Author: completebodyneeds

The birds are up with the sunrise — warblers, flycatchers, sparrows and towhees calling across the treetops. Deer browse on tender buds emerging from dense shrubs. Black bears scrounge for roots, insects and other edibles. It’s an idyllic setting in North Carolina’s Inner Banks, where fields of cotton, soybeans and corn stretch for miles, country roads wend through stands of pines and thousands of bird watchers converge to witness the spring migration. But it’s what’s underground that has drawn scientists and investors to this 23-square-mile (60-square-kilometer) tract: spongy, dense peat up to 15 feet (5 meters) deep. They’re here to…

Insurance brokerage The Baldwin Group, Inc. said today it has entered a definitive agreement resulting in becoming a privately held company. An entity formed by Sequence Holdings and DFO Management is to pay an all-cash sum of $7.7 billion to acquire a majority interest in Baldwin. Tampa, Florida-based Baldwin will continue as a wholly owned subsidiary of the new parent company. DFO Management manages the investment assets of Michael Dell, the founder, chairman, and CEO Dell Technologies. Trevor Baldwin “Our vision and strategy are not changing,” said Baldwin Group CEO Trevor Baldwin, in a statement. “We remain committed to building…

A late-filed workers’ compensation claim can be considered valid where the lateness is due to the identity of the claimant’s employer being concealed from her. The Virginia Workers’ Compensation Commission (VWCC) has upheld a deputy commissioner’s ruling that found an employee should not be denied benefits for filing her injury claim against the correct entity after the state’s two-year statute of limitations had expired. The claimant had no way of knowing that her employer was by law the federal grant-making agency AmeriCorps and not the school program where she was an assistant or the city that paid her. The 78-year…

CVC-backed Bamboo Insurance Services is targeting a valuation of up to $3.24 billion on a fully diluted basis in its U.S. initial public offering, the company revealed in a filing on Monday. The Midvale, Utah-based company’s selling shareholders are seeking up to $700 million by offering 35 million shares priced between $18 and $20 apiece. Despite a strong backlog of companies preparing to go public, the fall IPO season has started more slowly than a year ago as volatility due to rising oil prices and inflation weighs on deal activity. Related: Bamboo Launches Essential HO2 Product in California Within the…

Warnings from researchers at leading U.S. artificial intelligence developer Anthropic that increasingly powerful models could escape human control and even lead to the extinction of the human race have drawn attention in China, where policymakers have been preparing for some of the same risks. The U.S. and China are the two major driving forces of frontier AI development and the technology’s global adoption. Both superpowers have been increasingly at loggerheads over each other’s AI policies and industry practices, with these issues slated to feature prominently in bilateral talks later this month. Despite the race to develop increasingly powerful AI systems,…

US Senator Elizabeth Warren is pressing the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to explain how it’s policing Wall Street firms’ influence over insurers and their bets on private credit, saying a probe of Mark Walter’s businesses raises questions about regulatory gaps. In a letter to NAIC Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Johnston, the Massachusetts Democrat asked if the group is assessing whether other insurance companies have engaged in the same conduct as Walter’s firms, Delaware Life Insurance Co. and Clear Spring Life and Annuity Co. The US Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission have been probing Walter’s sprawling business…

The AI-linked rally that has seen world stock markets soar over the last two years is showing growing signs of vulnerability, global central bank umbrella body, the Bank for International Settlements, said on Monday. In a new report, the BIS said investors were becoming “increasingly cautious” about the profitability of future AI investments, especially as the leverage of major U.S. tech firms continued to rise. “The AI momentum, which had propelled equity markets and contributed to the resilience of the global economy of the last year, has begun to show growing signs of vulnerability,” the BIS’ head of economic analysis,…

Mizuho Bank provided some $100 million in credit to Radiant World in June which was secured by invoices that a counterparty to the iron ore trader later said were invalid, according to documents and a source with direct knowledge of the matter. Radiant World did not respond to Reuters requests for comment on Friday. Details of the credit provided by Mizuho, the banking arm of Japan’s Mizuho Financial Group, have not previously been reported. Read more: Allianz, Zurich Say They Have No ‘Material Exposure’ to Radiant A Mizuho spokesperson said it had no comment. The Mizuho financing was secured against…

Insurance broker network Keystone, headquartered in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, appointed Kevin Meskell as national brokerage leader. Meskell will lead Keystone’s national brokerage strategy — deepening the company’s carrier relationships and strengthening the placement capabilities behind every Keystone agency and platform partner. Meskell joins Keystone from The Baldwin Group, where he most recently served as national placement leader. Prior to Baldwin, he spent his career at Marsh, most recently as U.S. placement leader for Marsh Affinity — where he advanced through senior placement and leadership roles across multiple regions and specialty practices. Earlier in his career, Meskell served as a reinsurance broker…

Online vehicle auctioneer Copart last Thursday agreed to acquire peer ACV Auctions in an all-cash deal of about $1.9 billion, marking its entry into dealer-to-dealer wholesale remarketing. The acquisition comes as Copart seeks to expand beyond its core auction business amid slowing vehicle volume growth, hurt by insurers retaining more vehicles and consumers cutting back on auto insurance amid inflationary pressures. Shares of ACV Auctions jumped over 40% after the bell. Buffalo, New York-based ACV operates a digital marketplace for wholesale vehicle transactions, connecting dealers, commercial buyers and sellers of used vehicles. The purchase price of $10.50 per share represents…