U.S. home sales dropped to 6-month low in February amid cold weather and low supply

“We think severe winter weather depressed sales in February,” said Daniel Silver, an economist at JPMorgan in New York. “Existing-home sales also are cooling off following a robust run due to some other factors apart from the weather.”

Existing-home sales dropped 6.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.22 million units last month, the lowest level since August. Sales declined in the Northeast, South and Midwest but rose in the West.

Home resales, which account for the bulk of U.S. home sales, increased 9.1 percent on a year-on-year basis. Activity continued to be concentrated in the upper price range of the market.

Bitterly cold weather, including severe winter storms in Texas and other parts of the densely populated South, disrupted economic activity last month, depressing retail sales, production at factories and home-building.

Leon Black leaves Apollo positions early

Apollo Global Management co-founder Leon Black has left his executive positions at the private equity firm, a move that caps a series of corporate governance changes triggered by a review of his ties to financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Black, who co-founded the Apollo firm 31 years ago, stepped down as the company’s chairman, with Jay Clayton, former Securities and Exchange Commission chief, taking over as non-executive chairman, according to a statement Monday.

Black, 69, had planned to retain his role as chairman after relinquishing his post as chief executive in January following an independent review by the Dechert law firm. That review revealed that he had paid Epstein $158 million for advice on tax and estate planning and related services between 2012 and 2017. The review had cleared Black of any wrongdoing.

“The relentless public attention and media scrutiny concerning my relationship with Jeffrey Epstein — even though the exhaustive Dechert report concluded there was no evidence of wrongdoing on my part — have taken a toll on my health and have caused me to wish to take some time away from the public spotlight that comes with my daily involvement with this great public company,” Black said in a letter to Apollo’s board of directors.

Epstein was found dead at age 66 in August 2019 in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges for allegedly abusing dozens of underage girls in Manhattan and Florida from 2002 to 2005. New York City’s chief medical examiner ruled the cause of death was suicide by hanging.

Black said he will remain Apollo’s single largest shareholder and hopes to return to the company at some point.

Starbucks set targets to cut emissions and conserve water in the production of coffee it buys from farmers as it seeks to achieve its goal to store more carbon than it emits. The Seattle-based company will take steps including distributing climate-resistant trees, working with growers to cut fertilizer use and restoring at-risk forests in key coffee areas. It may also buy carbon offsets to bridge the gap in areas where it cannot reduce emissions, part of an effort to ensure supplies of unroasted coffee are carbon-neutral by 2030. It also plans to conserve 50 percent of the water in coffee production by then.

Microsoft will begin bringing workers back to its suburban Seattle global headquarters on March 29 as the tech giant starts to reopen more facilities it largely shuttered during the coronavirus pandemic. It said workers will have the choice to return to headquarters, continue working remotely or do a combination of both. More than 50,000 people work at the company’s headquarters campus in Redmond, Wash.

10 a.m.: The Commerce Department releases new-home sales for February.

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