MARKET MOVERS

  • Elon Musk will not join Twitter's board of directors. In a tweet Sunday night, Twitter Chief Executive Parag Agrawal said Musk has decided not to join the board. It was unclear why Musk refused the board seat. Agrawal said in his tweet that while he and the board had been excited to add Musk, he believes this is for the best, adding that Elon is still the biggest shareholder and they will remain open to his input.

  • Thoma Bravo agrees $6.9bn deal for cyber security group SailPoint. Monday’s takeover highlights the increased interest in acquisitions among private equity buyers, particularly in the software sector, which sold off sharply at the start of the year. For its takeover of Anaplan, Thoma Bravo bypassed bank lenders and instead raised financing from a group of private lenders led by Owl Rock, Blackstone, Apollo Global, and Golub Capital. Read more here.

  • Binance deepens Middle East expansion with Abu Dhabi approval. It’s the second city Binance has secured approval from. The company also received a crypto license in Dubai last month. The move also comes after Binance was authorized in Bahrain by the country’s central bank. CEO Changpeng Zhao said the company is not shunned elsewhere and that there’s more to come. Read more here.

  • U.S. Treasury yields hit a 3-year high as stocks slide. Adding to investor worries has been the tightening of the yield curve. Ten-year yield rose to 2.75% on Monday and markets have responded bearishly. The futures tracking the S&P 500 tumbled 0.6% in the early hours of Monday as the  Dow Jones Industrial Average futures followed suit falling 0.5%.

  • Startups join the AI acquisition rush. A growing number of venture capital-backed firms are buying artificial-intelligence startups, holding off public market debuts as they bulk up on products and services. They spent roughly $8 billion acquiring an estimated 72 AI startups last year, compared with 49 in 2020, according to 451 Research, a unit of analytics provider S&P Global Market Intelligence. Read more here.

  • The ETF industry is raking in cash. Investors are throwing money at ETFs, mostly in the form of passive (indexed) funds, but also a smattering of actively managed funds. Assets under management have gone from $5 trillion to $7 trillion in less than two years. At the same time, there are record levels in money market funds ($5 trillion) and short-duration bond ETFs.  Read more here.

  • New York Senate authorizes NYDFS to assess crypto companies. The New York State Senate is boosting the state’s Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) efforts to oversee the cryptocurrency sector. The Senate passed its fiscal year 2023 budget early Saturday, which included a provision tasking NYDFS with developing a new “assessment” or charge for the cryptocurrency companies it oversees to bring its oversight mandate in virtual currencies in line with how the regulator oversees more traditional banks and financial services firms. Read more here.

  • China changes audit secrecy rules in a bid to stop US delistings. Beijing has revised its laws on giving financial information to foreign regulators. It’s a move to keep companies from being delisted from US exchanges. And it marks a significant concession to pressure from Washington and would help around 270 Chinese companies stay in New York markets. Source(5:13)

WHAT TO WATCH

  • Shopify seeks a 10-for-1 stock split to protect the CEO's voting power. The company is asking investors to approve changes to its complex share structure to protect the voting power of the Canadian technology company’s leader. The company also is proposing a 10-for-1 stock split. Under the proposal, CEO Tobi Lütke will receive a new founder share that, will increase his voting power to 40% from 34%.

  • Sony and the Lego family bet big on the ‘metaverse’. Sony and KIRKBI, the family-owned investment firm behind Lego, are investing $2 billion in Fortnite maker Epic Games. The deal, which is subject to customary closing conditions, would value Epic at $31.5 billion. It comes after Epic and Lego announced plans to co-develop a family-friendly metaverse for kids.

  • Russia’s war will reorient global energy flows. The firm estimates that energy companies will spend an extra $106 billion to $137 billion over the next two to six years. This spending will aim to help replace 3 million barrels per day of Russia’s oil, as well as the country’s natural gas production. Ultimately, this translates to a $38 billion incremental market opportunity for the machinery companies like Caterpillar, Quanta Services, and Cummins. Read more here.

  • Google is working to automate finance tasks. The company looks to reduce the amount of manual work that its employees have to do. The software giant is using artificial intelligence, automation, the cloud, a data lake, and machine learning to run its finance operations and offers programming and other training to its employees. The Google finance head says that anything that can be automated, they will strive to automate.
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