Paramount Clears Path to Warner Bros. Deal, Ellison Wins Big
A lawsuit brought by 12 state attorneys general against Paramount's takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery has been settled, clearing the final hurdle to the merger. Paramount avoided any forced divestiture of cable assets, agreeing instead to keep its studios in California, commit $1.5bn to local production, and set up independent editorial boards for CNN and CBS News. Warner Bros. Discovery shares jumped 11% on the news, while Paramount ended the day down 3%. The settlement leaves David Ellison free to run the combined company with minimal structural constraints, with the $30m penalty for missing film production targets seen as trivial against per-film budgets.
Frozen US Housing Market Splits in Two as Mortgages Top 7%
US mortgage rates climbed back above 7% last week for the first time in over a year, pushing pending home sales to a near three-year low. The average home now costs more than seven times median household income, freezing out entry-level buyers across the south while high-end markets in San Francisco and the northeast track the Nasdaq rather than rates. Annual home sales are running near 4 million, roughly 30% below a normalised level, as older owners locked into low mortgages refuse to move.
Amazon Blocks Meta's Muse Agent, Opening AI Turf War
Amazon has cut off Meta's newly launched AI agent Muse from accessing products on Amazon.com, preventing it from executing basic tasks like reordering household goods. The move raises the prospect of other platforms - Google Search, TikTok, rival retailers - walling off competing agents, undermining the core utility of AI assistants that depend on open web access. Meta shares still rose more than 11% on the Muse launch, but the block signals a more hostile phase in the agent race.