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Trump administration kicks off plan for expanded offshore drilling

(Reuters) -The U.S. Interior Department on Friday said it would begin taking public input for a new five-year offshore oil and gas leasing program that could include new zones in the Arctic and elsewhere to maximize energy development. President Donald Trump has ordered government agencies to identify ways to increase already record high U.S. oil and gas production, arguing past administrations had unnecessarily curtailed drilling to combat climate change. He had also repealed former President … Read more…

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Factbox-Citi raises three-month gold price target to $3,500 per ounce

(Reuters) – Citi Research raised its gold price target for the next three months to $3,500 per ounce from $3,200, led by fresh buying from Chinese insurers and safe-haven flows amid tariff risks and market weakness, it said in a note on Thursday. China’s recent move to let 10 insurers allocate up to 1% of their total assets to gold could generate annual demand of around 255 tonnes, equal to roughly a quarter of total … Read more…

Capital One, Discover deal approved by US bank regulators

By Chris Prentice and Saeed Azhar NEW YORK (Reuters) -U.S. banking regulators said on Friday they approved Capital One’s $35.3 billion purchase of Discover Financial Services , paving the way for the combined firms to become the nation’s eighth-largest bank. The deal has been closely watched by financial executives, who see it as a litmus test for how quickly the administration of President Donald Trump will approve mergers in a sector they see as ripe … Read more…

Markets Cow-Tow to Trump – by Justin Vaughn

(Justin Vaughn, Editor, Options Trading Report) All three exchanges stayed ‘alive and active’ Friday after pondering President Trump’s easing back on the initiation of his tariffs. After a roller coaster week of market swings up and down, all three indexes finished positive. The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Friday added over 600 points, 1.5%, while the heavy-tech Nasdaq Composite bounced 2.1% and the S&P 500 advanced 1.8%, with all three indexes finishing positive, giving investors … Read more…

Blackstone’s alternatives unit BXMA reports 2.3% gain in Q1

By Svea Herbst-Bayliss NEW YORK (Reuters) -Blackstone Group’s multi-asset investing BXMA unit, the world’s largest investor in hedge funds, posted a 2.3% return after fees in the first quarter, handily outpacing the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index 0.53% return. The numbers, released on Thursday when Blackstone reported first-quarter earnings, are noteworthy because they came during a period of great market volatility as investors fretted about the prospect of U.S. tariffs, rising unemployment, and the chance … Read more…

Explainer-What does ruling on Google’s illegal ad tech monopoly mean?

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -A U.S. judge’s ruling that Google has illegal monopolies in ad technology sets up the possibility of U.S. prosecutors seeking a breakup. Here’s what the case involves and what Google owner Alphabet faces from here. WHAT IS THIS ABOUT? The most important thing is what this is not about: this is not about search, Google’s bread and butter, although there is a separate antitrust case about search. The Justice Department’s ad technology … Read more…

Probe of Trump team’s compliance with order on deported man can proceed, court rules

(Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court has denied the U.S. Justice Department’s request to prevent a lower court from probing whether the Trump administration complied with an order to return a man wrongly deported to El Salvador, court records showed on Thursday. The appeals court also denied the Justice Department’s request to halt an order requiring it to “facilitate” the man’s return. (Reporting by Luc Cohen; Writing by Ismail Shakil; Editing by Katharine Jackson)

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Kraken lays off hundreds to streamline business ahead of IPO, Coindesk reports

(Reuters) -Kraken, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has laid off hundreds of employees in the past several months across all areas of its business to streamline its operations ahead of its planned IPO, Coindesk reported on Thursday. Hundreds of more people have been laid off since Kraken appointed Arjun Sethi as co-CEO last year and reported a cut of 15% in its workforce, the report added, citing two people familiar with the matter. … Read more…

Powell does not think Trump’s labor board firings case will apply to Fed

By Howard Schneider CHICAGO (Reuters) – The legal case before the Supreme Court over President Donald Trump’s firing of two Democrats from federal labor boards does not likely apply to the Federal Reserve, the head of the U.S. central bank said on Wednesday. Fed Chair Jerome Powell, in response to a question at an event at the Economic Club of Chicago, said “that’s a case that people are talking about a lot. I don’t think … Read more…

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Zoom down for thousands of users, Downdetector shows

(Reuters) – Video-conferencing platform Zoom Communications services were down for thousands of users on Wednesday, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com. Users reported interruptions accessing the Zoom web portal, as well as the application. Some users also reported login issues. “We continue to investigate the domain name resolution issues on the zoom.us domain that is affecting multiple services,” the company said. Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from a series of sources, including … Read more…