Brookfield Brief (2024)

02/08/2023

Fitch Ratings Downgrades US Long-Term Debt Amid Debt Ceiling Standoff

In a move that sent shockwaves through financial markets, Fitch Ratings recently downgraded the United States' long-term debt from AAA to AA+. The downgrade, attributed largely to the spring's debt ceiling standoff, has raised concerns about the stability of the global financial system and the impli...

19/07/2023

Putting Politics on a Stock Freeze: Senators Propose Ban on Congressional Stock Ownership

In a move aimed at addressing potential conflicts of interest and increasing transparency, two U.S. senators, Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.) and Josh Hawley (R., Mo.), are set to introduce a bipartisan legislation this week that would prohibit members of the federal executive branch and lawmakers fro...

12/07/2023

Elon Musk Ventures into New AI Frontier with Launch of Innovative Company

Renowned entrepreneur and visionary Elon Musk has once again set his sights on the future, this time with the launch of a groundbreaking AI company. Musk, known for his involvement in ventures such as Tesla and SpaceX, aims to push the boundaries of artificial intelligence and drive transformative a...

28/06/2023

London’s Biggest Water Supplier on Verge of Collapse

The UK government is reportedly drawing up emergency contingency plans to temporarily bring Thames Water back into public hands as its debt pile reaches a mammoth £14 billion. Ministers are said to be in talks about the possibility of emergency nationalization of the water company under a so-called...

22/06/2023

China Slashes Interest Rates as Economy Stalls

The People’s Bank of China cut another key policy rate on Tuesday for the first time in 10 months, as the world’s second largest economy shows signs of stalling.

14/06/2023

Bud Light Brand Continues to Suffer Amid Controversy & Boycotts

Bud Light continues to be suffering a sustained decline in sales two months since the beer brand sparked backlash and calls for a boycott after sending a commemorative can to influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

07/06/2023

CNN CEO Steps Down After Short & Controversial Tenure

Chris Licht is out after just a year as chief executive at CNN following a series of missteps and plunging ratings. David Zaslav, the CEO of CNN’s parent company (Warner Bros Discovery), announced the leadership change, which was effective immediately, on CNN’s morning editorial call on Wednesda...

31/05/2023

U.S. Job Market Gets Unexpected Lift in April

U.S. job openings rose unexpectedly in April, illustrating the resilience of the American labor market and complicating Federal Reserve efforts to fight inflation. Employers posted 10.1 million job openings last month, up from 9.7 million in March and the most since January, the Labor Department sai...

24/05/2023

The Debt Ceiling Fight & How it Impacts the Economy

Once again, the debt ceiling is in the news and is a cause for concern. If the debt ceiling binds, and the U.S. Treasury does not have the ability to pay its obligations, the negative economic effects would quickly mount, triggering a deep recession. Although the US government has never defaulted on...

18/05/2023

Vodafone to Cut 11,000 Jobs as Shares Fall Dramatically

It’s been a number of weeks since Margherita Della Valle was named the CEO of Vodafone Group, and she’s had about five months to evaluate the company’s situation as interim CEO. During this time the new CEO concluded that the company is due for a significant redesign, which includes the reduct...

10/05/2023

Inflation Falls to Lowest Levels in Two Years

Consumer prices climbed 4.9% in April — the first-time annual inflation has landed below 5% in two years. On a monthly basis, the inflation rate rose 0.4%, which was higher than the 0.1% in March.

03/05/2023

Nordstrom Closes all its Stores in San Francisco

Nordstrom is closing both of its stores in downtown San Francisco, citing the changing “dynamics” of the area that hasn’t recovered since the pandemic and has been in the spotlight for crime.

26/04/2023

UK’s Antitrust Regulator Blocks Microsoft, Activision Deal

Despite recent signs that it was softening its stance on Microsoft’s proposed $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the U.K.’s antitrust regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), has announced that it has decided to formally block the deal.

19/04/2023

Canada’s Federal Workers Strike Amongst the Largest in History

Some 155,000 federal workers, including 35,000 from Canada’s tax agency, went on strike after midnight on Wednesday in what their union is calling one of the largest strikes in the country’s history.

12/04/2023

Elon Musk Confirms Over 80% of Twitter Staff has been Laid Off

Elon Musk has confirmed that he has fired over 80% of the entire workforce of Twitter so far. The billionaire took over Twitter in October last year and carried out multiple rounds of layoffs after the $44 billion-takeover. Musk, in an interview with the BBC on Twitter Spaces, announced that only 1,...

05/04/2023

Tech & Entertainment Executives Set to Meet with House Select Committee on China

Members of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party plan to meet this week with Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Iger and Apple CEO Tim Cook, as well as screenwriters and other studio executives. The chairman of the committee, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) has previously said that he wanted Ige...

29/03/2023

Judge Orders Sanctions in Massive Anti-trust Case Against Google

A federal judge ordered sanctions for Google Tuesday in a multidistrict litigation case after the global technology giant was found to have not adequately preserved communications that were exchanged internally on its Chat message system.

22/03/2023

Key Architects of Post-2008 Wall Street Regulation Calls for Investigation

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren is calling upon watchdogs from multiple federal agencies to open an independent investigation into the collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. Warren called for the probe in a letter she wrote to the inspectors general at the Department of Treasury, Federal De...

17/03/2023

What’s Going on With Credit Suisse?

Battered shares of Credit Suisse lost more than one-quarter of their value Wednesday, hitting a record low after its biggest shareholder — the Saudi National Bank — told news outlets that it would not inject more money into the Swiss bank beset by problems long before the failure of two U.S. len...

08/03/2023

Markets Respond to Fed Chair’s Recent Remarks

The latest remark by the US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on interest rate hikes has fueled volatility in global markets. All major US benchmarks slid more than 1% while equity futures for Australia, Japan, and Hong Kong also declined.

01/03/2023

https://www.brookfieldbrief.com/posts/covid-vaccine-manufacturer-warns-it-may-not-survive

COVID Vaccine Manufacturer Warns It May Not Survive

Five weeks into his job as the new CEO as Novavax, John Jacobs raised the possibility on Tuesday afternoon that the company may not survive 2023.

22/02/2023

Big Retailers Warn of a Slow-Down in Consumer Spending

If you want to know how this year may be for the retail industry, look no further than Walmart’s cautious outlook. The discounter easily topped expectations for the holiday quarter on Tuesday, but it gave a weaker-than-expected outlook for the year ahead. Home Depot issued similar guidance. The ho...

08/02/2023

Oil & Gas Industry Reports Record Profits

The world’s six biggest oil and gas titans reported record profits for 2022 in the past week, doubling their combined net earnings from 2021 and booking the best-ever year for Big Oil. Combined, the net profits of Exxon, Chevron, BP, Shell, Equinor, and TotalEnergies surged to $219 billion for 202...

01/02/2023

British Workers Go on Largest Strike in Over a Decade

Up to half a million British teachers, civil servants, train drivers and university lecturers have walked off their jobs to demand better pay and working conditions in the largest coordinated strike action in a generation as wages fail to keep pace with soaring inflation.

25/01/2023

Boeing Reports Big Loss in Q4

Boeing reported an over $650 million operating loss in the fourth quarter, taking many Wall Street analysts by surprise who had anticipated that the aerospace giant would turn a quarterly profit.

18/01/2023

Microsoft Announces Big Lay-Offs

Microsoft is announcing big job cuts today, affecting 10,000 employees. In a memo, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says the company will be “making changes that will result in the reduction of our overall workforce by 10,000 jobs through the end of FY23 Q3.”

13/01/2023

FTX Lawyers Report $5 Billion in Recovered Assets

FTX has reportedly recovered over $5 billion worth of liquid assets, according to attorneys involved in the bankruptcy court proceedings during a recent hearing.

11/01/2023

House of Coins: The Collapse of FTX Bankruptcy, Fraud, Toxic Culture, Missing Billions, Criminal Charges - Everything You Need to Know

Nearly two months after the infamous Coindesk article went viral raising questions regarding the health of FTX, former FTX CEO “SBF” Sam Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty in Manhattan’s southern district of New York to the allegations of fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, and the re...

28/12/2022

Ship Insurers Drop Coverage for Russia & Ukraine

Ship insurers said they are canceling war risk cover across Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, following reinsurers exiting the region in the face of steep losses.

21/12/2022

Bank of Japan Shocks Global Markets with Tweak to Yield Curve Policy

The Bank of Japan (BOJ) shocked global markets overnight with an unannounced change to its bond yield control that would now allow long-term interest rates to continue to rise, a move that many see as aimed at easing some of the costs of prolonged monetary stimulus in Japan.

Brookfield Brief