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Breakingviews: Gates can fill only so much of humanitarian void

6 days ago | lipperalpha.refinitiv.com | Lauren Tuck

A nation populated by all those alive thanks to Bill Gates and his philanthropic organization would be the world’s 20th biggest, with 80 million residents. The Microsoft co-founder on Thursday vowed to redouble his efforts by giving away nearly all his substantial wealth over the next two decades. Despite the ambitious generosity, his money is having to stretch much further because of President Donald Trump’s unhumanitarian policies.
Breakingviews: OpenAI closes one sticky door but opens another

1 week ago | lipperalpha.refinitiv.com | Lauren Tuck

OpenAI is inviting a fresh round of queries about its large-language model. The owner of the groundbreaking ChatGPT artificial intelligence chatbot scrapped a controversial plan to become a fully for-profit company and opted to leave its nonprofit entity in charge. Who serves on that controlling board and how much clout backers Microsoft and SoftBank get are unanswered questions that will be vital to the technology’s fate.
Breakingviews: Student-loan crackdown pours fuel on debt embers

2 weeks ago | lipperalpha.refinitiv.com | Lauren Tuck

Getting tough on student loans will be a teachable moment. The U.S. Department of Education is restarting collection efforts on federally backed debt used to pay for higher education, five years after the introduction of a pandemic-related reprieve. It’s a dangerous time to crack down, not least because flagging the liabilities to credit scorers risks making it harder to borrow as concerns about inflation and recession rise.
Breakingviews: Accounting merger helps balance private-fee books

3 weeks ago | lipperalpha.refinitiv.com | Lauren Tuck

Buyout barons are wearing pocket protectors and green visors with their tailored suits. Baker Tilly, an accounting firm recently backed by private equity shop Hellman & Friedman, unveiled a plan to merge with rival Moss Adams in a $7 billion deal that would create the sixth-largest U.S. bean counter. Like much investment these days, it turns growing public market liabilities into private market assets.
Breakingviews: Worldpay hands planet-sized lucre to buyout barons

3 weeks ago | lipperalpha.refinitiv.com | Lauren Tuck

Worldpay is a prime exhibit of how sharp-toothed buyout barons are masters of getting a good deal from a flailing industry. The payment processor once part of Royal Bank of Scotland has changed hands four times between 2010 and 2023. Now majority owner GTCR is shuffling it to U.S.-based Global Payments. All along, the only reliable outcome has been profits for private equity firms.
Breakingviews: Argentina’s latest bailout gets a trade war boost

4 weeks ago | lipperalpha.refinitiv.com | Lauren Tuck

Don’t cry for Argentina just yet. La Albiceleste’s new $20 billion loan package from the International Monetary Fund might seem the dreary continuation of decades of interventions that failed to put the South American nation on stable economic footing. But by dismantling tight controls on the official value of its currency, President Javier Milei is opening the door to international trade just as crushing U.S. tariffs scramble global relationships.
Breakingviews: Stock buybacks present solid trade-war tradeoff

1 month ago | lipperalpha.refinitiv.com | Lauren Tuck

Buying the dip is a good idea for at least one set of investors: CFOs. Chipmaker Broadcom unveiled a $10 billion share buyback plan, in a move that helps buffer valuations suffering even after Wednesday’s tariffs-rollback rally. Unlike many stock repurchases that tend to occur when prices are rising, doing so now would be a shrewd use of corporate capital to buck market trends.
Breakingviews: Apple has some apps to manage tariff trouble

1 month ago | lipperalpha.refinitiv.com | Lauren Tuck

Apple will lose big in a trade war. The $2.7 trillion technology giant designs iPhones in California, assembles most in China, and sells them around the world. President Donald Trump’s decision to slap cumulative tariffs, including those scheduled for April 9, of 54% on Chinese imports, would reduce profit perhaps 15%. Retaliatory levies on overseas sales would be worse. But Apple’s increasing focus on selling services at least offers some consolation.
Breakingviews: Tariffs tax markets-to-policy feedback loops

1 month ago | lipperalpha.refinitiv.com | Lauren Tuck

The U.S. tariffs bombshell has detonated across markets worldwide. Yields on 10-year Treasury bonds sagged, the dollar weakened, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite indexes slumped 4% in New York morning trading a day after President Donald Trump unveiled a bewildering array of levies on imported goods. Combined, they imply an aggregate effective rate beyond 20%, its highest in a century by many estimates. The question now is whether Washington will get the message from Wall Street.
Breakingviews: OpenAI’s profit trajectory is an open question

1 month ago | lipperalpha.refinitiv.com | Lauren Tuck

OpenAI’s horizons are expanding. The latest funding round of the startup behind ChatGPT, unveiled on Monday, raised up to $40 billion from investors including SoftBank Group at a $300 billion valuation – nearly double what it fetched only six months ago. Yet the company’s path to profitability remains opaque. Boss Sam Altman admittedly has some encouraging-sounding figures.