Jerome Powell, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, at a news conference after a Federal Open Market Committee meeting in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 18, 2024.Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesThis report is from today’s CNBC Daily Open, our international markets newsletter. CNBC Daily Open brings investors up to speed on everything they need to know, no matter where they are. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.What you need to know todayFed cautious about inflation and Trump’s policiesAt their December meeting, U.S. Federal Reserve officials expressed concern that inflation would stubbornly remain above the central bank’s 2% target, and…
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Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk sits as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump meets with House Republicans on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., November 13, 2024. Brian Snyder | ReutersTech billionaire Elon Musk said Wednesday that his budget-cutting effort on behalf of President-elect Donald Trump would most likely not find $2 trillion in savings, backtracking on a goal he set earlier as co-head of a new advisory body, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Musk told political strategist Mark Penn in an interview broadcast on X that the $2 trillion figure was a “best-case outcome” and that he thought there was only a “good shot”…
Hermann Goering, Hitler’s right-hand man, survived the cut. His bottles of wine — part of a collection seized by the Soviet army as a trophy at the end of World War II and deposited in a labyrinthine underground cellar in Moldova — are still on display.A gift of 460 bottles given in 2013 to then Secretary of State John Kerry when he visited the former Soviet republic is also there, kept in his name in a cubbyhole in the vast system of tunnels. (The State Department reported their value as $8,339.50, which might explain why Mr. Kerry chose to leave…
Omar Marques | Lightrocket | Getty ImagesCohere co-founder Nick Frosst is surrounded by chatter of artificial general intelligence, or AGI. He’s perfectly happy to stay out of the conversation.Founded in 2019, by ex-Google AI researchers, Cohere is valued in the billions of dollars and is one of the more high-profile names in the world of generative AI, which has exploded since OpenAI debuted ChatGPT in late 2022.But it’s not a company that’s well known among consumers, who have swarmed to chatbots and other tools from OpenAI, Google and Perplexity. Rather, Cohere is all about business.”I’m in meetings with companies in…
Pedestrians pass shops in the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney, Australia, on Friday, July 26, 2024. Lisa Maree Williams | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesAustralian retail sales saw the biggest increase in 10 months in November as Black Friday discounting drew cost-conscious shoppers, but even so they missed forecasts suggesting consumer demand remains subdued.Analysts also suspect the extra demand was just brought forward from Christmas.The data is unlikely to be seen as an impediment for rate cuts, with markets wagering that the Reserve Bank of Australia could ease policy in February. Data out from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Thursday showed retail sales rose 0.8% in November from October, when they increased by a revised 0.5%. Analysts had…
The atmosphere at the Disney Bundle Celebrating National Streaming Day at The Row in Los Angeles on May 19, 2022.Presley Ann | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty ImagesDisney said Wednesday it has an estimated 157 million global monthly active users watching ad-supported content across its streaming platforms — Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+.That number includes 112 million users domestically and is an average per month over the last six months.While traditional TV outlets have a standard way of measuring ratings and viewership, there is still no industry standard methodology for measuring global streaming advertising audience size.The company said that its Disney…
Iran’s top ranking general in Syria has contradicted the official line taken by Iran’s leaders on the sudden downfall of their ally Bashar al-Assad, saying in a remarkably candid speech last week that Iran had suffered a major defeat but would still try to operate in the country.An audio recording of the speech, given last week by Brig. Gen. Behrouz Esbati at a mosque in Tehran, surfaced publicly on Monday in Iranian media, and was a stark contrast to the remarks of Iran’s president, foreign minister and other top leaders. They have for weeks downplayed the magnitude of Iran’s strategic…
Goldman Sachs is cautious on Chinese tech behemoth Tencent Holdings , removing it from its Asia-Pacific “conviction list” of top picks. The company was added to the U.S. Department of Defense’s list of “Chinese military companies” on Jan. 7. That means that the government body will be prohibited from procuring goods or services directly from entities in the list in June 2026, and indirectly from June 2027, according to the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2024 . Goldman also removed Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and China’s Sungrow Power Supply from its Asia conviction list for January, and added…
A view of Damac logo in Dubai city center. February 10, 2018, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.Artur Widak | NurPhoto via Getty ImagesDUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The sky’s the limit when it comes to Dubai property giant Damac’s investment in the United States, the company’s chairman told CNBC on Thursday.Two days prior, President-elect Donald Trump announced a $20 billion foreign investment by the Emirati company to build new data centers across the U.S. — adding that its founder and chairman Hussein Sajwani was pledging “at least” that amount.Asked by CNBC’s Dan Murphy if he would eventually invest more in the U.S., Sajwani…
On-the-go food retailer Greggs posts 2.5% rise in like-for-like fourth quarter salesBritish baker and on-the-go food retailer Greggs on Thursday reported that like-for-like sales rose 2.5% in the fourth quarter of 2024, which it said was reflective of a “more subdued High Street footfall.””Trading performance reflected a well publicised more challenging market backdrop in the second half of 2024,” the company noted in a trading update.Across the full year 2024, Greggs’ total sales rose above £2 billion ($2.45 billion) for the first time, the company said, climbing 11.3%. That, however, fell short of expectations, with analysts having forecast a 12.2%…
