Garman will report to Jassy.AWS’ previous marketing chief, Ariel Kelman, is leaving the company to “pursue another endeavor,” Jassy said in the note. He’ll take the top marketing post at Oracle Corp., said a person familiar with the move. An AWS spokesman declined to comment, and Kelman didn’t respond to a message seeking comment. CNBC reported his move to Oracle earlier Monday.Garman last month was named to Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos’s strategy-setting S-team, evidence of AWS’ growing importance to the e-commerce and technology company.

Garman previously ran the engineering teams responsible for Amazon’s rented computing power services, including the company’s foray into selling server racks to businesses. He joined Amazon in 2006, the year AWS launched its first major services, after finishing business school. Today, AWS is the biggest provider of rented infrastructure and data storage services; in the last 12 months the unit generated 12% of Amazon’s revenue and a majority of operating income.

Rachel Thornton will take over Kelman’s duties. She, Teresa Carlson and Mike Clayville, leaders of AWS’ government and business sales groups, respectively, will report to Garman.

The S-team sets the Seattle company’s corporate priorities and features a powerful contingent of AWS executives, including Jassy, Charlie Bell, who oversees core engineering efforts, and Peter DeSantis, who leads data center infrastructure teams.

Amazon doesn’t comment publicly on the composition of the S-team, which is said to include about two dozen executives. The company has been criticized for a c-suite that skews whiter and more male than Amazon’s workforce and customer base.The reorganization announced Friday also included a promotion for the leader of Amazon’s machine learning efforts. Swami Sivasubramanian will report to Bell. Previously, he reported to one of Bell’s deputies, Raju Gulabani, who leads AWS’ database engineering teams.

Protesters are already preparing to disrupt the opening of Uniper SE’s Datteln-4 plant in June and could turn the utility into the latest flash point in Germany’s increasingly fractious debate about the fossil fuel that still generates about a third of the country’s electricity. The conflict could threaten Chancellor Angela Merkel’s climate legacy as German emission targets lag following a decade of record renewable energy investments.

Merkel is trying to build consensus this week over a 2038 exit date for coal and heal widening rifts between industry and environmentalists. Government officials and company executives will meet for another round of talks Jan. 15 in Berlin, where they’ll discuss compensation for abandoning coal. Uniper is keen for its plant to become one of the nation’s last operating coal facilities.

“It’ll be an own goal for Uniper to open it,” said Dirk Jansen, an official at the environmental group BUND Friends of the Earth Germany.

The 1.5-billion euro ($1.7 billion) Datteln-4 plant, outside Dortmund in western Germany’s industrial heartland, is already nine years late and over budget because of defects that delayed its connection to the grid.

Climate activists aren’t buying the utility’s arguments that the new facility burns cleaner than older models it plans to retire and wants the plant shuttered before it ever operates.

In the year since a German panel of industry and environmental experts recommended Europe’s biggest economy stop using coal, talks have focused on compensation that utilities are seeking in return for closing plants. That could be changing, however, as activist investors and funds pressure companies to reduce emissions.

Uniper’s fifth-biggest shareholder, Blackrock, added some $7 trillion of heft to a group of investors on Friday that’s pressing the world’s biggest emitters to change their ways. The addition of the world’s largest fund manager is a significant milestone for the Climate Action 100+ group, which advocates for emissions transparency and climate action.

Uniper argues the facility is more efficient than existing coal plants, and therefore more environmentally friendly, adding it should run to close to the 2038 exit date.

“There is understanding from the government that it makes sense to turn on the most efficient plant,” Uniper CEO Andreas Schierenbeck said in an interview with Bloomberg in November. Despite faltering economics for coal, the company said last year that Datteln-4 would be a “significant earnings contributor once up and running.”

Others say that logic is flawed and raises questions about whether Merkel’s government is serious about making up lost ground on its lapsed climate targets.

Connecting the 1,100-megawatt plant to the grid would undermine “the credibility of the coal commission,” said Claudia Kemfert, a professor for energy economics at the DIW in Berlin.

A report in the Rheinische Post newspaper on Wednesday said Uniper was proposing to shutter all its remaining coal plants or convert them to gas in order to let Datteln-4 open – the company is undertaking a gas conversion project at its Scholven plant near Cologne, with the aim of the site producing electricity from gas by 2022.

The proposal would include, however, closing or converting a 747-megawatt coal plant in the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven, commissioned in the mid-70s, according to an official from the port’s home state of Lower Saxony who asked not to be identified as the plan isn’t yet sealed.

The federal government last year approved 40 billion euros in aid to Germany’s four main coal regions to cushion the structural impact of plant closures, a financial facility that would potentially cut Uniper’s costs in closing its coal plants.

If Uniper reaches an agreement that allows Datteln-4 to open, it won’t be the end of the matter. On Thursday, Luisa Neubauer, 23, Germany’s answer to Swedish climate protester Greta Thunburg, called on the Fridays for Future movement to target the plant and demand the government close it, underscoring the challenge facing fossil fuel operators in increasingly environmentalist Germany.

The German Green Party also said it would seek to review the status of the plant if it gets into government, a scenario deemed almost certain by pollsters due to German coalition mathematics.

“It cannot be that Germany’s coal exit will be marked by the opening of one of the biggest coal-fired power stations in Europe,” said senior Green Party politician Oliver Krischer in an email to Bloomberg.

(Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, has committed $500 million to launch Beyond Carbon, a campaign aimed at closing the remaining coal-powered plants in the U.S. by 2030 and slowing the construction of new gas plants.)

“We’re willing to walk away from any mall at this point,” Abercrombie Chief Financial Officer Scott Lipesky said Monday at the ICR Conference in Orlando. “For us, it’s about getting the right store in the right location at the right size.”

The teen retailer, which owns Abercrombie and sister brand Hollister, is looking to make many of its existing shops smaller and cut square-footage as shoppers flock online. As of November, Abercrombie and Hollister had 677 stores across the U.S. Chief Executive Officer Fran Horowitz said Monday that continuing to adjust the stores’ footprint will be her top priority for the company this year.

Abercrombie shares jumped as much as 6.9% in New York Monday, the biggest intraday climb in more than four months. The stock declined 14% last year.

Across the industry, retailers are aggressively paring their store fleets, seeking both fewer and smaller ones. A total of 7,600 stores in the U.S. closed in the first nine or so months of last year, according to a report from Credit Suisse, which predicts closings may worsen in 2020. Abercrombie & Fitch has closed about 500 stores over the past decade.

Every two years, Abercrombie has about half of its leases for the U.S. come up for renewal, Lipesky said. Abercrombie is one of the few retailers willing and able to invest in its shops, as the brands conduct remodels on dozens of locations across its store network, he said. Meanwhile, e-commerce improvements have let the retailer expand online sales to about 30% of its business, making it less reliant on malls.

As it negotiates with shopping center landlords, management is also trying to get rid of the company’s flagship stores, large locations that are typically on tourist shopping streets. Last year, it closed flagships in New York, Milan and Fukuoka, Japan. The company began 2019 with 19 flagships around the world and hopes to reduce that number to just 12 by the end of this year as leases expire.

“The customer has changed so dramatically,” said Lipesky. “We don’t have a need for these large stores long-term.”

The Swedish investor, which became the biggest owner in struggling Norwegian sports retailer XXL ASA last year, has so far racked up losses on its investment as the entire industry suffers from fierce competition from web-based sales and a mild winter. But Altor is aiming to turn the company around and says the market will improve.

“XXL is by far the best platform in the Nordics,” Hugo Maurstad, partner at Altor Equity Partners AS and chairman of XXL, said by phone. “It’s an attractive opportunity.”

The Oslo-based retailer just filed its second profit warning since October and had to seek looser loan terms and raise capital last year, allowing Altor to raise its stake to 20%. By the end of last week, the stock had dropped almost 90% since a peak in 2016, and most analysts still recommend clients sell the share.

Altor bought about 10 million shares at 25 kroner apiece in June, according to a company announcement, before adding about 17 million more at 15 kroner a share in a placement later. Those shares have lost about 120 million kroner ($13 million) in value since, even after the stock jumped on Monday, according to Bloomberg calculations.

“Market conditions are challenging,” Maurstad said. “A lot of the capacity taken out of the market has been much smaller stores. But several major players are adjusting and reducing capacity. That will have to happen in some shape and form.”

XXL rose as much as 11% on Monday, after local newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv reported the chief executive officer of tanker company Frontline Ltd., Robert Hvide Macleod, has built a holding of 600,000 shares in the retailer.

Beyond capacity adjustments, Altor is betting XXL can revitalize its stores. The company has hired a new chief executive officer, the outgoing CEO of discount retailer Europris ASA, Pal Wibe, to lead the effort. XXL wants to make the stores “more fun,” betting that sports and leisure is one area where the physical world will keep an edge over digital sales, Maurstad said.

“We’re talking about your hobby — you’re not going there to get milk and bread,” he said. “I don’t think brick and mortar retail will be gone.”

Maurstad sees an upside for lifestyle-oriented companies as Scandinavians live longer and get richer. Altor, which manages about 8.3 billion euro ($9.2 billion), is also invested in fitness chain Sats ASA and Nordic Leisure Travel Group, the former Nordic business of Thomas Cook.

Norwegians may be known for their love of the great outdoors, but their country is also western Europe’s biggest oil and gas producer. That’s an area Altor isn’t as excited about.

Investors, energy companies and policy makers worldwide are grappling with how to adapt to climate change and oil industry valuations, especially service providers, have yet to recover from the market slump in 2014-2017. Altor last year exited its stake in Spectrum ASA, a seismic data company that helps oil companies find deposits under the seabed, and isn’t about to get into new investments in Norway’s oil and gas industry.

“We’re very careful with new investments in that sector,” Maurstad said. “Because with the negative view on the industry long term, we are worried about the exit multiples. And that makes it difficult to make the cases work with our return targets.”

“After thorough evaluation SIE has decided not to participate in E3 2020,” a Sony Interactive Entertainment spokesperson told GamesIndustry.biz. “We have great respect for the ESA as an organization, but we do not feel the vision of E3 2020 is the right venue for what we are focused on this year.”

The news comes on the heels of several rough news cycles for E3 and the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the organization that hosts the event. PlayStation first skipped the event in 2019, raising questions about E3′s viability, and its utility to the video game industry. Other developers and publishers, such as Nintendo and Electronic Arts, have foregone the event in the past, opting instead to host livestreams and events of their own, or seeking programming opportunities outside of E3.

In August of 2019, it was also revealed that the ESA was hosting sensitive information – including phone numbers and home addresses, among other data – belonging to over 2,000 content creators and journalists in an excel spreadsheet that was accessible to anyone with a direct link. In 2019, E3 attendance fell to approximately 66,100, compared to 69,200 attendees in 2018.

Sony saw great success during its performance at E3 2013, where the company drew a sharp contrast between its PlayStation 4 console and Microsoft’s Xbox One, which was mired in a controversy over used games.

However, in 2019, Sony’s began distancing itself from the event. It explained its absence from the trade show by suggesting it was seeking new, more innovative ways to engage with fans: “PlayStation fans mean the world to us and we always want to innovate, think differently and experiment with new ways to delight gamers. As a result, we have decided not to participate in E3 in 2019. We are exploring new and familiar ways to engage our community in 2019 and can’t wait to share our plans with you.”

This year’s announcement was more vague. “We will build upon our global events strategy in 2020 by participating in hundreds of consumer events across the globe,” an SIE spokesperson told GamesIndustry.biz. “Our focus is on making sure fans feel part of the PlayStation family and have access to play their favorite content. We have a fantastic lineup of titles coming to PlayStation 4, and with the upcoming launch of PlayStation 5, we are truly looking forward to a year of celebration with our fans.”

Lannan “LazarBeam” Eacott, Elliott “Muselk” Watkins and Rachell “Valkyrae” Hofstetter together boast 21 million YouTube subscribers. LazarBeam, with 12.3 million, and Muselk, with 8.1 million, are both prominent YouTube creators who have focused on Google’s platform. Valkyrae primarily streamed on Twitch, amassing almost a million followers there. She also is nearing a million subscribers on YouTube.

Although they play many other games, all three are prominent Fortnite creators. LazarBeam and Muselk’s contracts were brokered through talent agencies WME, which also represents NFL and NHL talent, and Click Management, while Valkyrae’s was brokered by UTA.

LazarBeam is just starting out on YouTube streaming, and said he hopes to show a “different side of himself.” He and Muselk are celebrating the contract with a 12-hour charity livestream Monday to raise a million dollars for the Australian bush fire crisis.

Valkyrae is the first woman to join esports group 100 Thieves, and gained attention when she attended the Fortnite Pro Am Tournament at last year’s E3 event. She said she hopes to use YouTube’s global reach to “translate the importance of mental and physical well-being.”

The move is yet another in an ongoing talent bidding way, primarily between YouTube, Mixer, Facebook and Twitch. Microsoft’s Mixer platform kicked off the trend by signing on streaming’s biggest personality, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, to what is believed to be a multimillion-dollar contract. Terms of the recent YouTube contracts were not disclosed.

This isn’t YouTube’s first contract. In November, Google locked in Jack “CouRage” Dunlop, who left behind 2.1 million Twitch followers, and now has 1.9 million YouTube subscribers.

The continued signing of popular personalities signals that when it comes to platform features, content is now taking precedence, according to Doron Nir, CEO of streaming platform StreamElements, which releases quarterly reports of the streaming market.

“The benefit of having a large diverse stable of press-worthy marquee streamers is that it is the most effective way to attract new viewers, creators and brands,” Nir said. “The key moving forward will be long term commitments to top talent and working with third party developers to ensure their influencers have the best production, monetization and engagement tools to optimize their channels.”

Calhoun, who officially takes charge Monday, pushed to release humiliating internal messages last week even though they may darken public perception for years to come — with Boeing’s own employees suggesting rot in a once-vaunted safety culture, and mocking designers and regulators on the ill-fated 737 Max. He also was heavily involved in the decision to drop Boeing’s long-held opposition to simulator training for Max pilots, said people close to the company.

Those steps are just the start as Calhoun settles into a 36th-floor suite at Boeing’s Chicago headquarters, entrusted with turning around a company that has been widely censured for its arrogance, failure to take responsibility after two crashes killed 346 people, and unrealistic estimates of when the Max would be cleared to fly again. The bungling cost former CEO Dennis Muilenburg his job, and the bad news is far from over: Boeing is expected to reveal one of the largest writedowns in its history this month along with fourth-quarter results.

“The company has a unique opportunity to get all the bad news on the table now,” said Jim Schrager, professor of entrepreneurship and strategy at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. “It’s time to get this right and make the turnaround.”

The accounting charge is likely to be in the $6 billion range, said Cowen & Co. analyst Cai von Rumohr, as Boeing balloons its reserve to compensate airlines to $12 billion. That’s another risk for investors, who have taken a hit from the crisis while dodging a full-fledged meltdown.

Boeing climbed less than 1% to $331.03 at 9:40 a.m. in New York. Through last week, the shares had tumbled 22% since the second Max crash prompted a worldwide flying ban in March. That was the biggest drop on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Calhoun, a former General Electric Co. executive who became a senior leader at Blackstone Group Inc., is far from an outsider at Boeing. He has served on the aerospace titan’s board for a decade, and he took over from Muilenburg as chairman in October. That means he is identified with the moves that have left the company’s standing with consumers, lawmakers and regulators in shambles.

Boeing’s reversal on simulator training was approved by the Calhoun-led board at its meeting in December, said people familiar with the deliberations, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private.

When directors asked to Calhoun to take charge, they vowed to make Boeing more transparent. With his support, interim CEO Greg Smith followed through last week by releasing a new batch of internal messages that a key lawmaker in the U.S. Congress called “incredibly damning.”

In one exchange, a company pilot said the Max was “designed by clowns, who in turn are supervised by monkeys.” In other messages, employees bragged of their ability to hoodwink regulators.

Calhoun has already begun reaching out to the Federal Aviation Administration, which delivered a rare public rebuke of Muilenburg shortly before he was ousted in December. His top priority as CEO will be to look inward to the company’s issues and cultural rifts and to spend meaningful time in its Seattle manufacturing hub, said a person close to the board.

Revamping Boeing’s culture is especially critical for Calhoun and Larry Kellner, the former Continental Airlines chief who replaced him as Boeing chairman, given the lapses that have come to light from blue-ribbon panels poring over the Max’s development.

“It seems like there’s been an absolute breakdown,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst George Ferguson. “They’re going to have to find a way to ditch the arrogance. It’s hurt their relations with the FAA, customers and suppliers.”

The crisis has also left Boeing at risk of losing ground to Airbus in the global aerospace duopoly. Calhoun is convinced there is a way to simplify strategy and planning for Boeing’s numbingly complex operations, said the person familiar with the matter.

Then there’s the challenge of revitalizing a demoralized workforce. Muilenburg, an engineer and Boeing lifer, had pledged to reorganize the company’s engineering corps and create buffers to insulate workers from undo pressure from business managers. That task now falls to Calhoun, an accountant by training.

Some former colleagues at GE, where Calhoun spent 26 years, consider him close in personality to Jack Welch, said Rick Kennedy, author of “GE Aviation: 100 Years of Reimagining Flight.”

“He will make hard decisions at Boeing and he won’t hide behind them,” said Kennedy, a retired spokesman who worked closely with Calhoun for four years at GE’s aviation division. That extends to personnel decisions.

“It won’t be a cozy world,” Kennedy said.

Calhoun’s task is daunting. It could take months before the Max is back in service, and more than a year after that for the company to nurse its suppliers back to health and return the 737 to pre-crash production levels.

Other aircraft programs faced stumbles of their own, with the 777X airplane, KC-46 military tanker and Starliner spacecraft suffering high-profile problems and delays.

At GE Aviation, Calhoun built a team that included David Joyce, who went on to become the division’s long-time leader. While the aerospace industry was mired in a recession following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Calhoun pitched Boeing hard on a cutting-edge engine for the plane that became the 787 Dreamliner.

The GEnx turbofan wasn’t an easy sell to GE management either.

“Calhoun had to make a very aggressive business case in a very horrible market,” Kennedy said.

The GEnx went on to become the fastest-selling engine of its kind at GE, with 2,700 units in service or on order. And it provided key concepts for the smaller Leap power plant in the Max and many of Airbus’s A320neo jets. The Leap, produced by a GE-Safran SA alliance, has garnered 19,000 orders and commitments.

More recently, Calhoun has been instrumental in turning around Caterpillar as chairman and Nielsen Holdings as CEO. During his seven-year tenure leading the television ratings giant, which included taking it public, he took home at least $235 million in cash and stock sales.

For 62-year-old Calhoun, whose name had circulated in previous Boeing CEO searches, turning the manufacturer around would be the pinnacle of a four-decade career. What’s not known is how long he intends to stay at Boeing, where executives traditionally leave at age 65.

Will he be the visionary who pushed GE to bet big on a new engine in a horrible market? Or will the Wall Street veteran be content to “stabilize the company and then continue the cash-extraction process?” asked analyst Richard Aboulafia of Teal Group.

By Aboulafia’s reckoning, Boeing spent $78 billion on shareholder returns over the past 15 years while milking the lucrative 737 and treating engineers as an expendable cost center. The cash cow is now vulnerable, and Boeing has no product to counteract the sales success of Airbus’s longest-range narrow-body jets.

If Boeing doesn’t tilt its strategy back to emphasizing product investment over stock buybacks once the Max crisis abates, it will hand its European rival the chance to build an insurmountable lead, Aboulafia warned.

“It will take five years to show up, 10 years to really show and 15 years to be irreversible,” Aboulafia said. “Game over.”

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Bloomberg’s Anders Melin contributed.