Business & Markets

LOS GANGOS, CALIF. — Netflix said this week it will lay off about 6% of its workforce, close to 1,000 positions. It is the company's biggest round of cuts in years. Co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters announced the move in a Wednesday memo. They said product, technology, legal and human resources teams would be hit hardest, and that the business is strong but needs discipline about where it puts people and money. Netflix had about 16,000 full-time employees at the end of 2025. Variety reports that the company also removed chief content officer Bela Bajaria and named industry veteran Peter Rice, formerly of Disney and 21st Century Fox, to replace her. The Wall Street Journal first reported the layoffs. Netflix has declined to comment beyond the memo.

CINCINNATI — Kroger told staff on Oct. 12 that it will eliminate about 3,000 corporate jobs over three years. That is roughly 37% of its 8,200 office employees, according to figures the company gave Business Insider. CEO Greg Foran wrote that the company has too many layers, handoffs and overhead, and said technology would help reduce duplicated work. No departments have been named. Notices are due in the coming months. Store, plant and warehouse workers are not covered. The cuts arrive as Kroger heads to a bench trial in Delaware Chancery Court on Oct. 19, expected to last about two weeks. Albertsons is seeking more than $8 billion, including lost shareholder premium and a $600 million break fee, over their $24.6 billion merger. Federal and Washington state courts blocked that deal in late 2024. Kroger denies liability and says it spent more than $1 billion pursuing approval.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Trade Commission has urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to reinstate its monopolization suit against Meta Platforms. District Judge James Boasberg dismissed the case after trial in November 2025, finding that Meta now competes with TikTok and YouTube and so lacks monopoly power. In its brief, the FTC argues that Meta operates in two markets: personal social networking, where it says Meta holds monopoly power, and a separate market for unconnected content such as short video. It also argues the question is whether Meta held a monopoly when the case was filed, not when it was decided. Meta told the court in an August filing that users treat TikTok and YouTube as substitutes for Facebook and Instagram. Elsewhere, the FTC settled with Corteva in a pesticide-loyalty case, and its litigation against Syngenta continues.

Google is folding its Local Services Ads platform into the main Google Ads interface through 2027. Per Google's announcement, as reported by Search Engine Roundtable, the first phase began in August for select U.S. home and storefront advertisers, including plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing and pest control. Late 2026 is meant to bring in service-area businesses without storefronts and accounts with custom bidding or booking setups. Non-U.S. accounts and remaining categories follow in 2027. Advertisers will still pay per valid lead, with ads limited to Search and Maps. Manual bidding and industry-level target CPA are being retired. Weekly budgets convert to daily budgets, and past performance reports do not carry over. Google says it will email 14 days before each move. Google also told Search Engine Roundtable it is still adding LSA verticals and 'pre-badge' ads.

Google appears to be testing the AI Mode left sidebar on its standard results page. It carries chat history, a button to start an AI Mode chat and settings. Search Engine Roundtable's Barry Schwartz reported the test after a user posted a screenshot. Schwartz could not reproduce it himself and judged it a test. He wrote that it moves AI Mode closer to being Google Search's default. The click effect of AI features is under scrutiny. A randomized field experiment by Saharsh Agarwal of the Indian School of Business and Ananya Sen of Carnegie Mellon, run in January and February 2026, found AI Overviews cut organic clicks by 38% on queries where they appeared. Zero-click searches rose from 54% to 72%, and removing the summaries did not change reported satisfaction. Google has argued that the clicks that remain are higher quality.

WASHINGTON — Fed Chair Kevin Warsh told an IMF audience in Bangkok on Friday that he does not prejudge meetings, and he gave no hint on the Oct. 27-28 decision. Futures put the chance of an October hike at about 15%, after it briefly hit 50% following Wednesday's inflation data. The Labor Department reported September consumer prices up 0.6% on the month and 3.7% over the year, up from 3.4% in August. Gasoline rose 9.1% in the month. Core prices, which exclude food and energy, rose 0.3% on the month and 2.6% on the year. The Fed raised rates a quarter point in September, to 3.75%-4.00%, its first increase in more than three years. Vice Chair Philip Jefferson, New York Fed President John Williams and Governor Christopher Waller have signaled patience. One CNBC analysis cautions that Warsh's refusal to give guidance leaves room for a surprise. A Chase wealth-management outlook puts September payrolls at 29,000 and unemployment at 4.2%.

NEW YORK — Treasury yields were little changed Friday after a volatile week. The 10-year note yielded about 5.085%, the 30-year bond about 5.434% and the 2-year note about 4.715%. Thursday's producer price index showed wholesale prices up 6.3% from a year earlier in September, the largest gain since 2022 and above the 5.5% economists expected. That followed Wednesday's consumer price report. Market commentator Wolf Richter notes that the 10-year yield jumped to 5.33% briefly after the CPI release. It then fell to a low of 5.04% Thursday as investors fled AI-linked stocks and bonds for safety. He calls it the biggest weekly bond rally since mid-February and says the 5% level now looks like a floor, though that is his reading of the market. Short-term yields moved little and still price in at least one more Fed hike.

LONDON — Brent crude futures touched $110 a barrel on Friday for the first time since May and settled at $109.86, up 3.7%. U.S. West Texas Intermediate settled at $101.41 and rose more than 10% on the week. At least nine commercial ships have been attacked near the Strait of Hormuz since Sunday, according to CNBC, with three seafarers injured and two missing. Kpler data show crude shipments through the strait at about 9.4 million barrels a day, roughly 70% of prewar levels. Houthi missile fire at Saudi Arabia and Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries added to supply worries. U.S. diesel averaged $6.33 a gallon, according to AAA data cited by CNBC. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that energy prices were up 20.4% from a year earlier in September's CPI. Iran says it is escalating in response to a U.S. port blockade and new sanctions.

WASHINGTON — On Oct. 9 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected the core of PJM Interconnection's plan for new data centers. The plan would have let large loads connect without matching new generation, in exchange for being curtailed first in emergencies. FERC said parts of it intruded on state authority over retail customers. It approved a 50-megawatt large-load definition and a registry of big users, effective Oct. 12. Days later, warm weather and about 62,000 MW of plants offline for maintenance led PJM to issue a Maximum Generation Alert on Oct. 13 and call on demand response. The Energy Department issued an emergency order through Oct. 16. It let PJM exceed some environmental permit limits and, as a last resort, direct large users onto backup generators. Spot power at the Western hub reached $1,021 per megawatt-hour Tuesday. PJM says it is reviewing whether to refile.

WASHINGTON — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission renewed and updated Westinghouse's AP1000 design certification on Wednesday. The update folds in lessons from building Vogtle units 3 and 4 in Georgia. On Oct. 5 the Energy Department announced a loan of about $4.2 billion to Vistra for upgrades at plants in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Those upgrades add 433 megawatts, and Meta has signed a long-term power purchase deal. Constellation this week disclosed plans to spend more than $4.3 billion on uprates at 11 reactors, enough for roughly 700,000 homes. The NRC already expects applications for about 2.4 gigawatts of uprates through 2032. At Michigan's Palisades plant, the first US reactor attempting to restart after shutdown, the NRC approved an alternate method for removing a tilted fuel assembly. Separately, an NRC inspection report found possible fear of retaliation among some staff for raising safety concerns.