Business & Markets

MILAN — UniCredit said Thursday the European Central Bank has authorized it to go above 30% of Commerzbank and raise its stake without an upper limit, in what AFP called an important milestone for its bid. The Italian bank says it expects to complete the remaining regulatory steps around year-end and hold roughly 50% of Commerzbank's voting rights. Its offer closed in July, lifting its position to about 48%, according to Bloomberg and other reports. Commerzbank had initially resisted but entered talks in July, Finextra reported. CEO Andrea Orcel is reported to want a profit-boosting strategy imposed from January, with a full merger put off until 2029-2030. The ECB approval is not a completed takeover. Other approvals are still needed, and Commerzbank's CEO has said supervisory sign-offs could slip into early 2027.

Netflix told employees on Oct. 14 it is cutting about 6% of its workforce, nearly 1,000 jobs, AP reported. Co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said product, technology, legal and HR teams would be hit hardest. The company had about 16,000 full-time staff at the end of 2025. The memo said Netflix remains on track to meet its full-year forecast. A day later the company announced that chief content officer Bela Bajaria is leaving after ten years, and Deadline reported that former Disney and Fox executive Peter Rice is replacing her. Shares are down about 40% this year, and Schwab noted they fell a further 3.6% on the leadership news. Netflix reports third-quarter results Tuesday, Oct. 20. The company walked away from a deal for Warner's studio and streaming business in February.

SEATTLE — U.S. District Judge John Chun on Oct. 9 rejected Amazon's request to move the Federal Trade Commission's monopolization trial to June 2027, according to MLex and Law360. He wrote that he had been preparing for the March 29, 2027 date and saw no good reason to change the schedule. The FTC alleges Amazon created an artificial price floor across online retail. Amazon had argued that a parallel California attorney general case could overlap in time. The order does not decide whether Amazon violated antitrust law, and a law-firm analysis notes the case has not been tried and there is no liability holding. Dispositive and Daubert motions were due Oct. 16, with a final pretrial conference set for March 15, 2027.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google updated its Business Profile help page in late September to say owners have four days to accept or reject a user-suggested edit once notified. After that, Google may publish the change if other public information, such as the business's website, supports it. Google also says some edits can be applied without prior review, and it does not list which. Around the same time, owners began receiving emails saying Google had detected a spike in spam reviews, removed them and paused new reviews for a few days. Local SEO practitioners say the filter has also caught legitimate review drives. On Sept. 30, Search Engine Roundtable reported that Google Maps prompts users to sign in to read all reviews, sort them or leave one. Google has not formally announced that change or explained its reason. Some commentators suspect an effort to deter scrapers.

On Oct. 15 Google published five changes meant to put more links in AI Mode and AI Overviews, according to PPC Land. They include a test of clickable creator and publisher names on video results in AI Mode, and Google said use of its Preferred Sources feature has grown more than sevenfold since January. The post gave no click-through figures. Independent research points the other way. A randomized field experiment of 1,100 U.S. Chrome users, reported by Search Engine Land, found that routing searches into AI Mode cut the share leading to an outside site by 18.8 percentage points. Those users also reported lower satisfaction. Hiding AI Overviews raised click-through by an estimated 8.8 points, though a Google HTML change weakened the researchers' blocking method. The sample skewed young and educated, and the test ran only seven days.

NEW YORK — U.S. stocks fell Friday. The S&P 500 lost 1.09% to 7,659.44, the Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.14% to 26,140.03, and the Dow slipped 175.28 points to 52,002.41. For the week the S&P 500 fell about 2% and the Nasdaq more than 4%, its worst stretch since June, while the Dow gained 0.7%. Chipmakers Micron and Intel led the decline. West Texas Intermediate settled at $101.41 a barrel and Brent at $109.86, as U.S.-Iran and Russia-Ukraine tensions escalated. In bonds, the 10-year Treasury yield was near 5.09%, the 30-year near 5.43% and the 2-year near 4.72%. The 10-year had spiked above 5.30% after the CPI release before retreating. Tesla, Meta, IBM and Netflix report earnings in the coming week.

NEW YORK — CoreWeave, the AI cloud operator with about $50 billion in debt and obligations, saw its shares fall 15.5% Wednesday, its worst day since February, as the hot CPI report lifted rates. By Thursday its 9.75% bonds due 2031 yielded 15.78%. Five-year credit default swap spreads topped 1,140 basis points at one point, a level generally seen as distressed. These prices show investor doubt, not a default. CEO Mike Intrator called the reaction irrational and said the company's contract backlog covers its debt. S&P rates the company B+, which is below investment grade. Oracle, Nebius and Dell also fell. Axios noted that higher borrowing costs hit heavily indebted AI builders hardest. Analysts are watching whether spreads widen on stronger hyperscaler credits as well.

BANGKOK — The IMF and World Bank annual meetings ended Saturday with Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva describing a mix of optimism and worry. She cited the global economy's resilience, AI's promise and Asia's dynamism, against inflation, heavy debt, war and climate risks. She said higher global interest rates and bond yields have pushed debt service for low-income countries from 8% to 14% of government revenue. A chair's summary said high public debt and rising sovereign yields are tightening financial conditions, and it stressed central bank independence. In an Oct. 7 speech, Georgieva urged what she called a prudently hawkish bias in monetary policy. At that point 30-year U.S. Treasury yields had reached 5.73%, the highest since 2002, and the 30-year U.K. gilt was near 6%.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Oct. 9 rejected the core of a PJM Interconnection proposal. It would have let new data centers connect without matching new generation, on condition that they accept curtailment ahead of other customers in emergencies. FERC said the plan intruded on retail matters reserved to states and discriminated against large loads. It approved a registry of users drawing 50 MW or more. The ruling followed a tight week on the grid. The Energy Department issued a four-day emergency order on Oct. 12 at PJM's request. PJM had forecast it would be within 900 MW of its reserve margin, with about 61,600 MW of generation on outage. PJM called demand response on two afternoons. It did not use the order's authority to move data centers onto backup generators. The NRDC wants PJM to refile quickly. Analysts at Jefferies expect any new curtailment rules to come from states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Constellation Energy will invest more than $4.3 billion to add 890 MW across 11 reactors in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, under a 20-year power purchase agreement with Google announced Oct. 6. Work covers turbines, steam generators and digital controls, with the first power expected as soon as 2028. Constellation's chief executive said such projects need prices above what the market pays. The Energy Department separately committed a roughly $4.2 billion loan to Vistra for uprates at plants in Pennsylvania and Ohio. On Wednesday the Nuclear Regulatory Commission renewed and updated Westinghouse's AP1000 design certification, making Vogtle-4 the reference plant. At Palisades, the Michigan plant seeking to be the first U.S. reactor restarted after shutdown, the NRC reported possible safety-culture concerns. It also approved Holtec's plan to remove a tilted fuel assembly.