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Senior U.S. defense officials have held talks about producing weapons and other military supplies with top executives ​of companies including General Motors, GE Aerospace and Ford Motor. The preliminary and wide-ranging talks, which commenced before the war with Iran, come as the White House wants automakers and other American manufacturers to play a ​larger role in weapons production, the ‌Wall Street Journal reports. The Pentagon is interested in enlisting the companies to use their personnel and factory capacity to boost production of munitions and other equipment as the wars in Ukraine and Iran deplete stocks. The Defense Department “is committed to rapidly expanding the defense industrial base by leveraging all available commercial solutions and technologies to ensure our warfighters maintain a decisive advantage,” a Pentagon official said.

 

Wall Street Journal

JPMorgan Chase Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Barnum has said he backs a Trump administration proposal to end mandatory quarterly reporting. "We're very supportive of all initiatives and any initiatives that lessen the burden to ensure that U.S.-listed markets remain maximally robust," Barnum said on a post-earnings call. The Wall Street Journal in March reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission is preparing a proposal to ​ditch the requirement and give companies the option to share results twice ⁠a year.

 

Reuters

A Manhattan jury has held that Live Nation illegally maintained a monopoly that harmed competition among venues, ticketing services and other concert promoters. The lawsuit alleged that the company engaged in “anticompetitive conduct,” resulting in fans’ paying higher fees, artists’ having fewer options for touring and venues’ being coerced to use Ticketmaster. “This is a fantastic outcome for the American people,” said Omeed A. Assefi, the acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. “DOJ and some states settled their case and got instant relief. The remaining states received a liability finding and will now move on to the next phase of a remedies trial. Everyone but Live Nation wins with this scenario.” Live Nation said in a statement: "The jury’s verdict is not the last word on this matter. Pending motions will determine whether the liability and damages rulings stand."

 

Bloomberg

Financial Times

NBC News

Global advertising agencies Publicis, WPP and Dentsu have settled a probe by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) which alleged they colluded to boycott online media platforms based on political content they didn't like, including Elon Musk’s X. The settlements with the FTC and eight Republican-led ‌U.S. ⁠states require Dentsu, Publicis and WPP's GroupM to stop alleged efforts to set common "brand safety" standards, or use "exclusion lists" when placing ads. “This unlawful collusion not only damaged our marketplace, but also distorted the marketplace of ideas by discriminating ​against speech and ideas that fell below the unlawfully agreed-upon floor," FTC ​Chairman Andrew Ferguson said.

 

AdWeek

Financial Times

Reuters

A court in Milan has given the go-ahead to a class-action lawsuit on behalf of tens of millions of Facebook users affected by a data leak. According to the court ​order, the data scraping incident, ​which took place between January 2018 and ⁠September 2019 and was disclosed ​by Facebook parent Meta in 2021, affected around 533 ​million Facebook users globally. The CTCU consumer association seeks compensation on behalf of social media ​users who lost, or feared losing, ​control over their personal data in breach of ‌the ⁠EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). "We respectfully disagree with the court's decision, which is ​a procedural ruling only and ​makes ⁠no finding that Meta violated any law," a Meta spokesperson said, adding: "We are confident ⁠this ​meritless action will ultimately ​be dismissed."

 

Reuters

Silicon

Reuters reports that Wall Street executives have said they are stress‑testing or monitoring private credit portfolios as the asset class comes under scrutiny, but say they are comfortable with their exposure. "We're passing our own test, and we're comfortable with how we're sitting there, so the constant monitoring the risk capital framework, will play a role," Citigroup CFO Gonzalo Luchetti ​said on an earnings call.  Three of the six biggest U.S. lenders recently disclosed about $108bn  financing exposure to private credit or related loans during their quarterly earnings

 

Reuters

The increasing dominance of four major investment banks - BNP Paribas, Barclays, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley - in supplying billions of dollars to help juice bets at hedge funds and proprietary trading firms is precipitating new financial stability risks, ratings agency S&P Global has warned. “A small network of global banks has underpinned nonbank trading firms’ ascent to the center of the financial ecosystem,” S&P's report said. “Together with record leverage and scale and the concentration of such exposures in a handful of banks, this means the ecosystem exhibits an inherent fragility that could be tested under severe stress.”

 

Bloomberg

Financial Times

The $3.5 trillion private credit market does not present a systemic risk to the wider financial ​system, bond giant PIMCO's group chief investment officer Daniel Ivascyn ‌has said. "We do not see ​systemic risks within private credit, we see disappointment, we see ⁠lower returns than anticipated," Ivascyn told a PIMCO media conference ​in London. Reuters notes that alternative asset managers' stocks this year have been badly hit by risks linked to AI, fund outflows and fears of credit stress.

 

Reuters

President Donald Trump has threatened to fire Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell from his separate seat on the U.S. central bank's Board ​of Governors if Powell does not vacate that post as well when his term as Fed chief ends on May 15. In an interview with Fox Business, Trump said that if Powell stays on the board of the Fed past the date, "then I’ll have to fire him, OK? If he’s not leaving on time, I’ve held back firing him. I’ve wanted to fire him, but I hate to be controversial." Powell, citing a longstanding precedent, has said he will stay on as Fed chair if Kevin Warsh, Trump’s nominee to replace him, has not been confirmed before his departure date. Warsh has a confirmation hearing scheduled for next week, but Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told NBC News on Tuesday that he will not vote to advance his nomination until the Justice Department drops its ongoing investigation into Powell over his handling of the $2.5bn renovation of the Fed’s headquarters. Trump on Wednesday ruled out dropping the investigation.

 

Financial Times

NBC News

Reuters

The EU is planning the biggest relaxation of its rules on corporate mergers in decades to give greater weight to “innovation, investment and resilience of the internal market”, the FT reports.

 

Financial Times

Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk has hired about 2,000 people this year, as the company reshapes its workforce after laying off about 10% of employees in 2025.  CEO Mike Doustdar pushed through broad layoffs last year in a bid to make Novo faster and more aggressive, Bloomberg reports. About 1,400 of the hires have already started, a company spokeswoman said. Of the new hires, Novo said 398 have been in Denmark.

 

Bloomberg

Snapchat owner Snap has cut around 1,000 jobs, representing 16% of its workforce, as part of a strategy to reduce annual costs by $500m. Co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel described this as a "crucible moment" for the company, which has faced pressure from activist investor Irenic Capital Management. Spiegel said that remaining staff will leverage AI tools to enhance productivity, saying that the technology will help "reduce repetitive work and increase velocity."

 

Los Angeles Times

U.S. News

Investors in Monte dei Paschi di Siena have voted to back ousted boss Luigi Lovaglio. Lovaglio was pushed out as chief executive of the world's oldest lender at the beginning of March, following disagreements with board members and billionaire industrialist Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone after presenting in February a strategy that envisaged a swift merger of recently-acquired rival Mediobanca into MPS to boost savings. Lovaglio's supporters won eight board seats after ​backing from investors representing about a third of MPS' capital. T

 

Financial Times

Reuters