While Wall Street prepares for the prospect of a more aggressive Federal Reserve, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan has a reassuring message for anxious investors.

Despite Bank of America’s issuing the most hawkish forecast on Wall Street — predicting three interest rate hikes under Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh — Moynihan insists a recession is nowhere in sight.

“The [U.S.] president thought it was going to be rate cuts. Now we’re talking about rate hikes. Will that lead us into a recession?” FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo asked Moynihan on the New York Stock Exchange floor Wednesday.

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“No, because at the end of day, that’s the balance the Fed has to have, is they’re trying to keep the inflation from getting out of control, price stability,” Moynihan responded. “And Chairman Warsh made it clear that’s what he stands for.”

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan visits Fox News Channel Studios on June 3, 2026, in New York City. (Getty Images)

“He’s focused on that, that’s their job. But you also have to be mindful of the other side, which is, recession means unemployment goes up, and you have to stabilize unemployment. So they’ve gotta mind that,” he added. “The U.S. economy is growing better than most. The inflation is higher than people want it to be, but if you talk to people who are in the positions Kevin’s in… they could never get inflation back. They’re sort of saying, ‘Wait, we can never get the economies to recover fast enough.’ I think it’s easier to bring it down carefully than it is to get it going, and so you want to air a little bit to the upside.”

During their latest meeting, the Federal Reserve announced that it would hold interest rates steady due to concerns about elevated inflation amid the war in Iran, as Warsh’s tenure leading the central bank begins in earnest.

Fed policymakers voted 12-0 to leave the benchmark federal funds rate unchanged at its current range of 3.5% to 3.75%. The move follows the central bank’s decisions to hold rates steady in January, March and April after three consecutive 25-basis-point rate cuts in September, October and December of last year.

Moynihan argues that higher interest rates shouldn’t be feared but rather celebrated as a sign of a strong U.S. economy.

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“We have a great research team… They’ve also put three Fed raises on the table, meaning that the inflation is going to be stickier, go[ing] all the way through ‘27 into ‘28, largely just to deal with the aftermath of the oil price shock,” the CEO said. “But at the end of day, the economy has grown a little faster now than they thought it was going to grow a few months ago.”

“Inflation will take a while, rates will be higher. But everybody argues for rates to be high or low. At the end of it, rates are an outgrowth of a very strong economy in the United States and a need to keep inflation in check.”

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FOX Business’ Eric Revell contributed to this report.

The smallest of the three breweries based in Tadcaster, it is also an unlimited company which allows it to maintain financial privacy.

Smith introduced many changes when he took control as chairman including turning tenants into managers, directly employed by the brewery.

It enabled the business to dictate the policies it is known for and, as its website states, its pubs are “havens from the digital world”.

Sweeting said: “Mr Smith had his standards, Mr Smith had his reasons and a lot of people understood.

“Mr Smith was also a man of principle and there would have been a reason for regulations in the pubs.

“A lot of people were quite happy for those regulations because we respected him.”

Councillor Kirsty Poskitt, who represents Tadcaster on North Yorkshire Council, said her family had close ties with the brewery and that she had found Smith to be passionate about local history.

“He was very well-known, not just in Tadcaster, but across the country and probably throughout the world. It’s impacted lots of people.

“It’s a sad day. He obviously had quite a lot of influence on the town itself, just in terms of its structure and how it is. His legacy is vast and varied.”

Speaking about the company’s ownership of land and property in the area, she said: “He is a very intrinsic part of why Tadcaster is like it is today. I think everyone’s reflecting on what he has meant to the town.”

Poskitt regularly met with Smith in her role as a councillor and said he was a “kind and fascinating man”.

“He was quite eccentric, but he was a really interesting man. He was passionate about history. I was always grateful for time with him and enjoyed speaking to him.”

Her father and grandfather both worked at the brewery, the latter as a cooper, and Smith remembered them both.

“Throughout Tadcaster there are an awful lot of people that were employed by the brewery and who live in houses that belong to the brewery.

“I’ve been here pretty much my whole life and he was a controversial figure in lots of people’s eyes, and but those that did interact with him and those that did know him would make positive statements about him and would acknowledge that he was an intelligent man with big family and his heart was in the right place.

“He always acted in the best interests of the town. He was incredibly private. For me he is a very big part of Tadcaster’s history and leaves a huge legacy.”

The banking giant is set to rebrand its Halifax operations under the Lloyds name

Lloyds Banking Group is preparing to scrap its Halifax brand in a decision that will bring the curtain down on the retail bank’s 173-year presence on the high street.

The FTSE 100 giant – which also owns Bank of Scotland and Scottish Widows – announced on Wednesday it would absorb Halifax into the overarching Lloyds name.

Lloyds maintained the shake-up would streamline its customer service operations by consolidating around a single main consumer banking division.

“There are no changes to previously announced plans for branches, and there are no role reductions as part of today’s announcement,” said Jas Singh, Lloyds’ chief executive of consumer relations.

The bank will start removing Halifax signage from its 190 branches in early 2027. From next year, Lloyds will stand as the group’s only brand across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, as reported by City AM.

Lloyds was established in Birmingham in 1765, while Halifax takes its name from the West Yorkshire town where it began life as a building society in 1852.

Halifax relinquished its mutual status in 1997 when it floated on the London Stock Exchange, but ceased trading independently four years later following a merger with Bank of Scotland to create HBOS.

Lloyds stepped in to rescue HBOS in 2009 amid the financial crisis, bringing the firm’s brands into its stable.

The bank emphasised it remained committed to its presence in the town of Halifax, highlighting a recent £116m investment in its Trinity Road office in Halifax town centre. Around 3,000 Lloyds employees are based in the town.

The development arrives amidst a broader transformation for the banking sector on the high street.

Santander is reportedly considering proposals to remove TSB from the high street following its nearly £3bn landmark acquisition last year.

The decision would bring to a close TSB’s 215-year presence on Britain’s high street. The transaction, which was unveiled last July, incorporated TSB’s five million customers, £34bn in mortgages and £35bn in deposits into its portfolio.

Other significant consolidation activity in recent years has included Barclays’ £600m acquisition of Tesco’s banking division last year, which enabled it to return £700m to shareholders through an incremental share buyback. HSBC also extended its partnership with M&S banking arm in 2024, which permits the grocer to utilise its credit offering.

Sony Interactive Entertainment announced Wednesday that it will stop producing physical game discs for all new titles releasing on PlayStation consoles starting in January 2028, marking the end of a 50-year tradition of physical video game media and drawing immediate and intense backlash from players, collectors and game preservation advocates worldwide.

Sony Interactive Entertainment’s content communications senior director Sid Shuman said: “As consumer preferences and the broader entertainment industry continue to shift away from physical discs to digital, physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting January 2028. Following this date, new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only.”

The announcement, published simultaneously on the official PlayStation Blog and previewed by Game File ahead of its public release, represents one of the most consequential decisions in Sony’s gaming history, effectively closing the door on a format that the company helped define with the original PlayStation’s shift to CD-ROMs in 1994 and then championed through subsequent generations of hardware using DVDs, standard Blu-Rays and eventually 4K Blu-Rays in its disc-based consoles.

Sony noted that the transition has no impact on games that already released or will be releasing prior to January 2028 in disc format, citing upcoming PlayStation game “Marvel’s Wolverine” as among the titles that would still receive a physical disc edition. Shuman cited the move as “a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs.”

Shuman continued in the announcement: “This transition will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today. We’ll continue to prioritize our resources to drive innovation in how players can access games and provide choices as to where players prefer to purchase new games, whether that’s at retailers or PlayStation Store.”

The policy applies to all new PlayStation games released from January 2028 forward, covering both Sony’s own first-party titles and third-party publishers releasing games on PlayStation hardware. Physical retailers will still be able to sell new games after the cutoff, but those products will no longer contain a disc. Instead, they will be distributed in digital formats only, though Sony has not yet clarified exactly what that will look like at retail, whether through boxes containing download codes, cards with digital redemption prompts, or some other physical-but-discless format.

Microsoft has been offering codes in boxes for certain releases for years and the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2 ushered in game key cards, which are effectively glorified download codes but can still be shared and traded. Unlike single-use codes, game key cards retain some of the secondhand-market flexibility of physical media. It doesn’t sound like Sony is considering any similar compromise for physical media on its upcoming PS6.

The announcement carries significant implications for Sony’s next-generation console, widely expected to be called the PlayStation 6. Many industry observers had assumed the PS6 would at minimum offer an optional disc drive for backward compatibility with existing physical PS5 games, but Wednesday’s announcement narrows those expectations considerably.

Piers Harding-Rolls, senior games research analyst at Ampere Analysis, told Game File: “This pretty much guarantees that PS6 won’t arrive until 2028 at the earliest.”

The digital transition Sony is formalizing has been underway for years across the entertainment industry. Music pivoted away from CDs more than a decade ago, while film and television have largely moved to streaming, leaving the gaming sector as one of the last major entertainment categories to still produce a meaningful volume of physical media. Sony has previously pointed to data showing a growing share of game sales occurring digitally, with many major titles now selling more than half their copies through digital storefronts rather than retail disc sales.

The announcement arrived alongside a separate, related development: Sony disclosed that it will be closing the PlayStation Store for its older PlayStation 3 console and PS Vita handheld in most countries in July 2027, with some regional shutdowns beginning even earlier.

Sony said in its PS3 and PS Vita store closing announcement: “We know this news may be disappointing to PS3 and PS Vita players who hold a special place in their hearts for this generation of gaming,” characterizing the move as one that “was not an easy decision for us to make,” and saying the marketplaces “are no longer able” to support modern commerce systems.

That parallel announcement has amplified concerns among gaming preservation advocates, who argue that the combination of closing older digital storefronts and eliminating new physical disc production creates a permanent access problem for games, since players who purchase digital titles receive only a personal license for non-commercial use rather than ownership of the content in any lasting or transferable form, unlike physical disc ownership.

The concern is not theoretical. Sony’s 2024 shutdown of “Concord,” a first-party multiplayer game that was pulled from sale and effectively wiped from players’ libraries just weeks after launch, demonstrated in stark terms how digital game ownership differs fundamentally from owning a disc. Physical discs can be shared, resold, lent to friends and used indefinitely regardless of whether a company continues to support the title. Digital licenses expire when a company decides they do.

A Sony spokesperson noted to Game File that with all digital content, including games, movies and music, players are purchasing a personal license for non-commercial use, an explicit acknowledgment that digital purchasing confers different rights than physical ownership.

Player reaction across social media and gaming forums following Wednesday’s announcement was swift and overwhelmingly negative. Comments on the PlayStation Blog post, which accumulated thousands of responses within hours, ranged from expressions of disappointment to declarations that Sony had irreversibly damaged its relationship with a segment of its customer base that values physical game ownership.

The announcement comes as Sony has already been raising prices on PlayStation hardware, with the PlayStation 5 console line receiving a price increase in April driven in part by skyrocketing memory chip costs tied to the global AI infrastructure buildout. That context has left some players feeling squeezed from multiple directions simultaneously, paying more for hardware while losing the ability to buy, share, resell or lend physical copies of the games they play.

Stefan Arnold
Head of Investor Relations

So I would suggest we start. So again, thank you for participating in this IR talk. And again, good afternoon, morning or evening from wherever you are listening today.

So this is now our last call for Q2 or half year 1 2026. And as always, some notes at the very beginning. So this — with this, we are following the recommendations of the ESMA. This means we are just sharing, of course, publicly known information. The call was made accessible to everyone who is interested via our website. And if we would maybe show any documents later on, which I would expect not to happen, then this will be, of course, made available to all nonparticipants as well. And another hint, this call will not be recorded by us, but I think there will be some transcripts produced by service companies.

To start with, let me first summarize the most important points of Q1 2026. So sales revenues in Q1 amounted to around EUR 318 million, which corresponds to a reported growth rate of 8%. Adjusted for negative FX effects, the growth amounted to more than 11%. Here, it is important to know that looking at the development of the past month, we see that there is a stronger prebuying effect than we initially expected. To be honest, we cannot, of course, quantify that in detail. But looking at the strong organic growth in Q1, we would estimate that 2 or 3 — between 2 and

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