A slumping tech sector pulled markets lower on Tuesday, “adding to a losing streak that has April shaping up to be Wall Street’s worst month in two years.” For the S&P 500, that translates into a nearly 8% decline for the...more
Elon Musk and Twitter brass struck a deal on Monday in which Musk will spend $44 billion to “take over the influential social network frequented by world leaders, celebrities and cultural trendsetters” and take it private....more
Back at it. Let’s get caught up . . . The latest in the Elon Musk/Twitter drama includes word that PE firm Apollo Global Mgmt is “considering” joining a bid by Musk to acquire the social media platform, a potential early...more
In the reversal heard around the tech world on Monday, Elon Musk announced that he would not be joining Twitter’s Board of Directors after all. The social media company had extended the invite to Musk after news broke that he...more
The Fed’s March meeting notes dropped on Wednesday, and they detailed the central bank’s plans to “shrink their portfolio of bond holdings imminently” as well as the “many” fed officials auguring for significant rate hikes in...more
JetBlue has made a last-minute $3.6 billion offer to buy Spirit Airlines, “throwing a wrench into Spirit’s plan to merge with Frontier Airlines and create a behemoth budget carrier.” The offer appears calculated to help...more
Jobs Report Friday! Here’s what we’re looking for in the March numbers after reports earlier this week suggested we remain in a period of both high openings and voluntary resignations...more
White House officials are mulling over a plan that would “release one million barrels of oil a day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for as long as 180 days,” a move intended to ease sticker shock at the pump for Americans...more
3/31/2022
/ Activision ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Facebook ,
Financial Institutions ,
Financial Markets ,
Oil & Gas ,
Oil Prices ,
Russia ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) ,
TikTok ,
Ukraine
The White House unveiled its 2023 budget to start the week, a document that outlines the Administration’s economic agenda for the year ahead. Among other proposals, the budget proposes “a new tax on American households worth...more
The European Union is putting the final touches on its latest landmark digital legislation, the Digital Markets Act—one of “the world’s most far-reaching laws to address the power of the biggest tech companies.” The DMA is...more
Back at it. Let’s dive right in. Fed Chair Powell Jay Powell went on the record to start the week with an attempt to prepare markets for the central bank’s big moves ahead “in its quest to cool off demand and temper...more
Jobs Report Friday again! Here’s what we’re looking for in the numbers (though after last month, good luck with any predictions)...more
President Biden made fighting inflation one of the cornerstones of his State of the Union last night, highlighting the economic progress the country’s made in the past year while stressing efforts to stem rising prices. The...more
After a weekend in which the West’s major economies made it clear that they’re choosing economic isolation as the desired means of punishing Vladimir Putin and Russia for their invasion of Ukraine, Shell and BP have both...more
3/2/2022
/ Acquisitions ,
Amazon ,
Cross-Border Transactions ,
Economic Sanctions ,
Financial Institutions ,
Financial Markets ,
Financial Services Industry ,
Russia ,
Supply Chain ,
SWIFT ,
Ukraine ,
Whole Foods
Recent news of misinformation out of Russia about alleged troop withdrawals (when, in fact, troops and shelling near the border are up) sent skittish markets down on Thursday. Tech companies were again among “some of the...more
Sony announced on Monday that it will acquire video-game maker Bungie, the latest in a recent series of big moves in the gaming industry in which the “game market further consolidates around some of its biggest companies.”...more
Stronger-than-expected GDP figures for the 4th Quarter and 2021 on the whole was welcome good economic news for the U.S. on Thursday after weeks of volatility and renewed supply-chain issues. Q4 growth clocked in at 1.7%,...more
Consumer Price Index numbers out on Wednesday hit economists’ expectations, an increase of 7% as compared to a year earlier. Though the figure was expected, it was also the first time CPI rose that much since 1982, as strong...more
The latest from Fed Chair Powell’s first day of confirmation hearings, including the expected news that the central bank is prepared to raise interest rates to tame inflation, tying that goal to the Fed’s other mandate by...more
The release of the Fed’s December meeting minutes (and its discussion of a quickened pace of rate hikes) was all it took to rattle markets, with the S&P 500 dropping nearly 2% on Wednesday—“its biggest drop in weeks.”...more
As we’ve been expecting thanks to some heavy foreshadowing from Chair Powell and others, the Federal Reserve wrapped its December Open Markets Committee meeting with the news that it would “cut back on [its] stimulus more...more
Samsung surprised the business world today by replacing the “heads of its three major business units and merg[ing] the company’s mobile and consumer electronics businesses into a single unit.” The moves mean the South Korean...more
12/8/2021
/ Bitcoin ,
Coronavirus/COVID-19 ,
Cryptocurrency ,
Financial Institutions ,
Financial Markets ,
Mergers ,
Publicly-Traded Companies ,
Samsung ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) ,
Tesla
After 11 weeks of the prosecution laying out the government’s case, it’s now the defense’s turn in the criminal fraud trial of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. They began by putting Holmes, herself, on the stand, and she’ll...more
It was a slog, to be sure, but Congress finally made President Biden’s infrastructure plan a reality late Friday, guaranteeing nearly “$600 billion in new federal aid to improve highways, bridges, dams, public transit, rail,...more
Southwest Airlines canceled hundreds more flights to start the week, though its operations were closer to normal after a weekend that saw the carrier nix almost 2000 flights. The company blamed a mix of weather problems, “air...more