News updates from June 13: Musk wins vote for $56bn pay package; US Supreme Court rejects abortion pill challenge

Donald Trump told a gathering of top US CEOs on Thursday that he would slash taxes and regulations while pushing up tariffs, as he tried to win backing for his populist economic agenda from the country’s business leaders.

Trump made the remarks at a Business Roundtable event in Washington, which was attended by about 100 corporate leaders, including Citigroup’s Jane Fraser, Apple’s Tim Cook, Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan and longtime JPMorgan Chase boss Jamie Dimon.

The meeting came just weeks after Trump became the first former president to be convicted of a felony when a jury found him guilty in a New York “hush money” trial. He also met Republicans on Capitol Hill.

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Adobe upgraded its full-year sales and profit outlooks, sending shares in the Photoshop software maker surging in extended trading.

The company forecast full-year revenue between $21.4bn and $21.5bn, raising the low end of its previous guidance. It now expects adjusted earnings between $18 and $18.20 a share, compared to the $18.03 a share analysts polled by Reuters forecast.

“Our highly differentiated approach to [artificial intelligence] and innovative product delivery are attracting an expanding universe of customers,” Adobe chief executive Shantanu Narayen said.

Adobe reported $5.3bn in revenue in the three months ending in May, a record high. Both sales and net income in the quarter increased year-on-year and exceeded consensus estimates.

Shares in the company rose more than 14 per cent in after-hours trading on Thursday.

US stocks climbed to record highs for the fourth straight session after data showed inflation fell to 3.3 per cent in May, raising expectations of early interest rate cuts.

The S&P 500 closed 0.2 per cent higher on Thursday, despite 60 per cent of stocks in the benchmark index declining on the day. The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite rose 0.4 per cent, as four Magnificent Seven stocks rose.

The S&P 500 most recently had a four-day winning streak earlier this month, but it was the Nadsaq’s first such streak since late March.

The steady gains in US equities pushed Wall Street’s Vix index — the so-called “fear gauge” — to its lowest level in three weeks.

Small-cap stocks performed worse, with the Russell 2000 falling 0.9 per cent.

Treasuries prices rose, pushing down yields. The yield on the two-year note was down 0.05 percentage points to 4.70 per cent, while the yield on the 10-year note fell 0.05 percentage points on the to 4.25 per cent.

Joe Biden has pledged support from the US and its allies for Ukraine “until they prevail” in the war against Russia’s invasion and said the US would send more air defence systems to Kyiv after signing a 10-year defence pact with Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The US president’s comments and the deal his Ukrainian counterpart marked a show of unity between the leaders following tensions between Washington and Kyiv in recent weeks.

Biden and Zelenskyy announced the deal on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Puglia, Italy, as the group of leading advanced economies took new steps to support Kyiv and punish Russia for its two-and-a-half year long military invasion of Ukraine.

Wells Fargo has fired several employees for allegedly trying to fool their bosses into thinking they were working when they were not, in the latest example of a crackdown on non-compliant staff in the era of hybrid work.

The bank said the workers were discharged last month after it determined they had sought to “create the impression of active work” through “simulation of keyboard activity”, according to regulatory filings with Finra, one of the top US securities industry regulators.

All of the employees appear to have worked in the bank’s investment and wealth management divisions. Many were relatively recent hires, joining in the past two years, but at least one had been with the bank for more than seven years.

In a statement, Wells Fargo said it “holds employees to the highest standards and does not tolerate unethical behaviour”.

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US stocks edged higher as traders assessed more economic data following the Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision on Wednesday.

The S&P 500 was up 0.1 per cent and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.2 per cent in Thursday afternoon trading, having been lower for much of the session.

Four Magnificent Seven stocks advanced. Tesla gained 3.9 per cent ahead of a shareholder vote on Elon Musk’s pay package later in the day.

Treasuries were set to rally for the third day in a row. The yield on the two-year note was down 0.06 percentage points to 4.69 per cent, while the yield on the 10-year note was down 0.06 percentage points to 4.24 per cent.

Data released on Thursday morning showed a cooling labour market and easing producer prices, suggesting that monetary policy is weighing on the US economy.

One of the top meatpackers in the US has suspended its chief financial officer after he was arrested again for being intoxicated.

John Randal Tyson, the son of board chair John H Tyson was arrested for driving while intoxicated in the early hours of Thursday morning, according to the Washington County police department in Arkansas. A bond of $1,105 was paid and he was released nine hours later.

Tyson Foods on Thursday afternoon said the younger Tyson had been suspended and that a senior finance executive, Curt Calaway, would step into the CFO role on an interim basis.

Tyson was arrested in 2022 for public intoxication and trespassing after a woman found him asleep in her bed. The arrest came just weeks after he was promoted to CFO.

Shares of the company were down 1.5 per cent on Thursday afternoon.

US President Joe Biden has nominated Christy Goldsmith Romero to chair the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation after Martin Gruenberg, the agency’s former leader, stepped down following a probe that found a misogynistic workplace culture at the US bank regulator.

Goldsmith Romero, a commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, previously served as the special inspector general for the troubled asset relief programme at the Treasury department, a role the Senate unanimously confirmed in 2012 after former president Barack Obama nominated her. Goldsmith Romero has also worked at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The FDIC, which has almost 6,000 staff, formally investigated allegations of harassment and discrimination against female employees last year that ultimately found grave workplace harassment problems at the regulator. Goldsmith Romero will be tasked with leading reforms at the agency and overhauling its culture.

Cathie Wood, chief of Ark Invest, has praised Donald Trump for embracing cryptocurrency in his election campaign, saying “he’s educating the people” on digital assets.

Trump has positioned himself as a pro-crypto presidential candidate, and earlier this week said all the remaining bitcoin should be mined in the US. 

“He’s certainly captured this wave and he’s considered divisive by some people but half of the population did vote for him,” Wood said, speaking at the Coinbase and Financial Times’ State of Crypto Summit in New York on Thursday.

She also said the technology underpinning crypto “is rivalling AI” but that most traditional financial institutions do not “understand that this moment is as big as that one”.

French and German blue-chip stocks fell the most in almost a year as a recent bout of political uncertainty continued to rattle investors.

France’s Cac 40 closed 2 per cent lower on Thursday, with banking stocks again leading the sell-off. The one-day drop was the benchmark index’s biggest since early July last year and dragged the gauge to its lowest level since mid-February.

Germany’s Dax also dropped 2 per cent, its biggest one-day drop since last July, to close at its lowest since early May.

The region-wide Stoxx Europe 600 dropped 1.3 per cent for its biggest one-day fall in two months.

London’s FTSE 100 fell 0.6 per cent.

Boeing said it has found improperly torqued fasteners on some of its undelivered 787 Dreamliners, the latest in a series of quality problems.

The fastener problem does not make the wide-body plane unsafe to fly, Boeing said on Thursday, and it has not stopped delivering them to customers. But it is checking fasteners “to ensure they meet our engineering specifications” and fixing them as necessary.

Boeing is attempting to improve manufacturing — a process monitored by the US Federal Aviation Administration — after a door panel blew out on a 737 Max on a commercial flight. The 787 has also suffered from quality problems, with some workers failing to perform a required test but recording it as completed.

The US Supreme Court on Thursday ruled against a bid to restrict access to a drug used in more than half of the country’s abortions, thwarting the latest attempts to curb the procedure.

In a unanimous decision penned by conservative justice Brett Kavanaugh, the high court held that the group of anti-abortion advocates who brought the case against the US Food and Drug Administration, which regulates mifepristone, lacked the legal authority to challenge the agency.

Under the Constitution, “a plaintiff’s desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue”, Kavanaugh wrote.

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Russia’s main exchange has halted trading in dollars and euros after a sharp escalation in US sanctions targeted the remaining links between the Russian financial system and foreign banks.

Russia’s central bank said exchange rates for the rouble will now reflect interbank transactions, after US sanctions announced on Wednesday on the Moscow Exchange (Moex), Russia’s oldest marketplace, forced trades off the central market.

The changes mean that pricing of the rouble will become more opaque, affecting its convertibility and raising costs for importers and exporters after sweeping sanctions that the US Treasury described as targeting Russia’s “war economy”. 

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The US, UK and Canada have accused Russia of plotting to influence the outcome of Moldova’s presidential election in the autumn, and warned that Moscow would seek to incite unrest if its preferred candidate does not win.

Moldova, a former Soviet republic bordering Ukraine, has been subject to a number of hybrid attacks from Russia in recent years as it seeks to join the EU under pro-western president Maia Sandu.

Russia sought “to foment negative public perceptions of western governments”, the joint statement said, adding that Moscow was supporting pro-Kremlin candidates standing against Sandu and “using disinformation” to “exacerbate societal tensions.”

“If Russia’s election meddling proves unsuccessful in Moldova, there is reason to believe Moscow will work to incite protests,” the governments said in the statement.

Wall Street stocks rose on Thursday after US wholesale inflation cooled in May, in the latest sign of easing price pressures across the world’s biggest economy.

The S&P 500 gained 0.3 per cent in early trading in New York and the tech-dominated Nasdaq Composite rose 0.6 per cent. Both indices are trading at record highs.

Data released on Wednesday showed US inflation last month fell to 3.3 per cent, below economists’ expectations. Hours later, the Federal Reserve kept interest rates steady at their 23-year high and raised its inflation forecasts. 

A court in central Russia will try detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on espionage charges amid US attempts to secure his release in a prisoner exchange.

Russia’s prosecutor-general’s office said on Thursday that it had filed an indictment against Gershkovich more than a year after he was arrested in Ekaterinburg, a city in the Russian defence industry’s heartland in the Ural Mountains. 

Prosecutors said they had “determined and documentarily confirmed” that Gershkovich used “careful measures of clandestine activity” on an assignment from the US intelligence agency to obtain “secret information” about production and repair efforts at Uralvagonzavod, a major tank factory in the region.

The WSJ vehemently denies the charges against Gershkovich, for which Russia has provided no evidence.

New applications for US unemployment aid, a proxy for job cuts, jumped in early June by the most in 10 months, an indication the domestic labour market is showing some signs of softening.

Jobless claims totalled 242,000 in the week ended June 8, the labour department said on Thursday, up from 229,000 the previous week and above the 225,000 applications economists forecast.

Recent levels are relatively low by historical standards, but the June figure marked the largest weekly increase since early August last year.

US wholesale inflation unexpectedly cooled in May, in a further sign that price pressures could be easing amid tight monetary policy. 

The producer price index, a leading indicator of inflation, shrank 0.2 per cent last month, the labour department said on Thursday. Economists had forecast a 0.1 per cent month-on-month increase.

The annualised rate slipped to 2.2 per cent, from an upwardly revised April reading of 2.3 per cent that was the highest in a year. Economists had forecast a year-on-year reading of 2.5 per cent.

Core PPI, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, was flat in May, pushing the annualised rate down to 2.3 per cent from an upwardly revised 2.5 per cent in April.

Consumer price growth eased more than expected in May, but the Federal Reserve has remained hawkish and expects only one rate cut this year.

Britain has unveiled its first sanctions targeting vessels in Vladimir Putin’s “dark fleet”, in co-ordinated action with G7 partners in support of Ukraine.

The UK announced 50 new designations and specifications aimed at degrading Russia’s war efforts, including ships that Moscow has exploited to circumvent international sanctions and evade the US-led price cap on Russian oil sales.

The Moscow Stock Exchange and other Russian financial institutions were targeted by the UK sanctions, a day after the US announced a significant expansion of its secondary sanctions programme on Russia. 

British prime minister Rishi Sunak, who is at the G7 summit in Puglia, Italy, said: “Putin must lose, and cutting off his ability to fund a prolonged conflict is absolutely vital.”

Saudi Aramco has signed its first deal to purchase liquefied natural gas, as global energy companies increase their investment in a sector that is expected to grow in the coming years.

Aramco signed a deal with the US LNG developer NextDecade to purchase 1.2mn tonnes per annum of LNG for 20 years, both companies said in a statement on Thursday. The agreement is non-binding, and both parties will need to sign on to a firm commitment at a later date.

The world’s largest oil exporter has been keen to push into the LNG sector, and last year invested in a small LNG company MidOcean Energy, and had been public about its intention to invest further in the sector.

Swiss Re, one of the world’s biggest reinsurers, has admitted its models significantly underestimated the size of the fallout from natural disasters across Europe in the past year.

“Whether it’s the Turkey quake . . . or the floods in Germany or the hailstorms in Italy, models were off by factors as opposed to 10 or 20 per cent,” said Gianfranco Lot, the group’s chief underwriting officer for property and casualty reinsurance, describing extreme weather events in the past year.

Speaking at the FT’s Global Insurance Summit on Thursday, Lot said Swiss Re needed more data so it could be “more accurate in predicting the impact of these scenarios and events”.

French stocks resumed their slide on Thursday, with car companies and banks among the worst performers.

France’s Cac 40 fell 1.3 per cent in late-morning trading, with all 40 of its member stocks in negative territory. Carmakers Renault and Stellantis fell 2.4 per cent and 2.3 per cent, while Crédit Agricole and Société Générale slipped 2.4 per cent and 1.8 per cent.

The Cac 40 fell sharply on Monday and Tuesday after President Emmanuel Macron called snap elections for June 30, though the sell-off paused on Wednesday.  

“We would stay away from politically sensitive French stocks for now,” said equities analysts at Barclays in a note to clients.

Failures in insurance provision across US states hit by natural disasters are due to “excessive government interference”, according to a senior vice president at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association.

Speaking at the FT’s Global Insurance Summit, Robert Gordon said state measures designed to shore up provision had “critically injured” US insurance markets.

“In the US, the markets where you’re having a real availability crisis, [are] because the government is trying to suppress those rates,” he said, referring to the cost of obtaining home insurance.

Large US insurers have restricted underwriting of new home policies in certain states after a rise in the cost of property catastrophe reinsurance, or insurance for insurance companies.

In certain US states, regulators have to sign off on price rises and have been accused of preventing home insurers from keeping up with inflation in claims costs.

Aviva’s chief executive has said that Labour’s promised crackdown on rising motor insurance prices would be using a “sledgehammer to crack a nut” and was based on flawed logic. 

Speaking at the FT’s Global Insurance Summit in London on Thursday, Amanda Blanc, who leads one of the UK’s biggest motor insurers, denied there was a problem with pricing. 

Premiums hit an all-time high last year as insurers rushed to catch up with a surge in their claims costs that had left the sector with its worst underwriting performance in a decade.  

“To say there is an issue with the [motor insurance] market is fundamentally flawed,” said Blanc. “Yes, prices are high but if you look at them relative to where they have been [in previous years] they are not.”

Eurozone manufacturers continued to struggle at the start of the second quarter after factory output in the bloc declined 0.1 per cent in April from a month earlier, despite economists’ forecasts for a mild rebound.

However, excluding a 3.4 per cent drop in Ireland — where factory output is volatile due to the activities of multinational companies — Eurozone industrial production increased in line with the 0.2 per cent forecast by economists in an earlier Reuters poll.

“We think industrial production growth will remain subdued in the coming months,” said Lily Millard at Capital Economics. Recent business surveys pointed to a fall in new factory orders that indicated Eurozone output was set to drop 1 per cent this year, she added.

Wholesale inflation: The US producer price index, which tracks prices businesses receive for their goods, is forecast to have accelerated in May, rising 2.5 per cent from a year ago compared with April’s 2.2 per cent increase.

Jobless claims: New applications for unemployment aid are forecast to have ticked down to 225,000 in the week ended June 8, compared with 229,000 claims in the previous week.

Earnings: Zales parent Signet Jewelers will report earnings results before the bell and software company Adobe will report after the markets close.

Biden: The US president will join other G7 leaders in Italy for the group’s annual summit.

Trump: The former US president will attend a meeting with the business lobby group Business Roundtable in Washington today, as he prepares to shore up support for his presidential campaign.

Football players have taken legal action against Fifa over the world governing body’s expansion into the club game and the increased workload the extra matches will bring, escalating the schism between the sport’s stars and organisers.

Fifpro Europe said on Thursday that it had submitted a legal claim at the Brussels Court of Commerce. It accused Fifa of “unilaterally” setting the international match calendar and challenged its plans for a new club competition.

With the support of the English and French player unions, Fifpro Europe wants to have the case referred to the European Court of Justice, as the fight over the “overloaded and unworkable” football calendar ramps up.

Fifa, which acts as the game’s governing body and a competition organiser in its own right, did not immediately comment.

The European Court of Justice today fined Hungary for failing to comply with an earlier ruling that found the country in breach of EU asylum rules.

Hungary is required to pay a lump sum of €200mn and a cumulative €1mn penalty per day of non-compliance.

In 2020 the court ruled that Hungary breached EU rules on the right to apply for asylum, the right of asylum seekers to stay in Hungary while their application is being processed, as well as the treatment of illegally-staying migrants, in what the court described as an “unprecedented and extremely serious infringement of EU law”.

Migration is one of the areas where Brussels and Budapest have often clashed. The fine comes weeks before Hungary is set to take over the presidency of the EU.

G7 negotiators have reached a provisional agreement on a $50bn loan to Ukraine raised against sovereign Russian assets immobilised in western countries, two people involved in the talks said.

“It’s done. At sherpa level it is agreed and I do not expect any leaders . . . to block it,” said one of the officials, who declined to be named. “There is provisional agreement . . . but of course you need formal approval from the G7 leaders.”

Formal announcement of the deal is expected later on Thursday at a summit of G7 leaders outside of Bari, Italy. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be in attendance.

The EU Council president is “very confident” that a summit of G7 leaders will agree on a loan package for Ukraine raised against proceeds from Russian sovereign assets immobilised in the west.

“I am very confident that an agreement could be made in the hours to come,” Charles Michel told reporters ahead of the summit in Bari, Italy.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will join the G7 leaders after lunch on Thursday, with negotiators working to agree a deal before then.

“Not only an agreement here but also supported by the [EU] member states,” Michel said. “We are co-ordinating with the member states so that they are not taken by surprise.”

Big share price moves in Europe today include London-based fintech Wise, Dutch biscuit maker Lotus Bakeries and UK housebuilder Crest Nicholson:

• Wise: Shares in the UK-based fintech dropped 19 per cent despite the company tripling annual profits. It reported on Thursday that it missed an internal target of passing down 80 per cent of interest income to customers.
  

  

• Lotus Bakeries: Shares in the Dutch biscuit maker led gains on the region-wide Stoxx 600 on Thursday, rising 4 per cent after it announced a tie-up with Cadbury-owner Mondelez to expand Lotus’s Biscoff brand in India.

• Crest Nicholson: Shares in the UK housebuilder shed 12 per cent after it warned that adjusted profits would fall by about a third this year, to between £22mn and £29mn, as uncertainty around interest rates weighs on demand among would-be homebuyers.

European stocks slipped early on Thursday as traders digested the US Federal Reserve’s hawkish monetary policy forecast.

The region-wide Stoxx 600 fell 0.3 per cent. Germany’s Dax and France’s Cac 40 both lost 0.4 per cent, while London’s FTSE 100 fell 0.2 per cent. 

Contracts tracking Wall Street’s S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 added 0.2 per cent and 0.7 per cent ahead of the New York open.

The Fed on Wednesday kept interest rates on hold at a 23-year high. Officials signalled that they expect to cut interest rates just once this year.

South Korea’s antitrust regulator fined ecommerce company Coupang Won140bn ($102mn) for using search algorithms unfairly and publishing product reviews written by employees to prop up sales of its own products.

It marks the biggest fine for a retailer in the country and amounts to nearly a quarter of Coupang’s operating profit of Won617bn last year. The Fair Trade Commission on Thursday referred the company to prosecutors for further investigation.

Coupang has been accused of using deceptive algorithms to give better exposure to its own products over those of its suppliers since February 2019. Nearly 2,300 Coupang employees were mobilised to write positive product reviews for its own products, according to the KFTC.

Coupang denied any wrongdoing and said it would appeal the KFTC ruling.

UK housebuilder Crest Nicholson has warned of a hit to full-year profits as uncertainty around interest rates weighs on demand among would-be homebuyers.

The group swung to a statutory pre-tax loss of nearly £31mn in the six-month period to the end of April, it reported on Thursday, down from £28.4mn the previous year. 

Crest noted that the delay in the interest rates cuts that were widely predicted at the start of the year had made homebuyers more cautious. “Momentum has softened slightly since Easter, reflecting the volatility in mortgage rates and the expectation of a base rate reduction coming later in the year than previously expected,” it said. 

The group forecast adjusted profits would fall by about a third this year, to between £22mn and £29mn. Analysts polled by LSEG had predicted a pre-tax profit of £38.9mn.

South Korea is to extend a short selling ban until next March, when it plans to complete an electronic monitoring system to detect illicit naked short selling of Korean shares.

The Financial Services Commission said on Thursday that short selling rules would be revised to level the playing field between retail and institutional investors. The FSC added that it would strengthen fines for naked short selling — shorting stocks without first borrowing them or confirming they can be borrowed.

The ban, imposed in November, was supposed to expire at the end of this month. The authorities will impose stricter rules on disclosing short positions.

London’s capital markets are showing “tentative signs” of recovery after two years of depressed activity, said the boss of stockbroker Peel Hunt as the firm reported widening losses.

Pre-tax losses at Peel Hunt rose to £3.3mn in the 12 months to March, from £1.5mn a year earlier, as an increase in revenues failed to offset rising costs.

“We are seeing tentative signs that a recovery from the lows of the last two years is under way,” said chief executive Steven Fine.

Peel Hunt advised on the initial public offering of Raspberry Pi, whose shares rose sharply after it listed this week. The flotation has raised hopes among City of London advisers of a reopening of the UK’s moribund IPO market. 

Profits at Wise more than tripled after the London-listed fintech was boosted by high interest rates.

Pre-tax profits at the cross-border payments company rose from £147mn to £481mn in the year to the end of March as it expanded its customer base to 13mn. Interest income on customers’ balances rose to £1bn in the period, up from £846mn the previous year.

The fintech, which is not regulated as a British bank, however missed its internal target of passing down 80 per cent of interest income to customers. Of the £292mn it aimed to return it held £167mn, blaming restrictions in its ability to pass the money on to UK customers under the terms of its payments licence.

St James’s Place has poached Caroline Waddington from UBS to join the wealth manager as chief financial officer, replacing Craig Gentle who will retire later this year.

The FTSE 250 company said Gentle, who joined in 2016, would step down as a director when Waddington joins in the second half of the year, but remain at the company for a short period to facilitate the handover.

Waddington was previously CFO at UBS group’s UK Credit Suisse entities. She has also held senior positions at Barclays Capital, NatWest and Deutsche Bank.

Paul Manduca, chair of St James’s Place, said the selection process was “robust”, adding: “I am confident that [Waddington] will prove to be a great asset to the business.”

The executive chair of FTSE 250 engineering company Renishaw is to step down more than 50 years after he founded the company, and has appointed his son to the board.

The company said on Thursday that Sir David McMurty, who set up the £3bn company in 1973, had been “instrumental in driving the success of the business both as chief executive and as executive chair”.

He will remain on the board as a non-executive director, where he will be joined by his son, Richard McMurty.

Sir David Grant, the senior independent director, will become non-executive chair while the company looks for a permanent successor.

Asian markets were mixed during Thursday trading, with South Korean equities and some Chinese electric vehicle groups rallying.

South Korea’s Kospi index led gains among the region’s major stock markets, rising 1.1 per cent due to a rally both in high-tech electronic manufacturing and companies connected to oil and gas infrastructure.

Hong Kong-listed shares of BYD, the world’s largest electric-vehicle manufacturer, rose by as much as 8.8 per cent after the European Commission announced lower than expected tariffs for the company.

In currency markets the yen and won both fell 0.3 per cent against the dollar to ¥157.18 and Won1,373.63, respectively.

Industrial production data: The EU releases the latest Eurozone industrial production figures for April. Output increased by 0.6 per cent in March on the previous month, slightly outperforming expectations as the production of capital goods offset declines in consumer goods output.

UK property: The UK’s Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors publishes its latest residential market survey.

G7 summit: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni hosts leaders of the other G7 member nations in south-west Italy, along with presidents of the European Council and the European Commission.

Earnings: UK housebuilder Crest Nicholson and challenger bank Virgin money publish half-year results, while UK pub chain Fuller, Smith & Turner releases full-year results.

Shareholders in Tesla are voting in favour of Elon Musk’s $56bn pay award and its proposal to reincorporate the electric-car maker in Texas by “wide margins”, according to its chief executive.

“Both Tesla shareholder resolutions are currently passing by wide margins,” Musk said on the social media platform X late on Wednesday, thanking investors for their support.

The results cited by Musk in charts are preliminary with Tesla’s annual meeting being held on Thursday. But approval of the resolutions would mark a massive win for Musk, who would stand to be awarded the largest pay package in US corporate history.

Hong Kong-listed shares of BYD jumped more than 7 per cent on Thursday after the Chinese electric-vehicle maker was targeted with a lower EU import duty than some of its competitors.

The European Commission on Wednesday told carmakers it would provisionally apply additional duties of 17 to 38 per cent on EVs imported from China starting next month, on top of an existing 10 per cent tariff.

BYD’s additional tax of 17.4 per cent is the lowest among all carmakers listed in the announcement, which came after a months-long probe into Chinese government subsidies for the sector.

Asian equities broadly rose, with South Korea leading gains, after easing US inflation data helped support the case for at least one interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve this year.

The benchmark Kospi index rose 1.4 per cent. Construction and gas businesses extended gains after South Korea’s president approved exploration of oil and gas reserves off the country’s coast.

Korea Gas, which operates natural gas pipelines and terminals in the country, rose 15.2 per cent. It has more than doubled since the start of the year.

Memory chip giants SK Hynix and Samsung Electronic also posted strong gains as optimism around artificial intelligence demand remains high.

Li Qiang, China’s second-most powerful official, arrived in New Zealand on Thursday for a three-day visit to the country, marking the first visit from a sitting Chinese premier in seven years.

Li’s arrival marks the beginning of a tour of New Zealand, Australia and Malaysia from June 13 to June 20. Chinese state media Xinhua said he would hold “in-depth” exchanges with New Zealand’s leaders, including with Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, as China seeks to manage relations in the region.

China recently lifted tariffs on Australian wine amid an easing of trade tensions between the two countries.

Events: Chinese Premier Li Qiang arrives in New Zealand, where he will meet Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.

Central banks: Taiwan’s central bank announces its decision on interest rates, which it is expected to hold at 2 per cent. The Bank of Japan starts a two-day meeting and will announce its decision on interest rates tomorrow.

Economic data: Australia publishes employment data for May and Thailand releases its May consumer confidence index.

Corporate updates: Hong Kong group Chow Tai Fook, one of the world’s largest jewellers, reports full-year earnings.

The Republican-led US House of Representatives has voted to hold the country’s highest law-enforcement official in contempt of Congress for failing to hand over recordings of Joe Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur.

The House on Wednesday voted 216-207, along party lines, in favour of censuring attorney-general Merrick Garland, as allies of former president Donald Trump escalated their attacks on the Department of Justice.

Garland appointed Hur in January 2023 to investigate Biden’s handling of classified information. The special counsel did not charge the president but ignited a political firestorm in February when his report cast Biden as an “elderly man” whose “memory was significantly limited” during interviews with investigators.

US stocks closed at record highs for the third straight session as a domestic inflation report slowed more than expected in May and Federal Reserve officials forecast one interest rate cut in 2024.

The S&P 500 rose 0.9 per cent on Wednesday and the Nasdaq Composite gained 1.5 per cent. Gains from earlier in the session moderated during afternoon trading, as Fed chair Jay Powell concluded his press conference.

Apple shares rose as much as 6.3 per cent during intraday trading, resulting in the company briefly eclipsing Microsoft to again become the most valuable US stock. However, the iPhone maker was unable to sustain the momentum, its 2.9 per cent move by the closing bell not enough to push its market capitalisation ahead of its peer, whose shares gained 1.5 per cent.

The small-cap focused Russell 2000 added 1.6 per cent.

The dollar weakened 0.5 per cent against a basket of six peer currencies.

JPMorgan Chase now expects investment banking revenues in the second quarter to be up 25 per cent to 30 per cent from a year earlier, about twice the sales growth it had forecast just a few weeks ago. 

Troy Rohrbaugh, co-head of JPMorgan’s investment banking and trading business, said capital markets activity was “extremely robust” and helped drive the better outlook than the bank had predicted at its recent May 20 investor day. 

“The overall franchise has improved and saw better results than we were expecting on investor day but capital markets has been particularly strong,” Rohrbaugh said at an industry conference on Wednesday. 

Broadcom boosted its full-year revenue outlook thanks to continued demand for its AI product and announced a stock split, sending shares of the US chipmaker higher in extended trading.

The company said now it expected full-year sales of $51bn, up from $50bn and higher than analysts had expected. That came as the company reported second-quarter revenue and adjusted net income that topped consensus expectations.

Broadcom also announced a 10-for-one stock split to take effect after the closing bell on July 11. The stock closed at $1,495.51 on Wednesday after a 2.4 per cent rise, and added a further 12 per cent in after-hours trading.

“Broadcom’s second-quarter results were once again driven by AI demand and VMware,” chief executive Hock Tan said. “Revenue from our AI products was a record $3.1 billion during the quarter.”