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…

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…

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…

(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…

(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…

By Kalea Hall, Nora Eckert and Utkarsh Shetti (Reuters) – Ford Motor may raise prices on its new vehicles if U.S. President Donald Trump’s auto tariffs continue, according to a memo sent to dealers on Wednesday that was reviewed by Reuters. The Dearborn, Michigan, automaker offered deep discounts across its lineup starting earlier this month through June 2. The program will continue, but pricing on new models produced in May and beyond may change, the … Read more…

(Reuters) – American chipmaker Intel has informed Chinese clients it will start needing a license to sell some of its advanced artificial intelligence processors, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. The news comes a day after Nvidia warned of a $5.5 billion hit as Washington restricted exports of its AI processor tailored for China. Dutch chip-making tools giant ASML also raised doubts about its outlook earlier in the day. Intel, under new CEO Lip-Bu Tan, … Read more…