access to care.
Dr. Jonathan Fish, head of stem cell transplant and cell therapy at Northwell, said that the hospital system hasn’t run into challenges getting insurers to cover the therapy, adding that it’s also covered by New York’s Medicaid program. Northwell currently has 15 to 20 patients waiting to be treated for beta thalassemia, said Dr. Banu Aygun, chief of hematology at Cohen.
Beta thalassemia, similar to sickle cell disease, is a rare genetic blood disorder. It occurs when patients don’t make enough hemoglobin to circulate oxygen throughout the body, causing patients to suffer from extreme anemia and depend on blood transfusions every couple of weeks. There are only 200,000 patients across the globe who are alive and in treatment, according to Thalassemia International Foundation.
Before gene therapies hit the market, the only way to cure beta thalassemia was by performing a bone marrow transplant, which clears patients of cells with damaged or missing genes and replaces them with healthy ones. But the challenge is finding a match and making sure patients don’t reject their transplant, said Fish.
Stem cell therapies like Zynteglo eliminate the need to find a donor by removing a patient’s bone marrow and genetically modifying it. Clinicians replace the damaged cells with the modified ones, effectively eliminating the need for a donor. Casgevy, a CRISPR-based therapy approved by the FDA late last year, is also indicated to treat beta thalassemia.
The patient treated at Northwell is part of a small group that has received the stem cell therapy nationwide. Bluebird Bio spokesman Elliot Fox said that seven patients have started treatment with Zynteglo since the beginning of this year, in addition to the 20 patients who were treated in 2023. There are 62 medical centers nationwide that are certified to offer the drug.
While Northwell is the first health system in New York to treat a patient with Zynteglo, it’s not the only center that’s qualified to. Mount Sinai and Montefiore also have centers that have been certified to administer the drug, according to the drug manufacturer’s website.
Northwell Health has 21 hospitals and 850 outpatient facilities in New York. The health system has 12,000 affiliated physicians.
New York City will open 16 new school-based mental health clinics in Central Brooklyn and the Bronx, part of its efforts to increase the availability of mental health care in schools while scaling back its primary care offerings.
Mayor Eric Adams said Wednesday that the public hospital system and the Department of Education will roll out new clinics over the next six months and expect the facilities to serve 6,000 children. The new clinics add to the five existing facilities currently operated by New York City Health + Hospitals.
School-based mental health clinics are outposts of state-licensed outpatient behavioral health care facilities. The clinics are run by social workers and provide individual, family or group therapy to school-aged kids, but they can also refer patients to more intensive services.
The clinic expansion is a part of the city’s $5 million mental health continuum, a partnership between the mayor’s office, education officials and the public hospital system to improve school-based mental health services.
The new clinics are funded by $3.6 million in city funding and $700,000 from the state’s Office of Mental Health.
The announcement comes on the heels of the public hospital system’s closure of eight school-based health clinics last year. Unlike the new clinics, previous facilities also offered primary care services; but those clinics were scarcely used because most patients went to other H+H locations for primary care, including hospital clinics and Gotham Health centers, said Dr. Ted Long, senior vice president of ambulatory care and population health at H+H.
Long said in a City Council oversight hearing on Wednesday that school-based health clinics saw roughly two patients each day. He added that H+H is changing its approach to school-based health services, specifically by “doubling down” on mental health care.
The addition of school-based mental health clinics in the city comes as Gov. Kathy Hochul has pledged to expand these services statewide. The governor pledged in her State of the State address in January to allocate $20 million to allow any school that wants a mental health clinic to get one off the ground. But many providers fear the start-up funds, which total between $25,000 and $40,00, are not enough to support an expansion of these services.
The City Council is likely to sign off Thursday on a measure that would clear the way for casinos to open in New York City, although a fair number of lawmakers may vote against it.
The vote will only matter if casinos are approved through a state-level process.
Since the city’s zoning laws currently do not allow casinos, Mayor Eric Adams has proposed changes that would legalize the gambling centers in commercial districts and manufacturing areas while barring them in residential neighborhoods. Supporters say the change would ensure that the city’s nine known casino contenders are not at a competitive disadvantage compared to other projects on Long Island or upstate that are also in the running for three downstate licenses that the state plans to award next year.
The zoning changes passed two council committees unanimously on Wednesday ahead of Thursday’s expected passage by the full council. But some opposition was brewing among both left-wing lawmakers and more conservative council members as of Wednesday afternoon, multiple council sources said, suggesting that Thursday’s margin will be narrower than most council votes.
“Anything that gives up control, especially of zoning, scares me,” said Bob Holden, a conservative Queens Democrat. Holden said Wednesday that he planned to vote no, and heard similar concerns from colleagues. Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who supports the measure, was shoring up votes Wednesday afternoon, and the influential Hotel and Gaming Trades Council union, which represents casino workers, was also placing calls to lawmakers, a source close to the union confirmed.
Deep-pocketed casino contenders like SL Green, the Related Cos. and New York Mets owner Steve Cohen will have one less thing to worry about if the 51-member council votes yes, although the lobbying bonanza surrounding the high-stakes process is likely to continue as each bidder tries to secure the local support they need to advance.
The vote on Thursday could serve as a test of the council’s willingness to defy the community boards that wield symbolic power at the neighborhood level. Nineteen boards voted against the casino changes in recent months while just four voted in favor, although more than 30 others opted against voting at all. A similar dynamic could be in play when the council is asked to vote on Mayor Adams’ City of Yes zoning packages in the coming months, which also face local resistance.
The zoning change would amount to the city relinquishing control over the casino process, but supporters say the state-led process already has local feedback built in through the six-member community advisory councils that will hold veto power over every casino proposal. Without the citywide change, all city-based casino proposals would need to pass through their own monthslong zoning reviews, jeopardizing their chances of winning a license and likely overburdening the City Planning Department.
The city’s plan would put no limit on casinos’ size and also allow developers to tack on “related” facilities like hotels — which are typically tightly regulated outside the casino process.
Responding to concerns that the zoning changes could open the floodgates to more casinos in future years, the City Planning Commission last month added a June 2025 “sunset” date ensuring that the changes apply only to the nine known contenders for the three licenses now up for grabs — not any proposals that could arise if the state awards fewer than the maximum three licenses next year and reopens the process in the future.
Staten Island councilman David Carr, a Republican, said during a Wednesday committee vote that sunset provision was “crucial” in convincing him to vote for the zoning changes; he said it eliminates the slim chance that any casino could be approved in his district during the current cycle.
No-votes cast on Thursday are likely to come from progressives who view gambling as a regressive tax on the poor, as well as right-leaning lawmakers who object to the large and potentially disruptive casino developments.
There are four casino proposals that still need to overcome their own specific local zoning hurdles on top of winning a state license. Cohen’s Queens proposal and Bally’s on the former Trump Golf Links in the Bronx need approval from the city and state to build on what is technically parkland. Related in Hudson Yards and Thor Equities at Coney Island also need to secure zoning changes at their sites to be able to build.
State regulators announced last month that applications for downstate casino licenses will not open until 2025, finally putting a firm timeline on what had been a sluggish run-up to the eagerly awaited process.
That pushed-back timeline was meant to give all applicants time to finish environmental reviews and land-use hurdles, state Gaming Commission officials said.
It’s unclear how long the Federal Aviation Administration’s review of United Airlines’ safety procedures will last.
“It will conclude when it concludes,” CEO Scott Kirby told reporters during a conference call this morning to discuss United’s surprisingly strong earnings.
Among other things, the review prohibits the airline from putting new planes into service, further complicating an already difficult situation for United. The airline was poised to ramp up its growth plan this year, driven largely by new, larger aircraft.
But Boeing, its main supplier, has run into manufacturing and safety challenges, headlined by a January incident in which a panel of a new 737 Max blew off in mid-flight, causing the FAA to order Boeing to throttle back production.
The result is that United will have 40 fewer new planes this year than it expected, which means higher costs from extra pilots it hired and trained and less revenue from additional flying.
United’s own problems with a series of safety mishaps — from a plane sliding off a runway to a plane losing a wheel in flight — prompted the FAA to embark on a major review of the airline’s safety procedures and culture.
“The main focus has been less about changing the policies and processes but really making sure that everyone keeps safety as a top-of-mind awareness and spending a lot more time with the leadership team out talking about it,” Kirby said.
“Now we, of course, will go through with the FAA a pretty rigorous process and we'll continuously look at ways to improve safety across-the-board. And that's continuing.”
He added that “at some point we’ll start taking aircraft deliveries again” but that's not the airline's focus.
United’s stock climbed 16% today to about $48 per share as the company found ways to keep cost issues in check and present an upbeat picture to Wall Street. Like other carriers, United said it’s seeing a healthy recovery in corporate travel. It's the biggest one-day gain for United's stock since November 2020.
Bloomberg contributed. This article originally appeared in Crain's Chicago Business.
Bankers are applying the idea of a “breakup fee,” a longtime fixture in corporate takeovers, to a very different kind of acquisition target: each other.
This story begins happily enough, with a nearly $10 million offer from Jefferies Financial Group. The lucky hire was Dean Decker, a rainmaker at Credit Suisse Group.
The catch: If Decker reneged before he started, a clause in his nine-page offer letter read, he’d have to pay Jefferies what amounted to a personal breakup fee. The price to walk away: $4 million. Walk away Decker did.
Seven years later, the legal fallout is still raining down. A federal appeals court in California is now poised to rule on whether the Jefferies maneuver was legal or, as Decker’s camp has contended, tantamount to ransom. During a hearing on April 12, two of the three judges on the panel appeared to express skepticism about Decker’s argument.
How this saga ends might well shape the way financial companies and other employers — from police departments to hospitals, to the news media — recruit talent. That’s particularly so in California where Decker was employed.
At stake, too, are the personal financial risks people might face if they accept an offer and then — shocker — try use it to squeeze more money out of their current employers.
Wall Street banks have long used mechanisms to keep people in place, including trying to claw back pay from defectors. But Jefferies’ approach, also used by hedge funds, can lead to millions of dollars in damages for employees who back out before ever receiving a paycheck.
Hundreds of pages of legal documents related to the Jefferies episode filed in court provide an unusually candid view into the running war for talent on Wall Street.
Text messages from various parties, including Richard Handler, Jefferies’ chief executive, show the lengths to which the hard-charging New York-based firm went to lure stars.
“I want you to know how much I believe in what you and your team can do on our platform,” Handler texted Decker, a real estate and casino specialist, on Jan. 4, 2017, as Decker and several Credit Suisse colleagues wavered over their offers. Handler also said he “would really appreciate the time to talk this all through with you calmly when you can focus.”
Decker, now 55, declined to comment for this story, as did a representative for Jefferies and its executives.
‘Liquidated damages’
The Jefferies provision centers on what’s known in contract law as “liquidated damages.” Such clauses specify a predetermined amount of money that must be paid if a party fails to keep their side of the bargain. One Jefferies executive testified that the clause is necessary because recruiting bankers is time consuming and expensive. (Jefferies could have had to pay more than $10 million to Decker if it backed out.)
Just how widespread are these provisions on Wall Street? It’s difficult to say. Individual employment agreements are rarely disclosed — Decker’s was as part of the case. But employment lawyers say these clauses have been proliferating in finance.
“It’s super aggressive,” said Ross Intelisano, a founding partner of the law firm Rich, Intelisano & Katz in New York, of the trend. “I can’t imagine advising an employee to sign this.”
It wasn’t supposed to be this way at Jefferies. Back in 2016, the firm was looking to pry senior bankers away from competitors, according to testimony filed in the case. Credit Suisse — which would ultimately collapse into the arms of UBS Group — seemed like a target-rich environment.
Decker had brushed aside earlier overtures from Jefferies. Not this time. He made $1.1 million at Credit Suisse in 2015, his lowest take-home in years, according to documents entered in the court dispute. And Credit Suisse shares were sucking wind – bad news for employees whose compensation included stock.
Before long, Decker and several colleagues began talking to Jefferies about making a jump. Whether they all really intended to go is still up for debate.
One colleague messaged Decker in June 2016, asking if they should consider a move.
Decker’s response: “Play it out.”
“It certainly doesn’t hurt to know options,” the gaming-industry banker wrote. “I’m not going to play all the way out unless serious. I know they are willing to pay big.”
Decker ended the exchange by saying, “Need to use market data point with CS.” He subsequently testified he was referring to negotiating a raise at Credit Suisse.
Legal action
On Monday, January 2 — a public holiday because New Year’s Day that year fell on Sunday – Decker took in the annual Rose Bowl college football game in Pasadena. Then he made his way to Jefferies’ offices near the Westwood section of Los Angeles. A team of bankers and lawyers was waiting. The offer letter Decker signed guaranteed him about $10 million in salary and bonuses for the first year with a payout of $2 million the following year.
The breakup clause was the brainchild of Ben Lorello, then head of investment banking, the court filings show. Over a decades-long Wall Street career, Lorello had orchestrated major acquisitions, notably in health care. Many of those deals employed breakup fees. Now he was applying his M&A playbook to hiring a new banker. Attempts to reach Lorello, who left the firm in 2020, through contact information listed in public records and via Jefferies were unsuccessful.
Decker later testified that Lorello told him the clause was non-negotiable. It was there, the Jefferies banker told him, to prevent hires from leveraging offers into fatter paychecks from their current bosses, a tactic known as a “bid-back.”
A recruiter hired by Jefferies warned his colleagues at the time that the provision might not stick.
“It’s unlikely the clause is enforceable in most states (if anywhere),” the recruiter said in an email included in court filings, “but the threat of legal action is usually enough to dissuade anyone from accepting a bid-back.”
Another Credit Suisse rainmaker, capital-markets specialist Jonathan Moneypenny, was similarly negotiating to bring his leveraged-finance unit to Jefferies.
The news reached Credit Suisse in Zurich.
“Does this mean Moneypenny is gone,” Tidjane Thiam, then CEO of the Swiss bank, asked two executives in an email that was cited in arbitration that proceeded the court case, “or is this an opportunity to embarrass them?” Thiam declined to comment for this story.
Moneypenny, now 51, wasn’t gone. He was negotiating a better deal for himself at the Swiss bank. He declined to comment for this story.
“I was really pissed,” Decker subsequently testified in the arbitration. He told an industry arbitration panel that he fully intended to join Jefferies. But when Moneypenny balked, he got cold feet, he said.
And so, no sooner had Jefferies appeared to snag several big hires than its grand plan began to unravel. Handler tried to contain the damage. Lorello ordered a subordinate to find a way to reach Decker by that evening.
A Jefferies executive messaged the casino specialist: “All the reasons to come are still in place, and same for the reasons you wanted to leave.”
In the end, only three of the eight Credit Suisse bankers — Joseph Kieffer, John Bown and Brad Capadona — ended up moving to Jefferies.
Breakup fees
By 5 p.m. on January 3, less than 24 hours after Decker signed his offer letter, he was negotiating with Credit Suisse for more money and a promotion. Jefferies promptly sought to collect its breakup fees (Moneypenny’s was $5 million, even more than Decker’s $4 million.)
Per standard industry practice, the disputes went to different arbitration panels. Moneypenny and two of the other bankers prevailed. Another won on liquidated damages but was ordered to pay almost $900,000 in other damages. Decker lost.
Now, the matter has gone to the courts. The outcome could have its biggest impact in California, said Zoe Salzman, an employment lawyer at the firm ECBAWM.
Jefferies’ argument is simple: Decker failed to live up to his contract and his career was “greatly enhanced” by the offer from Handler’s firm.
“His compensation increased substantially, and he received a promotion solely because he signed the agreement with Jefferies,” Jefferies said in a court filing last November. “In fact, the only winner was Decker — both Jefferies and Credit Suisse were gamed (pun intended).”
Credit Suisse agreed to cover his legal bill — and any damages. Now, UBS will have to pick up the tab. UBS declined to comment.
In the end, neither the Swiss bank nor Jefferies got their stars. Decker and Moneypenny have since departed for Banco Santander.
Vornado Realty Trust might be spiking a football when it comes to 220 Central Park South.
In a likely cause for celebration, the developer appears to have unloaded two of its final units at its blockbuster Billionaires Row condo with the sale of a three-bedroom and a studio in a $34 million haul.
And the purchaser seems to have close ties to the New England Patriots. The shell company used by the buyer lists its contact as the Kraft Group, the owner of the Super Bowl-frequenting football squad, and an address of 1 Patriot Place in Foxborough, Mass., a mixed-use entertainment and retail project developed by Kraft next to Patriots home field Gillette Stadium.
Likewise the shell company’s official name, Protista 220, includes an anagram of the word “Patriots.”
The units, Nos. 43B and 20F, went into contract on March 1 and closed on April 12, according to the deeds for the apartments, which appeared in the city register on Wednesday.
Because Vornado chose to market 220 Central Park South privately, not much is known about the look of the two apartments save for what’s spelled out in the condo’s offering plan, a legal document that the state requires in advance of condo projects.
The three-bedroom, which went for $33 million, has three-and-a-half baths and about 3,000 square feet, the plan says, while the studio, which was presumably created to be a staff or guest unit, has a bath and 500 square feet. It traded for $1 million, according to the register.
A conglomerate with holdings in wood, healthcare and technology companies, the Kraft Group was founded in the late 1960s by Boston area native Bob Kraft, who still serves as the company’s chairman and CEO, though his sons Jonathan, Daniel and Josh also hold executive positions at the company or in related ventures.
An attempt to reach Kraft’s media office by phone by press time was unsuccessful, and a phone message left for company spokesman Michael Jurovaty was not returned. Peter Batten, the New York lawyer who handled the paperwork on behalf of Protista, also did not return a call. And Vornado spokesman Bud Perrone had no comment.
With the two sales, Vornado has likely hit its goal, or is very near to it, of completing a staggering $3.5 billion sell-out of the 117 units at 220 Central Park South. In summer 2022 the 79-story development had 10 units left, according to a Crain’s analysis, and in the two years since has sold most of those apartments, based on the register.
Though the Steven Roth-helmed Vornado may have struggled to realize its long-term vision for a new office district surrounding Penn Station, 220 Central Park South has been a regular bright spot for the firm since sales there began in 2015. Among the huge-ticket deals completed in the complex was hedge funder Kenneth Griffin’s purchase of a triplex apartment, a $238 million transaction believed to be the country’s priciest-ever residential sale.
At the same time, several apartments at the park-facing building have resold for even more than Vornado’s original lofty prices, no small feat at a time when similar units in rival towers have posted declines in value over the years.