CEO

Former captain Ryan Brierley is returning to Salford to become chief executive, the consortium that has won the bid to run the phoenix club has said.

Brierley, one of the players who departed the club midway through the 2025 campaign, has ended his playing career at Oldham in order to take on the role.

He has been appointed two days after fellow former Salford player Mason Caton-Brown’s consortium was successful in applying for membership of the second-tier Championship from the Rugby Football League.

The old Salford Red Devils club were wound up on 3 December after a turbulent year, with a mass player exodus, late wage payments, heavy defeats and ultimately the loss of their Super League status for 2026.

“Salford is in my heart, and I believe saving its rugby league heritage is something that transcends rivalry,” 33-year-old Brierley said.

Dec. 22 (UPI) — The former CEO of a healthcare software company in Arizona was sentenced to 15 years in prison and ordered to pay more than $452 million in restitution for conspiring to defraud Medicare for $1 billion, the U.S. Department of Justice said Monday.

Gary Cox, 79, of Maricopa County, was found guilty in June of healthcare fraud in which he generated false doctors’ orders to support fraudulent claims for various medical items.

He was sentenced Friday in the Southern District of Florida.

“This just sentence is the result of one of the largest telemarketing Medicare fraud cases ever tried to verdict,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew R. Galeotti of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said in a statement. “Telemedicine scammers who use junk mailers, spam calls and the internet to target senior citizens steal taxpayer money and harm vulnerable populations. The Criminal Division will continue dedicating substantial resources to the fight against telemedicine and medical equipment frauds that drain our health care benefit programs.”

Cox was convicted of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and wire fraud, three counts of healthcare fraud, conspiracy to pay and receive healthcare kickbacks, and conspiracy to defraud the United States and make false statements in connection with healthcare matters.

Cox was the CEO of Power Mobility Doctor Rx, LLC.

Prosecutors say Cox and his co-conspirators targeted several hundred thousand Medicare beneficiaries who provided personally identifiable information and agreed to accept medically unnecessary orthotic braces, pain creams and other items through misleading mailers, television advertisements and calls from offshore call centers, the Justice Department said.

Cox connected pharmacies, durable medical equipment suppliers and marketers with telemedicine companies to accept illegal kickbacks and bribes in exchange for signed doctors’ orders transmitted using the DMERx platform.

Prosecutors said DMERx falsely said that a doctor had examined and treated the Medicare beneficiaries when, in fact, purported telemedicine companies paid doctors to sign the orders without regard to medical necessity. It was based on a brief telephone call with the beneficiary or no interaction with the beneficiary, the Justice Department said.

These doctors’ orders billed Medicare and other insurers more than $1 billion with Medicare and the insurers paying more than $360 million based on these claims.

The scheme was concealed through sham contracts and elimination from doctors’ orders in which one co-conspirator described as “dangerous words” that might cause Medicare to audit the scheme’s DME suppliers.

“This sentence sends a clear message: Those who exploit telemedicine to prey on seniors and steal from taxpayer-funded health care programs will be held accountable,” said Christian J. Schrank, deputy inspector general for investigations of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“This scheme was a massive betrayal of trust, built on deception and greed. Our investigators, working with law enforcement partners, dismantled this billion-dollar fraud operation that targeted vulnerable patients and undermined the integrity of Medicare. We will not relent in our mission to protect the public and safeguard Medicare and other federal health care programs from fraud, waste, and abuse.”

Before his sentencing, friends of the defendant submitted letters to the judge vouching for Cox’s good character.

“It is my belief, based on all my life experiences both good and bad that Gary is not a person that would take advantage of or cheat another,” one letter said.

Since March 2007, the Justice Department’s Fraud Section, operating nine strike forces in 27 federal districts, has charged more than 5,800 defendants, who collectively have billed federal healthcare programs and private insurers more than $30 billion.

“Together with our partners, the FBI will aggressively pursue those who defraud taxpayer-funded health care programs,” Rebecca Day, acting assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, said. “Programs like Medicare are intended to help the most vulnerable among us, and fraud schemes like the one orchestrated by the defendant can jeopardize the delivery of critical care to those who need it the most.”

Approximately 69.4 million Americans are enrolled in the federal health insurance, which is primarily for people aged 65 and older. It also covers younger people with long-term disability, end-stage renal disease or ALS.

Medicare fraud, mistakes and abuse cost the program an estimated $60 billion annually.

“Medicare numbers are more valuable than Social Security numbers because if they have all the right documentation, the Medicare claim has to go through, there are rules and regulations around that,” Nancy Moore, director of Indiana Senior Medicare Patrol, told WRTV-TV in June.

“One of the best ways to look out for fraud is to read your summary notices, your EOB if you’re on Medicare Advantage, or your Medicare summary notice. If you notice a charge for something you never received or didn’t need. That’s when you should call us to report it.”

Consumers can also report suspected medical identity theft to the Health & Human Services fraud hotline at 800-447-8477 (800-HHS-TIPS) or the National Insurance Crime Bureau at 800-835-6422.

BP has tapped Woodside Energy’s Meg O’Neill as its next CEO, its first external hire for the post in more than a century and the first woman to lead a top-five oil major as the firm pivots back to fossil fuels.

O’Neill, an Exxon veteran, will take over in April following the abrupt departure of Murray Auchincloss, the second CEO change in just over two years as the British oil major strives to improve its profitability and share performance, which for years has lagged competitors like Exxon.

The company embarked on a major strategy shift earlier this year, slashing billions in planned renewable energy initiatives and shifting its focus back to traditional oil and gas. BP has pledged to divest $20bn in assets by 2027, including its Castrol lubricants unit, and reduce debt and costs.

“Progress has been made in recent years, but increased rigour and diligence are required to make the necessary transformative changes to maximise value for our shareholders,” new BP Chair Albert Manifold said in a statement.

When Manifold took up his post in October, he emphasised the need for a deeper reshaping of BP’s portfolio to increase profitability and faced pressure from activist investor Elliott Investment Management, one of BP’s largest shareholders, which called for him to urgently address the company’s shortcomings.

Elliott saw the change of CEO as a sign of BP’s willingness to act swiftly to deliver cost cuts and divestments, a person familiar with the situation said.

An external change

O’Neill, a 55-year-old American from Boulder, Colorado, and the first openly gay woman to helm a FTSE 100 company, headed Woodside since 2021, having previously spent 23 years at Exxon.

Under O’Neill’s leadership, Woodside merged with BHP Group’s petroleum arm to create a top 10 global independent oil and gas producer valued at $40bn and doubled Woodside’s oil and gas production.

The acquisition took the company to the US, where it embarked on a major Louisiana liquefied natural gas project, which it is progressing in an LNG market braced for oversupply.

BP spent more than 40 percent of its $16.2bn investment budget in the United States last year and plans to boost its US output to 1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day by the end of the decade.

Markets react

Woodside shares fell as much as 2.9 percent after news of O’Neill’s departure. At BP, shares were up 0.3 percent, compared with a broader index of European energy companies.

Like BP, Woodside shares have underperformed rivals. In absolute terms, though, the stock has risen about 10 percent during O’Neill’s tenure.

BP’s executive vice president, Carol Howle, will serve as interim CEO. Auchincloss, 55, will step down on Thursday and serve in an advisory role until December 2026.

BP said O’Neill’s appointment was part of its long-term succession planning, though it had not publicly announced a search process.

Auchincloss became CEO in 2024, taking over from Bernard Looney, who was fired after lying to the board about personal relationships with colleagues.

After an ill-fated foray into renewables under Looney, BP has promised to increase profitability and cut costs while re-routing spending to focus on oil and gas, launching a review in August of how best to develop and monetise oil and gas production assets.

During BP’s third-quarter earnings call last month, the company did not give an update on the closely watched sale process for its Castrol lubricants unit, the centrepiece of its $20bn asset-sale drive to slash its debt pile.

“We question whether this is set to change BP’s thinking once again on key strategic initiatives – should they defer the sale of Castrol? We think yes. Should they cut the buyback to zero and repair the balance sheet further? We think yes,” said RBC analyst Biraj Borkhataria.

Woodside said in a separate statement that O’Neill was leaving immediately, and it had appointed executive Liz Westcott as acting CEO, while intending to announce a permanent appointment in the first quarter of 2026.

Dec. 16 (Asia Today) — Rebellion Chief Executive Park Sung-hyun said Tuesday the South Korean AI semiconductor startup wants to “compete head-to-head” with Nvidia as the company marked its fifth anniversary and said its valuation has reached about 2 trillion won (about $1.5 billion), meeting the threshold commonly used for “unicorn” status.

“Even if it kills me, I want to step into the same ring as NVIDIA and face them head-on,” Park said at a media day at Rebellion’s headquarters in Seongnam, south of Seoul.

Founded in 2020, Rebellion has positioned itself as an AI chipmaker focused on inference – the computing used to run AI services – rather than large-scale model training. The company said it has built “real-world” usage references by deploying its chips in services with live traffic in telecommunications, the public sector and enterprise markets.

Executives said competition in AI semiconductors is shifting as AI services spread and inference becomes a key battleground, where power efficiency and operating costs can matter as much as raw performance. The company pointed to moves such as Google‘s expansion of its Tensor Processing Unit into large-scale cloud offerings as evidence that specialized AI chips developed for internal use can be adapted for commercial services.

Rebellion said it is seeking to differentiate itself in a market not fully centered on Nvidia by focusing from the outset on inference-optimized designs. Park said the company expects measures such as cost per token and throughput per watt to become increasingly important as AI services scale.

Park also criticized what he described as the practical challenges facing domestic AI chip companies, arguing that government support for AI infrastructure – particularly around graphics processing units – has largely benefited large companies and established cloud providers. “This is disappointing for AI semiconductor companies targeting the inference market,” he said, while adding the company plans to pursue competition through chips and systems rather than policy-driven, software-centric approaches.

Rebellion said its merger with Sapion Korea, finalized last year, strengthened its global expansion efforts. Through the deal, SK Telecom and SK Hynix became major shareholders, providing capital and boosting credibility, Park said. He added that SK Hynix’s brand reduces the burden on Korean startups seeking recognition abroad.

The company said it raised 92 billion won (about$70 million) from KT in a 2022 Series A round and 165 billion won (about $125 million) in a 2024 Series B round from overseas investors including Saudi Aramco and Singapore’s Pavilion Capital. Rebellion said a Series C round this year included investment from Arm, which it described as a milestone for an Asian startup.

Rebellion said it mass-produced its first neural processing unit, ATOM, in 2023 and later introduced a higher-performance inference chip, REBEL-Quad. It said it has established overseas subsidiaries in Japan, Saudi Arabia and the United States as it expands international business.

Rebellion said it has selected Samsung Securities as lead underwriter for an initial public offering and has begun listing preparations. The company plans to pursue a Korean listing first, while also targeting a longer-term U.S. listing, it said.

Park said the company now sees itself as part of South Korea’s “deep tech” push and aims to become a key player in global AI infrastructure.

-Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

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