Raphael Stevens

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    Puma challenges Tiger Woods’ Sun Day Red logo

    Puma has filed a notice of opposition against Tiger Woods’ apparel and sneaker company Sun Day Red over its tiger logo.
    Puma said the mark will cause confusion among consumers.
    This is the second notice of opposition against Sun Day Red, whose logo features a tiger with 15 marks representing the major championships Woods has won.

    Puma logo (L) and Sun Day Red Tiger logo (R)
    Source: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

    Sun Day Red is not out of the woods yet in regard to trademarking its logo.
    Footwear giant Puma filed a last-minute notice of opposition against Tiger Woods’ logos tied to his Sun Day Red brand, according to a filing last week.

    The German sneaker and apparel company says the Sun Day Red logo is too similar to the logo that Puma has been using since 1969. The company filed to prevent the TaylorMade-owned golf brand from being able to use its proposed mark.
    “Due to the confusing similarity of the marks and the identical, legally identical, or closely related nature of the goods and services of the parties, consumer confusion is likely between the Challenged Marks and the Leaping Cat logo,” Puma said in the filing.

    Side-by-side comparison showing the Puma logo (L) and the Sun Day Red Tiger logo (R).
    Source: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

    Shoes showing Puma logo (L) and Sun Day Red Tiger logo (R).
    Source: U.S. Patent and Trademake Office

    In a statement to CNBC, TaylorMade said, “We feel very confident in our trademarks and logos.”

    Josh Gerben, a trademark attorney at Gerben IP, said the challenge from Puma is “significant.”
    “This is a real fight,” said Gerben, whose firm is not involved in the Puma lawsuit. “Any time you have open litigation you can lose. I think Puma has a legitimate case.”
    The two parties could still reach a settlement before the case goes to trial, likely in September 2026, according to Gerben.
    Gerben said disputes over logos are much less common than trademark disputes over names or slogans.
    “Tiger certainly has a target on his back,” he said. “He’s big enough to move markets.” More

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    Panera Brands CEO steps down, CFO to fill in as interim chief

    Panera Brands announced its CEO, Jose Dueñas, is stepping down, effective immediately.
    CFO Paul Carbone will serve as interim chief executive.
    The restaurant company, which also includes Einstein Bros. and Caribou Coffee, has been attempting to go public over the last few years.

    A Panera Bread restaurant in Miami Beach, Florida, Nov. 8, 2017.
    Joe Raedle | Getty Images

    Panera Bread’s parent company announced Tuesday that CEO Jose Dueñas is stepping down, effective immediately.
    The change in leadership is the latest challenge to the company’s plans to go public eventually, following several years of hurdles.

    Panera Brands CFO Paul Carbone will step in as interim chief executive while the board searches for a permanent replacement to lead the company, which includes Panera Bread, Einstein Bros. and Caribou Coffee.
    Dueñas plans to stick around through the end of March as a special advisor, the company said. He took over as CEO of Panera Brands in July 2023 after four years leading bagel chain Einstein Bros.
    JAB Holding, the investment arm of the Reimann family, bought Panera Bread in 2017 for $7.5 billion, taking it private and then forming Panera Brands with some of its other acquisitions.
    JAB has been trying to take Panera public again for years. In 2022, Panera scrapped a deal with Danny Meyer’s special purpose acquisition company, citing market conditions.
    In the same 2023 announcement tapping Dueñas as its latest CEO, Panera said the leadership transition is to prepare for an eventual initial public offering. Months later, in December 2023, the company confidentially filed for an IPO.
    It has yet to go public, following lawsuits tied to its heavily caffeinated Charged Lemonade, a rocky year for the restaurant industry and a sluggish market for IPOs in 2024. More

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    China’s markets take a fresh beating

    As Chinese markets came crashing down at the start of 2025, a joke circulated among investors: “What is the most valuable asset in the market?” The answer, they replied with a chuckle, was “retail investors”. China’s stockmarkets are dominated by amateurs. They buy high and sell low, helping the professionals eke out a living. They also seem to be in endless supply, no matter how much money is lost. “They get cut down like leeks but grow right back,” goes a popular saying. More

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    Chinese markets suffer a dismal start to the year

    As Chinese markets came crashing down at the start of 2025, a joke circulated among investors: “What is the most valuable asset in the market?” The answer, they replied with a chuckle, was “retail investors”. China’s stockmarkets are dominated by amateurs. They buy high and sell low, helping the professionals eke out a living. They also seem to be in endless supply, no matter how much money is lost. “They get cut down like leeks but grow right back,” goes a popular saying. More

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    J&J says its lung cancer drug combination keeps people alive longer

    Johnson & Johnson said a combination of its lung cancer drugs Rybrevant and Lazcluze kept people alive for at least a year longer than AstraZeneca’s Tagrisso in a clinical trial.
    J&J is trying to supplant AstraZeneca’s blockbuster Tagrisso, a once-daily pill that has transformed the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer with EGFR mutations.
    It remains to be seen how many doctors will adopt the treatment.

    Niels Wenstedt | Getty Images

    Johnson & Johnson on Tuesday said its lung cancer regimen keeps people alive for at least a year longer than AstraZeneca’s Tagrisso, the go-to drug for a certain type of lung cancer.J&J in a statement said its drugs – Rybrevant and Lazcluze – showed a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement to survival relative to Tagrisso in a pivotal trial. The company expects the benefit to be at least a year and possibly longer, J&J executives said in an interview. The company plans to present the full results at a medical meeting later this year.
    “This is an absolute igniter,” said Biljana Naumovic, president of U.S. Oncology Solid Tumor at Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine. “People were looking for an overall survival difference.”

    J&J is trying to supplant AstraZeneca’s blockbuster Tagrisso, a once-daily pill that has transformed the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer with EGFR mutations and extended the median survival to about three years. These genetic errors cause cancer cells to proliferate. They’re responsible for between 10% and 15% of lung cancer cases in the U.S., according to the American Lung Association.
    J&J executives hailed the result as a game-changer that should change the treatment of this type of lung cancer. But there’s no guarantee doctors and patients will all switch to using Rybrevant and Lazcluze since the regimen comes with more side effects and requires infusions every few weeks, said Dr. Stephen Liu, director of thoracic oncology and head of developmental therapeutics at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.
    “I think the announcement that this leads to people living longer will force a harder look,” Liu said.
    He wants to see who benefited the most so he can treat those patients more aggressively while sparing those who are less likely to respond. Rybrevant and Lazcluze can cause people to develop a rash and lead their fingernails to split.
    Like Tagrisso, J&J’s regimen blocks the EGFR protein to prevent cancer cells from growing. It also targets MET, a common pathway cancer uses to develop resistance to drugs.
    J&J forecasts Rybrevant and Lazcluze’s annual sales could top $5 billion. Tagrisso brought in about $6 billion for AstraZeneca in 2023. More

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    Wall Street notches another win as Fed’s Barr clears the way for gentler banking regulator

    Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr said he plans to step down from his role by next month to avoid a protracted legal battle with the Trump administration.
    The announcement, a reversal from Barr’s previous comments on the matter, ends his supervisory role roughly 18 months earlier than planned. It also removes a possible impediment to Donald Trump’s deregulatory agenda.
    Trump is limited to picking one of two Republican Fed governors for vice chair of supervision: Michelle Bowman or Christopher Waller.

    Federal Reserve Governors Michelle Bowman and Christopher Waller pose for a photo, during a break at a conference on monetary policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, in Palo Alto, California, U.S. May 6, 2022. Picture taken May 6, 2022.
    Ann Saphir | Reuters

    The early departure of the Federal Reserve’s top financial regulator allows for a more industry-friendly official to take his place, the latest boon for U.S. banks riding a wave of post-election optimism.
    Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr said Monday that he plans to step down from his role by next month to avoid a protracted legal battle with the Trump administration, which had weighed seeking his removal.

    The announcement, a reversal from Barr’s previous comments on the matter, ends his supervisory role roughly 18 months earlier than planned. It also removes a possible impediment to Donald Trump’s deregulatory agenda.
    Banks and other financial stocks were among the big winners after the election of Trump in November on speculation that softer regulation and increased deal activity, including mergers, were on the way. Weeks after his victory, Trump selected hedge fund manager Scott Bessent as his choice for Treasury secretary.
    Trump has yet to name picks for the three major bank regulatory agencies — the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
    Now, with Barr’s resignation, a more precise image of incoming bank regulation is forming.
    Trump is limited to picking one of two Republican Fed governors for vice chair of supervision: Michelle Bowman or Christopher Waller.

    Waller declined to comment, while Bowman didn’t immediately respond to request for comment.
    Bowman, whose name had already appeared on short lists for possible Trump administration roles and is considered the front-runner, has been a critic of Barr’s attempt to force American banks to hold more capital — a proposal known as the Basel III Endgame.
    “The regulatory approach we took failed to consider or deliver a reasonable proposal, one aligned with the original Basel agreement yet suited to the particulars of the U.S. banking system,” Bowman said in a November speech.
    Bowman, a former community banker and Kansas bank commissioner, could take on “industry-friendly reforms” around a number of sore spots for banks, according to Alexandra Steinberg Barrage, a former FDIC executive and partner at Troutman Pepper Locke.
    That includes what bank executives have called an opaque Fed stress test process, long turnaround times for merger approvals and what bankers have said are sometimes unfair confidential bank exams, Barrage said.

    Easier ‘Endgame’?

    When it comes to the Basel Endgame, first announced in July 2023 before a toned-down proposal was released last year, it’s now more likely that its ultimate form will be far gentler for the industry, versus versions that would’ve forced large banks to withhold tens of billions of dollars in capital.
    Barr led the interagency effort to draft the sweeping Basel Endgame, whose initial version would’ve boosted capital requirements for the world’s largest banks by roughly 19%. Now, Barrage and others see a final version that is far less onerous.
    “Barr’s replacement could still work with the other agencies to propose a new B3 Endgame rule, but we think such a proposal would be capital-neutral industry-wide,” Stifel analyst Brian Gardner said Monday in a note. “Bowman voted against the 2023 proposal, and we expect she would lead any B3 re-write in a different direction.”
    If lenders ultimately beat back efforts to force them to hold more capital, that would enable them to boost share buybacks, among other possible uses for the money.
    Bank stocks traded higher Monday after Barr’s announcement, with the KBW Bank Index rising as much as 2.4% during the session. Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, which have both garnered headlines for regulatory matters last year, were among the day’s biggest gainers, each rising more than 2%.
    Notably, Barr is not resigning from his role as one of seven Fed governors, which preserves the current 4-3 advantage of Democrat appointees on the Fed board, according to Klaros Group co-founder Brian Graham.
    “Barr’s resignation of the vice chair role, while remaining a governor, is actually very clever,” Graham said. “It preserves the balance of power for board votes for a year or so, and it constrains the choices for his replacement to those currently serving on the board.”

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    dLocal, Latin America’s answer to Stripe, wins UK license in global expansion push

    DLocal, a Latin American payments firm focused on emerging markets, has acquired an authorized payment institution license from the Financial Conduct Authority.
    The license, which adds to dLocal’s growing portfolio of authorizations globally, will allow the firm to start onboarding merchants in the U.K. for the first time.
    Pedro Arnt, dLocal’s CEO, told CNBC it’s targeting both domestic U.K. businesses as prospective clients, as well as global companies with a presence in the U.K.

    DLocal is one of Latin America’s most prominent payment players. It specializes in cross-border payments for emerging markets such as Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and its home country, Uruguay.
    Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

    LONDON — Uruguayan payments firm dLocal has secured a U.K. payment institution license, adding to the company’s growing portfolio of regulatory authorizations as it furthers global expansion.
    The emerging markets-focused fintech told CNBC it had acquired an authorized payment institution license from the Financial Conduct Authority, which is Britain’s financial services regulator. That would allow it to start onboarding new U.K. merchants.

    DLocal will onboard U.K. merchants through a local entity, dLocal Opco UK, which was previously unable to onboard new clients locally because of restrictions placed on it by the FCA. DLocal said the restrictions were the result of the U.K.’s exit from the EU.
    Pedro Arnt, dLocal’s CEO, told CNBC he expects the business to stand out from domestic payment tech rivals, such as Worldpay and Checkout.com, given its focus on emerging markets in places like Latin America, Africa and Asia.
    “The differentiating factor for us when we think of our U.K. base of merchants is that the geographies where we serve them, and those are the only geographies we work,” Arnt said in an interview. He added that dLocal is also targeting global merchants that have a U.K. presence.

    “The U.K. has become a hub for many global companies — even the American companies, some Asian companies — for their emerging market expansion, primarily in Africa, and in some cases LatAm,” Arnt told CNBC.

    UK expansion plans

    Established in 2016, dLocal is one of Latin America’s most prominent payment players. It specializes in cross-border payments for emerging markets such as Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and its home country Uruguay.

    With a payment license now under its belt, dLocal is looking to boost its U.K. footprint, with plans to increase headcount and grow business.
    Arnt said dLocal has already been expanding its U.K. footprint, with a number of its senior executives — like Chief Operating Officer Carlos Menendez and Chief Revenue Officer John O’Brien — based in London. Globally, dLocal currently has over 1,000 employees.
    Arnt said a major benefit the U.K. payment license will bring dLocal is recognition as a “licensed partner” that companies in the developed world can trust to handle payments in emerging markets with complex regulatory needs. DLocal now holds over 30 licenses and registrations worldwide.
    Still, dLocal will come up against some fierce competition. Britain already has an established fintech ecosystem with numerous well-capitalized players in the world of payments operating there, including PayPal, Stripe, Adyen, Checkout.com, Mollie and Revolut — to name a few.

    ‘Not for sale’

    DLocal went public on the Nasdaq in 2021, notching a $9 billion valuation at the time. It’s seen its market capitalization decline since then. As of Tuesday, the business was worth $3.4 billion. Still, the stock has risen about 40% in the past six months.
    Last month, Reuters reported dLocal was in the process of exploring a potential sale. When asked about buyout speculation by CNBC, Arnt said he didn’t want to comment on rumors, but clarified that dLocal isn’t currently for sale.
    All in all, Arnt said, being a public company comes with a level of transparency and oversight that he sees as “positive commercially” for it. At times, he added, “rumors will emerge that someone’s interested in the asset — but I wouldn’t assume there’s too much to that.”
    “While there would be a fiduciary duty to shareholders to entertain takeovers, Arnt said that for now, “the company is not for sale.” More

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    Online holiday spending rises nearly 9%, as deep discounts and AI-powered chatbots fuel purchases, Adobe data says

    Online spending grew 8.7% during November and December, according to Adobe Analytics, as consumers took advantage of discounts.
    Shoppers have embraced “event-ized buying,” as they hold out for key periods when they know that items they want will be on sale, said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst for Adobe Digital Insights.
    The biggest year-over-year spending growth came from groceries, which jumped nearly 13% to $21.5 billion, and cosmetics, which shot up by 12.2% to $7.7 billion, the data said.

    Alistair Berg | Digitalvision | Getty Images

    Online spending rose 8.7% during the holiday season from last year, according to data from Adobe Analytics, as deals and the use of AI-powered chatbots helped inspire purchases.
    Sales on retailers’ websites and apps totaled $241.4 billion from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, according to Adobe. The company’s analysis includes more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, 100 million unique items and 18 different product categories.

    More demand, not higher prices, drove higher online spending, according to Adobe. Adobe’s Digital Price Index found e-commerce prices have fallen every month for 27 months. The company’s figures are not adjusted for inflation, but if they were revised, overall consumer spending would be higher.
    The e-commerce results are a promising sign for the retail industry, which has yet to report company-specific sales. Walmart, Target, Macy’s and others will start to post their fiscal fourth-quarter results, including their sales over the key shopping season, in late February.
    Other early reads on the holiday season have looked strong, too. Retail sales for the holiday season in the U.S., excluding automotive sales, rose 3.8% year over year for the period from Nov. 1 through Dec. 24, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, which measures in-store and online sales across payment types.
    Deep discounts motivated holiday shoppers to spend, according to Adobe’s data. For every 1% drop in the typical price, demand for merchandise increased by about 1% compared with the 2023 holiday season, Adobe data found. That led to an additional $2.25 billion in online spending.
    Vivek Pandya, lead analyst for Adobe Digital Insights, said as prices of groceries and housing remain elevated, consumers are waiting to buy nonessential goods at times of the year when they expect to pay less. He described that pattern as “event-ized buying.”

    For example, he said shoppers have opened their wallets during Amazon’s Prime Day event in the summer or during sales days such as President’s Day and Memorial Day.
    “There are certain moments and certain opportunities where we see them overindexing their spend, really driving forward, because they see the value,” he said. “And then outside of those periods, we start to see growth kind of draw back down.”
    Some of the best online deals during the holiday season were in the electronics category, where discounts peaked at 30.1% off listed price; toys, where price reductions topped out at 28%; TVs, where discounts maxed out at 24.2%; and apparel, where price cuts peaked at 23.2%.
    Electronics, apparel, and the furniture and home goods segment were the three top categories for the holiday season, which contributed to about 54% of the total online spending, according to Adobe. Yet the biggest year-over-year spending growth came from groceries, which jumped nearly 13% to $21.5 billion, and cosmetics, which shot up by 12.2% to $7.7 billion.

    The AI effect

    One of the newer factors nudging spending is AI-powered shopping assistants such as ChatGPT and its competitors.
    Traffic to retail sites that came from generative AI-powered chatbots shot up by 1,300% compared with the year-ago holiday season, as more shoppers turned to the technology to look for gift ideas and direct them to cheaper items, according to Adobe. That data included only external chatbots, not those that retailers offer on their own apps or websites.
    Pandya said while the technology is young and the base of users still modest, those chatbots are becoming more meaningful drivers of clicks and purchases on retailers’ websites.
    “You have a consumer that’s very strategic and thinking a lot about their strategy around where they’re buying, when they’re buying, what’s offering the best deal,” Pandya said, “and that’s where the generative AI sources, the assistants were helping the consumer and kind of co-piloting that journey.”
    For many shoppers, smartphones played a central role. Most of the season’s e-commerce purchases — nearly 55% — took place through a smartphone rather than a laptop or other device. That’s up from about 51% in the year-ago holiday season, Adobe found.
    The use of buy now, pay later, a credit option that allows shoppers to split their purchase into multiple payments, rose 9.6% year over year and contributed to $18.2 billion in online spending during the holiday period. That marked an all-time high for the holiday season, according to Adobe. Cyber Monday was the biggest day on record for buy now, pay later with $991.2 million in spending. More