Business & Markets

DUBLIN, Ohio — Wendy's said Thursday that a committee of independent directors unanimously rejected an unsolicited, non-binding offer of $7.35 per share in cash. The offer came from an investor group led by Nelson Peltz's Trian Partners, with Flynn Group, BlueFive Capital and Sixth Street Partners, and valued the burger chain at about $1.4 billion. The committee said the bid undervalues the value expected from the company's strategic plan, called Dave's Way. The board also adopted a one-year shareholder rights plan, or poison pill. According to The Globe and Mail, it is meant to cap holdings at 15%, and Trian-related parties already own about 16.3%. Wendy's said the group had turned down an offer of a standstill agreement. The offer came about three months after the company withdrew its forecast and cut its dividend, and its U.S. same-store sales fell 5.7%.

CHICAGO — U.S. employers announced 43,994 job cuts in October, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That is 2% above September and 71% below October 2025. Through October, announced cuts total 617,189, down 44% from a year earlier and the lowest 10-month total since 2022. Technology still leads all industries with 171,501 cuts this year. Challenger said market and economic conditions have overtaken AI as the top stated reason for cuts in 2026. Hiring plans rose 57% to 444,692, the most for any October since at least 2009, led by Amazon's 300,000 seasonal hires. Among states with at least 10,000 cuts this year, Tennessee posted one of the largest increases, up 68% to 19,446. Challenger's count excludes Microsoft's voluntary exit offers to 60,000 employees. Separate Labor Department data showed initial jobless claims at 189,000, a 57-year low.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department's Antitrust Division announced on Oct. 29 that it is deepening cooperation with state attorneys general on merger reviews. That includes fully referring deals whose effects fall mainly within a single state, according to a National Law Review analysis. In a separate announcement, the department described two referral cases in which New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania each reached their own divestiture settlements with the merging companies, while the federal division took no separate action. The move comes after high-profile disagreements in which some state attorneys general pursued different remedies than federal enforcers. The law-firm analysis advises merging companies in overlapping local markets to plan a state-specific clearance strategy. The department's own releases were not reviewed for this report.

Facebook's AI-generated Answers pages now number more than 6 million in Google's index and rank across Google surfaces, Search Engine Roundtable reported Thursday. Each page under facebook.com/fb-answers/ is an AI summary of a topic built from public Facebook posts and pages. Analyst Saul Westbrook says he noticed the directory in June. Consultant Glenn Gabe says it began filling in July and ranks for millions of queries. He says it appears in standard results, AI Overviews and AI Mode, and calls it scaled content abuse. These are claims from SEOs, not a Google finding. The report cites no Google response. Google's spam policy defines scaled content abuse as many pages made mainly to manipulate rankings, and it names generative AI as one possible method.

Google has announced no core update since the May 2026 rollout, which finished June 2. An SEO agency's roundup (Numinix) says Google's Search Status Dashboard lists the September spam update as the latest confirmed ranking change. That update finished October 8. Search Engine Roundtable logged unconfirmed volatility and chatter around October 20-21, on October 24 and again on October 27. Google has said it makes smaller changes continuously without announcing them. Some agencies, including Nickel SEO, predict a core update soon. That is speculation, not an announcement. Third-party rank trackers were reported to be struggling earlier in October, so local operators should compare calls and leads, not tracker positions, before blaming an algorithm change. Holiday demand shifts can also distort traffic charts.

TOKYO — Asian equities fell hard Friday after Wall Street's technology rout. Japan's Nikkei 225 dropped about 5.9% and moved more than 20% below its June peak, the usual bear-market threshold. It had closed Thursday at 61,077.9. South Korea's Kospi fell more than 6%, triggering circuit breakers. Chip-testing equipment maker Advantest fell about 12%, SoftBank Group about 11.6% and Tokyo Electron about 7%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 1%, mainland China's CSI 300 fell 1.47% and Australia's S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.9%. Reuters quoted AMP chief economist Shane Oliver saying the U.S. election result gave a trigger for a correction in richly valued tech shares that were already vulnerable. Closing levels for the Nikkei will confirm whether the bear-market mark holds.

WASHINGTON — The equity selloff pulled Treasury yields lower Thursday and cut the market-implied odds of a December Fed rate hike. The 10-year yield fell about 6 basis points to 4.84%, its lowest since early September. The 2-year fell about 12 basis points to 4.46%. CME FedWatch put the chance of a quarter-point hike at the Dec. 8-9 meeting at roughly 67%, down from about 83% Wednesday, according to Schwab. Schwab noted the Fed does not typically weigh stock-market moves. Last week Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan said at least two more quarter-point increases were needed, and St. Louis Fed's Alberto Musalem called for more firming soon, Reuters reported. The Fed's target range is 3.75% to 4%. The October jobs report, due at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, is expected to show about 59,000 jobs and a 4.2% unemployment rate.

LONDON — The Bank of England raised Bank Rate by a quarter point to 4% on Thursday, its first increase since August 2023. The Monetary Policy Committee voted 8-1. Catherine Mann dissented in favour of a half-point rise, citing what she called non-linear inflation risks. UK inflation reached 3.5% in September, and the Bank cited energy prices tied to the Middle East conflict, now in its ninth month. Governor Andrew Bailey said the move should not be seen as the first in an inevitable long sequence, but that a further rise may be warranted unless the conflict eases or other news softens inflation risks. Huw Pill, Megan Greene and Clare Lombardelli indicated more tightening was likely. CNBC reported the Bank expects inflation near 5% in mid-2027. FTSE 100 rose about 0.6% on the day and gilt yields moved little. The next decision is Dec. 17.

WASHINGTON — Six regional grid operators must soon tell the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission how they will connect data centers and other very large loads. Five have until Nov. 16 and the Southwest Power Pool until Nov. 20, after FERC granted 90-day pauses. Answers to the filings follow 30 days later. FERC's June show-cause orders preliminarily found that existing tariffs lack enough cost transparency. They proposed that detailed data on transmission upgrade costs be posted centrally. The orders also push expedited studies for generation sited next to large loads and new transmission services for loads that can curtail during stress. They set out a netting limit on behind-the-meter generation. FERC proposed defining a large load as at least 50 megawatts connecting at 69 kV or above. Operators may instead file their own tariff proposals, which would suspend the show-cause response. FERC's next open meeting is Nov. 19.

LONDON — National Grid raised its earnings outlook on Thursday after investment jumped in the first half of its financial year. The British utility is speeding up spending under a multibillion-pound plan to upgrade the UK electricity grid. It now expects earnings per share to grow 15% to 16%, up from a prior forecast of 13% to 15%. Total investment in the 2026/27 financial year is expected to reach £13.5 billion, about $18.2 billion. That is £500 million more than the company had projected. The report is a sign that grid construction, driven by new generation and rising demand for power, is turning into large and steady capital spending at one of the biggest listed network operators. Bloomberg reported the figures from the company's statement.