Axios

Monday was the first day back in the office for Goldman Sachs employees in New York.

Why it matters: The move brings an influx of office workers into lower Manhattan, the second-largest central business district in the country. It also marks a clear inflection point for the finance industry.

Another day, another development in the Lordstown Motors saga.

• What's new: The buzzy electric vehicle company's CEO and CFO are out.

Mashable editor-in-chief Jessica Coen is joining Morning Brew as chief content officer, Axios has learned. She will report to CEO Austin Rief.

Why it matters: She's the latest high-profile hire for Morning Brew, which has added dozens of new people since Insider purchased a majority stake in the outlet last fall.

The CEOs of 178 health care companies collectively made $3.2 billion during the coronavirus pandemic, which was 31% more than 2019, according to an Axios analysis of financial filings.

The big picture: Health care executives took home more than ever because a vast majority of their pay still comes in the form of stock. So while the coronavirus ravaged people's lives, the health care system and the broader economy, the soaring stock market immunized executives' pay.

Last year, drug company Mallinckrodt paid its top five executives nearly $33 million, including $15 million to CEO Mark Trudeau.

Why it matters: Last year, Mallinckrodt filed for bankruptcy, faced numerous opioid lawsuits, and shelled out $640 million in underpaid rebates to the federal government — all problems that have come under the watch of executives receiving these lavish pay packages.

Sotheby's last week auctioned off the first fine art NFT ever created, a landmark moment in the transformation of art from the physical to the digital. The winning bid was $1.4 million.

Axios Re:Cap goes deeper, to understand how the fine art and cryptocurrency worlds are colliding, including a conversation with Kevin McCoy, the artist whose work was just auctioned off.

Battery recycling startup Redwood Materials is amping up expansion plans, including adding more than 500 new manufacturing jobs in Nevada, as the United States gets serious about supporting a shift to electric vehicles.

Why it matters: The news coincides with an event being hosted today by Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to dive into the DOE's newly released blueprint for the lithium battery supply chain.

YouTube will stop accepting ads for its masthead ad unit from certain verticals, including alcohol sales, gambling, prescription drugs, and election and political ads, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: YouTube's masthead, a highly visible rectangle across the top of the homepage, is often the platform's most expensive and sought-after ad unit.

More than 5,800 postal employees were attacked by dogs last year, and the pandemic was partly to blame, says the U.S. Postal Service.

• E-commerce surged when shoppers were stuck at home, meaning more packages being delivered to residences.
• And more people, including children, were at home to open the door for deliveries, giving pets more opportunity to escape.
• Plus, there were simply more dogs, as "pandemic puppy" adoptions soared last year.

Why it matters: It's National Dog Bite Awareness week and the postal service wants to remind dog owners to secure their pets. This year’s theme is “Be Aware: Any Dog Can Bite.”

• Houston ranked first in dog bites, with 73 carriers attacked. Chicago, Los Angeles, Cleveland and Denver rounded out the top 5 for most aggressive dogs, according to USPS.

What to watch: In the era of Big Delivery, reports of dog attacks could be expected to rise among Amazon, UPS and FedEx delivery personnel, too, though a UPS spokesperson says the company hasn't seen an increase yet.

The bottom line: Both UPS and the Postal Service say if a driver encounters an aggressive animal, they will not deliver the package, and you'll have to pick it up from their facility.

The time is coming when you won't have to take your shoes off before passing through airport security.

Why it matters: Removing shoes at the TSA checkpoint is one of the most inconvenient rituals of flying in the U.S.

Thrasio, a Walpole, Mass.-based acquirer of Amazon third-party private-label businesses, is in talks to go public via Churchill Capital V (NYSE: CCV), a SPAC led by Michael Klein, per Bloomberg. The implied valuation could top $10 billion.

Why it matters: This comes just days after Congress introduced a bipartisan bill that would break apart Amazon's control of its marketplace, thus benefiting the sorts of sellers that Thrasio rolls up.

The origin story of the meme stock phenomenon centered around an uprising by retail investors, who wanted to make money at the expense of Wall Street short-sellers.

But in today’s meme stock world, there’s not that much short interest in the names most popular with the WallStreetBets crowd. Instead, trading activity appears to be increasingly driven by call options, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Companies that made it through the pandemic in one piece now have a major new problem: more than a quarter of their employees may leave.

What's happening: Workers have had more than a year to reconsider work-life balance or career paths, and as the world opens back up, many of them will give their two weeks' notice and make those changes they’ve been dreaming about.

Behind the scenes in colleges across the U.S., institutions are having trouble paying their bills.

Why it matters: There’s a reckoning coming in higher education — especially for smaller, private liberal arts schools — that’s been years in the making. In obvious ways, COVID-19 accelerated some of the trends, but college finances have been hurting for a while.

Americans Michael Taylor and Peter Taylor pleaded guilty in a Tokyo court Monday to helping former Nissan chair Carlos Ghosn escape Japan in a box aboard a plane in 2019, per the Wall Street Journal.

The big picture: Ghosn was awaiting trial in Tokyo on financial misconduct charges following his 2018 arrest when he fled to Lebanon. He denies any wrongdoing.