The US government is pursuing a stake in Intel, the US commerce secretary said on Tuesday, confirming reports of discussions between officials and the company that have circulated for the better part of a week.
The Trump administration wants to convert funding from the Chips and Science Act, which funds research and manufacturing of semiconductor chips in the US, into equity in the struggling tech company, according to Howard Lutnick.
Intel was once a leader in producing computer processors, but is now seen as a laggard behind the likes of Nvidia, which last month became the first public company in history to scale a $4tn valuation after a stratospheric stock market rise.
Lutnick criticized the structure of the Chips Act, signed into law in 2022 under Joe Biden.
“Why are we giving a company worth $100bn this kind of money? What is in it for the American taxpayer? And the answer Donald Trump has is we should get an equity stake for our money,” he told the CNBC financial news network. “So we’ll deliver the money which was already committed under the Biden administration, we’ll get equity in return for it.”
Shares in Intel rallied 7.5% in New York.
The conversion of the funding would not confer governing rights typical of a company’s largest shareholder to the federal government, according to Lutnick. “It’s not governance, we’re just converting what was a grant under Biden into equity. Non-voting,” he said.
Lutnick did say the goal of the equity stake would be much the same as that of the Chips Act, bluntly stating: “We need to make our own chips here. We cannot rely on Taiwan.”
A large portion of the world’s semiconductors originate from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), based in the city of Hsinchu. TSMC has also received Chips Act funding to build semiconductor manufacturing facilities in the US, with construction beginning in Arizona.
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The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, also said on Tuesday that a potential stake would not oblige US businesses to purchase Intel chips.
“The last thing we’re going to do is take a stake and then try to drum up business,” he told CNBC. “The stake would be a conversion of the grants and maybe increase the investment into Intel to help stabilize the company for chip production here in the US. There’s no talk of trying to force companies to buy from Intel.”
The prospect of large US investment in Intel has reinvigorated investor interest in the company, whose stock value has declined by half over the past five years. Shares jumped last week after initial reports of discussions with the US government, and the Japanese conglomerate Softbank announced late on Monday that it would take a $2bn stake in the company.
LONDON, August 19, 2025–(BUSINESS WIRE)–AM Best has revised the outlook to positive from stable for the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating (Long-Term ICR) and affirmed the Financial Strength Rating (FSR) of B (Fair) and the Long-Term ICR of “bb” (Fair) of Jubilee General Insurance Company Limited (Jubilee) (Pakistan). The outlook of the FSR is stable.
These Credit Ratings (ratings) reflect Jubilee’s balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as strong, as well as its strong operating performance, limited business profile and marginal enterprise risk management (ERM).
The revision of the Long-Term ICR outlook to positive from stable reflects improvements in the company’s balance sheet strength fundamentals, notably through increased risk-adjusted capitalisation, as measured by Best’s Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR), underpinned by good earnings retention. In addition, the rating action considers improvements in the economic, political and financial system risks in Pakistan.
Jubilee’s balance sheet strength assessment is underpinned by its risk-adjusted capitalisation at the strongest level, as measured by BCAR (at year-end 2024). Future growth of the company’s underwriting portfolio is expected to be supported adequately by internal capital generation. However, the company’s risk-adjusted capitalisation remains sensitive to changes in asset risk, which is the primary driver of required capital. Other partially offsetting rating factors include the company’s high dependence on reinsurance and its exposure to a non-rated reinsurance counterparty through mandatory cessions to the state-owned reinsurer in Pakistan.
Jubilee has a history of strong earnings, with a five-year (2020-2024) weighted average return on equity of 19.3%. Underwriting performance has been resilient over this period, with a weighted average combined ratio of 94.3%. Investment returns remain the core driver of operating performance, with Jubilee generating a weighted average net investment yield, including capital gains, of 14.3% over the same five-year period.
As the third-largest non-life insurer in Pakistan, Jubilee holds a solid competitive position within its domestic market. The company writes a diversified insurance portfolio, offering conventional and takaful products principally to commercial customers. The company’s premium income increased by 18.5% in 2024, which was ahead of the market growth. This was supported by inflation-driven rate increases and higher sums insured. However, writing PKR 23.1 billion (USD 83 million) of gross premium in 2024, Jubilee remains relatively small on a global scale.
AM Best views Jubilee’s ERM as marginal given the size and complexity of its operations. The company’s risk profile remains exposed to Pakistan’s elevated economic, political and financial system risks. While AM Best notes Jubilee’s historical operational resilience to country risk factors, risk management challenges are presented by its concentration of business and assets in Pakistan.
This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on AM Best’s website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see AM Best’s Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Guide to Best’s Credit Ratings. For information on the proper use of Best’s Credit Ratings, Best’s Performance Assessments, Best’s Preliminary Credit Assessments and AM Best press releases, please view Guide to Proper Use of Best’s Ratings & Assessments.
AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specialising in the insurance industry. Headquartered in the United States, the company does business in over 100 countries with regional offices in London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.ambest.com.
Viking Therapeutics’ stock was crushed after a mid-stage trial of its oral weight-loss drug.
Viking Therapeutics Inc. on Tuesday announced that a trial showed its oral weight-loss drug works – and like a larger rival, its stock price immediately suffered.
Viking’s stock (VKTX) dived 40% in early trade.
Eli Lilly & Co. (LLY), which is developing its own weight-loss drug, orforglipron, had seen its stock crater 14% earlier this month when it said the medication resulted in weight loss of up to 12.4%.
San Diego-based Viking said a Phase 2 trial on its VK2735 oral weight-loss drug – of the same class of drugs like Ozempic that mimic the effects of the glucagon-like peptide 1 hormone – resulted in weight loss of up to 12.2%, or 26.6 pounds on average, after 13 weeks of treatment.
That compared with a weight loss of 1.3% for those taking a placebo pill.
At the highest dose, 38% discontinued treatment early, while 18% taking the placebo similarly stopped treatment. Of those taking the pill, 98% of side effects were categorized as mild or moderate in severity.
Evan Seigerman, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, said investors had expected strong efficacy with a “squeaky clean tolerability profile” but the trial only delivered on effectiveness, due to the rates of treatment discontinuation and vomiting at top dosing.
On a conference call, analysts said they were puzzled by the high discontinuation rate – especially in the placebo group.
“We noted in earlier comments, the placebo rates have escalated a little bit,” said Chief Executive Brian Lian, according to a transcript from S&P Global Market Intelligence. He added, “Everybody knows somebody who’s on a GLP-1 therapy and everybody knows the GI [gastrointestinal] adverse events that are sort of expected from this mechanism.”
-Steve Goldstein
This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(Reuters) -Venture investor Chamath Palihapitiya, dubbed Wall Street’s “SPAC king” for his high-profile blank-check deals, is set to take his latest special purpose acquisition vehicle public, marking his return to the market after several years.
American Exceptionalism Acquisition Corp, chaired by Palihapitiya, will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker ‘AEXA’, a filing showed late on Monday. The SPAC plans to raise $250 million to target companies in artificial intelligence, energy, decentralized finance and defense sectors.
A SPAC is a shell firm that raises money through an IPO to merge with a private business and take it public, offering companies an alternative route to the market that bypasses the longer and more costly traditional IPO process.
SPAC deals hit record levels in 2020 and 2021, before activity slowed sharply in the following years as regulatory scrutiny increased and investors soured on the once-popular vehicle.
During the peak, several Wall Street heavyweights, including billionaire investors Bill Ackman and Michael Klein, joined Palihapitiya in betting on SPACs as the next big trend in the listings market.
Despite backing from big-name investors, many SPACs failed to secure merger targets, while others completed deals with heavy redemptions or saw their shares plunge after debut.
But Palihapitiya strongly believes in the vehicle. “When I raised my first SPAC in 2017, I wanted to help correct an increasingly unstable balance between the private and public markets,” he said in a letter to investors.
“While SPACs are not the solution for every issue in the IPO process, I continue to believe that they have an important piece to play in capital formation – and especially now.”
SoFi Technologies is among Palihapitiya’s most successful bets, with the consumer lender now valued at nearly $29 billion. In January 2021, it had agreed to go public in a blank-check deal valued at around $8.65 billion.
(Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
Air Canada flight attendants say they have reached a “tentative” deal with the airline to end a strike over wages and ground work that has cancelled travel for half a million people worldwide.
Roughly 10,000 flight attendants walked off the job after midnight Saturday, insisting Air Canada had failed to address their demands for higher pay and compensation for unpaid ground work, including during boarding.
The attendants’ union defied two orders from a regulatory tribunal to return to work, forcing Air Canada to roll back plans to partially restore service.
But after resuming talks on Monday evening, the union said it had reached a potential deal with the airline that it would put to its members for consideration.
“The strike has ended. We have a tentative agreement we will bring forward to you,” the Canadian Union of Public Employees’ (Cupe) Air Canada branch said in a statement.
“We are required to advise our membership that we must fully cooperate with resumption of operations,” the statement said.
Air Canada said in a statement that it would “gradually restart its operations” after reaching an agreement with Cupe through a mediator, William Kaplan.
It said the first flights were scheduled for Tuesday evening but warned that full service may not return for seven to 10 days.
“Restarting a major carrier like Air Canada is a complex undertaking. Full restoration may require a week or more,” Air Canada president Michael Rousseau said.
Neither the union nor the airline immediately provided details of the proposed agreement.
But Cupe said the deal achieves “transformational change for our industry after a historic fight”.
“Unpaid work is over,” it added, a reference to a key demand throughout the talks that flight attendants also be compensated for time not spent in the air.
“When our rights were taken away, we stood strong, we fought back – and we secured a tentative agreement that our members can vote on,” Cupe further said.
Air Canada said it would not comment on the terms of the deal “until the ratification process is complete”.
It was not immediately clear when Cupe would schedule a vote.
More travel disruption
Air Canada – the national carrier which flies directly to 180 cities domestically and abroad – has said the strike forced cancellations impacting 500,000 people.
Over the weekend, federal labor minister Patty Hajdu invoked a legal provision to halt the strike and force both sides into binding arbitration.
Following that intervention, the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB), a regulatory tribunal, ordered the flight attendants back to work in two separate orders – on Sunday and Monday.
But the union said it would not comply with the orders, forcing Air Canada to walk back service resumption plans.
Air Canada told customers on Tuesday to expect continued disruption “as aircraft and crew are out of position”.
It urged passengers to only travel to the airport if their flight was shown as operating.
“The suspension of our service is extremely difficult for our customers. We deeply regret and apologize for the impact on them of this labour disruption,” Rousseau said.
Prime minister Mark Carney told reporters Monday it was “disappointing” that eight months of negotiations between the carrier and union had not produced an agreement.
He said it was “important” that flight attendants were “compensated equitably”, but voiced unease that hundreds of thousands of people were facing travel uncertainty.
