Madison Avenue Watch Week Returns With Breitling, Ralph Lauren, Apple and Others, After Pandemic Hiatus
The five-day event features master watchmakers, workshops, the latest timepiece innovations, special viewings and receptions.
Jaeger-LeCoultre's Duometre Chronograph Moon timepiece.
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After a four-year hiatus, the time is right for another Madison Avenue Watch Week.
The Madison Avenue Watch Week was last held in 2019, and subsequently put on hold due to the pandemic which kept people at home and forced many businesses on Madison Avenue and across the country to close either temporarily or permanently.
But now people are back shopping stores, seeking fun, informative and different kinds of brick-and-mortar experiences, and watch aficionados are eager to learn about innovations in the sector. In addition, over the past couple of years, there’s been a spate of store, gallery and restaurant openings along Madison Avenue,
bolstering the venue’s reputation as a epicenter for luxury, inclusive of those sumptuous, technically advanced and often coveted watches.
As in the past, this year’s edition of Madison Avenue Watch Week is expected to draw hundreds of watch collectors and connoisseurs, as well as a good number of master watchmakers — some flying in from Europe — and others just eager to get out, roam the avenue and check out the newest timepieces and stores.
“There is a genuine fascination with luxury watches. People are so interested in the production process, the handiwork, the details,” said Matt Bauer, the president of the Madison Avenue Business Improvement District which organized Watch Week along with WWD. “There are people that are truly dedicated to learning every aspect about what’s new in luxury watches and how they’re made.”
A. Lange & Söhne watchmaker at work.
Madison Avenue Watch Week kicks off Tuesday with opening night receptions and runs through May 4. It’s the 10th time the annual Watch Week is being held. Discussions, workshops, demonstrations, product introductions and special viewings are all part of the program. Twelve watch stores on Madison Avenue between 57th Street and 75th Street are participating. Watch Week is part of the Madison Avenue BID’s robust schedule of events and activities through the year, among them the Gallery Walk, the Metropolitan Opera festival, and a celebration of the Chinese New Year. The Madison Avenue BID has even staged “Shop With Your Dog” days for the combined purposes of encouraging people to adopt dogs, supporting the Humane Society of New York, and like the BID events, lifting shopper traffic along the city’s toniest and most fashionable venue.
For the first time for Watch Week, the Madison Avenue BID is collaborating with the Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie to stage the event. According to its website, FHH was founded in 2005 by Audemars Piguet, Girard-Perregaux and the Richemont Group and is a not-for-profit organization that promotes “watchmaking culture, and positions the watch as an object of art and culture.”
Watch Week is also partnering with the Horological Society of New York and RedBar. The Horological Society of New York was founded in 1866 and is also a nonprofit “dedicated to advancing the art and science of horology through education.” RedBar is a watch collectors club that meets regularly in New York.
In addition, WatchBox, a setting for selling pre-owned, vintage watches, and Element iN Time, which sells new and pre-owned watches, are participating. Both are located in the Fuller Building, at 57th Street and Madison Avenue.
“With watches, it’s really a reason why you would come to a store,” said Bauer. “You need to see them in person. You want to touch them and have that visceral connection, and that’s what Madison Avenue Watch Week is all about.”
Bauer added that part of the impetus for bringing Watch Week back is because watch brands and other businesses, including designer stores, restaurants and galleries, have reinvested in Madison Avenue since the pandemic. He pointed out that in the watch category, A. Lange & Söhne opened in October 2023 at 709 Madison Avenue and Panerai opened in June 2023 at 711 Madison Avenue. In addition, IWC Schaffhausen is opening during Watch Week at 645 Madison Avenue, and Jaeger-LeCoultre, located at 701 Madison Avenue, doubled in size this month.
After seeing a surge of vacancies, many even before the pandemic, Madison Avenue has been rebounding now for about two-and-a-half years. In a January 2024 report, the BID indicated that 20 projects including designer stores, hotels and restaurants are to be completed this year and into 2025, on top of the 32 businesses that opened during the second half of 2023. The Madison Avenue BID extends from East 57th to East 86th streets along Madison Avenue and blocks just to the east and west of the avenue. In the second half of 2022, there were 29 shop openings along Madison Avenue between 57th and 86th streets.
According to Bauer, the most recent wave of openings is different. “One of the things that distinguished those that have recently opened, pardon the pun, is that they are places to spend time in. Each have spaces or lounge areas where you can really be immersed in the brand, its designs and its history.”
Bauer also believes that staging Watch Week has a halo effect up and down the avenue. “The watch collections really bring so many new clients to the avenue, and then they discover all the things that are here from the fashion collections and restaurants to the galleries and the like.”
He expects to see more women attending Watch Week, which in the past has been dominated by male participants. “We have brands that will be highlighting collections for women,” said Bauer. “There is a stronger focus on women in watches in an industry that has been male-oriented.”
In another twist this year, Davide Cenci will stage an “off the cuff” fashion show at the brand’s townhouse at 1041 Madison Avenue featuring Cenci’s tailored menswear collection paired with vintage watches curated by Element iN Time.
The Buccellati Tulle watch in white gold set with diamonds, priced $93,000.
Among other highlights of the upcoming Madison Avenue Watch Week:
- The 1916 Company, the collectible watch and fine jewelry company formed through last year’s merger of WatchBox, Govberg, Radcliffe and Hyde Park Jewelers, will present exclusive F.P. Journe and De Bethune Watches & Wonders exhibitions as well as F.P. Journe and De Bethune education sessions with Jack Forster, George Mayer and Tim Mosso.
- A. Lange & Söhne will provide the opportunity to learn about the history of the brand while experiencing the craftsmanship of watchmakers flown in from Glashütte, Germany, through a live demonstration on one of its in-house movements and a dialog with one of its own watchmakers. By appointment only.
- Apple will curate Today at Apple Watch sessions. Participants can learn ways to personalize and utilize for their business. By appointment.
- Breitling Boutique celebrates its 140th anniversary with a special vintage collection of watches that highlight the brand’s innovation through the decades.
- Buccellati will share its extraordinary timepiece history and present a special showing in its gallery setting.
- Element iN Time NYC will display its vast collection of vintage and modern timepieces from assorted Swiss manufacturers. By appointment.
- Jaeger-LeCoultre offers a series of watchmaking masterclasses led by an expert watchmaker. Participants will be able to practice skills of traditional watchmaking with the opportunity to bring a timepiece to life by assembling a mechanical movement. Reservation required.
- Montblanc celebrates the beginning of Madison Avenue Watch Week and invites watch connoisseurs to discover its curated collection of 2024 Watch Novelties. Book a private appointment with a Montblanc watch specialist.
- Ralph Lauren will have on view a specially curated timepiece collection.
- IWC Schaffhausen will present a panel discussion on “How a watch stays eternally relevant,” for an exploration of the IWC Portugieser, one of the brand’s oldest and best known watches, and how it has remained an icon for 85 years, as well as private, small-group product presentations of the newest timepieces just unveiled at Watches and Wonders, the trade fair that is held in Geneva.
Tiger Global-backed Innovaccer in talks to raise $250 million in new funding, sources say
Innovaccer, a healthtech startup that aggregates patient data across systems and care settings, is in advanced stages of talks with investors to raise as much as $250 million in a new financing round, three sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.
The deliberation for the new funding round is ongoing, and the current talks propose a value of between $2.5 billion to $3 billion for nine-year-old company, the sources said, requesting anonymity as the details are private.
Innovaccer has developed a cloud-based software layer that integrates with existing electronic health record systems used by healthcare facilities. The platform enables the unification and analysis of patient data from various sources, providing healthcare providers with a comprehensive view of their patients’ health status. By tapping its cloud technology and architecture, Innovaccer aims to bring efficiencies and accelerate growth in the healthcare industry, which has been slow to adopt technology compared to other sectors.
Innovaccer – which counts Tiger Global, Mubadala, Lightspeed, Dragoneer, Microsoft’s M12 fund, and Steadview Capital among its backers – was valued at $3.2 billion in a funding round it disclosed at the end of 2021. The San Francisco-headquartered startup has raised more than $375 million to date.
Talks about some secondary transactions – where existing backers, employees, or the founders directly sell their shares to other investors, as opposed to the startup selling the shares – are also underway, the sources said. The proposed talks for the secondary transactions value Innovaccer at as low as $2 billion, the sources added.
According to one source, health system Kaiser Permanente is among those engaging to lead the funding round, which is expected to be split into many tranches. Kaiser Permanente and Innovaccer share a long history; Kaiser is a customer of Innovaccer and has seen many of its executives join the San Francisco-headquartered startup.
On Tuesday, Kaiser announced that it had deepened its partnership with Innovaccer to improve the health system’s value-based care services.
A spokesperson for Innovaccer denied that the firm was raising a round. Kaiser didn’t respond to a request for comment. A deal could materialize as early as this month, one source said.
According to its website, Innovaccer has helped unify more than 54 million patient records, served 96,000 clinicians, and helped save more than $1.5 billion for its customers. The startup’s ARR, at the end of December, stood at nearly $140 million, according to one source.
Innovaccer operates on a subscription-based business model, charging customers based on the number of patients, modules subscribed, and endpoints. The company’s cloud-based platform offers multiple layers of services, including core data, CRM, virtual care, and remote patient care.
It differentiates itself by addressing the traditional healthcare system’s lack of information interoperability, deploying a framework with a common language that brings data together and connects different healthcare systems.
AI Startup CoreWeave Nearly Triples Valuation to $19 Billion in Five Months
Nvidia-backed company raises $1.1 billion from investors including Fidelity, Magnetar Capital
CoreWeave, a cloud-computing startup backed by Nvidia NVDA -1.53%decrease; red down pointing triangle, nearly tripled its valuation to $19 billion in a new funding round that highlights booming demand for the cutting-edge systems that power artificial intelligence.
The $1.1 billion funding round was led by Coatue, and follows a round about five months ago that valued seven-year-old CoreWeave at $7 billion.
The New Jersey-based company rents out chips housed in data centers across the U.S. that customers use to create and deploy AI systems. It is part of a new crop of companies offering cloud-computing tailored for AI, setting it apart from big tech companies such as Microsoft and Amazon, which offer a wider range of cloud services.
CoreWeave’s leaders, who came to the AI business via Wall Street, have made the company into one of the big winners of the AI boom by moving faster than the tech giants in offering access to the latest AI hardware. They have also been able to secure large allocations of Nvidia’s best chips to cater to the AI niche.
“We built our infrastructure specifically targeted for that specialized use,” said Michael Intrator, the company’s chief executive. “We’re not here to store your Mom’s photos, and we don’t support people’s websites.”
Building that infrastructure is enormously expensive, for CoreWeave and for tech giants including Microsoft, Google and Amazon that it competes with.
CoreWeave raised $642 million from investors in its prior funding round. It has also raised money through debt: In August, it collected $2.3 billion from investors in a deal secured by its Nvidia chips. Intrator said more such financings were on the horizon and would help further fuel the company’s expansion.
Other investors in the latest funding round include Magnetar Capital, Altimeter Capital, Lykos Global Management and Fidelity, the company said.
The company will use the funding to support the expansion of its data-center infrastructure, Intrator said, moving beyond a U.S.-centric footprint into Europe and eventually elsewhere. Already in the past year, the company has expanded from three data-center locations to 14 and has quadrupled its employee count to more than 550.
Having a broad geographic reach is increasingly important for cloud-computing companies as AI demand shifts to a deployment phase in which getting quick responses from data centers near the end user is more important.
The funding for CoreWeave comes amid growing concern about the rising valuations of AI startups that have yet to build viable businesses out of the technology. Sequoia Capital estimated in March that around $50 billion had been spent on Nvidia’s chips during the AI boom, but generative AI startups only gathered $3 billion in revenue.
Brannin McBee, CoreWeave’s co-founder, said the company saw no sign of a change in demand for AI computing power.
“It hasn’t peaked and I don’t see any signs of peaking,” he said. “If anything, I’d say it’s still materially increasing.”
Big Oil accused of decades of denial and doublespeak over climate change, US committee report says
Findings by Congressional Democrats follows three-year investigation that unearthed internal documents
The world’s largest oil groups were accused of “denial, disinformation and doublespeak” at a US Congressional hearing, after an investigation showed they had privately acknowledged for decades that burning fossil fuels causes climate change.
The findings followed a three-year probe that unearthed internal documents from the major energy companies with evidence of concerted campaigns “to confuse and mislead the public while working unceasingly to lock down a fossil fuel future”, said Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Oversight committee in the report.
The probe was conducted by Democrats on the House Oversight and Senate Budget committees.
Raskin on Wednesday said: “Big Oil’s denial, disinformation, and doublespeak — all in service of their campaign to deceive the public about the enormous climate crisis we are in and the role that Big Oil has played in bringing it about.”
The hearing comes as scientists conclude 2023 was the hottest year on record. Earlier this year, the World Meteorological Organization sounded a “red alert” on the climate change behind record surface and ocean temperatures, glacial retreat and rising sea levels.
The report, which is accompanied by documents from Chevron, BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, the American Petroleum Institute and the US Chamber of Commerce, finds the companies “worked for decades” to undermine public understanding about climate change.
In one example, in response to Washington state climate change policies, BP planned to spend between $2.5mn and $4.5mn on “hard persuasion” tactics, another $2.5mn on a salmon hatchery to associate BP with “robust sea life” and $300,000 on “soft persuasion” with elected officials.
It also reports the industry pushed gas, made mainly from methane, as a clean fuel while “internally acknowledging that there is significant scientific evidence that the lifecycle emissions from gas are as bad as coal”.
Companies also made public pledges to support the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement and reach net zero emissions targets, while internally recognising they could not achieve those goals, the investigation finds.
Sheldon Whitehouse, the chair of the Senate budget committee which held the hearing on Wednesday, said the fossil fuel industry had “deceived the American public” while “raking in record profits”.
Oil companies across the world have reported bumper profits over the past two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine drove a surge in the price of crude.
Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Budget committee, said it was “undeniable” that fossil fuels were “critical” to US energy security. He also accused Democrats of failing to “acknowledge the unpopularity of their many climate policy proposals”.
“What’s worse is they assume the American people who don’t want expensive and burdensome climate regulations are too dumb to think for themselves,” Grassley said in his opening testimony.
The API said the investigation was “unfounded election-year rhetoric”. The US Chamber of Commerce, Chevron, BP and Shell were approached for comment.
Exxon said the report included “tired allegations” that had been publicly addressed through previous Congressional committees on the same topic and litigation in the courts.
“As we have said time and time again, climate change is real, and we have an entire business dedicated to reducing emissions — both our own and others,” it said.
The company has a 2050 net zero plan for emissions from its own operations but does not address so-called scope 3 emissions, which are the result of the use of its products and make up the bulk of pollution when burnt.
In March, the WMO reported global surface temperatures last year was 1.45C above pre-industrial levels, with a margin of uncertainty of 0.12C.
Records were broken “and in some cases smashed” for greenhouse gas levels, ocean heat and acidification, rising sea levels, Antarctic sea ice cover and glacier retreat, the UN agency said.
Federal Reserve signals that interest rates will remain higher for longer
US central bank says there has been a ‘lack of further progress’ towards 2% inflation goal
The Federal Reserve has signalled that US borrowing costs are likely to remain higher for longer, as a it wrestles with persistent inflation across the world’s biggest economy.
The Federal Open Market Committee said after its meeting on Wednesday that there had been “a lack of further progress” towards its 2 per cent inflation goal in recent months — an addition to its statement that in effect delays rate cuts until the second half of this year at the earliest.
“It is likely to take longer for us to gain confidence that we are on a sustainable path down to 2 per cent inflation,” Fed chair Jay Powell said during a news conference. “I don’t know how long it will take,” he added.
But the Fed also indicated that it was not yet considering new rate rises to counter the recent uptick in inflation, saying that the risks to meeting its joint goals of full employment and subdued price pressures had “moved towards better balance over the past year”.
“I think it’s unlikely that the next policy rate move will be a hike,” Powell said.
The comments from Powell came as the US central bank held interest rates at 5.25 per cent to 5.5 per cent, a 23-year high that has been in place since the summer of 2023.
The higher-for-longer rate signal from the Fed follows recent data showing that inflation had crept higher again, largely driven by costlier fuel, while the US economy grew more slowly in the first quarter of the year than expected.
The comments from the Fed also mean that borrowing costs could remain higher for many US voters in the run-up to this year’s presidential election in November. President Joe Biden said recently that he “expected those rates to come down” this year.
“The Fed’s room for manoeuvre has shrunk drastically, with inflation ticking up, growth slowing, and the political calendar becoming an increasingly tight constraint,” said Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University.
“The spectre of stagflation, which the Fed seemed to have decisively put behind it in 2023, is now back in the picture,” he added.
Powell pushed back against that prognosis of 1970s-style inflation coupled with stagnation in the economy, saying growth remained strong and price pressures were under 3 per cent.
“I don’t see the ‘stag’, I don’t see the ‘flation’,” he said.
The Fed also announced that from June it would reduce the cap on the amount of US Treasury bonds it allows to mature each month, without buying them back, from $60bn to $25bn. It would still allow up to $35bn in mortgage-backed securities to roll off the balance sheet. Any principal payments in excess of the $35bn cap would also be reinvested in Treasuries.
In a market where some Treasury auctions are currently at record sizes, the slowdown in quantitative tightening could help bolster prices, and lower yields.
US rate-setters had hoped to cut interest rates three times this year, but higher-than-expected inflation in recent months has raised the prospect that the Fed will keep borrowing costs at current levels for the duration of 2024.
Ahead of the meeting, traders in the futures market were betting on between on and two cuts this year, with the first reduction not fully priced in until December.
As Powell spoke on Wednesday, US stocks rose, reversing earlier losses, while Treasury yields dropped. The two-year yield, which moves with interest rate expectations, slid 0.09 percentage points to 4.94 per cent. Market expectations of rate cuts later this year, as observed in the futures market, were little moved in the middle of the press conference.
The Fed “believes that monetary policy is still restrictive”, said Priya Misra, fixed income portfolio manager at JPMorgan Asset Management.
“The Fed is trying to calm the market and telling us that they are not reassessing the state of monetary policy . . . Powell has been very careful to not bring up hikes. He stuck to the message, which is why we’ve seen the market reaction we have.”
The Fed statement on Wednesday came after recent price data showed its progress in lowering inflation in 2023 has stalled this year.
The headline personal consumption expenditures measure, on which the Fed’s 2 per cent goal is based, edged up in March — to 2.7 per cent, from 2.5 per cent in the year to February.
Rate-setters’ preferred gauge of underlying price pressures, core PCE, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, was unchanged at 2.8 per cent.
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FT : AI could kill off most call centres, says Tata Consultancy Services head
Chatbots will soon take over much of the work of human agents, forecasts chief of Indian IT group
The head of Indian IT company Tata Consultancy Services has said artificial intelligence will result in “minimal” need for call centres in as soon as a year, with AI’s rapid advances set to upend a vast industry across Asia and beyond.
K Krithivasan, TCS chief executive, told the Financial Times that while “we have not seen any job reduction” so far, wider adoption of generative AI among multinational clients would overhaul the kind of customer help centres that have created mass employment in countries such as India and the Philippines.
“In an ideal phase, if you ask me, there should be very minimal incoming call centres having incoming calls at all,” he said. “We are in a situation where the technology should be able to predict a call coming and then proactively address the customer’s pain point.”
He said chatbots would soon be able to analyse a customer’s transaction history and do much of the work done by call centre agents. “That’s where we are going . . . I don’t think we are there today — maybe a year or so down the line,” he said.
The prospect of rapidly advancing generative AI tools replacing many types of white-collar workers, including call centre agents and software developers, has alarmed policymakers around the world.
In India — a global hub for back-office services — more than 5mn people work in IT and business process outsourcing, according to industry group Nasscom.
TCS, an arm of India’s Tata conglomerate that works with multinationals to develop their IT systems, has more than 600,000 employees of its own and annual revenues of nearly $30bn.
The company has reported that its pipeline of generative AI projects doubled quarter over quarter to be worth $900mn to the end of March. Krithivasan said he expected that flow to “increase significantly” and almost keep on doubling over a few more quarters. The pay-off so far has been a record order book reported this month worth $42.7bn for the financial year ending in March.
However, Krithivasan cautioned that claims of the immediate impact of generative AI were overblown. “We are in the phase where we are in a hype that we are overestimating the benefits,” he said. “The impact would be seen more long term than expecting to get the benefits in the next two to three quarters.”
He disputed whether generative AI would lead to a reduction in overall jobs, arguing that “the world is going to need more and more people, not fewer people, in terms of technology talent — and India has so many people”.
The country needed more workforce training to take advantage of this demand for tech talent, he added. Many business executives say that large swaths of India’s graduates lack enough skills to be employable, amid concerns about the quality of many higher education institutions. Nasscom has previously estimated that fewer than 20 per cent of India’s 1.5mn engineering students graduating each year get industry jobs.
Krithivasan said that TCS, which runs its own vast internal AI-skilling programme, only hires directly from about 10 to 15 per cent of Indian colleges, with more work needed to make the remainder “employable”.
“If we can go to maybe 50 per cent of the colleges, we provide more employment, and more importantly, we will be able to address the technology demand the overall global industry is going to have,” he said.
On overall IT services spending by customers, Krithivasan said inflation, war and upcoming elections were driving “uncertainty”, putting off businesses in key markets from investing in new tech projects. TCS’s annual currency-adjusted revenue growth declined to 3.4 per cent in its last financial year, down from 13.7 per cent the previous year.
Salil Parekh, chief executive of rival Indian IT services company Infosys, said discretionary outlays by customers had been “slow” after it reported flat annual revenue growth last week.
“We see that continuing,” Parekh added, with Infosys forecasting muted sales growth of between 1 and 3 per cent over the next financial year on a constant currency basis.