The Wall Street Journal
- Citi said Shell’s beat to first-quarter net income was for the most part driven by better utilization across key assets—such as the Prelude LNG platform, the Pennsylvania ethylene plant and U.S. refining—and aided a little by positive trading in oil and gas.
- The global economy is likely to avoid an anticipated slowdown this year, but could yet suffer a significant setback if an escalation of conflict in the Middle East were to push oil prices sharply higher, the OECD said.
- Base metals and gold gained after the Federal Reserve’s comments came in softer than expected.
- Oil was close to 1% higher on a likely technical rebound and helped by a weaker dollar, after prices slid in the previous trading session after the Federal Reserve signaled a lack of further progress on inflation.
- SK Hynix said its high bandwidth memory products were sold out for this year and almost fully booked for 2025 due to brisk demand for artificial-intelligence chips.
- Maersk raised the lower end of its full-year guidance despite expecting the overcapacity challenges that have plagued the industry to continue, potentially for the rest of the year.
- Universal Music’s artists and song catalogs will return to TikTok after the world’s largest music company and the social-media platform agreed on a new licensing contract.
- Eurozone government bond yields declined, trading by 3-4 basis points lower, as they tracked a fall in Treasury yields on Wednesday in the wake of the Fed meeting.
- The dollar fell after the Federal Reserve appeared to rule out the possibility of raising interest rates, instead reiterating that it would take longer to gain confidence that inflation has fallen sufficiently to be able to cut rates.
- ING backed its full-year guidance and said it planned to buy back up to €2.5 billion of shares to bring its common equity Tier 1 ratio toward its target.