MARKETS - Page 28

Amazon.com (AMZN.O) on Monday said it will invest up to $4 billion in cash in the high-profile startup Anthropic to compete with growing cloud rivals that have also focused their businesses on artificial intelligence. As part of the deal, which gives Amazon a minority ownership position in Anthropic, the company’s employees and cloud customers will gain early access to technology from the San Francisco-based startup that they can infuse into their businesses. The deal also sees Anthropic rely primarily on

Wall Street see-sawed to a lower close on Friday, capping a tumultuous week during which benchmark Treasury yields hit 16-year highs and investors digested the Federal Reserve’s hawkish outlook revisions. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq posted their most considerable weekly losses since March. The market gyrated as relief that signs of peaking inflation had eased vied with fears that policy tightening by the Fed could tip the economy into recession. Technology stocks rebounded, but gains were tempered by concerns

Oracle Corp agreed to prepay $104.1 million for processor chips made by startup Ampere Computing and invested $400 million in the company through a convertible note in its fiscal 2023, the software maker said on Friday. The upfront payment and investment are part of the tech giant’s strategy to strengthen its cloud capabilities as it competes with companies like Amazon and Google in the hardware space. Ampere’s server chips are designed to solve a fundamental problem large cloud service provider’s

Microsoft Corp’s restructured $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc. takes one giant step closer to fruition after Britain’s antitrust regulator said the revised deal offer appeared to address its concerns. The Competition and Markets Authority “opens the door” to clearing the biggest-ever gaming deal, allowing it to proceed if the U.S. tech giant can convince European authorities that it will not monopolize the nascent cloud gaming market, the CMA said on Friday. The watchdog said the changes Microsoft offered,

Oil prices increased on Friday as renewed global supply concerns from Russia’s fuel export ban countered demand fears driven by macroeconomic headwinds and high-interest rates. Brent crude futures were up 52 cents, or 0.56%, at $93.82 a barrel by 0933 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude (WTI) futures rose by 73 cents, or 0.81%, to $90.36 a barrel. Both benchmarks were on track for a small weekly drop after gaining more than 10% in the previous three weeks amid

Toshiba said on Thursday that a $14 billion tender offer from private equity firm Japan Industrial Partners (JIP) had succeeded – a deal that paves the way for the embattled industrial conglomerate to go private. JIP’s buyout bid will delist the 148-year-old electronics giant and put it in domestic hands after years of battles with overseas activist investors. It also would end a management dispute over how the company should be run. With commitment letters of investment and lending from

On Thursday, Cisco Systems agreed to buy cybersecurity firm Splunk for about $28 billion, the network equipment giant’s biggest-ever deal to strengthen its software business and capitalize on the boom in artificial intelligence. The acquisition will help reduce Cisco’s reliance on its massive networking equipment business, which has struggled recently as customers have moved away from buying hardware and preferring subscription-based services offered by Amazon.com Inc’s AWS unit and other cloud computing companies. The deal represents Cisco’s latest effort to

As China’s stock market struggles to recover, regulators have started to probe some hedge funds and brokerages on quantitative trading strategies amid a growing outcry against a sector able to profit from share price falls and volatility. The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has checked with several significant brokers over the past weeks about their quant clients’ short-selling activities and trading strategies – funds that trade rapidly using derivatives and data-driven computer models. The booming investment in quant trading is

Australia’s corporate regulator said on Thursday it had initiated civil proceedings against Bit Trade Pty Ltd, provider of the Kraken crypto exchange to Australian customers, for failing to comply with design distribution obligations for its margin trading product. The design and distribution obligations (DDO) require firms to design financial products that meet the needs of consumers and distribute them in a targeted manner. ASIC said it first notified Bit Trade of the issue in June 2022, but it has continued

World stocks fell for a fifth straight session, the dollar hit its strongest since March, and the Swiss franc tumbled on Thursday as the latest crop of central bank interest rate moves continued to produce surprises. European equities stumbled after the U.S. Federal Reserve had signaled that it probably had at least one more hike in the tank after its historically rapid rate run-up over the last 18 months. Currency dealers were caught off guard when the Swiss National Bank