Business & Markets

NEW YORK — Tuesday brings third-quarter results from General Motors, GE Aerospace, RTX, 3M, Northrop Grumman, Halliburton, Netflix, Capital One, Chubb and United Airlines, plus September housing starts. Meta, Tesla, Lam Research and Texas Instruments report Wednesday. Analysts polled by LSEG expect GM to post adjusted earnings of $3.63 a share on about $48.7 billion in revenue, roughly 30% earnings growth on flat sales. Wall Street is divided on whether GM will raise its guidance again, given concerns about slowing sales and rising commodity costs. AI-linked shares were rebounding this week after a sharp selloff. CoreWeave rose almost 6% after a Goldman Sachs upgrade, and Amazon gained after a Morgan Stanley endorsement.

Several pending deals face tougher scrutiny. Intercontinental Exchange and MarketAxess withdrew their Hart-Scott-Rodino filings on Sept. 25 to give the Justice Department more time, and refiled on Sept. 29, according to a MarketAxess SEC filing. MLex reported on Oct. 13 that the Antitrust Division issued a second request to RV component makers Patrick Industries and LCI Industries, a step that extends review and signals deeper concerns. Also on Oct. 13, Pennsylvania's attorney general sued to block Colas's purchase of Suit-Kote, alleging it would reduce competition in asphalt emulsions and pavement preservation. The European Commission conditionally cleared Kimberly-Clark's Kenvue acquisition after the company pledged to divest its tampon and other feminine hygiene brands. Outcomes on the U.S. reviews are pending.

SEC filings show several mid-sized takeovers advancing through U.S. merger review. Integer Holdings said on Sept. 30 that it received early termination of the Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting period for its merger with affiliates of KKR. The waiting period for DoubleVerify's merger expired on Sept. 21, leaving only the other closing conditions. Varex Imaging's waiting period was due to expire Oct. 16 absent an information request, and it still needs clearances in Austria, China, Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia and Ukraine plus a UK national-security review. Mistras Group and its acquirer filed on Oct. 1, and their waiting period runs to 11:59 p.m. Eastern on Nov. 2. Regulators can still challenge a deal after the period ends.

SAN FRANCISCO — A sharp fall in ChatGPT referral traffic after GPT-6 launched in early October appears to be a tracking problem, not a loss of visitors. Search Engine Land reported on Oct. 15 that links in ChatGPT answers had stopped carrying the utm_source=chatgpt.com tag. Adobe's Cedric Huesler studied about 500 pages where ChatGPT had supplied at least 5% of visits. For Oct. 9-13, he found ChatGPT-attributed visits down about 31,000 a day and Direct visits up about 26,000 a day. Search traffic fell 7%. He also found the links open without passing a referrer, so analytics tools file the visits as Direct. Later reports say OpenAI called the missing tag a known bug and that tagged links recovered from Oct. 15. That account relies on Huesler and secondary reports, and OpenAI has not confirmed it publicly. GA4 reports will still show a dip for the period.

Google appears to be testing a higher position for the Posts section in the local knowledge panel, the Business Profile panel shown in search. Search Engine Roundtable reported the test on Oct. 19. In 2018 Google moved Posts to the bottom of the panel. Local SEO practitioner Ben Fisher first described the new placement on LinkedIn and said he sees posts move up for about three days and then back down. Google has not commented, and the test is based on practitioner screenshots, so it may not reach all users. Roundtable editor Barry Schwartz noted that a prominent position would likely push more businesses to publish Posts. Posts are free and under owners' control. They are one of the few Business Profile elements a business can change directly in the panel.

NEW YORK — Moody's Ratings said in an October 14 report that stress in U.S. private credit is greater than headline default numbers show. Of 607 middle-market borrowers held in CLOs that it reviewed, 4.0% were reported in default in the 12 months to June 2026. Counting payment-in-kind amendments and maturity extensions at distressed issuers, which Moody's treats as distressed exchanges, the rate rises to 5.8%. Business services, consumer services and software account for about half of defaults. Moody's also warned that lower-rated borrowers face a heavy maturity schedule in 2027-28. It found CLO performance has held steady so far. A newsletter summary of the Financial Stability Board chair's October 12 letter to G20 finance chiefs says he named private credit among the top threats to financial stability. That account has not been independently checked.

Three of the world's biggest central banks decide on rates in a three-day span. The Fed meets October 27-28, the ECB on October 29 and the Bank of Japan concludes its meeting October 30. The Bank of England follows on November 5. In September the Fed, ECB and BoJ each raised rates by a quarter point, while the BoE held with three of nine members voting for a hike. ING expects the BoE to hike in November and February. It sees little chance of back-to-back BoJ increases and expects a December move. Backdrop data are hot: the Labor Department's September producer price index rose 1.3% on the month and 6.3% from a year earlier, the largest monthly gain since March 2022, driven by energy. One independent analyst calls an October Fed hike a live possibility but keeps a December move as the central case.

NEW YORK — The share of commercial mortgage-backed securities loans in special servicing rose seven basis points in September to 11.49%, according to Trepp data. That is the highest reading since February 2013. It follows a 33-basis-point jump in August to 11.42%. New transfers in September totaled about $2.65 billion across 42 loans, and office accounted for 57% of them. The largest was the $512.8 million One SoHo Square office loan in New York, which moved over an imminent maturity default. Retail rose to 13.84% and lodging to 8.95%. Office eased to 16.85%. Trepp has said the coming schedule of hard maturities is weighted toward large office and mixed-use loans. Whether those borrowers can refinance will determine whether the rate keeps rising. Strong properties are still refinancing, but weaker ones face gaps between loan size and value.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Energy announced Oct. 19 that it will use up to $42 million in Defense Production Act Title III funds to advance the Constitution Pipeline. The proposed 125-mile gas line would run from Pennsylvania into New York and the wider Northeast. The department cites Presidential Determination 2026-12, which classifies gas pipelines, processing and storage as essential to national defense. It says $1 billion has been appropriated for such energy projects. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the line would cut heating and power costs and lower blackout risk at peak demand. New York state blocked the project for years. The Washington Examiner reports the administration has recently used the same authority for pipelines, refineries and Alaska transmission. Unitil, which serves parts of New England, told the paper it has signed no purchase agreements and that the project does not match its system needs.

WASHINGTON — Congress has pushed the authorizations in the 2021 infrastructure law, which covers highway, transit and rail programs, to Dec. 11, according to the Congressional Research Service. The House Transportation Committee approved the five-year BUILD America 250 Act in May, but the full House has not voted on it. The Senate has not released its own bill, Transportation Topics reports. The stopgap kept Highway Trust Fund formula money flowing but left out advance appropriations under the law's Division J. That puts as much as $36.8 billion at risk, including the BUILD and Safe Streets and Roads for All grant programs. The American Society of Civil Engineers urges a five-year bill and estimates a $3.7 trillion investment gap through 2033. The Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group, says the extension cuts total transportation funding by 25 percent, with deeper cuts to transit and rail.