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A co-founder of telecommunications company Crown Castle has nominated a rival slate of directors to the firm’s board, muddying the waters months after activist investor Elliott Management and Crown Castle signed a cooperation agreement.

Ted Miller, who helped launch the company in 1994, along with his investment vehicle Boots Capital presented his thesis to investors in a release Tuesday, urging the company to sell its fiber business and improve operational efficiency.

The slate of four directors he’s nominating includes himself and his son-in-law. Crown Castle said in a statement rejecting the slate that the Boots Capital nominees “do not possess the relevant expertise and experience.”

The former Crown Castle CEO, who last worked at the company two decades ago, also called the cooperation agreement with Elliott “coercive and disenfranchising” and said it should be put to a shareholder vote.

But Miller and his partners reached out to Elliott Management in an effort to join forces with the activist around the same time that Elliott launched its second campaign in November, people familiar with the matter told CNBC.

That preliminary contact between Elliott and Boots Capital was through an advisor, and no formal proposal or offer to form a group was ever made, another person familiar with the matter said. The conversations focused on identifying potential investors who were interested in Boots Capital’s plan for Crown Castle, that person said.

Elliott rejected Boots Capital’s entreaties, the people said, which they described as seeking investment or access to investors.

Now, Miller is publicly excoriating Elliott’s approach as lacking “expertise, vision, and urgency.”

Miller had been trying to raise money for a special-purpose vehicle to launch an activist fight at Crown Castle prior to Elliott’s November launch and had been in conversation with Crown Castle since at least August, the people said. One of the people said the special-purpose vehicle was attempting to raise hundreds of millions of dollars but that it was unable to meet that goal.

A traditional cell phone tower, owned by Crown Castle, is shown near the Texas Medical Center.

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Much of Miller’s plan mirrors Elliott’s latest campaign and an earlier effort from the activist in 2020. In both instances, Elliott said governance changes and operational improvements were needed.

Shortly after Elliott launched its second campaign in 2023, Crown Castle’s then-CEO said he would retire, and several weeks later, the company said it would launch a strategic review of its fiber business, as Elliott had asked.

In a letter to Crown Castle dated Feb. 14, Boots Capital’s counsel urged the company to put the cooperation agreement to a shareholder vote. The letter said that Crown Castle’s board had “appeased” Elliott and allowed it to influence board nominations before the cooperation agreement had been signed.

Crown Castle’s counsel disputed those claims in a letter sent Tuesday.

“Your letter is replete with factual inaccuracies and completely distorts the nature of the relationship between CCI and Elliott,” said Scott Barshay, partner and corporate department chair at Paul, Weiss. Barshay is advising Crown Castle.

Miller said Tuesday that Elliott had shed “93% of its stated investment exposure,” citing the firm’s most recent regulatory filing.

“Remarkably, the Crown Castle Board did not specifically require Elliott maintain ownership thresholds to keep these privileges,” Miller said in his letter to Crown Castle chair Rob Bartolo. 

Elliott said when it launched its campaign that its economic interest in Crown Castle was around $2 billion.

An Elliott spokesperson said that claim was “categorically false.”

“Elliott remains one of the largest investors in the Company and is the largest investor after the three index fund shareholders,” the firm’s spokesperson said.

Elliott’s economic exposure to Crown Castle remains largely unchanged, one of the people said. It is not uncommon for activists to structure their positions using a mix of stock and derivatives, which are not fully reported out on regulatory filings.

Crown Castle announced its cooperation agreement with Elliott in December and added two directors, including Elliott portfolio manager Jason Genrich.

One month later, on Jan. 30, Boots presented its proposal to Crown Castle’s expanded board. A redacted version of that presentation was attached to Miller’s release. Boots said that Crown Castle could fetch up to $15 billion for its fiber business and that by working with Boots and Miller, Crown Castle could provide a list of more than two dozen potential buyers or financing sources for a sale of the fiber business.

Also included in that presentation was a request that Crown Castle cover the costs of Boots’ analysis and pre-proposal outreach, which Miller said in his release were around $5 million.

Crown Castle’s board dismissed the proposal following the call and their review, according to the people familiar, who noted that the company had already hired advisors from Bank of America and Morgan Stanley weeks earlier to conduct the same work.

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Microsoft pauses hiring in U.S. consulting unit as part of cost-cutting plan, memo says

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Microsoft pauses hiring in U.S. consulting unit as part of cost-cutting plan, memo says

Executive Chair and CEO of Microsoft Corporation Satya Nadella speaks during the “Microsoft Build: AI Day” event in Jakarta, Indonesia, on April 30, 2024.

Ajeng Dinar Ulfiana | Reuters

Microsoft plans to pause hiring in part of its consulting business in the U.S., according to an internal memo, as the company continues seeking ways to reel in expenses. 

The announced cuts come a week after Microsoft said it would lay off some employees. Those cuts will affect less than 1% of the company’s workforce, according to one person familiar with Microsoft’s plans.

Although Microsoft indicated earlier this month that it plans to continue investing in its artificial intelligence efforts, cost cuts elsewhere could lead to gains for the company’s stock price. Microsoft shares increased 12% in 2024, compared with a 29% boost for the Nasdaq Composite index.

The changes by the U.S. consulting division are meant to align with a policy by the Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions organization, which has about 60,000 employees, according to a page on Microsoft’s website. The changes are in place through the remainder of the 2025 fiscal year ending in June.

To reduce costs, Microsoft’s consulting division will hold off on hiring new employees and back-filling roles, consulting executive Derek Danois told employees in the memo. Careful management of costs is of utmost importance, Danois wrote. 

The memo also instructs employees to not expense travel for any internal meetings and use remote sessions instead. Additionally, executives will have to authorize trips to customers’ sites to ensure spending is being used on the right customers, Danois wrote.

Additionally, the group will cut its marketing and non-billable external resource spend by 35%, the memo says.

The consulting division has grown more slowly than Microsoft’s productivity software subscriptions and Azure cloud computing businesses. The consulting unit generated $1.9 billion in the September quarter, down about 1% from one year earlier, compared with 33% for Azure.

Under the leadership of CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft in early 2023 laid off 10,000 employees and consolidated leases as the company contended with a broader shift in the market and economy. In January 2024, three months after completing the $75.4 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition, Microsoft’s gaming unit shed 1,900 jobs to reduce overlap.

A Microsoft spokesperson did not immediately have a comment.

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Crypto ETFs have big innovation opportunity in 2025, but demand may be weak

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Crypto ETFs have big innovation opportunity in 2025, but demand may be weak

Omer Taha Cetin | Anadolu | Getty Images

Crypto ETFs may be entering a year of innovation, with new funds and new approaches, but don’t expect demand to match what was seen in the first year of bitcoin ETFs.

Bitcoin exchange-traded funds debuted a year ago and have been hailed as one of the most successful ETF launches in history, drawing $36 billion in net new assets in their first year, led by BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust. The ETFs were a catalyst spurring institutional adoption and helped double the total market value of cryptocurrencies in 2024.

The next crypto ETFs could see weaker demand, however. Already, applications for new funds that would track Solana, XRP, Hedera (HBAR) and litecoin have been submitted but, even if approved this year, they may attract a fraction of the assets that flowed in to bitcoin ETFs, according to JPMorgan. There has also been an application for a hybrid bitcoin and ether fund.

“We don’t see a next wave of cryptocurrency [exchange-traded product] launches as being meaningful for the crypto ecosystem given much smaller market capitalization of other tokens and far lower investor interest,” JPMorgan analyst Kenneth Worthington wrote in a note Monday.

Worthington noted that assets of $108 billion in bitcoin ETFs make up 6% of total bitcoin market capitalization after the first year of trading. For ether ETFs, which launched in July with less fanfare, that percentage narrows to just 3% ($12 billion) of the coin’s market cap after six months.

Applying those “adoption rates” to Solana, which has a total $91 billion market cap, JPMorgan projects ETFs tied to the token will attract between $3 billion and $6 billion of net new assets. A fund tracking XRP, which has a market cap of $146 billion, would attract an estimated $4 billion and $8 billion in net new assets.

Worthington added that the regulatory environment – specifically, the promise of a pro-crypto Congress and White House in 2025 that the industry hopes will boost growth in crypto businesses – could shape the outlook for innovation in crypto ETFs.

“The regulatory and legislative guardrails in the U.S. … will determine the type, quantity and focus of new products and services launched,” the analyst said. “The new administration and a new SEC chairman opens the door for new opportunity in cryptocurrency innovation.”

Tyron Ross, founder and president of registered investment advisor 401 Financial, expects demand for bitcoin ETFs this year won’t live up to what was seen in 2024 but will remain “healthy.” That’s largely due to investor education and growing confidence in the 16-year-old digital asset class.

Adoption could accelerate, however, if bitcoin ETFs get added Wall Street’s to model portfolios, he said.

“None of those portfolios have crypto in them, so until crypto is in there, you’re not going to see that next leg of growth this year that you saw last year,” Ross told CNBC. “The majority of advisors buy their their models off the shelf, and those models don’t have bitcoin or crypto [exposure] in them… when that’s addressed, I think you’ll start to see that parabolic [growth] like you saw last year.”

“You can feel it across the space that some of the regulatory clouds are clearing and there’s blue skies ahead, but there needs to be tempered expectations of the ETFs in the coming year,” he added.

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Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos will attend Trump inauguration

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Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos will attend Trump inauguration

Elon Musk walks on Capitol Hill on the day of a meeting with Senate Republican Leader-elect John Thune (R-SD), in Washington, U.S. December 5, 2024. 

Benoit Tessier | Reuters

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will attend President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, NBC News reported on Tuesday.

They will be seated on the platform near cabinet officials and elected leaders, according to a person familiar with the planning of the inauguration who spoke to NBC News.

The prominent attendance of several tech luminaries and billionaires at Trump’s inauguration signals how quickly the technology industry leadership has warmed up to Trump as he takes his second term as president.

During Trump’s first term, Bezos regularly clashed with the president over his ownership of The Washington Post, Amazon’s relationship with the USPS and how much tax the tech company paid. Zuckerberg also traded barbs with Trump, particularly over immigration and misinformation.

But as Trump takes office for a second time, the technology industry has contributed to his inaugural fund and several CEOs have praised Trump and offered well wishes for his administration.

Musk has joined Trump’s administration in a role overseeing the Department of Government Efficiency, a new body that is looking to find government waste and cut it. He’s also spent time with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Amazon and Meta have contributed $1 million each to Trump’s inaugural fund. Google also contributed $1 million, CNBC reported last week. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman contributed $1 million, and so has Apple CEO Tim Cook, according to a Axios report that the tech company has not commented on.

Reps for Musk, Zuckerberg and Bezos didn’t immediately comment to NBC News.

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