Marco Gobbetti, Burberry’s chief executive, quits to join Ferragamo.
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Marco Gobbetti, who was tasked with turning Burberry into more of an upmarket luxury brand when he was appointed chief executive in 2017, is quitting after five years in the role.
Shares in the British fashion house fell by 8 percent on Monday after news broke that Mr. Gobbetti, who had previously run brands including Céline and Givenchy, would be leaving Burberry at the end of the year to become chief executive of Salvatore Ferragamo in Italy.
Burberry said that Mr. Gobbetti had notified the board that he would be leaving “to take up another opportunity that will enable him to return to Italy and be closer to his family.” Burberry’s chairman, Gerry Murphy, said that he was “naturally disappointed” but that he fully respected Mr. Gobbetti’s decision “to return to Italy after nearly 20 years abroad.”
Mr. Gobbetti oversaw a broad overhaul at Burberry that included raising prices and cutting discounts as well as increasing the brand’s exposure in areas like handbags, where its offerings were seen as weak and where profit margins are higher.
He also focused on expansion in Asia, particularly in China, the world’s fastest-growing luxury market. In 2018, Mr. Gobbetti hired Riccardo Tisci, whom he had previously worked with at Givenchy, to be Burberry’s chief creative officer. Mr. Tisci has remade the company’s logo and infused its runway collections, once staid and traditional, with gender fluidity and streetwear.
There have been bumps in the road, including a scandal in 2018 over the burning of unsold stock (Burberry said the practice was aimed at preserving “brand value,” but it stopped after outcries), and another this year when it was among the first luxury brands to be assailed by a Chinese social-media backlash to Western accusations of abuses in Xinjiang.
Although Burberry’s share price has doubled in the past five years, it has still underperformed those of global luxury peers such as LVMH and Kering.
“The departure of Marco Gobbetti seems the seal on a partially successful brand turnaround,” said Luca Solca, an analyst at Bernstein, in a note published for investors on Monday. “In reality, Burberry is in a far better position today than when Marco took responsibility for it. Yet, the magnitude of the issues at hand didn’t offer a chance for the runway success that some had hoped for.”
A search for a successor for Mr. Gobbetti is underway.
Twenty-six states will halt some or all emergency unemployment benefits, with many Republican governors blaming the programs for a shortage of workers in many industries as businesses reopen.
The changes affect four programs:
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Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation, which provides eligible individuals with $300 a week on top of their regular benefits.
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Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, which extends benefits for workers who have exhausted their state allotment.
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Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which covers freelancers, part-time hires, seasonal workers and others who do not normally qualify for state unemployment benefits.
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Mixed Earner Unemployment Compensation, which offers additional assistance for people who make their income by combining a salaried job with freelance gigs.
It’s a question that has generated lots of speculation but little hard evidence: Why are businesses having trouble hiring when so many workers — 9.3 million in May — remain unemployed?
Many Republican governors have said they believe that enhanced federal jobless benefits, set to run through the end of September, are giving workers an incentive to remain on the sideline. All told, 26 states have said they will cut off the $300 weekly payments early.
But many economists are skeptical that the extra payments have played an outsize role in the hiring squeeze, Patricia Cohen reports for The New York Times. In Missouri, which terminated the benefits on June 12, work force development officials said they had seen virtually no uptick in job applicants since the governor’s announcement.
Economists pointed to other factors they believe were the more likely reasons for workers’ hesitancy. Among them: child care and continuing health fears with less than half the population fully vaccinated.
In the St. Louis area, The Times found, employers who are hunting for workers and people who are hunting for jobs have starkly different expectations and assumptions about what a day’s work is worth.
“Clearly part of the problem now is that what employers and what workers think is out of whack,” said Katharine G. Abraham, an economist at the University of Maryland.
For many single women, as well as for divorced women and widows, getting the most out of Social Security is crucial. Women tend to live longer than men, and they depend more on Social Security as a primary source of retirement income. Their benefits, on average, are smaller, in part because of lost earnings or part-time work during years caring for children and older relatives.
Even so, experts say, many women leave considerable amounts of this guaranteed source of inflation-adjusted money on the table.
“This safety net is incredibly important in old age,” said Marcia Mantell, a retirement consultant in Plymouth, Mass. “Yet most women don’t understand how to fully maximize this benefit.”
In an article for The New York Times, Susan B. Garland explains how women can maximize their Social Security benefits:
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A single woman, either one who never married or one whose marriage lasted for a short time, should delay claiming benefits for as long as possible, experts say.
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A single woman may also be able to boost her benefits by delaying retirement.
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Women generally fare worse financially than men after a divorce, but an ex-wife may be able to ease the hit by claiming a spousal or a survivor benefit on her former husband’s work record.
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A widow who claims the survivor benefit at her full retirement age is eligible for 100 percent of the benefit her late spouse was receiving, or was eligible to receive.
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A widow can claim as early as age 60 (50 if she is disabled), but her benefit will be reduced permanently for each month she claims before her full retirement age.
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