Business

➚ BUY: Swiss. UBS shares ended the year near all-time highs after the arrival of an activist investor. Its integration of Credit Suisse has gone smoothly, with more opportunities ahead to slash costs.

➘ SELL: Cheddar. Cable giant Altice sold the financial-news channel, aimed at younger viewers, for a fraction of the $200 million it paid to acquire it in 2019.

Fidelity cuts X valuation again… Israel’s war strains its budget… China boosts its own Bay Area… PGA tour punts deal-talk deadlines… U.S. jobs report may give Fed the all-clear to cut… Biggest CEO screw-ups of 2023… Mickey Mouse enters the public domain… So does Lady Chatterley’s Lover…

KPMG asked CEOs what would influence their decision to strike deals this year, and with the exception of interest rates, basically none of these answers are in the order I expected. Antitrust crackdowns and political drama tend to get blamed for M&A skittishness but seem not to matter that much.

Bank shots: The dynamics that took down three regional banks this spring are still here, and will be for a while. Interest rates will come down more slowly than they went up, and banks are currently sitting on more than $300 billion of paper losses on pre-2022 loans. We’ve moved from an acute crisis to a slower-moving one, where unprofitable banks with shaky funding limp along. They should merge, but they won’t be allowed to, unless it’s via a government auction. — Liz

A restruXuring: Elon Musk willed a financially illogical deal into existence, then ran into the buzzsaw of basic financial math. X’s advertising revenue has plummeted and its borrowing costs have risen alongside interest rates. Its lenders, meanwhile, are nursing their own losses and eager to get the debt off their books. A takeover that began with fireworks will end in the lamest way possible: an out-of-court debt swap. — Liz

Still Xi persists: The Chinese leader will take a harder line on Taiwan after the island’s Jan. 13 elections, in which the Beijing-friendly Kuomintang party is polling competitively. More military maneuvers and political crackdowns will spur more U.S. trade blacklists and sanctions, which Xi is willing to bear, the slowing Chinese economy be damned. In his New Year’s Eve speech, he told Chinese citizens to expect “winds and rains” this year. — Gina Chon

Media matters: We’ve been calling the 2024 U.S. campaign the Fragmentation Election and one thing that means is that an array of unexpected, medium-sized media figures — podcasters, influencers — will have their 15 minutes of presidential campaign glory. Successful media companies have been built on less! — Ben Smith

Green’s back: This could be a turnaround year for ESG investing, which saw some outflows in 2023. The backlash from Republicans will intensify as the U.S. election heats up, but smart investors will tune that out — cooling inflation will boost renewable energy companies, and the long-overdue arrival of climate disclosure rules from the SEC will make it easier to tell leaders from laggards. There’s still plenty of money to make from fossil fuels, but COP28 made the green trajectory of the global economy undeniable. — Tim McDonnell

National champions: Huawei’s revenue neared $100 billion in 2023 after it released a smartphone powered by a Chinese-made chip, shrugging off a U.S. blacklisting that had cut it off from big global suppliers. “We’re pretty much back on track,” its chairman wrote in a year-end message to employees.

Meanwhile, those same U.S. trade restrictions are forcing Nvidia to sell a worse version of its popular gaming chips in China. With Washington weighing new bans, it’s still not clear how well the old ones are working.

Black gold: The U.S. government is closing out a winning trade. President Joe Biden opened the country’s strategic oil stockpile in 2022 in an effort to lower prices at the pump and wean Europe off Russian gas. After selling more than 200 million barrels to refiners in the mid-$90s, the Energy Department is now refilling in the mid-$70s. Buy low, sell high.

• Hispanic leaders have a message for the president: Latino voters remain unconvinced by Biden.
• Russia launches retaliatory strikes on Ukraine. The attack on Kyiv came as both Zelenskyy and Putin vowed to keep on fighting.
• Here’s what journalists got wrong in 2023.