Donald Trump’s sky-high tariffs are not a ban on trade with China, but they come close. Although it is hard to estimate quite how sharp the decline in business between the two countries will be, since firms will find new routes and Mr Trump keeps changing the scope of the levies, a vertiginous drop is assured. More
What do the following three companies have in common? Stellantis, owner of the Fiat, Jeep and Chrysler brands; Merck, which makes the world’s bestselling cancer drug; and Barry Callebaut, a Swiss chocolate-maker, which is particularly proud of its ruby flavour, neither sweet nor bitter. More
Ride-hailing firm Lyft is buying European taxi app Free Now for $199 million.
The acquisition — Lyft’s first in Europe — is expected to close in the second half of 2025.
Europe is a highly competitive ride-hailing market, occupied by the likes of Uber, Bolt and Gett.
Lyft logo is seen in this illustration taken June 27, 2022.
Dado Ruvic | Reuters
U.S. ride-hailing firm Lyft on Wednesday announced that it’s buying European taxi app Free Now in a 175 million euro ($199 million) deal.
The company said that the acquisition — Lyft’s first in Europe — is expected to close in the second half of 2025, and that, once combined, the two companies will serve over 50 million combined annual users.
Founded in 2009 as myTaxi, Free Now is a ride-hailing platform headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. The company has been jointly owned by German automotive giants BMW and Mercedes-Benz since 2019.
The app is available in over 150 cities across nine countries, including Ireland, the U.K., Germany and France. Beyond traditional taxi and ride-hailing services, Free Now also offers other mobility options including e-scooters, e-mopeds and e-bikes.
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The startup is earnings-positive on the basis of Earnings Before Interest, Debt and Amortization, generating gross bookings over 1 billion euros in 2024, according to a company fact sheet.
‘Now is the time’
Acquiring Free Now will give Lyft a route to expand into the highly competitive European ride-hailing market, where it will come up against the likes of Uber, Estonia’s Bolt and Israel’s Gett.
Lyft CEO David Risher told CNBC that the company is only now entering Europe because it saw an opportunity to expand after steadily improving the service in North America.
Noting that Thursday will mark his two-year anniversary as Lyft CEO, Risher said: “When I started, unfortunately, we were losing share, we were losing money. We weren’t doing so great for riders or drivers.”
“Now, we pick you up about a minute faster, driver cancelation is down to less than 5%, drivers are making billions of dollars on the platform. And our Canada operation has doubled this year over last year.”
He added: “So, looking at the strong service levels, looking at the fact that internationally, within Canada, we’re doing quite well. Now we said, ‘You know what, now is the time?”
Lyft’s closest domestic rival, Uber, has a lengthy head start on the firm, having first launched in the U.K. back in 2012. It has since been beset by a series of regulatory issues.
London’s transport regulators tried to ban Uber two times over safety concerns. The company was eventually awarded a fresh license to continue operating in the city in 2022. More
JPMorgan Chase this week began suing more customers it has accused of stealing funds from the nation’s largest bank in last year’s so-called “infinite money glitch.”
The bank is now going after customers who allegedly stole amounts below $75,000, which means it is filing complaints in state courts, instead of the federal venues it chose last year.
The bank has also sent letters to more than 1,000 customers demanding they repay funds since October.
A person uses an ATM at a Chase bank in New York City on November 19, 2024.
Charly Triballeau | AFP | Getty Images
JPMorgan Chase this week began suing more customers it has accused of stealing funds from the nation’s largest bank in last year’s so-called “infinite money glitch.”
The bank is now going after customers who allegedly stole amounts below $75,000, which means it is filing complaints in state courts, instead of the federal venues it chose last year, according to a person with knowledge of the company’s deliberations.
The glitch, which went viral in late August in videos posted to social media, allowed customers to withdraw the entire value of a fraudulent check before it bounced.
“On August 29, 2024, a masked man deposited a check in Defendant’s Chase bank account in the amount of $73,000.00,” the bank said in a suit filed Tuesday afternoon in Gwinnett County, Georgia.
By the time the check bounced six days later, a series of cash withdrawals at two Chase branches in the state totaling $82,500 had been made, according to the bank.
The accused, whose name is being withheld by CNBC until she can respond, owes the bank $57,847.69, and hasn’t complied with requests to return the funds, according to the lawsuit.
Besides the Georgia case, the bank is filing lawsuits in state venues in Miami, Florida; the Bronx, New York; and two Texas counties, said the person, who declined to be identified speaking about the bank’s plans.
The episode highlights the lengths JPMorgan will go to to claw back funds it is owed and to deter future crimes. The bank looked at thousands of potential cases, choosing to litigate the largest amounts with the clearest pattern of theft, said the person familiar.
The bank has also sent letters to more than 1,000 customers demanding they repay funds since October, this person said. Some people returned money on their own after CNBC reported in October that the bank was going after potential fraudsters who had drawn down the largest amounts, said the person.
The lawsuits are separate from potential criminal cases that both federal and state law enforcement may be pursuing, according to the bank.
“We’re still investigating cases of fraud and cooperating with law enforcement — and we’ll do that for as long as it takes to hold fraudsters accountable,” Drew Pusateri, a spokesman for the New York-based bank, said in a statement.
Bankruptcy shield?
JPMorgan is also considering pushing back against the bankruptcy filings of alleged “infinite money” fraudsters.
In one of the bank’s motions made this week in bankruptcy court in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the company asked a judge for more time to object to the customer’s attempt to discharge his or her debts.
The bank is the “holder of an unsecured claim” that resulted from “actions taken by the Debtor to deposit a fraudulent check in the amount of $44,779.46 to which the Debtors immediately made numerous cash withdrawals on August 30, 2024 as well as various Cash App transactions to himself,” the bank alleged.
“There are genuine and important reasons people use bankruptcy protections,” JPMorgan’s Pusateri said. “Getting rid of debts you accumulated through fraud isn’t one of them.” More
A falling dollar is normally good for the developing world. Because poor countries borrow more in the greenback than rich ones, their debt bills become less burdensome. At the same time, imports become cheaper, providing a balm to foreign reserves that are often stretched, and investors become more optimistic. So it was from 1971 to 1978 (the last time poor countries really splurged on infrastructure) and from 2004 to 2008 (when commodity exporters became unexpectedly flush). More
Could it have been the rouble instead? The question is a strange opening gambit for a history of dollar dominance, with Russia’s economy sealed off from the West and its output less than a tenth of America’s. The idea of the rouble as a global reserve currency is laughable—and that is why Kenneth Rogoff considers it near the start of his new book, “Our Dollar, Your Problem”. What is obvious now was not at all so in the 1960s and 70s, when the rouble bloc’s economy was fast becoming the envy of the world. Soviet growth was red-hot. Plenty of economists believed parity with America was “not just likely but inevitable”. More
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The energy efficient home improvement tax credit offers taxpayers up to $3,200 per year to offset the cost of projects like installing a heat pump or insulation.
The Inflation Reduction Act extended the tax break through 2032 and made it more generous.
Republicans may kill the tax credit as part of a multitrillion-dollar tax-cut package being hashed out on Capitol Hill.
Banksphotos | E+ | Getty Images
Megan Moritz bought her dream house in 2019.
However, the 1,400-square-foot home, in the Arlington Heights suburb northwest of Chicago, was built in the 1930s and lacked insulation — leading to heating bills that were “very high,” said Moritz, 48.
The first-time homeowner opted to pay about $5,700 for a series of projects last year to make her home more energy-efficient. She added insulation to the walls, and sealed gaps in ductwork connected to her furnace to prevent air leaks.
Moritz shaved her gas heating bill by half or more during the winter months, and her home is now “delightfully toasty,” she said. She slashed her bill to $102 in December 2024 from $311 two years earlier, records show. In January 2025, her bill was $116, down from $288 in 2023.
Moritz also received a $1,200 federal tax break when she filed her tax return this year, according to records reviewed by CNBC. She’s among millions of homeowners who claim a tax credit each year for retrofits tied to energy efficiency.
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“The biggest perk to me, honestly, was not freezing my butt off,” said Moritz, who works for a global professional association. “Then it was the monthly bill going down as much as it did.”
“The tax credit was a nice little perk, the cherry on top,” she said.
The tax break, however, may not be available for much longer.
Republicans have signaled an intent to put the tax break and other consumer financial incentives linked to the Inflation Reduction Act on the chopping block to raise money for a multi-trillion-dollar package of tax cuts being negotiated on Capitol Hill.
What is the tax break?
The tax break — the energy efficient home improvement credit, also known as the 25C credit — is worth up to 30% of the cost of a qualifying project.
Taxpayers can claim up to $3,200 per year on their tax returns, with the overall dollar amount tied to specific projects.
They can get up to $2,000 for installing a heat pump, heat pump water heater or biomass stove/boiler, and another $1,200 for other additions like efficient air conditioners, efficient windows and doors, insulation and air sealing.
About 2.3 million taxpayers claimed the credit on their 2023 tax returns, according to Internal Revenue Service data.
The average family claimed about $880, according to the Treasury Department.
‘A much harder decision’
A thermal scan of Megan Moritz’s Chicago area home shows areas of energy inefficiency.
ARC Insulation
Blair Kennedy, a homeowner in Severna Park, Maryland, plans to claim a credit when he files his tax return next year.
Kennedy, 38, had fiberglass insulation installed in his attic and air-sealed his 3,700-square-foot home in March, a project that cost just over $6,000 after state and local rebates.
A federal tax break would reduce his net cost to about $5,000, Kennedy expects.
“I think it would’ve been a much harder decision to do it” without tax credits, said Kennedy, a real estate agent.
The tax break has been available on-and-off since Congress passed the Federal Energy Tax Act of 1978, according to a paper by Severin Borenstein and Lucas Davis, economists at the Haas Energy Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.
The original rationale for the credit was to boost U.S. energy security following energy crises in the 1970s, they wrote.
Today, the main goal of the tax break is to mitigate climate change, Davis said in an interview.
Making homes more energy-efficient helps reduce their planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. Residential energy use accounts for about 20% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to researchers in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan.
The Inflation Reduction Act — a historic law to combat climate change, signed by former President Joe Biden in 2022 — extended the tax break through 2032 and made it more generous. Biden-era Treasury officials said the tax break was more popular than expected.
“A lot of these clean-energy technologies have significant benefits, but they can tend to cost a bit more than the alternative,” Davis said. “This [tax] credit offers an incentive to spend a little bit more for a capital investment that will yield climate benefits.”
Households can only claim the tax credit if they have an annual tax liability, since the credit is nonrefundable. Most of the benefits accrue to higher-income households, which are more likely to have a tax liability, Davis said.
Risk of disappearance
Nes | E+ | Getty Images
The IRA also included many other consumer tax breaks and financial incentives tied to electric vehicles, rooftop solar panels and energy efficiency.
Republicans in Congress may claw back funding as part of a forthcoming tax-cut package expected to cost at least $4 trillion, experts said. President Donald Trump pledged to gut IRA funding on the campaign trail, and Republicans voted more than 50 times in the House of Representatives to repeal parts of the law.
“Absolutely, there is a risk in the current budget bill that these credits would be changed or go away completely,” Davis said.
However, there’s a group of Republicans in the House and Senate seeking to preserve the tax breaks. Their support could be enough to save the incentives, given slim margins in each chamber.
About 85% of the clean-energy investments and 68% of jobs tied to Inflation Reduction Act funding are in Republican congressional districts, according to a 2024 study by E2.
Moving forward without tax break
Many households would likely still undergo energy-efficiency projects even if the tax breaks disappear, Davis said.
Savings on utility bills are often a primary motivation, experts said.
There’s generally a five- to 10-year return on investment given monthly energy savings, said Ryan Warkentien, head of ARC Insulation, which did the retrofit on Moritz’s Chicago area home.
That time frame can easily shorten to three to five years for those who qualify for a tax credit, he said.
A “crazy” high energy bill — about $1,000 in January — motivated Kennedy to get an initial energy audit to identify efficiency problems in his Maryland home. (Taxpayers can claim a $150 tax credit for the cost of such an audit.)
Kennedy is hoping to save at least 15% on his monthly energy bills. He also expects to put less stress on his heating, ventilation and air-conditioning unit to keep the house at a comfortable temperature, prolonging its lifespan and delaying future maintenance costs.
“The tax credit ended up being the icing on the cake,” he said.
Likewise for Moritz.
“I’m literally in love with my house,” she said. “The investments I make in my house are for me, because I want to spend the rest of my life here.” More
