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    Some Calm Returns to Asian Markets Even as Trade Tensions Escalate

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    Stocks rise in China after Beijing announces support measures a day after market plunges triggered by tariffs imposed by President Trump.After three days of global market turmoil not seen since the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, stocks in Asia regained a measure of calm on Tuesday despite little let up in the escalating trade tensions caused by President Trump’s tariffs.Before markets opened in China, the government unleashed a series of measures to stabilize stocks. In turn, share prices in Hong Kong, a day after plunging 13.2 percent, rose 2 percent. Benchmarks in mainland China ticked higher, recovering from big declines the day before.In Japan, the Nikkei 225, a key benchmark in Japan, gained 6 percent, recouping a portion of the previous days losses. The uptick in sentiment followed comments made on Monday by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who said he would soon begin discussions with the Japanese government regarding tariffs.The Kospi index rose in South Korea rose about 1.5 percent.Markets around the world were unmoored last week by Mr. Trump’s announcement of broad new tariffs — a base tax of 10 percent on American imports, plus significantly higher rates on dozens of other countries. Countries have responded with tariffs of their own on U.S. goods, or with threats of retaliation. China retaliated forcefully on Friday, matching a new 34 percent tariff with one of its own on many American imports.In the United States on Monday, the S&P 500 fell 0.2 percent after tumultuous trading that at one point pulled the benchmark into bear market territory, or a drop of 20 percent or more from its recent high. S&P futures, indicating how markets might perform when they reopen for trading on Wednesday in New York, were 1.5 percent higher.Wall Street executives and analysts are growing increasingly worried that escalating trade tensions could do lasting damage to the global economy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon Warns of Economic Pain From Trump’s Tariffs

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      President Trump’s wave of tariffs threatens to bring both short-term economic pain, including lower growth, and long-term damage to America’s standing and trade relationships around the world, the chief executive of Wall Street’s biggest bank warned on Monday.“The recent tariffs will likely increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession,” Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s chief executive, wrote in his annual letter to shareholders.The warning by Mr. Dimon, one of Wall Street’s most influential leaders, echoes the growing anxiety among corporate chiefs about how the tariffs will play out. Even those who had initially professed support for Mr. Trump’s trade plans are becoming increasingly worried about the consequences.Even before Mr. Trump’s tariff announcement last week, the U.S. economy had been showing signs of strain after years of healthy performance, Mr. Dimon wrote. Inflation was already a worry, Mr. Dimon said, pointing to a yawning fiscal deficit and the need for more infrastructure spending. And stock valuations remain well above historical averages, — even after the recent market sell-off.The potential consequences of the trade fight could make things worse, the letter said. Those include other countries’ efforts to fight back — as China has done by imposing 34 percent counter-levies — and a possible erosion of confidence among consumers and investors. Mr. Dimon also warned about the weakening of the American dollar’s role as the global reserve currency.“If America, for whatever reason, becomes a less-attractive investment destination, the U.S. dollar and the economy could suffer if foreigners sold their U.S. assets,” he wrote.JPMorgan’s own economists have increasingly been saying that a recession is more likely this year, though Mr. Dimon did not personally take a position on those odds in his shareholder letter.While Mr. Dimon asserted that JPMorgan itself was strong enough to withstand the shocks that the levies posed — its traders have profited from previous whipsaws in the markets — the global economy may not be so fortunate. “It is not particularly good for the capital markets,” Mr. Dimon wrote of the tariff-linked volatility.For now, Mr. Dimon wrote that he was hoping for a speedy resolution to the trade battles. “The quicker this issue is resolved, the better because some of the negative effects increase cumulatively over time and would be hard to reverse,” he wrote.The longer-term worry, Mr. Dimon said, is that Mr. Trump’s fight could shred decades-old alliances that cemented the United States’ primacy in the global order. The JPMorgan chief wrote that he was worried that America’s trading partners might seek out deals with the likes of China, Iran or Russia in response to the tariffs.“America First is fine,” Mr. Dimon wrote, referring to Mr. Trump’s description of his policies — “as long as it doesn’t end up being America alone.” More

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      A November Surprise That’s Jostling the Markets

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      The dollar, Treasury yields and crypto currencies have fallen, reversing some elements of the so-called Trump trade after an unexpected poll result. In the race’s final hours, a poll reminds the markets of the power of women voters.Caroline Gutman for The New York TimesDown to the wire Investors on Monday appear to be unwinding bets on the so-called Trump trade. In a major reversal, bonds have rallied and the dollar and crypto currencies have dipped in the race’s final hours.One explanation is a surprising new poll that showed Vice President Kamala Harris, powered in part by support from women and older voters, edging ahead in deep-red Iowa — a finding that’s also led to a tightening of Donald Trump’s lead in political prediction markets.Why the change of heart? The highly regarded Ann Selzer/Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll that was published on Saturday gave Harris a three-point advantage over Trump in the Hawkeye State, a Republican stronghold. “It’s hard for anybody to say they saw this coming,” Selzer said.Some urged caution about the poll. The Economist questioned whether the small sample size in Selzer’s poll made it a good predictor of what might happen in other states. And the Trump campaign pointed to another Iowa poll out this weekend that showed the former president with a 10-point lead over Harris.But Michael McDonald, a politics professor at the University of Florida who runs a vote-tracking site, pointed to similar dynamics in a recent Kansas poll.The Selzer poll has roiled the political betting markets. Following its publication, Trump’s odds of victory fell on platforms including Polymarket, after they had climbed in recent weeks, in tandem with crypto and other elements of the Trump trade.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Worst Part of a Wall Street Career May Be Coming to an End

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      Artificial intelligence tools can replace much of Wall Street’s entry-level white-collar work, raising tough questions about the future of finance.Pulling all-nighters to assemble PowerPoint presentations. Punching numbers into Excel spreadsheets. Finessing the language on esoteric financial documents that may never be read by another soul.Such grunt work has long been a rite of passage in investment banking, an industry at the top of the corporate pyramid that lures thousands of young people every year with the promise of prestige and pay.Until now. Generative artificial intelligence — the technology upending many industries with its ability to produce and crunch new data — has landed on Wall Street. And investment banks, long inured to cultural change, are rapidly turning into Exhibit A on how the new technology could not only supplement but supplant entire ranks of workers.The jobs most immediately at risk are those performed by analysts at the bottom rung of the investment banking business, who put in endless hours to learn the building blocks of corporate finance, including the intricacies of mergers, public offerings and bond deals. Now, A.I. can do much of that work speedily and with considerably less whining.“The structure of these jobs has remained largely unchanged at least for a decade,” said Julia Dhar, head of BCG’s Behavioral Science Lab and a consultant to major banks experimenting with A.I. The inevitable question, as she put it, is “do you need fewer analysts?”The inevitable question, according to Julia Dhar, head of BCG’s Behavioral Science Lab, is “do you need fewer analysts?”John Lamparski/Getty Images for Concordia SummitWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why a Second Trump Term Could Be Bad for Corporate America

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      There was anxiety in the thin mountain air when the planet’s economic leaders gathered in January at Davos for the 54th meeting of the World Economic Forum. Donald Trump had just trounced Nikki Haley in the Iowa caucuses, all but securing the Republican nomination for president. Haley was reliable, a known quantity. A resurgent Trump, on the other hand, was more worrying.Listen to this article, read by Edoardo BalleriniOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.The Davos attendees needed reassurance, and Jamie Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, had some to offer. In an interview with CNBC that made headlines around the world, Dimon praised Trump’s economic policies as president. “Be honest,” Dimon said, sitting against a backdrop of snow-dusted evergreens, dressed casually in a dark blazer and polo shirt. “He was kind of right about NATO, kind of right on immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Trade. Tax reform worked. He was right about some of China.” Asked which of the likely presidential candidates would be better for business, he opted not to pick a side.“I will be prepared for both,” he said. “We will deal with both.”Dimon presides over the largest and most profitable bank in the United States and has done so for nearly 20 years. Maybe more than any single individual, he stands in for the Wall Street establishment and, by extension, corporate America. With his comments at Davos, he seemed to be sending a message of good will to Trump on their behalf. But he also appeared to be trying to put his fellow globalists at ease, reassuring them that America, long a haven for investors fleeing risk in less-stable democracies, would remain a safe destination for their money in a second Trump administration.Jamie Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, here testifying before Congress in 2023, has attempted to reassure global business leaders the economy would remain stable during a second Trump administration.Evelyn Hockstein/ReutersBut would it? As Dimon noted, for all Trump’s extreme rhetoric in the 2016 campaign — his threats to rip up America’s international trade agreements and his attacks on “globalization” and the “financial elite” — his presidency, like most presidencies, proved to be business-friendly. Corporate America wound up with plenty of allies in the administration, from Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs executive; to Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, a Harvard Business School-educated bankruptcy guru; to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, an aspiring Wall Street player. And the Trump administration’s economic agenda of reduced taxes and deregulation largely suited corporate America’s interests; JPMorgan saved billions of dollars a year thanks to Trump’s corporate tax cuts.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jamie Dimon Reshuffles Management Team at JPMorgan

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      Many consider the moves a sign of a succession plan at the nation’s largest bank, although the stalwart Mr. Dimon has signaled he’s not going anywhere.JPMorgan Chase is reshuffling its leadership team, a move that many consider a succession plan even though its longtime chief executive, Jamie Dimon, has signaled he’s staying put.Mr. Dimon, 67, has been head of what is now the largest bank in the United States for nearly two decades, and repeatedly brushed off suggestions that he might step aside. The specter of his eventual departure, however, hangs over JPMorgan as outsiders question whether he might run for public office or serve in a presidential administration.In a memo to employees Thursday, JPMorgan muddied the matter further. It said that Daniel Pinto, the bank’s chief operating officer and Mr. Dimon’s deputy, would no longer handle the bank’s daily operations. Mr. Dimon said that he and Mr. Pinto would “continue to jointly manage the company.”Mr. Pinto’s former responsibilities will be split by Jennifer Piepszak and Troy Rohrbaugh, who will serve as co-chief executives of an expanded commercial and investment bank that brings several lines of the company into one unit. Ms. Piepszak, who co-heads JPMorgan’s massive consumer banking business, has long been seen as a potential candidate for the top job. Mr. Rohrbaugh had been one of the co-heads of the bank’s markets and securities business.The reshuffle will result in the departure of some executives. Others at the bank will see their roles redefined or be promoted to new ones.Another senior executive, Marianne Lake, who ran the consumer and community banking unit with Ms. Piepszak, will now become the sole head of that business. Wall Street analysts have long considered Ms. Lake as a potential successor to Mr. Dimon as well.Mary Erdoes, who runs JPMorgan’s wealth management business and is perhaps the bank’s most public face after Mr. Dimon, will remain in her current role.Mr. Dimon has a financial incentive to stay in his post a good deal longer. In addition to his annual pay ($36 million in 2023), he is slated to receive an additional bonus if he’s still chief executive in 2026. More

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      GOP Donors Face Dilemma as DeSantis Drops Out

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      Ron DeSantis’s exit, and Nikki Haley’s struggle to make headway against Donald Trump, are forcing Republicans to make a tough choice.The narrowing race for the Republican presidential nomination is creating tough choices for anti-Trump donors.Sophie Park for The New York TimesIt’s down to Trump and Haley now The effort to pick anyone but Donald Trump as the Republican presidential nominee took another big, if expected, blow on Sunday when Ron DeSantis dropped out of the race and endorsed the former president. (Other former hopefuls, including Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott, have also endorsed Trump.)The Republican faithful are coalescing around Trump in a way that raises questions about the next move by the wealthy donors who have sought to stop him.Nikki Haley is now the only potential roadblock to a Trump nomination. DeSantis came into the race as the most daunting opponent to the former president, but his misstep-laden campaign never turned into a serious threat. Among his strategic errors was betting that “anti-woke” fights, including his battle against Disney, would resonate with voters. (Politico reports that a top DeSantis fund-raiser had proposed a legally untested way for the campaign to remain afloat, but the Florida governor eventually yielded to electoral reality.)Haley has embraced her status as the last anti-Trump candidate standing: “May the best woman win,” she said on Sunday. But polls put her some 15 percentage points behind Trump in New Hampshire, as voters head to the polls tomorrow.It’s a sign that the influence of big-money donors is limited. DeSantis’s war chest was financed largely by deep-pocketed benefactors. And in recent months, Haley has drawn support from a bipartisan group of anti-Trump moguls, including the hedge fund billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller and the Democratic investor and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman. (JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon has publicly exhorted people of all political stripes to back Haley.)But as The Times’s Ken Vogel notes, winning over the moneyed class hasn’t guaranteed electoral success for years. Just ask Jeb Bush.What will those anti-Trump donors do? Some are continuing to back Haley: Several Wall Street titans, including Druckenmiller and Henry Kravis, will host a fund-raiser for her on Jan. 30, a week after the Republican and Democratic New Hampshire primaries. And Americans for Prosperity, a super PAC backed by the Koch business empire, said it would continue to back Haley through at least Super Tuesday in early March.But if Haley loses badly in New Hampshire, how long will business leaders accustomed to success stick with a failing bet? Ken Langone, a co-founder of Home Depot and one of her backers, said recently that he wants to see how she does tomorrow before giving more money.In other election news: The top outside political group backing President Biden raised $208 million last year. And Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is heading to the Midwest this week to tout Biden’s economic record as data points increasingly turn positive.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING The war in Gaza hits the Middle East’s economy. Three months in, the conflict has cost Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan more than $10 billion in economic losses, and risks pushing 230,000 into poverty. Meanwhile, international support for Israel is fraying as casualties in Gaza mount and as attacks by Houthi rebels on commercial vessels in the Red Sea are driving up shipping costs.Exxon Mobil sues climate investors to stop a proxy fight. The fossil-fuel giant asked a federal court in Texas to throw out a proposal from Follow This and Arjuna Capital that calls for speeding up the company’s efforts to cut greenhouse gases. A decision could clarify S.E.C. guidance on which shareholder proposals can be put up for a vote by company shareholders.Another Boeing model comes under regulatory scrutiny. The F.A.A. said on Sunday that airlines should inspect the door plugs on Boeing 737-900ER planes “as an added layer of safety.” Confidence in Boeing’s engineering and quality control has fallen after hundreds of Boeing 737 Max 9s were grounded in the wake of a door panel tearing off an Alaska Airlines jet in flight.S&P 500 futures are up again on Monday. After hitting a record on Friday, the benchmark index looks set to extend those gains. Last week’s rally was driven by investor bets on interest rates cuts and the artificial intelligence boom buoying tech stocks.Could Macy’s get hostile? Macy’s has rejected a $5.8 billion takeover bid from the investment firms Arkhouse Management and Brigade Capital that valued the struggling department store chain at roughly 20 percent above its closing share price on Friday.The investor group is now threatening to take the offer to shareholders. With a potential hostile bid looming, here are DealBook’s questions about what may come next.How would Arkhouse and Brigade pull off a deal? Macy’s board cited doubts about the investment firms’ financing when it rejected the proposal on Sunday. The company said the firms had proposed to pay 25 percent of the offer in equity. The rest would most likely be from debt such as leveraged loans, the market for which has been tight thanks in part to high interest rates.Could the rejection open the door to other bids? Arkhouse’s 2021 offer for Columbia Property Trust led to another buyer entering the picture. Macy’s has not reached out to prospective buyers, people familiar with the matter tell DealBook. But the retailer indicated in a statement that it would “be open to opportunities that are in the best interests of the company and all of our shareholders.”The list of prospective suitors is short, given the challenges facing the retail sector and the scarring memories of buyouts-gone-bad like with Sears.What is Macy’s turnaround plan? The retailer’s shares have fallen about 30 percent over the past five years, as the company lost significant market share, forcing it to close stores and lay off staff — including an announcement last week that it would cut 2,350 jobs.All eyes are on Tony Spring, who takes over as C.E.O. next month after having led Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s much-healthier higher-end brand. But duplicating that kind of success could be challenging, given Macy’s large and underperforming store base and its different shopper demographics.Taking the temperature of tech C.E.O.s Tech sector C.E.O.s are more optimistic about the economy this year, especially the potential for artificial intelligence and the I.P.O. market. But they also remain wary that geopolitical tensions could disrupt trade and increase headwinds in the capital markets, SoftBank’s latest annual survey of its portfolio companies shows.DealBook got an exclusive first look at the report, which includes start-ups backed bySoftBank’s two Vision Funds and its Latin America fund.Hope is returning after a dismal two years. Almost half of the C.E.O.s surveyed were more upbeat about the economy than they were a year ago and expected to raise capital this year.The improvement in sentiment is from a low base, cautioned Alex Clavel, co-C.E.O. of SoftBank Investment Advisers, which manages the funds. Last year was a hangover from 2022, when the fund-raising “faucets were turned off,” he said. Hopes didn’t pan out that I.P.O.s at the end of 2023 — including of the SoftBank-backed Arm — would lead to a flow of new listings, but 37 percent of C.E.O.s said public listings would pick up in the second half of 2024.A.I. excitement is high, even if it’s unclear how it will be deployed. “There is an increasing sense that 2024 is the year when we go from A.I. enthusiasm to A.I. impact,” Clavel said. A third of the C.E.O.s said they had increased A.I. investment by 50 percent last year and were using it to make products more cheaply or to improve efficiency.But some are proceeding cautiously. Clavel said one company has used A.I. to cut costs significantly but is holding off on more changes “because it’s going to be too unsettling” for the work force.The C.E.O.s said tensions with China were the top geopolitical risk. Still, that obstacle hasn’t significantly affected their businesses yet. The biggest concern for 2024: that wider instability, including war in the Middle East, could sap investor interest in I.P.O.s or raise energy costs in Europe.“I have lost confidence in the determination and ability of the Harvard Corporation and Harvard leadership to maintain Harvard as a place where Jews and Israelis can flourish.” — Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary and ex-president of Harvard, after the university announced a new antisemitism task force on Friday. The committee is set to be co-chaired by Derek Penslar, a professor of Jewish history who Summers said was “unsuited” for the role in part because of his position on the extent of the school’s antisemitism problem.The week ahead On the agenda this week: earnings, inflation and central bank decisions.Tomorrow: Netflix, Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson and Lockheed Martin release quarterly results. Also, the Bank of Japan is expected to maintain its ultra-loose monetary policy; the markets predict the country will exit its negative rates regime as soon as March.Elsewhere, the Academy Awards nominees are set to be announced.Wednesday: The Dutch chips-equipment manufacturer ASML, Tesla and AT&T report earnings.Thursday: It’s decision day for the European Central Bank, which is expected to hold steady on interest rates. On the other side of the Atlantic, U.S. fourth-quarter G.D.P. is set to be published.In earnings, LVMH, Intel, Visa and a slew of airlines including American, Southwest and Alaska Air Group are due to report.Friday: The Personal Consumption Expenditures report, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, will be released.THE SPEED READ DealsSony ended a $10 billion deal to combine its Indian assets with Zee Entertainment, a Mumbai-based media company. (Reuters)Macquarie, the big Australian investment firm, has raised 8 billion euros ($8.7 billion) for its latest European infrastructure fund. (FT)What Citigroup’s exit from the $4 trillion market for municipal bonds, a field it once dominated, means for the business of financing state and local governments. (WSJ)Artificial intelligenceEleven Labs, an A.I voice-cloning start-up, raised $80 million in new funds from investors led by Andreessen Horowitz at a valuation of more than $1 billion. (Bloomberg)How Japan is turning to avatars, robots and A.I. to tackle its labor crisis. (FT)Best of the rest“‘America is Under Attack’: Inside the Anti-D.E.I. Crusade” (NYT)American clothing makers are pushing to change a trade rule that effectively lets foreign manufacturers ship directly to U.S. consumers without paying tariffs. (NYT)The Chinese electric carmaker BYD is going upmarket with a Lamborghini-style E.V. to step up its fight with Tesla. (WSJ)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More

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      The Davos Consensus: Donald Trump Will Win Re-Election

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      In private, many business and political leaders at the World Economic Forum say they expect Donald Trump to return to the White House. Many business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland say Donald Trump will win the race for the White House.Denis Balibouse/ReutersThe Davos consensus on the presidential election Publicly, the global business leaders who gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, haven’t wanted to predict the winner of the upcoming U.S. presidential election. The closest they’ve come? Referring to it as a “geopolitical risk.”But talk to executives privately, and they’re more explicit: They expect Donald Trump to win and while many are worried about that, they are also resigned to it.The predictions of a Trump victory came in different forms. Many pointed to the headlines and the mood in the U.S. One senior banker told DealBook that you only had to look at the polls to figure out that Trump was on track to win.Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase also got a lot of attention for his comments. In an interview with Andrew on CNBC, he didn’t predict that Trump would win, but suggested that dismissing the former president and his supporters would be a mistake.“Just take a step back and be honest,” Dimon said, listing the things that he thought Trump got at least partially right: NATO, immigration, the economy, China and more. “He wasn’t wrong about some of these critical issues, and that’s why they’re voting for him,” he said.“I think this negative talk about MAGA will hurt [President] Biden’s campaign,” he added.That said, the Davos crowd often gets things wrong. A common critique of those who attend the forum is that they are a contra-indicator of what’s to come, so their expectations could bode well for Biden or for Trump’s Republican rivals. “Trump is already the president at Davos — which is a good thing because the Davos consensus is usually wrong,” Alex Soros, the son of George Soros, said on a panel.A little history: The Davos consensus was that Hillary Clinton would beat Trump in 2016. And in 2020, the prevailing view was that there were few risks to the economy … as the pandemic began to explode.Seen and heard:Perhaps the biggest complaint among attendees was about the long lines everywhere, especially at the Grandhotel Belvédère. Many complained that the process of entering the building — with wait times sometimes reaching an hour — was worse than ever and it didn’t matter whether you were a business titan or a less famous guest. One executive complained to DealBook that the security was more restrictive than at U.S. airports because he had to take off his Apple Watch every time. At previous gatherings, executives wanted a room at the Belvédère because the hotel was considered the best in town and was closest to the main venue — but many told DealBook that they no longer do.Despite the rigid class system — people are assigned different colored badges that grant various levels of access — the event has odd ways of leveling the playing field, at least a little. At last night’s Salesforce party, the hottest ticket of the week, even billionaires had to wait outside with everyone else to get in to watch Sting perform.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING Congress approved a stopgap spending bill to avert a government shutdown. President Biden is expected to sign the bill into law on Friday to keep the federal government operating through to early March. It’s the third such stopgap bill since October.Jamie Dimon gets a big bump in pay. JPMorgan Chase’s board granted its C.E.O. $36 million in compensation for 2023, a year in which the bank weathered a banking crisis and rising interest rates, and generated record profit. The 67-year-old, the longest tenured chief of a large American bank, has not given any indication on when he might retire.Reddit reportedly considers a March public listing. The social media platform is said to be moving forward with a long-held plan to file for an I.P.O. in the first quarter, according to Reuters. The market for new listings has been a bumpy one and the outlook looks little improved this year.Macy’s will cut thousands of jobs. The country’s biggest department store operator will lay off 2,350 employees, about 3.5 percent of the work force. The cuts come as Tony Spring, a veteran retail executive, prepares to take over as C.E.O. next month. Macy’s has been struggling with slowing sales since the pandemic-inspired shop-from-home boom shook up the retail sector.BYD doubles down on overseas expansion. The Warren Buffett-backed Chinese maker of electric vehicles plans to invest $1.3 billion in a new Indonesian factory as it continues its aggressive push beyond its home market. Indonesia is home to the world’s largest reserves of nickel, a crucial mineral in production of E.V.s.The E.S.G. exodus intensifies The money flowing out of E.S.G. funds has gone from a trickle to a torrent as investors sour on a sector hit by greenwashing concerns, red-state boycotts and boardroom debates.The investing strategy has become increasingly politicized after being used by companies to address environmental, social, and governance issues among their employees, customers and other stakeholders. In a sign of the times, the phrase has been scrubbed from the World Economic Forum’s official program in Davos, after being on the agenda in previous years.Investors pulled $5 billion out of E.S.G.-focused “sustainable” investment funds last quarter, according to a new report by Morningstar. The withdrawals occurred despite a wider market rally at the end of 2023.E.S.G. funds saw outflows of $13 billion for the full year. All in all, it was the “worst calendar year on record,” wrote Alyssa Stankiewicz, Morningstar’s director of sustainability research.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Nikki Haley, in Retreat, Says ‘Of Course the Civil War Was About Slavery’

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      A day after giving a stumbling answer about the conflict’s origin that did not mention slavery, Ms. Haley told an interviewer: “Yes, I know it was about slavery. I am from the South.”Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and Republican presidential hopeful, on Thursday walked back her stumbling answer about the cause of the Civil War, telling a New Hampshire interviewer, “Of course the Civil War was about slavery.”Her retreat came about 12 hours after a town-hall meeting in New Hampshire, a state that is central to her presidential hopes, where she was asked what caused the Civil War. She stumbled through an answer about government overreach and “the freedoms of what people could and couldn’t do,” after jokingly telling the questioner he had posed a tough one. He then noted she never uttered the word “slavery.”“What do you want me to say about slavery?” Ms. Haley replied. “Next question.”Speaking on a New Hampshire radio show on Thursday morning, Ms. Haley, who famously removed the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the South Carolina Capitol in Columbia, said: “Yes I know it was about slavery. I am from the South.”But she also insinuated that the question had come not from a Republican voter but from a political detractor, accusing President Biden and Democrats of “sending plants” to her town-hall events.“Why are they hitting me? See this for what it is,” she said, adding, “They want to run against Trump.”In recent polls, Ms. Haley has surged into second place in New Hampshire, edging closer to striking distance of former President Donald J. Trump. To win the Granite State contest on Jan. 23, the first primary election of 2024, she will most likely need independent voters — and possibly Democrats who registered as independents. That is how Senator John McCain of Arizona upset George W. Bush in the state’s 2000 primary.But the Civil War gaffe may have put a crimp in that strategy.“I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run,” she said Wednesday night, “the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.”The answer echoed a century’s argument from segregationists that the Civil War was fundamentally about states’ rights and economics, not about ending slavery.Late Wednesday night, even Mr. Biden rebuked the answer: “It was about slavery,” he wrote on social media.She tried to walk back her comments on Thursday, asking: “What’s the lesson in all this? That freedom matters. And individual rights and liberties matter for all people. That’s the blessing of America. That was a stain on America when we had slavery. But what we want is never relive it. Never let anyone take those freedoms away again.”The episode also undermined her appeal to moderates and independents seeking to thwart Mr. Trump’s return to the White House by portraying Ms. Haley as an agent of compromise.Her record as governor of South Carolina included blocking a bill to stop transgender youths from using bathrooms that corresponded to their gender identity. Her push to lower the Confederate battle flag came after the mass shooting of Black worshipers at a Charleston church by a white supremacist. And she has recently called for a middle ground on abortion.“Haley’s refusal to talk honestly about slavery or race in America is a sad betrayal of her own story,” said Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California. More