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  • Olivia Dean fans refunded by Ticketmaster after singer criticises ‘vile’ resale practices | Music

    Olivia Dean fans refunded by Ticketmaster after singer criticises ‘vile’ resale practices | Music

    Ticketmaster has given fans of Olivia Dean partial refunds after the British singer condemned ticketing companies for allowing touts to relist tickets for her North American tour at more than 14 times their face value.

    After the tour sold out in…

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  • ‘The City can’t be taken for granted’: how banks won over Rachel Reeves | Budget 2025

    ‘The City can’t be taken for granted’: how banks won over Rachel Reeves | Budget 2025

    Over canapés of beef and stilton pie, bone marrow gravy and mushy peas, the financiers at JP Morgan’s New York headquarters held their champagne flutes aloft for a toast: “His majesty the king”.

    Just days before Rachel Reeves’s budget – amid the chancellor’s efforts to soothe business fears and bond market jitters – Jamie Dimon, the Wall Street banking company’s boss was hosting a birthday celebration for King Charles at it’s new $3bn (£2.3bn) Manhattan headquarters.

    Despite the union jack emblazoned on the skyscraper, the king was not there. Varun Chandra, the prime minister’s envoy, however, was among the 400 guests. Dispatched, according to the Financial Times, to reassure the JP Morgan boss of Labour’s pro-business stance.

    This week – hours after banks were spared a tax rise in Reeves’s £26bn budget – Dimon unveiled plans to build a 279,000 sq metre (3m sq ft) tower in London’s Canary Wharf district, with a caveat that a “continuing positive business environment in the UK” was required.

    It is understood that planning issues and long-term considerations are more important for the bank than any one budget. But the episode still highlights how financial services has won a prized status in government, amid ferocious City lobbying to ensure it was one of the few off-limits sectors in Reeves’s smorgasbord tax-raising budget.

    For months Labour has been rolling out the red carpet for Wall Street and City financiers, amid a far broader campaign to woo bankers and company bosses after the party’s pre-election love-in with industry turned sour.

    Norman Blackwell, the former chair of Lloyds Banking Group, who also advised Margaret Thatcher on policy in the 1980s, said Reeves had “work to do” to rebuild the confidence of the City after her £40bn tax-raising 2024 budget.

    “Before the election they talked as though they would be a party that would recognise the importance of wealth creation in the economy by business and entrepreneurs. Everything they have done in government has gone in the opposite direction.

    An artist’s impression of the planned JP Morgan Chase building in London’s Canary Wharf. The bank went ahead with the investment after assurances from an adviser to the UK prime minister. Photograph: JP Morgan Chase/PA

    “They have increased taxes on business, increased regulation in the labour market, [and] the threat to high earners and non-doms. If you look at the numbers of entrepreneurs and rich people leaving the country – they have convinced people that they do not value and will not support entrepreneurs.”

    Despite the reprieve for banks, he said the budget was still unlikely to help much because it would do little to boost UK growth. “It’s a budget that takes the economy in the wrong direction, and is in that sense self-defeating in terms of growth and future government revenue.”

    Much of the rationale behind the rearguard action is pragmatic. Reeves sees the City as critical to the government’s growth mission, with financial services among the eight critical sectors backed in Labour’s industrial strategy. Finance contributes almost a tenth of UK GDP, employs 1.2 million people, and brings in more than £40bn a year for the exchequer.

    In Birmingham earlier this autumn, the chancellor hosted a gala dinner for 300 financiers and business chiefs – putting on a ballet and a spoken-word poetry reading on the eve of its first regional investment summit. Sponsored by HSBC, Lloyds, Eon, KPMG, and IBM, the event the next day at Edgbaston cricket ground secured more than £10bn of investment in Britain.

    However, Labour’s proximity to the boardrooms of the Square Mile does not sit comfortably with the party’s own MPs and voters for whom the memories of the 2008 financial crisis still sting. Most people – including a majority of those considering voting for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK – would have backed a windfall tax on banks at the budget.

    “The chancellor’s failure to levy a windfall tax on the banking sector in the budget is a damning indictment of the stronghold the sector continues to have over our politics,” said Sara Hall, a co-executive director at the campaign group Positive Money.

    “It is very concerning that whilst the public is asked to contribute more to fix our crumbling public services, banks got off scott free – it’s high time we have a proper public conversation about the sector’s lobbying and influence.”

    Reeves hosted Goldman Sachs boss David Solomon in No 11 last month. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

    Last month Reeves hosted Goldman Sachs boss David Solomon in No 11 Downing Street, with the head of the Wall Street firm advising her against increasing bank taxes. Politico reported he ripped up his briefing notes to focus exclusively on the issue, a detail denied by the bank.

    This week, after the budget, Goldman announced that it would expand its Birmingham office and hire 500 staff, in a move that would more than double its workforce in the UK’s second-largest city.

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    The story could have been different. Reeves had been actively considering a multibillion-pound bank windfall tax to help repair the public finances and fund the removal of the two-child benefit limit.

    In August a paper by the Institute for Public Policy Research thinktank estimated Reeves could rake in as much as £8bn, in a report triggering a sell-off in UK banking shares and prompting the industry to lobby harder.

    Reeves’s office was furious with the IPPR report suggesting a windfall tax, and subsequent share price reaction. However, insiders said the Treasury had requested to see the report in advance of its publication.

    The Guardian also understands bank profits – inflated by the Bank of England’s quantitative easing scheme – were examined by Treasury officials on the instruction of ministers in the buildup to the budget.

    “We get whiplash in meetings with HMT at times,” said one senior banker.

    “One minute they’re [senior officials] incredibly nervous about inward investment, the next they’re suggesting that major structural problems are businesses’ fault. Narratives like lenders are the real handbrake on growth creep in. I think they’ve come to realise that the City can’t be taken for granted. London’s one of many financial centres for global banks.”

    Rachel Reeves had actively considered a multibillion-pound bank windfall tax, but dropped the plan. Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AP

    London’s high-paid corporate lawyers were also among those who expressed relief after the budget, after escaping a threatened tax on their earnings. Reports suggested Reeves was looking at scrapping an exemption for limited liability partnership members from national insurance – a move that would have raised £2bn.

    Mark Evans, the president of the Law Society, a body representing lawyers, this week welcomed the reprieve, saying it would have been damaging to the UK economy and claiming that law firms would not have been able to invest, hire, and contribute to growth.

    Banking industry figures said the sector pays a 28% headline rate of corporation tax, above the standard 25% rate charged on company profits, in addition to a 0.1% levy on bank’s balance sheets. “It’s hard to say we don’t pay a fair share, as we pay more,” said one bank lobbyist.

    However, banks have still managed to rake in record profits, benefiting from rising interest rates and the winding down of the Bank’s quantitative easing scheme. In total, Positive Money estimates banks made £24.1bn in the first half of 2025 alone, amounting to almost £1bn a week.

    Speaking earlier this autumn, Paul Nowak, the general secretary of the TUC, said getting banks to pay a little more to help rebuild Britain was common sense. “Banks have done very well out of the British people. It’s only right that they use their bumper profits to pay a bit more in tax to invest in our hospitals, schools and local councils.”

    The Treasury was approached for comment. JP Morgan declined to comment.

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  • Deveron Completes Sale of Assets to Rock River Laboratory | Canada | Global law firm

    Deveron Completes Sale of Assets to Rock River Laboratory | Canada | Global law firm

    Our Toronto office advised certain members of the board of directors of Deveron Corp., a leading agriculture services and data company in North America, on its entry into a share and asset purchase agreement with Rock River Laboratory Inc. and its affiliates.

    The transaction, valued at $36.4 million, includes the sale of all Deveron’s assets, including its 66.6% equity interest in A&L Canada Laboratories East, Inc., together with the remaining ownership held by minority vendors.

    This strategic transaction enables Deveron to retire significant secured debt obligations, settle earnout payments, and restructure convertible debentures, while ensuring continuity for A&L East’s operations under Rock River’s ownership.

    More details are available here. 

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  • Top Black Friday deals on giant TVs — 75-inch TVs for $378

    Top Black Friday deals on giant TVs — 75-inch TVs for $378

    Black Friday has finally arrived, and we’re hard at work rounding up the best Black Friday deals and providing live updates on the top sales. Some of this year’s biggest deals are on…

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  • Rally Saudi Arabia: Day 3

    Rally Saudi Arabia: Day 3

    The battle between TOYOTA GAZOO Racing World Rally Team drivers to be crowned the 2025 world champion will go down to the final day of the season on Saturday at Rally Saudi Arabia.

    After the longest day of the new and…

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  • Is Big Tech back? Meta’s and Microsoft’s stocks score largest weekly gains since May.

    Is Big Tech back? Meta’s and Microsoft’s stocks score largest weekly gains since May.

    By Emily Bary

    Meta and Microsoft shares have struggled for momentum over the past three months but rode improving market sentiment this week

    Shares of Meta and Microsoft, led by Mark Zuckerberg and Satya Nadella, respectively, staged resurgent performances this week.

    During a big week for Big Tech, Meta Platforms and Microsoft shares notched their largest weekly gains in over six months. Is sentiment meaningfully flipping for those beaten-down plays?

    The rallies in Meta (META) and Microsoft (MSFT) came as the broad-market mood improved, reflecting investors’ growing expectation that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates at its December meeting. A rate cut is seen as favorable for technology stocks, and especially for the artificial-intelligence trade. The Nasdaq Composite Index COMP closed the week 4.9% higher, while the S&P 500 SPX climbed 3.7%.

    Meta’s stock advanced 9% on the week to seal its best weekly performance since May 2. The week’s gain snapped a stretch of four consecutive weekly declines and outperformed Alphabet’s stock (GOOG) (GOOGL), the new market darling.

    See also: These two ‘Magnificent Seven’ stocks could be the strongest survivors of an AI apocalypse

    Meanwhile, Microsoft’s 4.2% rise was enough for its strongest weekly performance since May 2, as well. Within the “Magnificent Seven” grouping of large technology stocks, all but Nvidia (NVDA) landed in positive territory for the week. Tesla’s stock (TSLA) was the biggest gainer, up 10%.

    The Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF MAGS staged a 5.2% rise on the week, snapping a streak of three consecutive weekly drops. But Citi analysts noted Monday that the “Magnificent Seven” have started to behave less like a monolithic group lately.

    Meta and Microsoft shares have generally struggled for momentum in recent months, with Meta off 13.7% over a three-month span and Microsoft down 3.5%.

    Don’t miss: Is the ‘Magnificent Seven’ over? Focus on these three stocks in particular.

    In the aftermath of Meta’s third-quarter earnings report, investors began to more heavily scrutinize the company’s heightened artificial-intelligence spending given what’s seen to be a murky path to monetization. Whereas Microsoft, Amazon.com (AMZN) and Alphabet have cloud businesses that can financially benefit from the AI boom, Meta doesn’t. The company says that AI has helped it improve creative tools for advertisers and content recommendations for users, but Wall Street isn’t sure that other bets, like a chatbot, will pay off.

    Don’t miss: Meta’s stock has been under heavy pressure. Now the company is undergoing a shakeup.

    BNP Paribas analyst Nick Jones, who initiated coverage of Meta shares with a bullish rating earlier this week, agreed that success in large language models looks far from certain but praised the company’s monetization potential beyond that.

    Read: Meta’s stock finds a new defender, who predicts 30% upside from here

    Microsoft’s stock pressure has been somewhat more puzzling for Wall Street analysts, though they’ve come up with some theories, many of which relate to close partner OpenAI. First investors were worried that OpenAI would diversify away from Microsoft, but lately the concern has been that OpenAI might not even be the future of artificial intelligence, as Alphabet’s efforts gain steam.

    In a volatile year, shares of Microsoft are now up 16.7% on a year-to-date basis, a performance that ranks third within the “Magnificent Seven” and is roughly in line with the S&P 500’s 16.5% gain. And shares of Meta, which as recently as last week flirted with a wipeout of all their 2025 gains, are now ahead 10.7% on the year.

    -Emily Bary

    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.

    (END) Dow Jones Newswires

    11-28-25 1316ET

    Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

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  • AHA Ventures Bets Big on Women’s Heart Disease Innovation

    AHA Ventures Bets Big on Women’s Heart Disease Innovation

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  • Stocks Rise After CME Mess, Erasing November Loss: Markets Wrap

    Stocks Rise After CME Mess, Erasing November Loss: Markets Wrap

    (Bloomberg) — US stocks advanced in thin trading after a technical outage at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange disrupted premarket activity. Bonds edged lower.

    The S&P 500 rose 0.5% in a post-holiday shortened session and was back within spitting distance of all-time highs. Volume was more than 25% below the 30-day average as Friday trading closed at 1:00 p.m. Earlier, a data-center fault had affected multiple markets, with the issue lasting longer than a similar outage in 2019. The Nasdaq 100 rose 0.8% with Intel Corp. among its biggest gainers. Amazon.com Inc. shares gained 1.8% and Walmart Inc. hit a record on what’s traditionally one of the biggest US shopping days of the year.

    Subscribe to the Stock Movers Podcast on Apple, Spotify and other Podcast Platforms.

    Foreign-exchange markets, which had continued to traded throughout the day, saw no major volatility after the EBS platform reopened at 7:00 a.m.

    “The spillover from the Thanksgiving holiday and the fact there is no US data may on the face of it lessen the impact,” said Daniel Noorian, head of execution and quantitative services at Liquidnet.

    The CME halt was caused by a cooling system malfunction at a data center in the Chicago area, according to facility operator CyrusOne.

    “Some market participants will take advantage of possible differences in prices,” said Guillermo Hernandez Sampere, head of trading at asset manager MPPM. “The majority will pause trading for risk reasons until the issues are resolved, otherwise losses are possible.”

    For US stocks, expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates faster than initially anticipated fueled a late-month rebound.

    The biggest weekly advance in five months capped off a choppy November after swollen technology stock valuations stirred up unease on Wall Street. The gain buoyed the broader barometer of US stocks as it notched a seven-month winning streak. But investors rotating away from artificial intelligence winners and into defensive sectors like health care led the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 to log its first monthly loss since March.

    The broader US stocks gauge had been down as much as 4.7% in November barely more than a week ago, as worries over stretched technology valuations rattled traders. Money markets were assigning roughly an 80% chance of a Fed cut in December before the CME disruption hit.

    “For now, the data supports the soft landing, and that contributed to the continued equity rally ahead of Thanksgiving,” wrote Tom Essaye of the Sevens Report. “However, there remain a lot of economic unknowns right now and there are simmering risks that the economy is not as strong as investors believe given the lack of government data in recent months.”

    Essaye said there could be risk-off money flows in December if upcoming data disappoint. Next week, statistics-starved investors will be watching for Challenger, Gray & Christmas job cuts and ADP’s private-payrolls reports as well as a reading of the Fed’s favored inflation gauge on Friday.

    Moves across global equities were muted amid thin volumes. Europe’s Stoxx 600 edged up 0.2%, while an Asian gauge trimmed gains after a four-day rally. Yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.02% while the dollar held steady.

    In commodities, oil was on track for a fourth monthly decline as traders looked ahead to this weekend’s OPEC+ meeting and assessed how a possible Ukraine peace agreement might influence an already oversupplied market.

    Gold traders faced a volatile session as the CME outage rippled through trading. The disruption affected activity across contracts including gold futures and Comex options, often used to hedge exposure to London prices. Spot bullion resumed a climb as trading was restored, advancing more than 1%.

    What Bloomberg Strategists Say…

    Gold’s main drivers — central-bank buying, Fed rate cuts, a weaker dollar, concerns about the US central bank’s independence, and a loyal crew of ETF holders — all remain in place. There’s also concern in the background about swelling debt burdens in several developed economies and, by extension, the standing of fiat currencies.

    — Jake Lloyd-Smith Energy and Commodities Editor, Singapore

    Some of the main moves in markets:

    Stocks

    The S&P 500 rose 0.5% as of 1 p.m. New York time The Nasdaq 100 rose 0.8% The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.6% The MSCI World Index rose 0.5% Currencies

    The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell 0.1% The euro was little changed at $1.1602 The British pound was little changed at $1.3235 The Japanese yen was little changed at 156.23 per dollar Cryptocurrencies

    Bitcoin fell 0.8% to $90,683.7 Ether rose 0.1% to $3,037.02 Bonds

    The yield on 10-year Treasuries advanced three basis points to 4.02% Germany’s 10-year yield was little changed at 2.69% Britain’s 10-year yield declined one basis point to 4.44% Commodities

    West Texas Intermediate crude rose 1.4% to $59.47 a barrel Spot gold rose 1.4% to $4,217.17 an ounce This story was produced with the assistance of Bloomberg Automation.on.

    –With assistance from Subrat Patnaik, James Hirai, Sujata Rao, Macarena Muñoz and Christian Dass.

    ©2025 Bloomberg L.P.

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    ‘Sexy and a little daring, but never too much’: sheer skirts hit the sweet spot | Skirts

    Fashion loves nothing more than an extreme trend, one difficult to imagine transferring to most people’s everyday lives. See naked dressing, where stars on the red carpet wear transparent and sometimes barely there gowns.

    This party season,…

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