Walgreens pays $269.2 million to settle U.S. civil fraud lawsuits at Reuters. “The pharmacy chain will pay $209.2 million to resolve claims it improperly billed Medicare, Medicaid and other federal programs from 2006 to 2017 for hundreds of thousands of insulin pens it dispensed to patients it knew did not need them.” Read more

 

Fortune’s Most Admired Companies (Amazon #2, Costco #12, Nordstrom #20, Home Depot #21, Walmart #25, Target #32, CVS #35, Publix #45) Top 50 list

 

Ahold Delhaize’s Q4 sales meet expectations at CNBC. “In the United States…Ahold sales rose 2.7 percent. Online sales grew 12.1 percent at constant exchange rates, it said.” Read more

 

How MLMs — multilevel marketing schemes — are hurting female friendships by Laura Richards at Washington Post via Chicago Tribune. “According to a Federal Trade Commission report, less than 1 percent of MLM participants will profit, a far worse rate than for “legitimate small businesses,” of which 39 percent are profitable over the lifetime of the business. “MLM makes even gambling look like a safe bet in comparison,” the report states.” Tiered subs.

 

Target to Accept Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay and Contactless Cards at A Bullseye View. Read more

 

…Apple Pay also coming to Speedway, Hy-Vee and more at TechCrunch. Read more

 

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Amazon’s cashier-less c-store in San Fran has some empty shelves thanks to Munchery bankruptcy at CNBC. “Munchery was one of many on-demand meal kit companies that wanted to do it all: prepare meals and handle the delivery logistics for customers. Munchery raised $125.4 million in venture funding since it was founded in 2011, according to Crunchbase.” Read more

 

UPS will expand its Amazon Key-like delivery service into 10 new cities by Shannon Liao at The Verge. “By the middle of the year, Latch will arrive in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Washington, DC, Philadelphia, Boston, Miami, and Seattle. Latch is currently operating in New York and San Francisco.” Read more

 

Grocery chains with highest loyalty (Fry’s #1, Publix #4, Kroger #8) at inMarket via Supermarket News. Top 25 list

 

UPS CEO downplays Amazon threat and says online shopping ‘is a lot more than just Amazon’ by Hayley Peterson at Business Insider. “You have the other big retailers. But it’s really those just hundreds of thousands of small and mid-sized e-tailers that — that has allowed us to really be the e-commerce vendor of choice.” Read more

 

Boxed CEO Cheih Huang talks exclusive Coke skus, going public and more at Yahoo Finance. 4:33 video

 

How Companies Secretly Boost Their Glassdoor Ratings by Rolfe Winkler & Andrea Fuller at Wall Street Journal. “An analysis of millions of anonymous reviews posted on Glassdoor’s site identified more than 400 companies with unusually large single-month increases in reviews…During the vast majority of these surges, the ratings were disproportionately positive compared with the surrounding months, the Journal’s analysis shows.” WSJ subs.

 

World’s most sustainable companies: CDP Climate Change A List (Best Buy, Home Depot, Apple) CDP website

 

Express Announces Departure of CEO David Kornberg and Appointment of Matthew Moellering as Interim CEO. Press release

 

Condé Nast to Put All Titles Behind Paywalls by Year-End by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg at Wall Street Journal. “Ms. Ray said it wasn’t clear what form the paywalls would take for each of the other titles, which include Glamour, Self, Teen Vogue, the tech website Ars Technica, and Them, which serves the LGBTQ community. Bon Appétit’s website, for example, has a lot of recipes. “We may take a different approach with recipes,” Ms. Ray said.” WSJ subs.

 

Walmart upgraded at Morgan Stanley amid ‘unprecedented’ cost control at CNBC. Read more

 

Elliott thinks Walmart, Google and private equity could be interested in buying eBay’s core marketplace business at CNBC. Read more

 

Lowe’s Becomes Official Home Improvement Retail Sponsor Of The NFL Press release

 

Amazon pulls its Echo Wall Clock due to connectivity issues at The Verge. Read more

 

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