uCoty Seals The Deal To Take 43 Beauty Brands Off Procter & Gamble’s Hands For $12.5Br

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  (petitepanoply)

  A new look can be expensive, but hey, sometimes you’ve just got to shell out a few billion or so to try out some new cosmetics, right? After earlier reports that it might be in the buying mood, Coty Inc. announced today that it’s shelling out around $12.5 billion to bring 43 Procter & Gamble beauty brands into its company fold.

  The deal will make Coty one of the world’s biggest cosmetic product companies, reports the Financial Times, giving the company a whole new coterie of cosmetics, fragrance and haircare brands.

  Brands moving to Coty include Covergirl, Clairol, Max Factor, Wella, which will give a boost to Coty’s efforts to become a major player in the beauty market. The company previously tried and failed to buy Avon Products in 2012 for $14 billion.

  Coty might not be a name you know, but it owns a wide variety of brands, and also sells branded fragrances for everyone from Beyoncé to Playboy to Vespa. Coty also peddles nail care products under the Sally Hansen name and nail color brand OPI. This deal will finally give it a stake in the hair care business, which will be new for the company.

  P&G will either split or spin off the operations, which are set to merge with a Coty subsidiary under what’s called a “Reverse Morris Trust” transaction: Investors in P&G will hang on to 52% of the new combined business, with Coty’s investors holding the remaining shares.

  The Reverse Morris Trust move gets its name from a 1966 case dealing with tax law on spin-offs, FT notes. As long as shareholders of the selling company — in this case, P&G — end up with more than 50% of the separated business, the deal is tax-free. A Reverse Morris Trust transaction is named after a 1966 case that decided the tax law on spin-offs.

  The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2016.

  Coty seals $12.5bn deal for P&G beauty assets [Financial Times]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uGeneral Motors Recalls Nearly 200,000 Hummers Because They Shouldn’t Just Catch On Firer

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  (Mark Turnauckas)

  When operating your vehicle’s heating and cooling system, one probably doesn’t fathom a scenario in which simply turning on that function could set the car ablaze.  But that’s exactly what several owners of Hummer SUVs say happened to them.

  The New York Times reports that General Motors plans to recall 196,000 Hummer vehicles after receiving several reports of fires, including three that resulted in minor burns.

  In all, the recall covers 165,000 model year 2006 to 2010 Hummer H3 and model year 2009 to 2010 H3T.

  The company says the issue is related to an electrical part in the heating and cooling system that can overheat and cause a fire inside the dashboard.

  More than 20 consumers have submitted complaints to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regarding the problem since at least 2008.

  “Was traveling through a parking lot, noticed a glow from the corner of my eye, and something dripped from under the passenger glovebox,” one complaint states. “There was a funny smell. I immediately stopped and told my passenger to get out and noticed a fire under the passenger glovebox.”

  “Pulling into my stepson’s school, I began to smell and see smoke,” another Hummer owner writes to NHTSA. “When I got closer to the parking area, sparks began to fall from underneath the right passenger dash. I immediately parked the care and ran around to the right passenger side and opened the door… I have searched online and found that this is a common reoccurring problem with Hummers and there are many reports similar to my experience.”

  Nearly 200,000 Hummers Recalled After Fires Are Reported to G.M. [The New York Times]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uSurvey Says: You’d Rather Have Your Nude Pics Leaked Than Your Financial Informationr

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  (bnilsen)

  MasterCard wants to know how you feel, so they asked a bunch of people: Do you feel safe? Do you feel secure? Do you feel like you need a cookie and a nice cup of cocoa? Wait, scratch that last one. MasterCard’s survey only covered feelings about how safe and secure you feel your financial information is. The answer? Not very secure at all.

  MasterCard conducted the survey in May. They call their findings the “Emotion of Safety and Security,” and the data reveals some interesting things about consumers’ attitudes towards finance and privacy.

  We are, it seems, a nation of pessimists. Over three-quarters of the respondents — 77% — were concerned about their social security number or other financial information being stolen or compromised in some way. Consumers feared having their financial information being stolen much more than having their email hacked (62%), their house robbed (59%), or being pickpocketed (46%).

  Those concerns, of course, seem to be entirely well-founded: it’s only July, and yet this year we’ve already seen 411 known data breaches comprising almost 118 million records (PDF). That’s on top of 761 known breaches (85.6 million records) from last year.

  Still, despite the fact that businesses in both the digital and physical worlds have done a collectively miserable job of keeping everyone’s information secure, almost half (48%) of the consumers surveyed still feel that they are personally responsible for preventing their financial information from being stolen or compromised.

  The vast majority, 92%, responded that they personally do take precautions to protect themselves from their financial information being compromised. But, as MasterCard points out, saying and doing are two different things.

  Despite claiming they act to protect themselves, nearly half (46%) of respondents “rarely or never” change their passwords on their financial accounts, nearly half (44%) use the same password for multiple online accounts, and over a third (39%) log into financial sites while using public networks, which are likely to be unsecured or poorly secured.

  And what of the security of physical cards? MasterCard reports that 68% of consumers said they use or plan to use chip-enabled cards soon, with 32% already using them. But that too is in large part out of individual consumers’ control, as various banks are updating cards on their own timelines.

  Most consumers are, however, also willing to move toward a future with no physical cards in it at all. Over half already use mobile payments or plan to try them soon. And even though biometric payments and security aren’t exactly common yet, 75% of the survey respondents have at least heard of them, which is a start.

  The most shocking feeling MasterCard recorded, though? Between having their financial data leaked or having their naked selfies be spring loose online, a clear majority — 55% — said they’d rather have the nude photos leaked than their financial info compromised.

  This despite the fact that while the law protects consumers whose credit or debit accounts have been compromised, it has no such provisions for when other… sensitive… things get loose.

  
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by Kate Cox via Consumerist

uSpotify Wants iOS Users To Skip Apple’s App Store, Save $3r

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• Apple’s new streaming music service costs $10 per month. So does competing service Spotify, but if you subscribe through the Spotify iPhone app, they charge you an extra three bucks because of Apple’s 30% cut of every subscription sold through apps on their devices. However, Apple’s rules for what’s okay to put in an app mean that Spotify can’t actually tell you this, so they sent an e-mail to users explaining how to change your subscription.

  Of course, the timing of this e-mail is not a coincidence. Apple is currently offering a three-month free trial of its Music service, which competes directly with Spotify. Apple Music has the advantage of already being installed on customers’ devices, of course.

  There are two ways to subscribe to a service like Spotify: directly through the app (billed to your iTunes credit card) or directly through Spotify. Both methods let you stream music through your phone, and the difference is the knowledge that you’re depriving Apple of three bucks a month…while you use your pricey Apple-made device.

  How will Apple react to this e-mail? Will enough users expend the effort to end their subscriptions and re-subscribe directly through Spotify’s website to save $36 a year? It will be interesting to see how this plays out as part of the apparent streaming wars.

  Spotify encourages customers to bypass Apple’s App Store, save $3 per month on subscriptions [AppleInsider]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uParamount To Share The Wealth With Theaters If They Let Movies Go To Home Video Earlyr

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  “But daddy, I just saw this movie two weeks ago when it was still in theaters…”

  The traditional studio film won’t come out on video until at least 90 days after it’s hit theaters, even if it stopped playing on most screens after only a few weeks. But a new agreement between Paramount and two major theater chains could cut that release time in half.

  The Wall Street Journal reports that Viacom-owned Paramount has made a deal with AMC theaters in the U.S. and Canada’s Cineplex chain that will allow these companies to share in some of the revenue from the secondary markets of a pair of upcoming movies if they allow the titles to reach the home video market earlier than usual.

  The studio and the two chains will try out this model on two October releases, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension and Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse. Once either film is playing on fewer than 300 screens (probably after four or five weeks of release), Paramount will start a two-week countdown clock before it can get those films into the secondary market.

  That means there is no dead time between the disappearance of the film from theaters and its release to the home viewer. Studios don’t have to launch new and expensive marketing campaigns to remind people of a film that came out many months earlier.

  For now, only AMC and Cineplex are involved, though Paramount says it’s willing to reach similar agreements with other theater operators. If no one else signs on, then the studio will only release these movies on through these two chains.

  While we could imagine theater chains foregoing taking the risk with these two smaller-budget horror movies, Paramount could use its leverage with upcoming big-ticket entries in the Star Trek, Transformers, and Mission: Impossible franchises to win theater operators over to their new business model.

  If Paramount is successful at convincing theaters to go along with shorter windows in exchange for a cut of home video revenue, expect other studios to follow and ultimately for that window to continue to shrink.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uMan Behind IRS-Impersonation Scam Sentenced To 14 Years In Prisonr

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  (Renee Rendler-Kaplan)

  One of the more insidious scams of this decade has been the IRS impostor phone scam, where someone posing as a police officer or federal agent calls you up and threatens to arrest you over your tax balance. Of course, that balance is payable immediately by prepaid debit card. A Pennsylvania man who pleaded guilty earlier this year to running such a scam from 2011 until his 2013 arrest has been sentenced to 175 months in prison and $1 million in forfeiture for his crimes.

  The federal government estimates that this iteration of the scam drained $1.2 million dollars from the wallets of ordinary people, and that what makes it so terrible isn’t just the money. “The nature of this crime robbed people of their identities and their money in a way that causes people to feel they have been almost destroyed,” the judge said during sentencing.

  Victims lost $5,000 to $7,000 each, a lot of money for most Americans and a devastating amount to lose to manipulative overseas fraudsters. While the impostors were in call centers in India, they spoofed their phone numbers to make it appear that the phone calls came from the FBI or a federal prosecutor’s office.

  The man who was sentenced today didn’t think of this scam, and it certainly hasn’t ended with his arrest. His job was to be the US-based man who collected the money from victims’ prepaid debit cards.

  14-Year Term for Leader of Scam That Cost Taxpayers Millions [Associated Press]
  Leader of tax-related phone scam sentenced to nearly 15 years in prison [CNN]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uAmazon’s Stupid Shipping Gang Nestles Roll Of Bubble Wrap In Craft Paperr

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• Look, Amazon doesn’t know what Alexis wanted a roll of bubble wrap for. Maybe she just wants it to wrap up breakable items before placing them in a box to move, store, or mail. Or maybe she’s a collector of rare and precious bubble wraps, and needs to keep the rolls in mint condition with no risk of damage and not a single bubble popped.

  That’s probably why they secured her roll of bubble wrap with a generous helping of brown craft paper. It’s also possible that they did so out of habit, or they could have been sending her some handy free packing material along with the packing material she purchased.

  The paper may not be as versatile as the air pillows that another box of bubble wrap that we featured a few years ago was packed in, but at least it arrived safely and in mint condition.

  The important question is this: if you order a roll of craft paper, does it come wrapped in bubble wrap?

  (Thanks to Alexis for sharing this picture on Consumerist’s Facebook page.)

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist