Author: Press Room

The numbers: Total consumer credit rose $15.3 billion in February, down from a revised $19.5 billion gain in the prior month, the Federal Reserve said Friday. That translates into a 3.8% annual rate in February, down from a 4.9% gain in the prior month. Economists had been expecting a $20 billion gain in February from the initial January estimate of $14.8 billion , according to the Wall Street Journal forecast. Key details: Revolving credit, like credit cards, rose 5% in February after a revised 12.8% gain in the prior month. That was up from the initial estimate of a 11.1%…

Topline First Citizens Bank announced it will be buying Silicon Valley Bank in a government-backed deal making First Citizens Bank one of the top 15 U.S. banks, according to Bloomberg. Key Facts First Citizens Bank is to purchase $72 billion dollars worth of assets from SVB at a deeply discounted price of $16.5 billion, while also handling $56 billion of the failed bank’s deposits. Before edging its way up to become one of the top 15 banks in the U.S., First Citizens was previously ranked as the 30th top operating bank in the country, according to the Federal Reserve. First…

By Stephen Nellis (Reuters) – (This April 5 story has been corrected to clarify that Neuchips did not beat Qualcomm (NASDAQ:) and Nvidia (NASDAQ:) in one category of testing as it didn’t compete in the categories previously described, and Qualcomm’s results and rankings have been rectified in paragraphs 6-8) Artificial intelligence chips from Qualcomm Inc beat Nvidia Corp in two out of three measures of power efficiency in a new set of test data published on Wednesday. Nvidia dominates the market for training AI models with huge amounts of data. But after those AI models are trained, they are put…

By Peter Nurse Investing.com – The U.S. dollar edged higher in early European trade Thursday with weakening risk sentiment benefiting this safe haven, but remains near two-month lows as a cooling economy points to a pause in the U.S. Federal Reserve rate-hiking cycle. At 03:55 ET (07:55 GMT), the , which tracks the greenback against a basket of six other currencies, traded 0.1% higher to 101.625, just above the two-month low of 101.140 seen during the previous session. Economic data coming out of the U.S. has pointed to slowing economic growth, with the expanding at a more measured rate in…

By Arathy Somasekhar HOUSTON (Reuters) -Oil prices were little changed on Thursday but posted a third weekly gain as markets weighed further production cuts targeted by OPEC+ and falling U.S. oil inventories against fears about the global economic outlook. settled up 13 cents, or 0.2%, at $85.12 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate closed 9 cents, or 0.1%, higher at $80.70. There will be no trading on the Good Friday holiday. Both benchmarks jumped more than 6% this week after OPEC+, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and allies including Russia, surprised the market on Sunday with a pledge…

© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Tesla vehicles are shown at a sales and service center in Vista, California, U.S., June 3, 2022. REUTERS/Mike Blake By Hyunjoo Jin and Mike Scarcella SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A California Tesla (NASDAQ:) owner on Friday sued the electric carmaker in a prospective class action lawsuit accusing it of violating the privacy of customers. The lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California came after Reuters reported on Thursday that groups of Tesla employees privately shared via an internal messaging system sometimes highly invasive videos and images recorded by customers’ car cameras…

California-based fintech Aspiration plans to let go of 180 employees in a company-wide restructuring. The reduction in force will affect both remote staff and employees based out of Aspiration’s Marina Del Rey, California, headquarters. Aspiration’s last layoff was in December, when the company cut about 100 employees. The company declined Forbes’ request for comment. “The layoff is necessitated by the need to streamline and restructure the business in light of current economic conditions and the limited capital available to the Company,” a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification letter filed by the company and signed by CEO Olivia Albrecht reads. “The…

Any CEO who wants to convert his company to a stakeholder model will need patience and faith during the early years. A company that has long devoted itself to short-term gains may find itself going through shareholder withdrawal—literally and figuratively—during the shift. When a company decides to invest in its future—through more equitable employee compensation, rebuilding R&D, capital investment in workplace improvements, and so on—shareholders who have come to rely on quarterly rewards may divest or overtly oppose the conversion to a more responsible model for profit. Long-term thinking requires patient supporters rather than those with a close eye on…

Amazon has owned the ecommerce space for so long that it’s been hard to imagine a serious challenger, but that’s been changing in the past year. The pace of change quickened recently with Walmart’s relaunch of its shopping portal to make it simpler, cleaner, and to feature more relevant seasonal merchandise — in other words, more like Amazon. Alongside a long list of tech companies, both retailers have announced layoffs, but with very different motivations. Amazon is hunkering down. Beginning last fall, the company reportedly shed some 18,000 workers, with another 9,000 job cuts reported last month. The company has…

How can you ensure you’re best-positioned financially before buying your next home? Buying three homes helped me become a debt-free millionaire in my thirties. Here’s what you can do. Don’t Buy At The Top Of Your Budget Start your purchasing budget on half of what the bank approves. My husband and I stuck to this rule for the last three homes we bought because our goal is to become financially independent in our forties. When we bought our first home together, we were prequalified for at least a $200,000 purchase price on his salary and $400,000 using both our salaries.…