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Hailey Bieber sells makeup brand Elf Beauty in $1B deal

(Reuters) — Model Hailey Bieber’s makeup and skincare brand, Rhode, is being snapped up by Elf Beauty for about $1 billion, giving the budget cosmetic retailer access to a celebrity-endorsed product line that has become hugely popular among Gen Z and millennials.

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Elf said on Wednesday it would pay Rhode shareholders $800 million in a combination of cash and stock and an additional potential earnout consideration of $200 million subject to certain performance-related conditions.

Last month, Reuters reported that Bieber was exploring a sale of the brand, which could be worth more than $1 billion.

Elf — short for eyes, lips and face — offers products priced as low as $2 at U.S. retailers including Walmart, Ulta Beauty and Target.

On the other hand, Rhode — which launched in 2022 and gained popularity with TikTok viral products such as its $18 “peptide lip treatments” — sells exclusively through its own website or pop-up stores, relying heavily on Hailey Bieber’s social media influence.

The company raked in about $212 million in sales for the year ended March 31 and is planning to start selling at Sephora stores across the U.S. and Canada coming this fall, followed by the UK.

Elf’s deal with Rhode would mark its biggest acquisition to date and follows its $355 million acquisition of skincare company Natrium in 2023.

Another suspect is arrested in bitcoin kidnapping case

NEW YORK (NYT) — A third person accused of kidnapping a man and torturing him for nearly three weeks to steal his bitcoin fortune surrendered to police in New York City on Tuesday morning, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.

Police identified the man, who has connections to Switzerland and Miami, as William Duplessie, 33. He spent days negotiating his surrender with the Police Department after the arrest Friday of two other suspects, according to two law enforcement officials.

Duplessie was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Courthouse on Tuesday night and charged with kidnapping, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of 25 years to life in prison. He was also charged with assault, unlawful imprisonment and criminal possession of a weapon. He was held without bail.

One of the people arrested Friday, John Woeltz, 37, a cryptocurrency investor, faces kidnapping, assault and firearms charges. The other, Beatrice Folchi, 24, who was initially charged by police with kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment, was quickly released, and her prosecution was deferred.

Shortly before 11:30 a.m., Duplessie, in handcuffs and flanked by two detectives, was walked out of a precinct house on East 21st Street in Manhattan. Duplessie did not respond to questions as he was placed in a waiting police cruiser.

The episode burst into public view Friday morning when the victim, an Italian man named Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan, escaped from a lavish town house in the Nolita neighborhood of Manhattan, where he was being held captive, and flagged down a traffic agent.

Carturan and Woeltz had ties to a crypto hedge fund in New York, but Carturan and Woeltz fell out over money, and Carturan flew to Italy. Soon after, Woeltz persuaded him to return to New York.

Carturan arrived at the town house, at 38 Prince St., on May 6, where he was captured and held by Woeltz and Folchi. They wanted the password to a bitcoin wallet worth millions.

Glacier collapse in the Swiss Alps destroys a village

(NYT) — A vast section of a glacier broke apart in the Swiss Alps on Wednesday, setting off a landslide of ice, mud and rocks that caused widespread damage to a small village, nine days after its 300 residents had been ordered to evacuate.

At least one person is missing after the village, Blatten, in the Valais canton in southern Switzerland, was buried beneath debris from the Birch Glacier, Matthias Ebener, a spokesperson for the area’s crisis management team, said Wednesday.

Drone footage and other videos captured the moment that the glacier collapsed sending a large plume of dust down a mountainside. The glacier, covered by about 9 million tons of debris, was estimated by a government engineer to have been moving about 8 to 11 feet a day toward the valley before the landslide.

Officials said at a news conference Wednesday that it would take years to recover from the damage, which they were continuing to assess.

“We’ve lost the village, but not the heart,” Matthias Bellwald, the mayor of Blatten, said during the news conference.

Stéphane Ganzer, a state councilor for the Valais canton, told SRF, the Swiss radio and television broadcasting corporation, on Wednesday that 90% of Blatten had been buried.

Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter, sharing a photo of the destruction on social media Wednesday, wrote that it was terrible to lose a home and that she was thinking of the people of Blatten.

Officials warned that the landslide, which registered as a 3.1 magnitude earthquake, could cause flooding in the area. A nearby riverbed is blocked by debris, which creates a significant risk of ice jams, the officials, who were not ruling out additional evacuations, said.

Regional leaders asked the army for pumps and debris removal equipment to try to prevent flooding, according to the State Council for Valais.