Natasha Frost

It is a truth universally acknowledged: When businesses’ costs rise, they will pass off what they can to the customer.

Just as firefighters and postal workers have uniforms, bankers seem to have a go-to outfit, often involving suits and ties. But within the walls of America’s fifth-largest bank, this prescriptive dress code may no longer be the norm.

Money launderers, numismatists, and European doomsday preppers rejoice: Even as the rest of the world marches relentlessly toward a cashless future, the Swiss 1,000-franc note is here to stay. In fact, according to a press release issued by the Swiss National Bank today (March 5), it’s about to get a fresh new look, effective next week.

Most companies have bugbears that keep their investors up at night—financial question marks, hefty insurance bills, rogue management; the list goes on. Ride-hail company Lyft, which on Friday (March 1) filed paperwork to go public, has its own list of fears, many of them unique to the wide new world of transportation as a service (TaaS). 

Until 2008, a cash-strapped customer in Ohio seeking a quick, two-week loan from a payday lender might find themselves paying a hefty fee. These unsecured short-term loans—often secured with a post-dated check and seldom exceeding $500 at a go—carried annual percentage rates (APR) of up to almost 400%, more than ten times the normal limit permitted by usury laws.

Kim Jong-un knew nothing about the death of American student Otto Warmbier, who spent 17 months in detention in North Korea.

The NS Concept is a colossal red-and-yellow oil tanker with an international background almost as colorful as its paintwork. It sails under the flag of Liberia; was built in South Korea by Hyundai, and is owned and commercially managed by Russia’s Sovcomflot. But of late it’s been mostly nowhere in particularly, drifting in international waters, with US sanctions sending it wildly off-course.

Spotted some cinematic potential in Michael Cohen’s testimony before the US Congress today (Feb. 27). You might not have to wait all that long before Hollywood gets its hands on the saga, based on comments made by Donald Trump’s former personal attorney to the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

When the diet company formerly known as Weight Watchers revealed its new branding late last year, it was met with skepticism. After reporting disappointing earnings today (Feb. 26), it appears that wariness was warranted.

To US politicians on both sides of the aisle content to luxuriate in seemingly infinite debt, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell has a simple warning: “Federal government debt is on an unsustainable path.”

General Electric shareholders were feeling lighter—and wealthier—this morning (Feb. 25), after the industrial conglomerate announced plans to sell its biopharma business to Danaher Corp for $21.4 billion, sending its share price soaring 15%. It’s the first significant asset sale since new CEO Larry Culp took on the role in October 2018, after coming to GE from Danaher itself.

The dried, wrinkly black fruit of the pepper plant was once so valuable that peppercorns were used as a kind of currency. These days, the spice remains sought after despite its relative expense, featuring in virtually every meal on dining tables the world over. Demand for peppercorns is high, and rising: as any aspiring chef will tell you, there’s simply no substitute for its pungent taste.

$12.6 billion is a lot of money. It’s roughly the cost of a US navy aircraft carrier, a bit less than what Amazon paid to take over Whole Foods, and if you had it in your wallet you’d be the 100th-richest person in the world.

AP Moller-Maersk, the world’s largest container-shipping company, spies storm clouds up ahead.

Traders say the darnedest things.

A French court ordered UBS to pay a fine of more than €4.5 billion ($5.1 billion) today, after finding the Swiss bank guilty of illegally soliciting wealthy French clients to help them evade tax. Of that total, €800 million in damages go directly to the French government, which intends to seek further penalties. Following the verdict, shares of UBS fell by more than 3%, a decline worth about $2 billion in market capitalization.

According to data from the US Commerce Department, American consumers had a subdued Christmas shopping season. But at Walmart, it seems, they were spending like crazy.

Nearly four months to the day since Canada legalized marijuana, Canopy Growth’s sales have never been buzzier.

The Oracle of Omaha doesn’t see a future for technology company Oracle.

This story was updated at 12:25pm US eastern time today (Feb. 15):

Marco Rubio is generally a friend of business. But a raft of tweets from the Republican senator from Florida yesterday Feb. 12 suggested that on the issue of stock buybacks, he’s more closely aligned with prominent Democratic senators such as Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer than with many of his fellow conservatives.

Traditional strategies to boost gender equity in the workplace don’t seem to be working.

With every lurch toward a no-deal Brexit, the most chaotic way that the UK could quit the European Union, the British pound takes another dive. It lost nearly 20% of its value against the dollar in the months after the June 2016 referendum. Then, after clawing back some of the decline, forecasters now warn that the pound could lose up to 25% of its value if Britain crashes out of the EU by the March 29 deadline without any transitional arrangement in place.

Vasant Narasimhan, the new CEO of Swiss drug company Novartis, has been engaged in what he described as “a big culture change” for the company.