Happy Thursday and welcome to your morning wrap of the latest business and political headlines from around the world.
First up, the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates by 25 basis points, in a move that was widely expected by financial markets, taking the key overnight rate to a range of between 3.5% and 3.75%.
But as CNBC reported, the Fed was divided on the decision. The 9 to 3 vote featured hawkish and dovish dissents, with one member favouring a steeper 50-basis point cut, while two others voted to hold interest rates steady.
In a statement, the Federal Open Markets Committee said that uncertainty about the economic outlook remains elevated.
“The Committee is attentive to the risks to both sides of its dual mandate and judges that downside risks to employment rose in recent months.”
The closely watched “dot plot” of individual officials’ interest rate expectations points to just one cut in 2026 and another in 2027 before the federal funds rate hits a longer-run target of around 3%.
In addition to the rate decision, the Fed announced it will resume buying Treasury securities, following up on the announcement from the October meeting that it would pause its balance sheet runoff.
The committee also upgraded its growth forecasts for 2026.
US Federal Reserve building.
In business, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is reportedly looking to raise more than US$25 billion through an initial public offering of its shares in 2026.
The report from Reuters, which cited a source familiar with the matter, said the company has started discussions with banks about launching the offering around June or July.
The company did not respond to requests for comment.
The talks are also unfolding against the backdrop of a resurgence in the IPO market, which has been barren for three years.
Mergermarket’s head of equity capital markets, Samuel Kerr, said SpaceX represents one of the most exciting opportunities in the global IPO market and has been on the “dream list” of several investors for years.
“It is a genuine growth industry, with space technology seen as a key frontier in defence, satellite proliferation and, in tech infrastructure in general, the growth of orbital data centres.”
In other news, a judge has ruled that secret grand jury transcripts from Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 sex-trafficking case can now be made public.
The Associated Press reported that US District Judge Richard M. Berman reversed his earlier decision to keep the material secret, citing a new law that requires the government to open its files on Epstein and his longtime confidant Ghislaine Maxwell.
Berman previously cautioned that the 70 or so pages of grand jury materials slated for release are hardly revelatory and are “merely a hearsay snippet” of Epstein’s conduct.
The Justice Department asked the judge to lift secrecy orders after the Epstein Files Transparency Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump. The legislation created an exception to rules that normally keep grand jury proceedings confidential.
The court records approved for release are just a sliver of the government’s trove.
Staying in the United States, the Trump administration has revealed plans to require all tourists from visa-free countries to give immigration and customs authorities access to five years of social media data.
As Deutsche Welle reported, the plan would affect people travelling to the US on a visa waiver provided by the Electronic System for Travel Authorisation, or ESTA. Currently, citizens from 42 countries are able to apply for visa-free travel to the US, including New Zealand.
Visitors will also be required to provide information on what US authorities dub “high-value data fields”, meaning all of their phone numbers over the past five years and all of their email addresses over the past ten.
Trump said the new requirement was a necessary step toward “protecting the USA from foreign terrorists and other national security and public safety threats”.
To the high-profile battle over the future of Warner Bros. Discovery now, and Paramount chief executive David Ellison was in New York yesterday as he tried to convince them that his company was a better bet than Netflix, the Financial Times reported.
According to people who attended the meetings, Ellison and his deputies left several WBD shareholders with a positive view of the advantages of Paramount’s US$108 billion bid over Netflix’s offer.
Ellison reportedly tried to assuage concerns about Paramount’s reliance on investors from the Middle East to fund its offer, which became contentious in negotiations with WBD’s board.
Mario Gabelli, a fund manager who attended the meeting, told the FT that Ellison’s team did an “extraordinarily good job” answering questions.
Paramount’s tender offer to acquire stock from current shareholders would circumvent WBD’s board of directors.
Gabelli said his clients would be better off tendering their stock under the Paramount offer if Netflix does not change the structure of its proposal. Netflix is offering to pay US$23.25 per share for Warner Bros.’ studio and streaming networks, leaving the rest of the company to be spun off. Investors would be offered equity in the new company, with the total offer valued at US$23.75 per share.
Meanwhile, Paramount is offering US$30 per share in an all-cash offer for the whole company.
A deal would require approval from federal competition regulators and could face scrutiny from US states as well.
