Business & Markets

LONDON — Barclays said Thursday it will eliminate about 5,000 jobs, roughly 5% of a global workforce of about 93,000, as it leans on AI and other technology to lower costs. About 1,000 roles have already gone, and the remaining 4,000 are scheduled to go by the end of 2026. The bank's earnings presentation said about 60% of the cuts fall in support functions, including developers. The reductions are concentrated in its UK retail bank, though the investment bank is also affected. Because some UK back-office work is done in India, a significant share of the losses is expected there. Barclays reported third-quarter pre-tax profit of £2.3 billion, up 12% from a year earlier. Chief executive C.S. Venkatakrishnan tied the cuts to years of technology investment. Barclays follows Citigroup, HSBC and Standard Chartered in announcing AI-linked reductions.

SAN JOSE — eBay plans to lay off about 1,000 employees, roughly 9% of its workforce. Chief executive Jamie Iannone told staff in a memo, as reported by Reuters, that the company's strategy is working but that it must choose carefully where to invest. A spokesperson confirmed the figure to Reuters. It is eBay's second reduction this year. February's round hit about 800 jobs, or 6% of staff, so the new round is about 25% larger. The company is pivoting toward collectibles, pre-owned luxury goods and high-value refurbished items, and bought the fashion resale marketplace Depop this year for $1.4 billion. Shares have risen about 41% year to date, closing near $122.90 on Wednesday. eBay is scheduled to report third-quarter results next Wednesday, when investors may get more detail on the savings.

PHILADELPHIA — Comcast is preparing significant job cuts in its cable television, broadband and wireless businesses over the coming weeks. Bloomberg reported the plan Wednesday, and Variety followed it. The restructuring comes ahead of the expected 2027 spin-off of NBCUniversal. Variety's coverage says Comcast anticipates a restructuring charge of more than $1 billion in the fourth quarter. The scale of the layoffs has not been set, according to two sources cited by Variety, because individual teams are still assessing the impact. Comcast had about 179,000 employees at the end of 2025. Comcast has not publicly detailed the scope of the cuts in the material reviewed, and the figures rest on anonymous sourcing. Next steps include team-level decisions on headcount in the coming weeks and the fourth-quarter charge.

Google is retiring the standalone Local Services Ads dashboard and moving campaigns into Google Ads as a Performance Max type built around pay-per-lead goals. Google's help page says the first phase began in August 2026 for selected U.S. home and storefront advertisers, including plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing and pest control. A second phase is due in late 2026 for service-area businesses without storefronts and for accounts with custom bidding or booking setups. Non-U.S. accounts follow in 2027. Ads are to keep running only on Search and Maps, and billing stays per lead. Manual maximum cost-per-lead bidding and vertical-level target CPAs are being dropped, and weekly budgets become daily budgets. Historical performance reports do not carry over. Advertisers are told to export them before their migration date, and account administrators get an email 14 days ahead.

Google says appeals over reviews on Business Profiles are taking longer than usual. According to Search Engine Roundtable, Google's Dan Boguslavsky posted in an official Business Profile Help thread that processing times are extended because of a high volume of review-related appeals. He said the team is working through all cases but cannot give a specific response time for pending ones. Schwartz noted that similar delays occurred last December and in March 2025, so the backlog is not unusual. The delay matters most to businesses disputing fake or policy-violating reviews. It also matters to those whose reviews were removed or paused by Google's spam systems, which in July Google confirmed it was investigating after reports of reviews going missing. Google has not said when the queue will clear.

WASHINGTON — First-time unemployment claims dropped to a seasonally adjusted 194,000 in the week ended Oct. 17, the Labor Department said Thursday. That was below the roughly 200,000 economists expected. It is near July's 189,000, the lowest weekly figure since September 1969. The four-week average slipped to 197,750. CNBC described a low-hire, low-fire labor market. It noted the week fell within the survey period the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses for October payrolls. It also reported that policymakers have lately cast the job market as a source of strength and shifted attention to inflation that remains well above the Fed's 2% goal. Australian market commentary cited a 93% probability that the Fed holds at its meeting next week. Bloomberg data showed markets betting on three more hikes by December 2027. The Fed meets Oct. 27-28.

LONDON — British consumer prices rose 3.5% in the 12 months to September, up from 3.1% in August and above the 3.4% economists polled by Reuters had forecast, CNBC reported. Motor fuel prices were 29.8% higher than a year earlier. Britain is a net energy importer and is exposed to the disruption of oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz. It was the highest annual rate in almost a year. Sterling and gilt yields barely moved on the release. According to LSEG data cited by CNBC, markets see a 98% chance that the Bank of England raises its key rate by a quarter point to 4% next month. Most traders also expect a second increase of the same size in December. An analyst quoted by CNBC said services inflation has accelerated, raising concern about second-round effects beyond energy.

MENLO PARK, Calif. — This is a new development in the Meta story. Meta beat third-quarter revenue expectations but said it would issue a new class of non-voting shares to raise money for AI expansion, SBS News reported. Its shares fell about 7% on Thursday. Wells Fargo traders told clients that Meta's remarks on how much AI funding it needs weighed on the whole market, according to CNBC's live coverage. The reaction suggests investors are now concerned that AI outlays could exceed what companies generate internally. Money moved out of tech and into defensive and financial shares as the Nasdaq fell 2.6%. Meta's results and the Nasdaq's slide came on the same day, and the session has become a test of how much capital markets will absorb to fund AI.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department asked a federal court in Washington on Tuesday to send back Interior's 2024 construction-and-operations approval for New England Wind. It argued that the approval did not properly weigh major adverse impacts. The filing, in a suit brought by the Nantucket group ACK for Whales, follows similar requests on Revolution Wind and Maryland Offshore Wind, and on the suspended Atlantic Shores project. Interior said the filing followed a court briefing schedule and did not signal a policy change. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a lead negotiator on the bipartisan Senate permitting bill, said the moves are how you blow up a permitting deal. The bill would expand FERC's transmission siting authority and bar most revocations of issued permits. It awaits Senate Energy Committee action when the chamber returns in November. Trade press reports the filings may have undercut support for it. The White House says it still backs permitting reform.

COLOMBO — Sri Lanka's energy minister told parliament that the October 17 island-wide blackout began when a boiler component ruptured during maintenance on Unit 1 at the Norochcholai coal plant, forcing the unit offline. That differs from early statements that pointed to the Upper Kotmale hydro station. Just before the 11:43 a.m. outage, the grid operator was directly managing about 1,137 MW, from coal and hydro, alongside roughly 1,700 MW of mostly solar output it could not monitor. Frequency fell fast, and about 2,000 MW of installed rooftop inverters were not set to ride through drops to 47.5 Hz, so they disconnected. High-voltage transmission was restored by about 5 p.m. and all customers by about 10 p.m. Hospitals, water plants and airports had priority. The government says it is applying recommendations from an EPRI study on grid inertia and reserves. An official investigation continues, and the exact inverter contribution is still being examined.