Raphael Stevens

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    Sports super agent Scott Boras says Juan Soto’s Mets contract wasn’t just about the money

    Scott Boras represented Juan Soto in his negotiations with the New York Mets.
    Soto’s deal is the largest contract in sports history.
    Boras said Soto’s performance at Citi Field also factored into his decision.

    Major League Baseball super agent Scott Boras just negotiated the biggest contract of his life.
    On Thursday, the New York Mets signed 4-time All-Star Juan Soto to a record-breaking $765 million, 15-year contract. It’s the largest deal in professional sports history.

    Soto will be the first player in the MLB to earn more than $50 million in a single season.
    “Half the league wanted to participate in this,” Boras told CNBC’s “Power Lunch.” “So many teams were seeking this rare value, because in the end, it was just good business to acquire it.”
    Boras talked about the difficult decision Soto and his team had in finding the best fit. One factor in his decision was his recent performance at Citi Field, where the Mets play.
    “Juan Soto’s performance levels in Citi Field are well known to him,” Boras said. “He plays at his highest level of performance and players think about execution. You think about all these factors.”
    In Soto’s 35 games at Citi Field, the left-handed hitter scored 12 home runs, 26 RBI’s and had an on-base percentage of .466 and .709 slugging.

    His longest homerun of his career, 466 feet, came at Citi Field on August 12, 2020.
    Boras also shared that it wasn’t all about the money for the 26-year-old player.
    “When you’re an athlete, you think about all things, but you primarily also think about your routine, your performance,” Boras said. “There’s vastly more things than the economics.”
    Speaking at his introductory press conference, Soto said the Mets had treated him like family.
    “They showed me a lot of love on the standpoint of what they have and how they’re going to try to make it comfortable. That’s one of the things that impressed me more, and how they’re going to treat everybody around me and my family,” Soto said. More

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    in Finance

    Trump says he’s not going to make any stock market predictions in case there’s a ‘dip’

    “I don’t want to get into a situation where they do and we have a dip or something because that can always happen,” Trump told CNBC’s Jim Cramer on “Squawk on the Street.”
    Trump repeatedly used the stock market as a performance barometer during his first term.

    After ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday, President-elect Donald Trump stopped short of telling investors to buy more stock as he gets set to take office.
    “I don’t want to get into a situation where they do and we have a dip or something because that can always happen,” Trump told CNBC’s Jim Cramer on “Squawk on the Street.”

    Trump repeatedly used the stock market as a performance barometer during his first term. During that time, the S&P 500 scaled nearly 68%, reaching all-time highs. Part of that was due to corporate tax cuts passed by the administration at the time. The Federal Reserve also maintained interest rates close to historical lows back then as it tried to spur inflation, also boosting stock prices.

    President-elect Donald Trump is greeted by traders as he walks the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Dec. 12, 2024.
    Alex Brandon | AP

    He touted at the exchange on Thursday the possibility of lowering taxes again. “We’re gonna do things that haven’t really been done before. We’re gonna cut taxes still further,” he said. “You pay 21% if you don’t build here. If you do, we’re going to try and get it to 15%, but you have to build your product, make your product in the USA.”
    Wall Street CEOs and investors such as Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon and Pershing Square’s Bill Ackman came to the New York Stock Exchange for Trump’s bell-ringing ceremony. Ackman told CNBC later that “most of the country understands that the more successful businesses are, the more the stock market goes up, the more that their wages rise, the more job growth, the more opportunity, the more businesses who come to this country, it lifts all boats.”
    While Trump refrained from telling investors to buy stocks now, he maintained a bullish outlook longer term.
    “I think long term this is going to be a country like no other. We had the three best years ever until Covid came,” he said after being named Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.”
    — Additional reporting by CNBC’s Yun Li. More

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    FAA head Michael Whitaker to step down before Trump takes office

    Federal Aviation Administration chief Michael Whitaker said he will step down on Jan. 20, when President-elect Donald Trump is scheduled to be inaugurated.
    Whitaker, who was nominated to the top FAA role by President Joe Biden, began a five-year term in October 2023.
    Trump’s last appointed leader, ex-Delta captain Steve Dickson, stepped down in early 2022.

    Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Mike Whitaker listens to a question during a news conference on the FAA’s work to hold Boeing accountable for safety and production quality issues, at the Federal Aviation Administration Headquarters on May 30, 2024 in Washington, DC. 
    Andrew Harnik | Getty Images

    The head of the Federal Aviation Administration, Mike Whitaker, said Thursday he will step down Jan. 20, the day President-elect Donald Trump takes office, leaving the key agency that oversees Boeing and the U.S. airline industry again without a leader.
    Whitaker was confirmed to serve a five-year term as FAA administrator in October 2023. He set production limits and heightened the agency’s scrutiny of Boeing after a near-catastrophic door-plug blowout on a Boeing 737 Max in January, when he was months into the job.

    Mark House, the FAA’s assistant administrator for finance and management, will become acting deputy administrator.
    The agency has seen several changes in leadership in recent years. These have come during one of the U.S. aviation industry’s most tumultuous periods, which has included two crashes of Boeing’s best-selling 737 Max planes and a subsequent grounding, the Covid-19 pandemic, and series of high-profile close calls and safety issues involving U.S. airlines and airports.
    Trump’s last nominee to lead the FAA, ex-Delta captain Steve Dickson, resigned in 2022, midway through his term.
    “You have seen leadership come and go — and through every transition you have kept air travel steady and safe. This transition will be no different,” Whitaker said in a statement.
    A spokesman for Trump’s transition team didn’t immediately comment.

    Trump has not yet nominated an FAA administrator for his second term. His eventual nominee, if confirmed, will face a host of challenges, including continued oversight of Boeing and staffing up and modernizing air traffic control. Shortages of controllers have vexed airline executives, who have blamed staffing shortages for congestion in some of the country’s busiest airports.
    The FAA’s oversight of the space industry has also been the source of controversy. Companies including Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have been urging improvements to the FAA’s speed and efficiency in regulating rocket launches and spacecraft returning from orbit.
    Musk also said in September that his company would sue the FAA for “regulatory overreach,” after the agency fined SpaceX for license violations and, according to the company, held up test flights of its Starship rocket. More

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    in Finance

    CFPB announces rule limiting bank overdraft fees

    The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday announced the final version of a rule limiting banks’ ability to charge overdraft fees.
    It says the rule will save American consumers $5 billion annually.
    The CFPB said that its overdraft rule will take effect Oct. 1, 2025, though its ultimate fate is unclear.

    Rohit Chopra, director of the CFPB, testifies during a House Financial Services Committee hearing on June 14, 2023.
    Tom Williams | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images

    The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday announced the final version of a rule limiting banks’ ability to charge overdraft fees. It says the rule will save American consumers $5 billion annually.
    The regulator said that banks could opt to charge $5 for overdrafts — a steep drop from the average fee of around $35 per transaction — or limit the fee to an amount that covers the lenders’ costs, or charge any fee while disclosing the interest rate of the loan.

    “For far too long, the largest banks have exploited a legal loophole that has drained billions of dollars from Americans’ deposit accounts,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a statement. “The CFPB is cracking down on these excessive junk fees and requiring big banks to come clean about the interest rate they’re charging on overdraft loans.”
    While overdraft fees have been a lucrative line item for the industry, generating $280 billion in revenue since 2000 according to the CFPB, banks’ revenue from the service has been on the decline. That’s because lenders including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America have either reduced the fees or limited the types of transactions that trigger them, while some banks dropped the fee altogether.
    The CFPB rule applies to banks and credit unions with at least $10 billion in assets.
    The effort, part of a flurry of activity from the CFPB in the waning days of the Biden administration, faces stiff opposition from U.S. banking groups that have successfully stymied other efforts from the regulator. For instance, a rule capping credit card late fees at $8 per incident that was set to take effect in May has been held up in federal court.
    The CFPB said that its overdraft rule will take effect Oct. 1, 2025, though its ultimate fate is unclear.

    Even before the election victory of Donald Trump last month, the fate of the overdraft rule would’ve been murky, thanks to industry pushback. But Trump is expected to install a new CFPB head next month that is unlikely to support Biden-era efforts to rein in banking activity.
    Bank lobbying groups have argued that the overdraft rule, first proposed in January as part of Biden’s war on junk fees, would reduce access to overdraft services and could send customers to worse alternatives like payday loans.
    The Consumer Bankers Association said Thursday it was “exploring all options” to push back against the rule.
    This story is developing. Please check back for updates. More

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    in Finance

    The World Bank is struggling to serve all 78 poor countries

    Impoverished countries do not have much in common. Half the population of Niger, a landlocked African nation beset by military coups, live in extreme poverty, eight in ten people have no access to electricity and GDP per person is just $620. By contrast, the average Bangladeshi is four times richer, and just one in 18 is among the world’s poorest. The country’s policymakers do not have to worry about simply providing power. They want to attract foreign capital to build renewable energy, so as to reduce reliance on coal. More

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    The Federal Reserve takes on Trump—and stubborn inflation

    A lot is riding on the numbers after the decimal point. In the argot of investors, inflation in America is back to having a “two-handle” (that is, running above 2% but below 3%). It is a far better position to be in than a couple of years ago, when price rises were threatening to hit double digits. But there is a big difference between inflation decelerating towards 2% in the coming year or getting stuck nearer 3%. Not only would the latter forestall aggressive interest-rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, it would also put the central bank on a collision course with Donald Trump—a double-whammy of monetary hawkishness and political turbulence that would cast a shadow over the global economy. More

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    What a censored speech says about China’s economy

    At this time of year, many policymakers want to know how fast their economies will grow in the year ahead. China’s leaders set themselves a still tougher question: how fast their economy “should” grow. They are seeking not a forecast but a target. More

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    Bitcoin is up by 138% this year. It is a nonsense-free rally

    BITCOIN IS BACK. Since Donald Trump’s election victory on November 5th, the world’s dominant cryptocurrency has surged to new heights above $100,000 a unit, enjoying a rise of 138% since the start of the year. Altogether, the world’s cryptocurrencies now have a market capitalisation of almost $4trn—making them more valuable than the entirety of Britain’s stockmarket. More