There’s a strong signal for boardrooms coming from the loud noise in Washington: brace for crisis. Senior Trump administration officials inadvertently included a journalist in a group chat, in the latest example of sloppiness with sensitive material. Companies entrust the government with loads of confidential information, too, and the risks of exposure are rising quickly. The U.S. capital is renowned for leaks to advance political agendas, but recent events suggest greater vulnerability to hacking and accidental slips. The Atlantic exposed on Monday that even top-secret information isn’t safe. Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others used the commercial messaging

Semantic satiation is the technical term for what happens when a word or phrase loses its meaning from overuse. In the world of M&A, takeover targets shout “undervalued” in response to unwelcome acquisition offers so often that it’s easy for suitors and shareholders to tune it out. Beacon Roofing Supply’s $11 billion sale provides a perfect example of why it happens. CEOs and their advisers would be better served by choosing their words more carefully. QXO is effectively a shell company helmed by dealmaker Brad Jacobs that aims to roll up a building-products behemoth with $50 billion of sales, starting with Beacon.

Google’s yellow-brick road might be a path to nowhere. The search giant on Tuesday agreed to buy cybersecurity platform Wiz for $32 billion. It may help boss Sundar Pichai in his battle for the cloud, but the journey is riddled with potholes. Parent Alphabet is paying in cash to buy the startup backed by Blackstone, Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital. It was a hard-fought agreement. Back in the middle of last year, the technology goliath offered $23 billion for Wiz, according to the Wall Street Journal, which would already have made it Google’s largest acquisition. Talks collapsed in part over concerns that

The new top cop at the U.S. Federal Reserve hardly fits the presidential mold. Michelle Bowman, Donald Trump’s pick to be the central bank’s vice chair of supervision, has indicated that she believes in aligning federal rules with Europe and the rest of the world. If so, it would mean largely conforming to Basel 3, the sort of international accord the White House is trashing most everywhere else. Bowman should be a welcome choice to the eight systemically important U.S. banks, which include Bank of America and Goldman Sachs. JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon led the charge against her predecessor, Michael Barr, who initially proposed

Capital-markets bankers started 2025 betting on an initial public offering boom. Now they’re facing a plot twist. Monday’s market selloff and surging volatility may give IPO hopefuls like Klarna, CoreWeave and others pause for thought. The headache for companies and advisers alike is that the wobbles may persist, which could force capital-hungry issuers to go ahead and take the plunge anyway. The year started off well. The S&P 500 Index hit record highs in February. Companies have raised a total of $7.1 billion on U.S. exchanges so far in 2025, the highest year-to-date total since 2021, per LSEG data. But the sentiment

It turns out that politicians really do have the power to wrest the economic cycle – in this case, to negative effect. After a monthlong reprieve, U.S. President Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports are set to begin. Between haphazard spending cuts and will-he-won’t-he trade broadsides, the S&P 500 has coughed up nearly the entirety of its gains following Trump’s election, while forecasters have slashed growth projections. The most important reason: consumers, the engine of the U.S. economy, are pulling back, and it looks like it’s due to policy choices. Consumer confidence has declined rapidly since the administration began

How fast should an Asia-focused bank grow? There’s no right answer, but the long-term number probably ought to be higher than the 3% compound annual revenue increase that analysts are pencilling in for $200 billion HSBC between 2025 and 2027. New CEO Georges Elhedery announced a broadly sensible strategy for the lender on Wednesday, while implicitly acknowledging that the growth question is partly out of his hands. It makes a further valuation boost unlikely. The centrepiece of Elhedery’s announcement was a $1.5 billion annual cost-cut target by 2027, helped by closing bits of its U.S. and European investment bank. The move makes sense, but

Per Franzén is taking charge of EQT at a pivotal moment. The Swedish buyout shop is big, with about $140 billion of fee-paying assets under management, but it’s not in the same league as U.S. giants like Blackstone and KKR. The $40 billion company’s biggest gap lies in the racy world of private credit, which EQT quit several years ago. Franzén’s legacy might be defined by whether he manages to reverse that historic decision. The EQT veteran, who currently runs the firm’s main investing businesses in Europe and North America, will take over in May from boss of six years

The U.S. economy is still running too hot for comfort. Prices rose in January by 0.5% from the prior month, nudging the annual increase up to the psychologically testing 3% threshold. It’s another roadblock for further rate cuts from the Federal Reserve. More importantly, it leaves even less room for President Donald Trump, whose tariff plans could stoke inflation further. Something must give – raising the specter of recession. Inflationary pressure is the result of a gaggle of disparate causes: egg prices were up 15% over the prior month; car insurance is nearly 12% more expensive than last year. Sure, prices for

  Robots are no match for American football. The chorus of revolutionary promises about artificial intelligence might lead one to believe that no human activity is safe in an era of silicon smarts. But when it comes to live events – on traditional television, no less — AI can’t beat flesh-and-blood fervor. For the uninitiated, the National Football League broadcast of its championship game, dubbed the Super Bowl, is tantamount to a religious experience for many in the United States. On Sunday, millions gathered to watch the Philadelphia Eagles trounce the Kansas City Chiefs. The draw of the most-watched event

U.S. government bond markets are feeling the squeeze from all sides. Yields on 10-year government debt have dropped in recent weeks amid signs of slowing growth and investors’ reflexive flight to safety following President Donald Trump’s tariff talk. But buyers should beware a false sense of security: blown-up deficits, a major trade war, and something going haywire in tech tycoon Elon Musk’s forceful takeover of U.S. government payment systems all introduce major and sometimes opposing risks, making the future direction of yields hard to predict. The only guarantee is volatility. In the month after Trump’s election victory in early November, yields

The TikTok ban-or-sell drama is an algorithm stuck in a loop. First U.S. President Donald Trump, then his successor Joe Biden, pushed to ban the social media app amid warnings that its ties to China pose a national security threat. Both pulled back from the brink, even if a law mandating its sale or shutdown remains on the books. Now, with Trump back in charge, a long list of mooted, familiar buyers is re-emerging. The simplest way to scroll past this glitch in the feed is to spin TikTok off. Trump has given Chinese parent ByteDance a reprieve to figure