The Fed sought to reassure markets for the foreseeable future on Wednesday by announcing that it plans to hold rates at their near-zero mark until into 2023 as it tries to “coax the economy back to full strength after the...more
The Federal Reserve took the rare step yesterday of stepping “into financial markets . . . to keep interest rates from rising above its target, the first time the central bank has had to carry out this type of ‘market...more
Shared office-space company WeWork, which had committed to moving forward with its planned IPO this week despite recent turmoil, appears likely to postpone the offering until at least October in an effort to shore up its...more
There’s some surprise market wheeling and dealing afoot this morning. The Hong Kong stock exchange has offered to buy its London counterpart as part of a deal valued at $37 billion that would connect “the established...more
Friday remarks from Fed Chair Powell in Zurich confirmed the central bank’s dedication to keeping the US economic expansion on track and appear to have signaled the Fed’s plan to cut interest rates for a second time this...more
Google will pay a “record $170 million fine and make changes to protect children’s privacy on YouTube” as part of a deal it reached this week with the FTC and NY AG’s office, both of whom had accused YouTube of “violating the...more
A new report out Tuesday from the Food & Drug Administration reveals that drug maker Novartis “concealed manipulated data” from the agency “while applying for approval of an extremely expensive gene therapy treatment and then...more
The big takeaway from Day 1 of Fed Chair Powell’s Congressional testimony is that a July rate cut is still definitely on the table, despite last week’s strong US jobs numbers. As the Times puts it, “That the Fed is...more
Much more on the suddenly hot topic of Big Tech antitrust oversight, including a negotiated agreement among regulators that will see the DOJ handling Apple and Google while the Federal Trade Commission will take on Facebook...more
The DC Circuit Court of Appeals dealt the DOJ a blow yesterday with a ruling that “rejected the government’s claim that a lower court had applied antitrust laws incorrectly in allowing the merger” between AT&T and Time Warner...more
We’re glad the steak dinner went well, but we’re also still anxiously awaiting actual details about what exactly is covered by the pause in the US/China trade war....more
The Fed released minutes from its November meeting yesterday, and they reinforced the expected December rate hike while showing a more uncertain path for hikes in 2019....more
In order to comply with European antitrust rulings against it earlier this year, Google announced that for the first time it will begin charging telephone handset manufacturers to install Gmail, Google Maps, and other popular...more
The US government is officially greenlighting fintech, with both the OCC and the Treasury Department issuing statements yesterday in support of the “emerging corner of the financial sector.” For the OCC, that means welcoming...more
The DOJ vs. the AT&T/Time Warner deal. The much-anticipated ruling’s finally in, and . . . the merger’s a go. Repeat, the merger’s a go....more
Deutsche Bank—in keeping with its post-Cryan plans to shrink its US footprint—has been considering plans “in recent weeks to eliminate close to 10,000 jobs.” [It’s now looking like 7,000.] ...more
The Journal’s weekend report on Facebook’s role in the unauthorized use of data from 50 million users wreaked havoc on the ‘Book’s stock yesterday, with losses spreading across the tech sector (and fellow its FANGers in...more
HSBC announced yesterday that, 5 years after its controversial deferred prosecution agreement with the DOJ following the Swiss bank’s 2012 $1.9 billion payment over money-laundering allegations, it’ll be released from those...more
The emissions cheating scandal that recently cost VW $4.3 billion and a mess of criminal indictments isn’t, it seems, confined to the Germans. We heard months ago about a similar probe into Mitsubishi, and yesterday we...more
The December 22 announcement that Deutsche Bank had settled with the DOJ over long-standing RMBS-related claims and investigations for a reported $7.2 billion prompted this Times long-read that traced the Icarus-like rise and...more
Testifying before the Senate Banking Committee yesterday, Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf admitted that the illegal sham-account-creation activity at the heart of its recent SEC fine may have begun earlier than first reported....more
As expected, the Fed announced yesterday that it was holding current interest rates steady and would be slow to push rates up while the economy tiptoes toward stability. Much more from Chair Yellen and economists’ reaction...more
In a gift to Wall Street today, Fed Chair Janet Yellen signaled that May’s weak job numbers were low enough to prompt reconsideration of a June rate hike out of fears of pushing a fragile economy too far too fast....more
In February the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Department of Justice announced entry of a consent order with Toyota Motor Credit, the U.S. financing arm of Toyota Motors’ subsidiary Toyota Financial Services. The...more
The DOJ has moved to block the proposed Halliburton/Baker Hughes merger in a Delaware-based federal lawsuit that argues that “combining the two oil field services companies would cut competition in the industry to...more