Business
Paramount and Warner Bros mega merger paused by judge
A US federal judge has temporarily blocked the proposed $110bn (£85bn) merger between media giants Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros Discovery.
The decision follows a lawsuit brought by a coalition of 12 US states, including California and New York, aiming to halt the deal over concerns it would stifle competition and raise consumer prices.
Prosecutors representing the states said merging two major studios would cause “substantial harm on movie theatres, basic cable distributors, and, ultimately, audiences nationwide”.
In response, the media giants argued that the states had misread the market and that merging would improve streaming efficiency.
US district judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issued the temporary restraining order on Monday following legals arguments heard last week.
Under the 14-day injunction, neither company can finalise the deal or start joining the businesses together.
In her ruling, the judge noted that the state coalition raised “serious questions” regarding the deal’s impact on movie distribution.
She warned that allowing the merger to proceed now would make it “extraordinarily difficult to unscramble the egg” if the court decided later to block it all together.
Judge Martínez-Olguín also pushed back against the companies’ arguments, highlighting that “public’s vital interest in antitrust enforcement” outweighed any temporary delay to the merger.
She said that Paramount and Warner Bros “will continue to operate as separate, viable companies competing in the marketplace” while legal proceedings continue.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., speaks during a press conference at the Health and Human Services headquarters in Washington, D.C., U.S., Feb. 23, 2026.
Nathan Howard | Reuters
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday said that the ongoing outbreak of cyclosporiasis is “under control.”
“We’ve identified the source of the outbreak, and the companies that are involved have implemented a recall,” Kennedy said, responding to questions during a news briefing about health care fraud.
The Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, both under Kennedy’s purview as HHS secretary, have faced criticism for their responses to the outbreak. Critics have blasted the federal agencies for the delays in alerting the public and tracking down the source, which they have linked to shredded iceberg lettuce from central Mexico that was supplied by produce giant Taylor Farms.
Some have claimed that agency cuts by the Trump administration have hampered the investigation, although the cyclospora parasite itself presents challenges due to its lengthy incubation period.
“Those criticisms are invalid,” Kennedy said during the briefing, responding to a question regarding criticism of the job cuts under his leadership. “We had no cuts in the surveillance program. We did cuts in the FoodNet program, but they were for redundant surveillance.”
FoodNet, or the Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network, stopped mandatory reporting for six of eight pathogens — including cyclospora — last year due to funding cuts. The organization is a partnership between the CDC, the FDA, 10 state health departments and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The FDA has concluded that the current cyclospora outbreak is linked to the iceberg lettuce, some of which was served by Yum Brands’ Taco Bell. Taylor Farms has recalled the produce linked to the outbreak, while Taco Bell has pulled it from its restaurants.
However, the agency’s messaging about a false positive test for cyclospora in a sample of Taylor Farms lettuce during its investigation sparked confusion, leading the FDA to issue a clarification on Monday. It said it still suspects the company’s iceberg lettuce is the source of the outbreak.
The CDC, FDA and public health officials in multiple states have been investigating the outbreak, with illnesses first appearing on May 13. So far, more than 1,644 cases have been reported, with 94 hospitalizations and no deaths, according to the CDC.
Making Money panelists Mohamed El-Erian and Neil Dutta discuss the five task forces of the Federal Reserve.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said in an interview on Monday that he wouldn’t buy stocks or long-term Treasury bonds at their current prices as he thinks investors aren’t accounting fully for risks that could cause turmoil in equity and debt markets.
Dimon said in an interview with CNBC that he thinks geopolitical and fiscal risks are “probably bigger than other people think” amid the ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as looming tensions between the U.S. and China.
He also said that growing budget deficits by governments around the world pose a fiscal risk during a period of rising defense spending, which could lead to interest rates on government bonds remaining higher.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said he’s cautious about stock market valuations and wouldn’t buy bonds given current prices and yields. (Caroline Brehman/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Dimon said he wouldn’t buy long-term Treasurys given the current conditions of the bond market, saying that he thinks interest rates on U.S. bonds will likely remain elevated even if inflation subsides.
DIMON URGES CALM OVER FEAR ABOUT AI’S IMPACT ON JOBS: ‘STOP BEING BREATHLESS OVER IT’
The JPMorgan Chase CEO said he believes “the 10-year bond should probably be at 4% to 4.5%” even if inflation returns to the Federal Reserve’s long-run target of 2%, and said that he personally wouldn’t buy long-term Treasurys and sees little upside for bond prices.
The 10-year Treasury yield is currently about 4.6% and has remained above 4.2% since March after they had trended closer to 4% late last year.
The most recent consumer price index (CPI) data showed inflation was up 3.5% from a year ago – well above the Fed’s 2% target – despite declining month-over-month as gas prices declined as the energy market stabilized during a period of reduced hostilities between the U.S. and Iran.
JAMIE DIMON SAYS HE UNDERSTANDS WHY PEOPLE HAVE GROWN ‘ANTI-RICH’
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| JPM | JPMORGAN CHASE & CO. | 345.15 | +6.24 | +1.84% |
Stubbornly high inflation prompted the Fed to leave interest rates unchanged at the central bank’s June meeting and Fed Chair Kevin Warsh has signaled that policymakers won’t tolerate elevated inflation.
That has caused the market’s view of the probability of rate cuts to plunge, as the CME FedWatch tool suggests that the federal funds rate will either remain steady or rise before the end of this year.
Dimon also struck a cautious note on the stock market in the interview, saying he wouldn’t invest in the broader market at the high valuations that can currently be found at many leading companies and would instead look at individual companies to find “a great investment.”
Dimon likened the surge of investment in AI to the rise of the Internet. (Alexander Tamargo/Getty Images for America Business Forum)
JPMORGAN NAMES 2 NEW CO-PRESIDENTS, SETTING UP RACE TO SUCCEED JAMIE DIMON
He also likened the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the market as it reshapes the tech sector and the broader economy to what happened during the initial internet boom, saying that companies are spending a “huge” amount of money that may not quickly lead to the desired results.
“Will it in total pay off? Probably, just like the internet did,” Dimon told CNBC. “Will it pay off the way you expect and the timetable you expect? Definitely not.”
A Spacex Flacon 9 rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 40 on June 08, 2026 in Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images
Goldman Sachs has created a new platform to expand its offerings for wealthy clients and family offices who increasingly want direct stakes in fast-growing private companies, CNBC has learned.
The new group, called the alternative investments platform, combines Goldman’s existing alternatives business with two newly established teams, according to a memo seen first by CNBC.
The new teams focus on direct investments in individual private companies, rather than broader private equity funds, and on helping clients buy and sell those stakes, according to the memo.
“There has been a lot of focus on the big growth tech names and getting clients access to those before they debut in the public markets,” Kristin Olson, Goldman Sachs’ global head of alternatives for wealth, told CNBC in an interview.
Goldman’s move reflects two of the biggest trends reshaping Wall Street. The firm has spent years pushing deeper into wealth and asset management because of its perception as providing steadier revenues than investment banking and trading. At the same time, the most successful startups are staying private far longer than they once did, allowing early investors to capture most of the gains before public investors get a chance.
“Companies are going public at a trillion dollars,” Olson said. “If you haven’t participated along the way, you’re clearly missing a big part of the growth cycle.”
AI boom
Goldman has been arranging direct investments in later-stage private companies for wealthy clients for roughly two decades, Olson said, pointing to Facebook before its 2012 IPO and later SpaceX, Stripe and Canva. But growth in demand for the asset class convinced executives to break out the business, she added.
The firm’s goal, Olson said, is to help clients identify promising companies before they become household names.
Rather than targeting early-stage startups, Olson said Goldman generally focuses on later-stage companies that have established products, meaningful revenue and clearer paths toward profitability, seeking what she described as a “sweet spot” between risk and return.
The AI investment boom has only intensified demand. Beyond leading model developers, Goldman is increasingly steering clients toward investments in the infrastructure underpinning AI, including data centers and related projects, Olson said.
The announcement comes days after Goldman reported record quarterly revenue, with executives highlighting AI-driven activity across investment banking, trading and financing businesses. The results reinforced investors’ view that Goldman is positioned to benefit from multiple facets of the AI investment cycle.
The announcement also formalizes Goldman’s growing business helping clients find liquidity for private investments.
Through its new secondary advisory group, the firm plans to expand a marketplace that allows clients to buy and sell private holdings while also advising clients looking to exit investments held outside Goldman.
“We said, let’s break that out and let’s make it very clearly defined as something that we’re leaning into,” Olson said.
The Bear Traps Report founder Larry McDonald weighs in on Big Tech earnings on Mornings with Maria.
Apple is raising prices on Apple Music subscriptions as well as certain Apple One plans as the company faces higher licensing costs.
The tech giant last week hiked prices for Apple Music plans across subscription tiers. Individual plans will rise by $1 a month to $11.99, while student plans will increase by the same amount to $6.99 a month.
Prices for the Apple Music family plan are also rising by $3 per month to a new monthly rate of $19.99.
The company also hiked prices for some tiers of Apple One – the company’s bundle that allows consumers to subscribe simultaneously to Apple TV, Music, iCloud+, Arcade, Fitness+ and News+ or the first four services.
APPLE RAISES IPAD AND MACBOOK PRICES AS MEMORY CHIP COSTS SURGE
Apple raised prices on Apple Music plans as well as some Apple One packages. (CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Prices for the Apple One family tier are set to rise by $2 to a new total of $27.95 per month. Family plans may be shared with up to five people and have up to 200 gigabytes of iCloud storage, though they don’t include News+ or Fitness+ in the package.
The individual Apple One subscription, which includes the same four services but with 50 gigabytes of iCloud storage, is unchanged at $19.95 a month.
Apple One’s Premier package, which includes all six of the company’s subscription services with up to 2 terabytes of storage and may be shared among five people, will rise in price by $2 to $39.95 per month.
APPLE BRIEFLY OVERTAKES NVIDIA AS WORLD’S MOST VALUABLE COMPANY AMID AI INVESTMENT DOUBTS
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AAPL | APPLE INC. | 326.59 | -7.15 | -2.14% |
The price increases apply to consumers in the U.S. as well as other countries around the world.
The moves weren’t announced by Apple, which adjusted the prices for the various subscriptions and tiers on its website on Friday. Apple told 9to5Mac, “As a result of rising licensing costs, Apple Music is increasing its subscription price beginning today.”
FOX Business reached out to Apple for comment.
APPLE HIT WITH LAWSUIT CLAIMING ICLOUD+ PRIVACY TOOL COULD EXPOSE USERS’ REAL EMAILS TO WEBSITES
Apple’s subscription price hikes follow higher iPad and MacBook prices. (Apple)
In late June, Apple announced price hikes for its iPad tablets and MacBook laptops amid rising memory chip costs.
The company raised the price of the MacBook Air by $200 to a new total of $1,299, while the budget Neo laptop price rose from $599 to $699. The price of a MacBook Pro with 1 terabyte of storage rose $300 to $1,999, while the iPad Air with 128 gigabytes of storage rose from $599 to $749.
GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE
Apple said at the time that it has “never seen a component price increase this much, this quickly,” adding that it had “shielded our customers from these increases so far, but we have now reached a point where we need to begin raising prices on a number of products.”
ADM commercially scaling production of high-protein egg ingredient at Clinton, Iowa, facility.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent joins ‘Mornings with Maria’ to discuss the Trump administration’s crackdown on government fraud, mounting economic pressure on Iran, the AI race with China and the outlook for the U.S. economy.
The Trump administration has successfully tracked down the ayatollah’s “money man,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent revealed to FOX Business on Tuesday, detailing plans to publicly expose more than $100 million in properties linked to Iran’s supreme leader around the world.
“We have found the money man for the ayatollah. We are tracking the ayatollah’s properties around the world,” Bessent told “Mornings With Maria.”
“We hope to soon be able to print his $100 million-plus properties and show the addresses, and we’re preserving this money for the American people.”
MAJOR DISPUTE TO THREATEN TRUMP’S IRAN DEAL OVER BILLIONS IN FROZEN TEHRAN FUNDS: EXPERT
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent arrives to testify before the House Ways and Means Committee in the Longworth House Office Building on June 4 in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The Trump Treasury chief said the effort is part of the administration’s broader “Economic Fury” campaign against Iran, a “one-two punch” combined with the military “Epic Fury” campaign that rattled the region.
“Economic Fury,” he said, aims to dismantle the regime’s financial network by tracking overseas assets, freezing accounts and ratcheting up economic pressure following recent military operations.
Bessent said officials are pursuing Iranian assets across the globe while working to choke off the regime’s access to funding, arguing the pressure campaign has already helped drive Iran’s currency to record lows against the U.S. dollar and fueled soaring inflation inside the country.
TRUMP’S 60-DAY IRAN DEAL REACHES HALFWAY MARK AS CEASEFIRE COLLAPSES INTO ESCALATING WAR
An Iranian flag amid rubble and debris in Tehran. (Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images)
“[Their currency] is at an all-time low versus the dollar. It’s in freefall, and we think the inflation rate is upwards of 180% in Iran,” he said.
“So, the government is causing the people to suffer, and we’re going to keep pressing, but we’re also going to marshal the resources and save the resources that we recover for the Iranian people when we get on the other side of this.”
GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE
FDD Iran Program senior director and senior fellow Behnam Ben Taleblu discusses next steps in the Iranian conflict on ‘The Bottom Line.’
Bessent added that Treasury is also targeting Iran’s oil revenues, pointing to sanctions on Chinese “teapot” refineries and what he described as a roughly 40% decline in China’s purchases of Iranian crude in recent months, which he said has intensified financial pressure on the regime.
Daktronics EVP Wiemann sells $76,880 in DAKT stock
Around 75% of the world’s population is online and – in many ways – this makes all our lives better. But faced with a barrage of ads, misinformation, AI slop, toxicity and doom-scrolling, it can feel like the internet is kind of… broken.
What happened? And where are we headed next?
Featuring interviews with: Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, Hatelab director Matthew Williams, author and activist Cory Doctorow and author and co-founder of Logging Off Club Adele Zeynep Walton. Big thanks to students at the University of Cardiff.
Film by Daniel Nils Roberts
Senate Democrat calls for probe of US derivatives regulator’s staff cuts
Lindt has partially U-turned on its decision to hike prices after Easter chocolate sales dropped.
The Swiss chocolate maker said a “necessary groupwide” price surge of 11.8% was one of the reasons revenue shrank in the first half of this year, particularly in the UK, Germany, and Switzerland.
It also blamed weaker Easter demand and a drop in tourism from Asia and the Middle East “due to geopolitical uncertainties”. In response, it said it has adjusted prices and boosted marketing in certain regions for the second half of the year.
Around Easter, Lindt is known for its chocolate rabbits wrapped in gold-coloured foil and decorated with a red ribbon and bell on their necks.
Overall, the company’s sales dipped 0.9%, with European sales down by 2.1%. It added that “performance was impacted by more price-sensitive and mature markets such as Germany, Switzerland and the UK”.
By volume, meaning the amount of chocolate sold rather than the money it made, overall sales sank 7.5%. Pre-tax profit fell 1.5%.
Meanwhile, sales of Lindt chocolate in airports decreased “due to ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, and therefore declining passenger traffic”.
Lindt said its sales picked up in North America, Australia, China, and Japan, though these countries account for a much smaller slice of its sales than Europe, where it makes over half its revenue.
Lindt chief executive Adalbert Lechner said: “The actions we have initiated focus on volume recovery in the second half of 2026 and lay the foundation to regain volume growth momentum in 2027.”
Lindt is not the only chocolate firm which has been putting prices up.
Experts say climate change has led to extreme rainfall and droughts which have decreased cocoa farmers’ crops.
This pushes up costs of making chocolate, and companies have chosen different ways to react to this, with some reducing chocolate content or sizes rather than raising prices.
According to the latest official data, the annual rate of chocolate and sweet price rises is 7.9%, external – much higher than the general rate of UK inflation at 2.8%, external.
Madonna Denies Being In Donald Trump’s World Cup Suite
RFK Jr. says outbreak is under control
Interactive Brokers Earnings Reveal $1.90B Revenue, How Will IBKR Stock React?
-
NewsBeat5 days agoLondon Mayor Sadiq Khan handed a peerage by Keir Starmer alongside 15 other Labour figures… just days before the PM leaves No10
-
Fashion4 days agoWeekend Open Thread – Corporette.com
-
Politics3 days agoThe House | The City of London can help the new chancellor deliver growth in every postcode
-
Politics6 days agoYoung campaigners urge incoming PM to act on outdoor junk food ads
-
Crypto World6 days agoCFTC blocks Kalshi from unwinding Michigan trades after court order
-
Crypto World4 days agoTwo July Windows Left: The CLARITY Act’s Senate Fight and What Failure Means
-
Crypto World3 days agoRipple Payments Joins MiCA With 14 Firms, Does It Mean Anything For XRP?
-
Business6 days agoNvidia Stock Slips After Big Tuesday Rally as Huang Confirms Vera Rubin Chip Is Now in Production Today
-
Politics2 days agoDemocrats look to World Cup watch parties to register thousands of voters
-
Entertainment6 days agoDisney’s Most Ambitious Failed Star Wars Attraction Is Coming to SDCC
-
Crypto World4 days agoRipple wins EU-wide access as ESMA adds it to MiCA register
-
Crypto World12 hours agoGrayscale Files For Worldcoin ETF, WLD Registers Sharp Rise
-
Crypto World5 days agoInjective Submits SEC Transfer-Agent Registration to Onchain Ownership Records
-
Business6 days agoPalantir Shares Rise After Expanded Nvidia Partnership and Fresh Analyst Upgrades Ahead of Earnings Day
-
Tech20 hours agoSail Virtually Aboard The “Itanic” With IA-64 Emulator
-
Tech17 hours agoTurtle Beach Command Series KB7 review: a nifty screen-equipped gaming keyboard
-
NewsBeat4 days agoRegistration is now open for March for Men with Kev 2026
-
NewsBeat1 day agoUnregistered fitter used Gas Safe logo on business flyers
-
Sports6 days agoNew Cornerback Enters Vikings Trade Rumor Mill
-
News Videos5 days agoMoney | Class 12 Economics | CBSE Board Exam 2026-27
You must be logged in to post a comment Login