Finance

Shareholders are enjoying one of their best runs in history. Since a trough last October the S&P 500 index of large American firms has risen by more than 40%; peers in Europe, Japan and Canada have all gone up by at least half as much. The fears of last year, that stubborn inflation would prevent central banks from cutting interest rates, keeping bond yields high and dragging share prices down, have all but vanished. In fact, many of the world’s monetary guardians have been slashing borrowing costs just as corporate profits have climbed and animal spirits have surged. The result is that plenty of stockmarkets are now hovering near all-time highs. More

Arriving on the magical continent of Teyvat, you and your twin are attacked and separated by an unwelcoming god. When you regain consciousness, you set off in search of your lost sibling, exploring seven beguiling worlds (one of which resembles a Chinese national park). Along the way you team up with other heroes, blessed with elemental powers. One can cross lakes by freezing the water beneath his feet. Another can float on air currents of his own creation. Together, your travelling party must fight monsters, solve puzzles and plunder treasure chests. More

Apple and Goldman Sachs were fined more than $89 million for mishandling consumer disputes of Apple Card transactions, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Wednesday.
The bureau also banned Goldman Sachs from launching new credit cards unless it can provide an adequate plan to comply with the law.
The fines are tied to allegations that Apple and Goldman Sachs misled consumers about the interest-free payment plans for Apple devices.

Apple CEO Tim Cook introduces the Apple Card during a launch event at the Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California, on March 25, 2019.
Noah Berger | AFP | Getty Images

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered Apple and Goldman Sachs on Wednesday to pay more than $89 million for mishandling consumer disputes related to Apple Card transactions.
The bureau said Apple failed to send tens of thousands of consumer disputes to Goldman Sachs. Even when Goldman Sachs did receive disputes, the CFPB said the bank did not follow federal requirements when investigating the cases.

Goldman Sachs was ordered to pay a $45 million civil penalty and $19.8 million in redress, while Apple was fined $25 million. The bureau also banned Goldman Sachs from launching new credit cards unless it can provide an adequate plan to comply with the law.
“Apple and Goldman Sachs illegally sidestepped their legal obligations for Apple Card borrowers. Big Tech companies and big Wall Street firms should not behave as if they are exempt from federal law,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra.
Apple Card was first launched in 2019 as a credit card alternative, hinged on Apple Pay, the company’s mobile payment and digital wallet service. The company partnered with Goldman Sachs as its issuing bank, and advertised the card as more simple and transparent than other credit cards.
That December, the companies launched a new feature that allowed users to finance certain Apple devices with the card through interest-free monthly installments.
But the CFPB found that Apple and Goldman Sachs misled consumers about the interest-free payment plans for Apple devices. While many customers thought they would get automatic interest-free monthly payments when they bought Apple devices with an Apple Card, they were still charged interest. Goldman Sachs did not adequately communicate to consumers about how the refunds would work, which meant some people ended up paying additional interest charges, according to the CFPB.

It also meant some consumers had incorrect credit reports, the agency said.
“Apple Card is one of the most consumer-friendly credit cards that has ever been offered. We worked diligently to address certain technological and operational challenges that we experienced after launch and have already handled them with impacted customers,” Nick Carcaterra, vice president of Goldman Sachs corporate communications, told CNBC. “We are pleased to have reached a resolution with the CFPB and are proud to have developed such an innovative and award-winning product alongside Apple.”
Apple said it worked closely with Goldman Sachs to address the issues when it learned about them.
“While we strongly disagree with the CFPB’s characterization of Apple’s conduct, we have aligned with them on an agreement,” an Apple spokesperson said. “We look forward to continuing to deliver a great experience for our Apple Card customers.”
— CNBC’s Hugh Son and Steve Kovach contributed to this report.

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Rohit Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, will speak Wednesday at DC Fintech Week in Washington, D.C.

The bureau finalized its personal financial data rights rule on Tuesday, a measure that would require financial services firms to unlock an individual’s personal financial data and then transfer it for free to another provider at the request of the customer.
The rule would apply to data associated with a range of products, spanning from bank accounts and credit cards to payment apps and mobile wallets. The bureau said it would also allow customers to comparison shop more easily for favorable rates on deposits or credit.
“By allowing consumers to permission their personal financial data, and make it over time more seamless, people can more easily sign up, switch accounts and take their financial history with them,” Chopra said Tuesday in prepared remarks at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
The CFPB’s new rule garnered mixed reviews from trade groups. The American Bankers Association raised concerns around data security, while the Financial Technology Association — whose members include Plaid and PayPal — said the regulation “will increase competition, improve consumers’ choices, and drive momentum for future innovations that benefit customers.” More

Morgan Stanley is expanding the use of OpenAI-powered generative AI tools to its vaunted investment banking and trading division, CNBC has learned.
The firm began testing a version of an AI assistant based on OpenAI’s ChatGPT, called AskResearchGPT, this summer in its institutional securities group, according to Katy Huberty, Morgan Stanley’s global director of research.
Employees have been using it instead of getting on the phone or lobbing an email to the research department, Huberty said.

A screen displays the trading information for Morgan Stanley on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), January 19, 2022.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Morgan Stanley is expanding the use of OpenAI-powered, generative artificial intelligence tools to its vaunted investment banking and trading division, CNBC has learned.
The firm, which first rolled out an AI assistant based on OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology to its wealth management advisors in early 2023, began testing another version called AskResearchGPT this summer in its institutional securities group, according to Katy Huberty, Morgan Stanley’s global director of research.

The tool lets users extract answers from across the universe of Morgan Stanley’s research — including on stocks, commodities, industry trends and regions — collapsing what could otherwise be the cumbersome task of gleaning insights from the over 70,000 reports produced annually by the bank.
“We see it as a game changer from a productivity standpoint, both for our research analysts and our colleagues across institutional securities,” Huberty said in an interview. The tool helps staff “access the highest quality, most insightful information as efficiently as possible.”
Since its arrival as a viral consumer app in late 2022, OpenAI’s generative AI technology has been swiftly adopted by Wall Street’s largest players.
Morgan Stanley says that close to half of its 80,000 employees are using generative AI tools created with OpenAI, while at rival JPMorgan Chase, about 60% of the firm’s 316,043 employees have access to a platform using OpenAI’s models, said a person with knowledge of the matter. The San Francisco-based startup recently raised money at a $157 billion valuation.
At Morgan Stanley, a leader across investment banking and trading along with JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, employees have gravitated toward AskResearchGPT, using it instead of getting on the phone or lobbing an email to the research department, Huberty said.

Employees are asking the tool three times the number of questions as compared to a previous tool based on traditional AI that’s been in use since 2017, according to the bank.
It’s most in-demand among salespeople and other client-facing staff who often send research highlights and field questions from hedge funds or other institutional investors, said Huberty.
“We found that it takes a salesperson one-tenth of the time to respond to the average client inquiry” using AskResearchGPT, she said.
In a recent demonstration, the GPT-4 based chatbot was able to summarize Morgan Stanley’s position on matters from copper to Nvidia to the finer points of standing up a data center, understanding industry-specific jargon and providing charts and links to source material.
The bank wants to push adoption further in light of the productivity gains it’s seeing, Huberty said. The tool is embedded within workers’ browsers as well as Microsoft Teams and Outlook programs to make it readily available.
Understandably, Huberty says she is often asked if AI could ultimately replace the analysts who are creating the reams of research published under Morgan Stanley’s banner.
“I don’t see in the near future a path to just having the machine write the research report to generate the idea,” she said. “I really think that it’s humans who make the call and own the relationship, which is a really important part of the analyst job, or sales and trading job, or corporate banker job.” More

Honor, a spinoff from Huawei that focuses on higher-end devices, revealed Wednesday the latest version of its Android-based Magic operating system would focus on AI as an assistant.
Telecommunications giant Huawei on Tuesday launched an upgrade to its HarmonyOS system that uses in-house AI to allow users to translate text, take notes and edit photos.
Apple fell out of the top five smartphone players in China earlier this year, according to Canalys.

Chinese smartphone company Honor on Wednesday revealed new AI features. Pictured here is CEO George Zhao speaking in Shanghai on June 26, 2024.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Honor, a spinoff from Huawei that focuses on higher-end devices, revealed Wednesday the latest version of its Android-based Magic operating system would focus on AI as an assistant.
A company demo showed how even with a vague voice command — such as “I’m tired, order something” — the phone was able to automatically order coffee without requiring the user to touch the device. It used AI to mimic actions on a touchscreen. Human intervention was only needed to complete the payment.

The AI assistant could also identify documents and send them to contacts, or make calls via social media app WeChat, all without requiring the user to touch the phone.
For devices in China, Honor works with Baidu and other Chinese companies for some AI functions, while developing others on its own. Honor works with Google for devices sold overseas.
The new AI features are slated for release on Honor’s forthcoming Magic 7 smartphone, due for launch on Oct. 30. Honor plans to roll out AI capabilities to all its devices by the first few months of next year.
The Magic 7 will use Qualcomm’s newly announced Snapdragon Elite 8 chip for phones. Honor on Monday had teased its new AI features at the chipmaker’s annual event.
Chinese home appliance and smartphone company Xiaomi will also launch a new phone this month that uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Elite 8 chip. Xiaomi has been less vocal about its AI features for smartphones.
The AI features have climbed to a new level, Toby Zhu, senior analyst, Canalys, said in a phone interview Wednesday after Honor’s event. He said the new features have greater potential to convince consumers to switch to another device.
“Apple faces challenges in China but from our data it won’t face a significant decline,” he said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.

Apple’s falling China sales

Honor, Xiaomi and Huawei have all launched foldables, a category Apple has yet to enter.
About 17% of Apple’s revenue came from Greater China in the quarter ended June 29. That’s down from 19% in the year-ago period. Apple is scheduled to release quarterly results on Oct. 31 local time.
Apple CEO Tim Cook met with China’s Minister of Industry and Information Technology Jin Zhuanglong on Wednesday to discuss data security and cloud services, according to the ministry. Apple did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.
Since launching on Sept. 20, Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro Max has dropped slightly in value on second-hand shopping platform Xianyu. The device was selling between 8,000 Chinese yuan ($1,122) and 10,000 yuan Wednesday, compared with 10,500 yuan to 16,300 yuan last month.
Huawei had launched its trifold Mate XT on the same day. As of Wednesday, second-hand prices for the device had dropped to the mid-20,000 yuan range, nearly half the price it was selling for on Sept. 20.
— CNBC’s Dylan Butts and Sonia Heng contributed to this report. More

Dante Disparte, Circle’s global head of policy, said that he sees the U.K. bringing in legislation for stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency pegged to government currencies, soon.
“I think we’re within months, not years” of formal U.K. laws for the stablecoin market being introduced, Disparte told CNBC in an interview last week during a visit to London.
He added that the U.K. has some catching up to do with the European Union, which has begun enforcing regulation of stablecoins under its MiCa, or Markets in Crypto Assets, regulation.

Launched in 2018 by crypto firm Circle, USDC is now the second-biggest stablecoin globally, with more than $30 billion worth of tokens in circulation.
Nurphoto | Getty Images

LONDON — The U.K. is likely to see stablecoin laws introduced in a matter of “months, not years,” according to crypto firm Circle’s top policy executive.
Dante Disparte, Circle’s global head of policy, said that he sees the U.K. will soon bring in legislation for stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency that aims to maintain a constant peg to government currencies such as the U.S. dollar or British pound

“I think we’re within months, not years” of formal laws for the stablecoin market being introduced, Disparte told CNBC in an interview last week during a visit to London.
The Treasury and the Bank of England were not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
Disparte suggested the U.K.’s lengthier approach to introducing laws targeted at crypto may have been a good thing given events that transpired in 2022, such as the collapse of FTX, a crypto exchange once worth worth $32 billion, as well as other industry crises.

“You could also look back, and I think many in the U.K. and in other countries would argue that they’re vindicated in not having jumped in too quickly and fully regulating and bringing the environment onshore because of all the issues we’ve seen in crypto over the last few years,” Disparte said.
However, he added that more recently, there’s been a sense of urgency to introduce formal regulations for stablecoins, as well as trading in digital assets and other crypto-related activities.

By not bringing forth stablecoin-specific rules, the U.K. would risk missing out on the benefits of the technology. He added that the U.K. has some catching up to do with the European Union, which has begun enforcing regulation of stablecoins under its MiCa, or Markets in Crypto Assets, regulation. Singapore has also agreed formal laws for the stablecoin industry.
“In the spirit of protecting the U.K. economy from excess risk and crypto, there’s also a point in time in which you end up protecting the economy from job creation and the industries of the future,” Disparte said. He stressed that “you can’t have the economy of the future unless you have the money of the future.”
Among the benefits cited by Disparte are innovation in the wholesale banking industry, real-time payments, and the digitization of the British pound.
Officials at the Bank of England are currently exploring whether or not to introduce a digital version of the pound, which has previously been dubbed “Britcoin” by the media.

Dante said he had met with officials from the Bank of England recently and was reassured by their approach to so-called central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs.

What has the UK done so far?

Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s predecessor, Rishi Sunak, had previously envisioned Britain becoming a global crypto hub.
When the Conservative Party was in power, U.K. government officials had signaled that new legislation for stablecoins as well as crypto-related services such as staking, exchange and custody would be in place as early as June or July.
In April, the former government announced plans to become a “world leader” in the crypto space, outlining plans to bring stablecoins into the regulatory fold and consult on a regime for regulating trading of cryptoassets, like bitcoin.
Last October, Sunak’s administration issued a response to a consultation on regulation of the crypto industry, saying it would aim to introduce “phase 2 secondary legislation” in 2024, subject to parliamentary approval.
The new Labour government hasn’t been as vocal as the Conservatives were on crypto regulation. In January, the party released a plan for financial services, which included a proposal to make the U.K. a securities tokenization hub.

Securities tokens are digital assets that represent ownership of a real-world financial asset, such as a share or bond.
Stablecoins are a multibillion industry, worth more than $170 billion, according to CoinGecko data. Tether’s USDT token is the largest stablecoin by value, with a market capitalization of over $120 billion. Circle’s USDC is the second-largest, with the combined value of coins in circulation worth over $34 billion.
However, the market has been shrouded in controversies in the past. In 2022, Tether’s USDT dropped from its $1 peg after a rival stablecoin, terraUSD, collapsed to zero. The events raised doubts over whether USDT was truly backed 1:1 by an equal amount of dollars and other assets in Tether’s reserves.
For its part, Tether says its coin is backed by dollars and dollar-equivalent assets, including government bonds, at all times. More

Less than a mile from Singapore’s luxurious Changi Airport sits a rather less glamorous business park. Residents of the industrial estate include freight and logistics firms, as well as the back offices of several banks. One building is a little different, however. Behind a glossy onyx facade, layers of security and imposing steel doors, sits more than $1bn in gold, silver and other treasures. Reserve SG hosts dozens of private vaults, thousands of safe deposit boxes and a cavernous storage room where precious metals sit on shelves rising three storeys above the ground. More