Experience Over Inventory: How Department Stores Are Recasting Themselves for a Post-Transactional Age

Across global fashion capitals, department stores are no longer defining themselves primarily as places to buy things. Instead, they are repositioning as destinations to spend time, discover culture, and participate in curated experiences that cannot be replicated online. From ice-skating performances and architectural tours to wine tastings, designer talks, and fine dining, the sector is…

Mining’s Scale Race Intensifies as Rio Tinto–Glencore Talks Redefine Competitive Pressure

Rio Tinto’s exploratory move toward acquiring Glencore has injected new urgency into a mining sector already reshaping itself around scale, copper exposure, and long-term strategic positioning. While the talks remain preliminary, their mere existence has altered expectations across the industry, sharpening focus on whether the world’s largest diversified miners can afford to stand still as…

Populist Economics Re-Enter the Agenda as Washington Targets Credit Card Rates

When Donald Trump called for a one-year cap on U.S. credit card interest rates at 10%, the proposal landed less as a fully formed policy than as a political signal. It revived a campaign-era promise that many analysts had previously dismissed as impractical, but it also reflected mounting pressure across Washington to respond to consumer…

Capital, Power and Compute Converge as Stargate Pushes AI Infrastructure Into a New Phase

The decision by OpenAI and SoftBank Group to jointly commit $1 billion to SB Energy marks a decisive shift in how leading AI players are thinking about scale. The investment is not simply about funding another data center. It reflects how and why control over power generation, land, and long-term infrastructure has become inseparable from…

A High-Stakes Gamble Unravels as Saks’ Merger Ambitions Collide with a Shifting Luxury Market

What was conceived as a transformative consolidation in U.S. luxury retail has instead become a case study in how scale, leverage and structural market change can turn ambition into vulnerability. The merger that brought together Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman under a single corporate umbrella was meant to create a dominant luxury…

Scale, Scarcity and Strategy: How Mining Mega-Deals Forged the World’s Largest Resource Giants

The mining industry has long been shaped by cycles of boom, bust and consolidation, but the current wave of merger activity reflects a deeper structural shift. As demand for critical minerals accelerates and the cost of developing new projects rises, scale has become a strategic necessity rather than a competitive advantage. The prospect of Rio…

Deal Revival and Market Momentum Power U.S. Banks Toward a Strong Fourth-Quarter Finish

U.S. banks are heading into fourth-quarter earnings season with a markedly different backdrop from the caution that dominated much of the past two years. A broad revival in investment banking activity, combined with resilient trading desks and steady loan growth, has reshaped profit expectations across the sector. Analysts now expect the largest lenders to post…

Strategic Diversification Redefines Lilly’s Post-GLP-1 Growth Blueprint

Eli Lilly’s agreement to acquire Ventyx Biosciences for $1.2 billion marks a deliberate shift in how the world’s most valuable drugmaker is planning for life beyond its unprecedented obesity and diabetes windfall. After years in which GLP-1 medicines transformed Lilly’s revenue base and investor expectations, the company is signaling that its next phase of growth…

Why Venezuela’s Political Upheaval Is Unlikely to Jolt Oil Markets Anytime Soon

The overthrow of Nicolás Maduro in one of the world’s most oil-rich countries might ordinarily be expected to send shockwaves through global energy markets. Instead, traders and analysts are treating the event as largely neutral in the near term. Despite Venezuela’s vast reserves and its symbolic weight as a founding member of OPEC, the country’s…

Backlash Builds as Safety Failures Turn xAI’s Grok Into a Regulatory and Trust Crisis

The backlash facing Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence venture has crystallized around a core failure of governance rather than a one-off technical bug. When xAI’s chatbot Grok generated sexualized images of children on X, the episode exposed how product design choices, moderation latency, and leadership posture can combine to produce outsized harm. What followed was not…