Become more informed in minutes...

Global dealmaking in the first half of the year fell to a two-decade low as tariffs, high interest rates, a choppy market and uncertainty around the Trump administration’s policies stalled a rebound in M&A activity. Financial data company Mergermarket has reported that the worldwide tally of mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, financings and joint ventures so far in 2025 is down 16% year-over-year at 16,663, its lowest level since 2005. “Corporates were just in wait-and-see mode,” Mergermarket executive editor Lucinda Guthrie said, adding: “This uncertainty around where the [tariff] levels would land and where the deals would be struck caused shockwaves at different points in the calendar.” Kevin Desai, head of PwC’s U.S. deals platform, added: “All of us in the industry thought 2025 was going to be this banner year, with a meaningful uptick in volume . . . Obviously, that hasn’t come to fruition.”

 

Wall Street Journal

Elizabeth MacDonough, the nonpartisan Senate parliamentarian, has ruled that a crucial Medicaid provider tax overhaul, integral to President Donald Trump's tax cut and spending bill, does not comply with procedural rules. The decision poses a significant challenge for Republicans who are eager to finalize the extensive package over the coming days. Ms. MacDonough said the change to how states can tax Medicaid providers does not adhere to rules for passing the bill with a simple majority, a key provision to help offset the costs of the bill's tax cuts. Medicaid provisions have been among the most complicated provisions to negotiate in the bill. One issue is a directive Senate Republicans added that states cut and freeze the tax they impose on Medicaid providers from the 6% in the House bill down to 3%, effectively halving the amount that states will receive in tax revenue from those providers. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the parliamentarian’s ruling was part of the process and that Republicans are still sticking to July 4th as the deadline to get the bill to Mr. Trump’s desk.

 

AP News

NPR

Wall Street Journal

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has written to Empower Retirement chief executive Edmund Murphy III, asking for details about the company's plans to offer private equity investments to participants in its 401(k) plans. The letter outlined significant concerns about risks and the lack of oversight of private investments and questioned if the move serves the best interests of retirement savers. “While you claim that this move will ‘help clients build secure and prosperous futures,’ there are many reasons to believe that the 19m workers whose retirement funds you safekeep will be more at risk as a result of this partnership,” Warren wrote. Empower spokesman Stephen Gawlik acknowledged that the company received Warren’s letter and that it will respond to her. She has requested answers to her queries by July 7th.

 

Financial Times

Plansponsor

First-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) growth was revised lower Thursday in light of reduced consumer spending. The Commerce Department said that GDP contracted by 0.5% on an annualized basis, 0.3 point lower than an earlier reading. Economists surveyed by LSEG had expected the economy to contract at a 0.2% rate in the quarter. Imports surged 37.9% in the first quarter and accounted for a contraction of 4.66% in GDP, as firms ramped up imports in an effort to minimize the impact of President Donald Trump's tariffs. Government spending was down 0.6% compared with the prior quarter, with a decline of 4.6% in federal spending partially offset by a 2% gain by state and local governments. Consumer spending, meanwhile, rose 0.5%, while disposable personal income grew 2.5%. "The decline in Q1 GDP was a touch more than previously thought, but the details are more troubling because of the downward revision to real final sales to domestic purchasers, the engine of the economy," said Ryan Sweet, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics.

 

The Hill

Fox News

Los Angeles Times

Reuters

Analysts say the biggest U.S. banks can expect to clear the Federal Reserve's annual health check this year, and demonstrate that they have enough capital to use to boost dividends. Today's results of the central bank's so-called “stress tests” will determine how much cash banks would need to hold to withstand a severe economic downturn. A less exacting methodology this year means lenders will likely perform better and return more money to investors via dividends and share buybacks, analysts say. "With the improved regulatory tone, hopes are high for some reduction in capital requirements . . . driven by less harsh stress tests," observed JPMorgan analyst Vivek Juneja.

 

Reuters

Federal Reserve governor Michael Barr has emphasized the importance of banks managing climate-related risks, saying: "I think climate risk is a real risk for us as a society and is likely to be a risk for the financial system unless we pay attention to it now." Barr clarified that while the Fed does not create climate policy, it is crucial for supervised institutions to operate safely by addressing these risks.

 

Reuters

Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange are in talks with the Securities and Exchanges Commission about easing regulatory burdens for public companies. The reforms under discussion - which are being sought to encourage more richly valued start-ups to list - include reducing the quantum of disclosures and the costs of going public to making it harder for minority investors to agitate, according to sources. "The numbers are very clear that companies are staying private longer," Nasdaq President Nelson Griggs told Reuters.

 

Reuters

Trump Mobile, the wireless service provider and phone company recently announced by the Trump Organization, no longer promises on its website that its upcoming smartphone will be made in America. As of June 25th, the company says the T1 8002 phone was “designed with American values in mind,” having previously stated the phone was “Made in the USA,” according to archived versions of the site from June 18th. Some of the T1 8002 phone’s specifications also have changed, according to the Trump Mobile website. While the phone was originally listed as having a 6.78-inch screen, the website now says it has a 6.25-inch screen. The website has also dropped information on the phone's memory.

 

AP News

CNN

Financial Times

The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell last week, according to the Labor Department, although recurring applications rose to the highest since November 2021. Initial claims in the seven days to June 21st declined 10,000 to a seasonally-adjusted 236,000, well below the 245,000 expected among economists polled by Reuters. The four-week average of claims dipped 750 to 245,000; however, continuing claims, reported with a one-week lag, increased 37,000 to a seasonally-adjusted 1.974m.

 

Bloomberg

Los Angeles Times

Reuters

With Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents conducting raids in Los Angeles, Maria S. Salinas, president and chief executive of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, has highlighted the need for the local business community to respond. The chamber, typically nonpartisan, has issued a statement criticizing the raids for disrupting communities and threatening the local economy. Salinas noted: “Immigrants are not only valued members of our communities but are also essential to the strength of our workforce. Immigrants power critical sectors and contribute daily to the region's prosperity." The raids have instilled fear in the immigrant community, leading to decreased attendance at work, school, and local businesses, and particularly affecting smaller retail and restaurant establishments. The economic impact is still being assessed, and the L.A. County Board of Supervisors is working to determine the financial consequences of the enforcement actions. Salinas highlighted the importance of immigrant labor, saying that 35% of the county's population is made up of immigrants who contribute significantly to various industries.

 

Los Angeles Times

The scrutiny of corporate climate commitments is intensifying, with a recent report from the London School of Economics revealing a surge in legal challenges against companies regarding their carbon offset claims. The report analysed nearly 3,000 climate-related lawsuits since 2015, highlighting that "courts will continue to play a crucial role in clarifying legal boundaries for corporate responsibility in the context of net zero commitments." Notable cases include Energy Australia's admission that carbon offsets do not negate greenhouse gas damage, and a lawsuit against NW Natural in the United States for misleading marketing. The report indicates that legal risks and consumer awareness are influencing corporate strategies. A shift away from potentially misleading offset claims is expected in future reports.

 

The Guardian

A federal judge in San Francisco has ruled for Meta Platforms against a group of authors who had argued that its use of their books without permission to train its artificial intelligence system infringed their copyrights. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria said the authors had not presented sufficient evidence that Meta's AI would dilute the market for their work to demonstrate that the company's conduct was illegal under U.S. copyright law. Chhabria nevertheless said that the use of copyrighted work without permission to train AI would be unlawful in "many circumstances," observing: "This ruling does not stand for the proposition that Meta's use of copyrighted materials to train its language models is lawful . . . It stands only for the proposition that these plaintiffs made the wrong arguments and failed to develop a record in support of the right one." The ruling follows a decision on Monday that Anthropic, another major player in the AI field, had not infringed authors’ copyright.

 

Financial Times

Reuters

The Guardian

Investment banks Stifel Financial and Piper Sandler have petitioned a judge to free them from "onerous" restrictions contained in a more than two decades-old SEC $1.5bn global settlement with 12 investment banks over analyst conflicts. The settlement in 2003 and 2004 followed a scandal over analysts issuing positive research to help Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and others win investment banking business. In a filing in Manhattan federal court, Piper and Stifel said they should not be bound to requirements in a related consent decree, while rivals not subject to the decree are held to looser standards the regulator approved in 2015.

 

Reuters

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has delivered a victory for environmentalists in the fight over “forever chemicals” known as PFAS (perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances), after deciding that state regulators can mandate landowners to clean up such emerging pollutants before they are officially designated as hazardous substances. The 5-2 ruling is a defeat for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state's powerful group representing businesses and manufacturers, which had argued the state couldn't enforce rules on substances before they were officially designated as hazardous.

 

U.S. News

Saks Global Enterprises is in talks with bondholders to borrow up to $600m in additional funding, on top of its existing $2.2bn in senior secured bonds. The group has confirmed it will make its $120m coupon payment due June 30th; however, its financial outlook remains uncertain amid warnings of possible credit downgrades and analyst concerns over profitability.

 

Bloomberg

New York-based risk and compliance consultancy Compliance Risk Concepts has acquired Oyster Consulting, a strategy and operations consultancy in Richmond, Virginia. CRC-Oyster, as the combined firm will be known, will have approximately 100 professionals, with each firm roughly the same size and bringing complementary capabilities for financial services clients. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

 

Consulting

A series of experiments involving more than 4,500 participants at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School found that those who used ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) to research everyday topics demonstrated weaker understanding of those topics afterward and produced less original insights than people who looked up the same topics using Google. Overall, across five experiments, ChatGPT-assisted brainstorming sessions consistently produced narrower sets of ideas, according to the researchers. The findings highlight how overly relying on gen AI “can limit the breadth of perspectives, even when individual ideas seem original,” a media release stated. Relatedly, a study from researchers at MIT’s Media Lab divided 54 subjects - 18 to 39 year-olds from the Boston area - into three groups, and asked them to write several SAT essays using OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s search engine, and nothing at all, respectively. Researchers used an EEG to record the writers’ brain activity across 32 regions, and found that of the three groups, ChatGPT users had the lowest brain engagement and “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.” Over the course of several months, ChatGPT users got lazier with each subsequent essay, often resorting to copy-and-paste by the end of the study.

 

Time

HR Dive

Wall Street Journal

David Solomon, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, has called for a reassessment of Europe's "extensive" regulatory framework, which he described as "overbearing, duplicative, and costly," in an opinion piece for Les Echos. Solomon argues that these regulations hinder investment and complicate cross-border activities, ultimately putting Europe at a disadvantage compared to the U.S. He emphasises the need for member states to contribute to building long-term capital pools to enhance financing in both public and private markets, which are crucial for economic activity in the region.

 

Reuters

In 2024, U.S. charities received $592.5bn in donations, marking a 3.3% increase from 2023, according to a new report from Giving USA. Despite this growth, nonprofits face challenges, including significant federal funding cuts and increased demand for services. Una Osili, an associate dean at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, noted: “There's a lot of uncertainty, a lot of volatility, especially in financial markets. When you're not sure exactly what's happening and the news is changing, that sometimes leads to donors just being uncertain and not acting. Uncertainty can dampen giving.” While corporate giving rose by 6% and individual donations increased by 5%, bequests fell by 4.4%. The report highlighted that giving to public society benefits surged by 16.1%, while donations to religion declined by 1%.

 

US News and World Report