Paratek Pharmaceuticals to be sold

BIOTECH Boston-based biotech Paratek Pharmaceuticals has reached a deal worth up

BIOTECH

Boston-based biotech Paratek Pharmaceuticals has reached a deal worth up to $462 million to be sold to Gurnet Point Capital, a Cambridge-based investment firm, and Novo Holdings, the controlling shareholder of Danish pharma giant Novo Nordisk. Paratek, a nearly 300-person company, is headquartered at 75 Park Plaza but is led by Evan Loh, an executive based in Pennsylvania. Paratek's lead commercial drug is known as Nuzyra, an antibiotic used to treat bacterial pneumonia and acute skin infections. In 2019, Paratek was also awarded a federal contract to support the development and manufacturing of Nuzyra to treat pulmonary anthrax. Novo Holdings partner Aleks Engel said the deal will help Novo expand its efforts to tackle antimicrobial resistance. Investment bank Moelis & Co. and law firm Ropes & Gray represented Paratek in the deal. — JON CHESTO

SOCIAL MEDIA

A number of Reddit forums plan to go dark for two days later this month to protest the company's decision to increase prices for third-party app developers. One developer, who makes a Reddit app called Apollo, said that under the new pricing policy he would have to pay Reddit $20 million a year to continue running the app as-is. Reddit's move comes after Twitter announced in February that the company would no longer support free access to its application programming interface, or API. Twitter instead now offers pricing tiers based on usage. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

HOSPITALITY

Park Hotels & Resorts, the operator of two of the most prominent hotels in San Francisco, is handing in the keys on the properties — and, in essence, giving up on a city that has fallen on hard times. Park Hotel stopped making payments on a $725 million loan tied to the Hilton Union Square and Parc 55, the real estate investment trust said on Monday. The hotels, a few blocks from the once-bustling Moscone Center conference hall, have a combined total of nearly 3,000 rooms. A slowing economy and a remote-work thunderclap have emptied offices across the country, with some warning of a ticking bomb in the commercial real estate market. Slammed by a wave of layoffs in the tech industry and a steep slowdown in Moscone's conference calendar, downtown San Francisco has been hit hard. "Now more than ever, we believe San Francisco's path to recovery remains clouded and elongated by major challenges" that will reduce demand for business and leisure travel, said Thomas J. Baltimore Jr., the chief executive of Park Hotels & Resorts. The abrupt departure of Park Hotels & Resorts is raising fears that others could follow suit. San Francisco is highly dependent on business travel, which has yet to return to prepandemic levels. — NEW YORK TIMES

FINANCE

Sequoia Capital, the venture capital powerhouse, is breaking up into three entities across the globe, splitting the Chinese and US operations as tensions grow between the world's two largest economies. The firm, known for its early backing of Google, Instagram, and some of China's biggest Internet companies, will split up into independent partnerships and separate firms, operating under different brands, no later than at the end of March of next year, the company said. Sequoia over the years has managed tech investments across the Pacific, weaving in US endowment and pension money with opportunities in two of the world's largest Internet markets. Now, as regulatory scrutiny in both Beijing and Washington escalate, the company is finding it increasingly hard to navigate the policy landscape. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

ACCOUNTING

Australia's second largest pension fund has joined the boycott of PricewaterhouseCoopers as the fallout of the embattled accounting firm's tax evasion scandal spreads. Australian Retirement Trust, which manages $159 billion for 2.2 million members, "will not be undertaking any new contracts with PwC at this time," a spokeswoman told Bloomberg in an emailed statement. The action, following similar moves by industry giant AustralianSuper and a slew of government entities since last week, is the latest sign of the costly fallout caused by revelations that PwC's Australia unit used confidential government tax policy information to advise its global clients. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

OFFICE SPACE

Many of the biggest corporate employers plan to reduce the amount of office space they occupy over the next three years, underlining the changes set to reshape the commercial real estate market. A Knight Frank poll of 350 real estate leaders at international firms found that half of the largest companies surveyed — those with more than 50,000 staff — expect to shrink their global portfolios, with most expecting to shrink by between 10 percent and 20 percent. By contrast, more smaller businesses — those with fewer than 10,000 employees — said they expect to grow, with 55 percent saying their office footprint would expand, the survey data show. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

AGRICULTURE

The US corn crop deteriorated by the most in almost three years as a lack of rain hit yield potentials in the world's top producer of the grain. Just 64 percent of the nation's corn crop was rated good-to-excellent in the US Department of Agriculture's weekly report, a 5 percentage-point decline that was the biggest since August 2020 and more than double the drop forecast in a Bloomberg survey of analysts. The drop comes after weeks of parched weather across the Midwest that stressed young plants just as the sowing season concluded. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

WORKPLACE

Chipotle will require corporate staff to be on-site four days a week, becoming yet another large company to tighten return-to-office rules. Chief executive Brian Niccol announced the change in late May, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Newport Beach, Calif.-based company had required corporate workers to go in three days a week since March. Chipotle's move follows similar ones at BlackRock Inc., which told employees to be in at least four days a week beginning in September, and AT&T, which said managers need to show up in person at least three days a week starting this summer. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

WEALTH

It pays to be chief investment officer at a US family office. The private investment firms of ultra-wealthy Americans have the greatest number of money managers in that role earning at least $1 million a year or the same total in other currencies, according to a report from KPMG and recruitment firm Agreus Group. About 40 percent of CIOs for US family offices are paid that much annually. By comparison, the total average annual compensation of CIOs at US nonprofit endowment funds was $800,000, according to a 2023 post from the University of Missouri, or roughly three times more than their peers at public pension funds. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

ELECTRIC VEHICLES

All of Tesla's Model 3 sedans are now eligible for the full US tax credit under new criteria for battery-sourcing set by the US Treasury Department, part of a Biden administration plan to spur adoption of electric vehicles. The US government confirmed the tax credit of as much as $7,500 for all variations of the Model 3 in an update on its website Tuesday. The change brings the total number of electric vehicle models eligible for the full tax credits to 22, including those from General Motors, Ford, and Volkswagen. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

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Paratek Pharmaceuticals to be sold