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Big Consulting Bosses Meet With Trump Officials to Save Contracts

Executives from EY, Booz Allen and others are being told to ‘defend the spend’ on their work for the government—and identify possible cuts

Executives at some of the biggest U.S. consulting firms are meeting with Trump administration officials to defend their projects ahead of this coming week’s deadline for government agencies to justify major consulting contracts.

In recent days, top executives at professional services firms including Ernst & Young and Guidehouse have met with officials including Josh Gruenbaum, the Federal Acquisition Service commissioner within the General Services Administration, according to people familiar with the discussions. A Booz Allen BAH -4.48%decrease; red down pointing triangle executive has also been in touch with Gruenbaum, who is a former director at the private-equity firm KKR.

The flurry of meetings comes amid a Trump administration review of consultants and government contracts as part of a push to rein in federal spending. The General Services Administration, or GSA, has asked procurement officials at federal agencies to list and justify consulting contracts from 10 companies—including Booz Allen, Accenture ACN -2.35%decrease; red down pointing triangle, Guidehouse and others—that the agencies intend to keep. The responses are due on Friday.

The GSA has identified that the 10 highest-paid consulting firms are set to receive more than $65 billion in total fees across 2025 and future years. That is money that has yet to be spent, and comes from contracts tagged as “consulting services” within the Federal Procurement Data System from the top governmentwide vendors, according to a person familiar with the matter.

In the meetings with consultants, Gruenbaum has emphasized to executives that the government sees value in consulting—particularly in rolling out advanced technology and modernizing government agencies.

What may be frowned upon are contracts providing market research and analysis or supporting work on topics the Trump administration has de-emphasized, such as diversity, equity and inclusion issues. Gruenbaum has assured executives that the GSA wasn’t looking to put firms out of business but would be doing a deliberate review of existing contracts, according to the people familiar with the discussions.

Consulting firms are being asked to “defend the spend,” by explaining which of their existing projects they see as mission critical to the government’s goals, and which could be cut. Firms may be asked to make pricing concessions on existing contracts, though Gruenbaum has told executives that they could make up for the cuts by also suggesting new projects or services to the government that could offer a demonstrable return-on-investment, the people said.

“The private sector provides incredible products that help make the government better. We value their partnership, which is why we’re meeting with them,” Gruenbaum said in a statement, adding that “we welcome them working with us to decrease our excessive government spending while continuing to provide the essential services the government needs.”

After the initial high-level meetings with GSA officials, consulting executives are being asked to return with presentations providing a detailed assessment of their projects. Gruenbaum said in a statement that the spending reviews are necessary because of soaring government debt.

A deal would unite two of Italy’s best known luxury fashion brands

Prada has emerged as the frontrunner to buy Versace from Capri Holdings for about €1.5bn, in a move that would combine two of Italy’s best known luxury fashion brands.

After months of on-off talks between Milan-based Prada and Capri, which owns brands including Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo, the two companies are edging closer to an agreement and a deal could be concluded “within weeks”, according to people briefed on the discussions. 

Capri’s initial asking price of €3bn for Milan-based Versace, and the interest of other potential buyers, have prolonged the talks, said other people familiar with the discussions.

The pricing and timing of any deal could still change, the people added. Prada group is due to report full-year results for 2024 on Tuesday.

Miuccia Prada, Prada’s co-founder and controlling shareholder, said on Thursday at the group’s fashion show in Milan that “everyone is looking” at Versace, in her first public remarks about a potential deal. 

A spokesperson for Prada declined to comment. Bloomberg News first reported Prada was moving closer to buying Versace.

Capri purchased the Italian luxury brand founded by the late Gianni Versace from its eponymous family for about €1.85bn including debt in 2018. 

New York-based Capri has been looking to sell Versace for some time. The plan accelerated last year when Capri called off a merger with rival Tapestry, which owns Coach and other affordable luxury brands, after a US judge in October blocked the $8.5bn tie-up over antitrust concerns.

Prada is Italy’s largest luxury fashion group and its financial performance has remained strong despite a sector slowdown, partly due to its booming Miu Miu brand.

The group, which is preparing for a generational shift as Miuccia Prada and her co-founder Patrizio Bertelli prepare to hand over to their son Lorenzo Bertelli, is open to acquisitions as a way to gain scale. 

Industry insiders have long seen Versace, whose bold style is in stark contrast to the sober elegance of Prada’s mainline brand, as potentially adding something different to the Milan-based group.

As well as Miu Miu and its mainline brand, Prada also owns Church’s, the shoe label founded in the UK.

Larry Fischer, a veteran Brooklyn domain broker, hopes to convince the likes of OpenAI to do a deal that’s likely to break records.

Deep in Queens, New York, out near John F. Kennedy Airport, Larry Fischer was distraught. One of his favorite Italian joints—Don Peppe, the place where he lunched with Facebook’s lawyers after selling them Messenger.com in 2014—had closed for vacation this past week. It had seemed like a fitting place for our conversation about another domain name deal he’s got in the works that he hopes can be even higher profile. “You don’t know how bummed I am,” he said.

Fischer, a 62-year-old Brooklyn native, steered us to another of his favorite nearby haunts on 153rd Avenue. As pasta alla genovese and a carafe of Montepulciano arrived, Fischer, one of the world’s leading domain brokers, uncorked the details on his next blockbuster project: the sale of AI.com, which he thinks can fetch more than $100 million. (He will begin accepting offers this weekend.)

“If somebody is looking to sell a top-tier domain, I am the guy they call,” said Fischer. “I have a reputation for being able to get the best price.”

Fischer has spent nearly 30 years buying, selling and brokering deals for marquee internet domains. On top of Messenger.com, his greatest hits include selling Skincare.com to L’Oréal in 2015, selling Teams.com to Microsoft in 2020 and selling Chat.com in 2022 to HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah, who quickly flipped it to OpenAI.

But a nine-figure deal wouldn’t just be an order of magnitude larger than any of those sales—it would be the largest known domain sale ever, surpassing MicroStrategy’s $30 million sale of Voice.com in 2019. Of course, it’s hard to know for certain because the buying and selling of domains usually occurs in an opaque gray market through brokers like Fischer, who ranks in a small group handling the largest sales.

“I’ve been drooling about the day that AI.com would sell,” said Fischer, who is also working on finding buyers for VR.com, Coding.com and Kitchen.com. “The owner has a winning lottery ticket, and the only thing left is determining what that jackpot is.”

Fischer won’t reveal who owns AI.com but agreed to pass on a note from the owner to me. In the note, the owner said purchasing the domain “didn’t have anything to do with the growth of Artificial Intelligence in recent years, it was just simply, to have a vanity domain name that so happened to be my initials.…I happened to be there ahead of its time. I’m truly blessed.”

To begin attracting attention from prospective buyers, the owner has adopted a clever sales tactic in the last few months, continually redirecting AI.com to new sites. For a while, it went to ChatGPT’s website. These days, it goes to DeepSeek’s. The ploy has had an amusing ripple effect: A slew of headlines has mistakenly claimed that one of these companies had already secured the domain.

Still, even with the AI craze as manic as it is, the market value of AI.com—and whether it’s worth nine figures—is anyone’s guess. “I don’t think it’s going to get there, but if it does get there, I think it’s a good sign that we might be starting to get back into a dot-com bubble,” said Ron Berman, a Wharton School associate professor who focuses on digital advertising.

Most of the data around purchase prices and traffic are shrouded in privacy, Berman added. “I’m not aware of any science that gives us valuations for these things,” he said. “I don’t think there’s even research that tries to say what makes them more or less valuable.”

Big fish like OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Meta Platforms or, yes, DeepSeek would be logical buyers for AI.com. They’re among the few firms or people who could afford such a purchase. HubSpot’s Shah paid $15.5 million for Chat.com (who later suggested he sold it to OpenAI for that amount of equity in the company). Fischer said he’s also thinking a crypto mogul in the market for collectibles could be a potential buyer.

If anyone can get $100 million for AI.com, it’s Fischer, who started honing his salesperson’s instincts even before domains became important. As he bounced between accounting and headhunting jobs in the early ’90s, Fischer called phone companies to secure hundreds of phone numbers and then struck deals with several newspapers allowing them to use the numbers for the dating personals ads.

In 1995, he put an old newspaper clipping from The Wall Street Journal about domain names on his shelf. Two years later, he stumbled on the clipping again when the shelf “literally fell” on his head, he recalled. Next thing he knew he was snapping them up for $100 a piece. Among the first names he bought were Brothers.com, Sisters.com and Stockquotes.com.

Initially, Fischer struggled to figure out how to sell his stockpile. “My wife put her foot down: If I couldn’t turn this into something that generated cash flow, it was over.” But Portuguese.com changed his luck. Fischer sold it for $3,000, and soon after, he sold Return.com for a “low six-figure” sum after buying each for $100. That put him “back on top and officially on a roll.”

Unsurprisingly, the dot-com crash stifled Fischer’s momentum for a few years. But in the early 2000s, he and a prominent attorney in the domain world, Ari Goldberger, started a new venture called SmartName.com. The business helped domain owners—or “domainers”—generate revenue from advertisers who paid to stick their links on the domain’s plain and unremarkable landing pages (Stockquote.com, for example, is still set up like this). The business grew to manage more than 100,000 domains and sold in 2006 for $16.5 million.

Around that time is when Fischer started ramping up his brokerage services. Over the years, he has represented clients that bought or sold iconic names like MyWorld.com, Friend.com and Marketing.com. He closed most deals from the unfinished basement of a Park Slope neighborhood Brooklyn townhouse he has owned since 1993, with wood-paneled walls and “ugly shag pink carpeting,” his son Jeff Fischer said. (The younger Fischer, who owns Jeffrey.org, has been helping out with his dad’s business part time since he was a teenager.)

Leon Bensonoff, another veteran domainer who regularly buys and sells domains on his own, said he has turned to Fischer over the years for help with “impossible deals.” Fischer helped him buy Chat.com off CBS in 2014 and then sell it eight years later. Fischer has a knack for convincing people who don’t want to part ways with a domain that it’s time to sell, Bensonoff said. He also has a way of making buyers feel like he’s doing them a favor by selling them domains at whatever price they’re paying, Bensonoff added.

Over the years, Fischer himself has developed an attachment to certain names he’s unwilling to part with. He grew up an avid follower of pop art but could never afford his favorite artists’ work. So in 1997, he bought AndyWarhol.com and has been sitting on it ever since, despite several attempts from the Andy Warhol Foundation to claw it back. “It’s my painting. It’s my artwork,” he said. (The site is the same Warhol fan page Fischer set up 26 years ago.)

After scores of deals, Fischer said he’s addicted to the feeling of outdoing himself, driven by the high he gets from closing seven and eight figure deals.“It’s just like when my kids are born. It’s the same feeling.”

As we finished dinner and got up from the table, I asked how he’ll feel when AI.com sells. “Triplets,” he said.

Aviron’s home fitness equipment operates on a simple principle: People hate working out. But many of those same people love playing video games. Perhaps the only thing standing between them and a more active lifestyle is some health competition and well-timed distraction.

It’s the same gamification concept that made Nintendo’s Wii and VR games like Beat Saber hits. Instead of bringing the workout to video games, however, Aviron bring video games to the workout.

Founded in 2018, the Toronto-based startup made itself known in 2022 with the release of a gamified rowing machine. The pandemic was a predictably great time to launch a connected fitness startup, as gym closures left many predicting a future centered around home workouts.

Gamification works well with rowing’s speed up/slow down nature. It’s clear why Aviron came out of the gate with a rowing machine, rather than the more familiar treadmill or bike. With a platform in place, the company has since diversified into those form factors, as well. Aviron announced a bike in August 2024. Within a few months, it added connected dumbbells and the Victory Treadmill to the lineup.

Amid a deluge of Peloton and NordicTrack wannabes, Aviron offers differentiation. Where brands like Peloton dominated the market through an almost cult-like devotion to its instructors and classes, Aviron continues to bank on gaming to set itself apart. The good news for the Victory Treadmill is that Aviron has built a robust software and gaming experience for the rower and bike that can largely be ported over to the new hardware.

Most of the titles available here will be familiar if you’ve spent time with Aviron’s other machines. Instead of basing your gameplay on how strongly you row or how quickly you pedal, however, the Victory uses elements like walking/running speed and incline to control the titles.

Playing a fishing game or Aviron’s equivalent of the brick and ball game, Breakout, is less natural on a treadmill. The company addresses this to a certain degree with a pair of almost joystick-like controllers. It’s a clever solution that makes the process of adjusting speed an incline more dynamic. Most of us are used to typing in a couple of numbers and getting started.

The Victory treadmill demands you engage with these things more directly while working out. On the whole, I found it easier to get lost in the competitive aspect of gaming on the rower than the treadmill. It simply feels less intuitive interacting with games when walking or running.

The good news, however, is that there’s no shortage of distractions to tap into on the 22-inch touchscreen. I found myself watching a lot of YouTube and essentially falling back into familiar gym habits. You can also log into most of the big-name streaming services, including Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and Max, as well as Spotify.

Beyond these, Aviron offers up scenic virtual routes and a small — but growing — selection of classes. It’s clear the company hasn’t made the same sort of massive investment in instructors/classes that we’ve seen from the likes of Peloton, but that content is more of a supplement to the core gaming offering.

The connected fitness market has changed a lot in the three years since Aviron released its rower. Companies like Peloton bought too much into their own hype, suffering extreme financial consequences when excitement slowed. Even so, there’s still plenty of competition — especially when it comes to well-established categories like the treadmill.

There’s a broad range of quality when it comes to home treadmills, from $5,000 NordicTracks to $200 foldable systems. At $2,499, the Victory splits the difference in terms of pricing. It’s not as massive or solid as one of the systems you’ll encounter at the gym, but it’s solid quality, none the less, and should last a while. The controls are responsive, the belt speed goes up to 12.5 mph, and the system’s low-to-the-ground profile lends it stability.

The broad content selection, meanwhile, means the system isn’t likely to turn a $2,499 clothing rack any time soon.

Energy company is trying to focus on its most profitable operations

Shell SHEL -0.60%decrease; red down pointing triangle is exploring a potential sale of its chemicals assets in Europe and the U.S., according to people familiar with the matter, part of a continuing drive to refocus the company’s business on its most profitable operations.

The details

The oil and natural-gas company is working with bankers at Morgan Stanley on a strategic review of its chemicals operations, the people said. The process is in the early stages and Shell has yet to commit to any final decisions, they added.

Among the assets included in the review is Shell’s Deer Park facility in Texas. The site produces a range of chemicals such as light and heavy olefins, which can be used to make pharmaceuticals, detergents, adhesives and wire coating. The operation is located adjacent to a refinery, which Shell previously sold its stake in.

Shell also has chemical facilities in Pennsylvania and Louisiana in the U.S. In Europe, it has plants in the U.K., Germany and the Netherlands.

Potential bidders for the assets could range from private-equity firms to Middle Eastern buyers wanting to expand into the West.

The context

Since Chief Executive Wael Sawan took the helm of Shell at the start of 2023, the company has worked to focus more on its most profitable operations. To that end, the company has rolled back some of its green-energy targets and pledged to pump more oil and gas.

Shell’s chemicals business has been seen as lagging behind for years. It is capital-heavy and subject to cyclical ups and downs, resulting in losses in recent years that have weighed on the company’s overall performance. Anemic natural-gas prices and rising capacity in chemical manufacturing have caused the petrochemical market to languish recently.

The company has already signaled its willingness to shed lower-margin chemicals operations. Last year, it struck a deal to sell its chemicals park in Singapore to a joint venture that includes Glencore, the mining company, and Chandra Asri, an Indonesia-based chemicals producer, after a strategic review of the business.

Investors are expecting further details on Shell’s next steps at an investor day scheduled for later this month.