Business
Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos to Attend Trump’s Inauguration
Bezos, Zuckerberg and Coke at the inauguration
Corporate America had already raced to donate big sums to Donald Trump’s record-breaking inaugural fund. Now some of its leaders appear eager to jockey for prominent positions at the inauguration next week.
It’s a new reminder that for some of the nation’s biggest businesses, forging close ties to a president-elect who is promising hard-hitting policies like tariffs is a priority this time around.
Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are expected to be on the inauguration dais, according to NBC News, alongside Elon Musk and several cabinet picks.
The presence of Musk isn’t a surprise, given the Tesla chief’s significant support of and huge influence over Trump. But the other tech moguls have only more recently been seen as supporters of the administration. (Indeed, Bezos frequently sparred with Trump during his first presidential term.)
It’s the latest effort by Bezos and Zuckerberg to burnish their Trump credentials. At the DealBook Summit in December, Bezos — whose Amazon has faced scrutiny under the Biden administration and whose Blue Origin is hoping to win government rocket contracts — said that he was “very hopeful” about Trump’s efforts to reduce regulation.
And Zuckerberg recently announced significant changes to Meta’s content moderation policy, including relaxing restrictions on speech seen as protecting groups including L.G.B.T.Q. people that won praise from Trump and other conservatives. On the inauguration front, Zuckerberg is also co-hosting a reception alongside the longtime Trump backers Miriam Adelson, Tilman Fertitta and Todd Ricketts.
Both tech moguls have visited Mar-a-Lago since the election, with Zuckerberg having done so more than once.
Coca-Cola took a different tack. The drinks giant’s C.E.O., James Quincey, gave Trump what an aide called the “first ever Presidential Commemorative Inaugural Diet Coke bottle.”
More broadly, business leaders want a piece of the inauguration action. The Times previously reported that the Trump inaugural fund had surpassed $170 million, a record, and that even major donors have been wait-listed for events.
Others are throwing unofficial events around Washington, including an “Inaugural Crypto Ball” that will feature Snoop Dogg, with tickets starting at $5,000, The Wall Street Journal reports.
It’s a reminder that C.E.O.s are reading the room, and preparing their companies for a president who has proposed creating an “External Revenue Service” to oversee what he has promised will be wide-ranging tariffs.
David Urban, a longtime Trump adviser who’s hosting a pre-inauguration event, told The Journal, “This is the world order, and if we’re going to succeed, we need to get with the world order.”
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In other Trump news: The president-elect is expected to appear via videoconference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which starts on Inauguration Day, according to Semafor.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
Investors brace for the latest inflation data. The Consumer Price Index report, due out at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, is expected to show that inflation ticked up last month, most likely because of climbing food and fuel costs. Global bond markets have been rattled as slow progress on slowing inflation has prompted the Fed to slash its forecast for interest rate cuts.
More Trump cabinet picks will appear before the Senate on Wednesday. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the choice for secretary of state, is expected to field questions about his views on the Middle East, Ukraine and China, but is expected to be confirmed. Russell Vought, the pick to run the Office of Management and Budget, will most likely be asked about his advocacy for drastically shrinking the federal government, a key Trump objective. And Sean Duffy, the Fox Business host chosen to lead the Transportation Department, will probably face questions on how he would oversee matters including aviation safety and autonomous vehicles, the latter of which is a priority for Elon Musk.
Meta plans to lay off another 5 percent of its employees. Mark Zuckerberg, the tech giant’s C.E.O., told staff members to prepare for “extensive performance-based cuts” as the company braces for “an intense year.” The social media giant faces intense competition in the race to commercialize artificial intelligence.
A new bill would give TikTok a reprieve from a ban in the United States. Senator Ed Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, said he planned to introduce the Extend the TikTok Deadline Act, which would give the video platform 270 additional days to be divested from its Chinese parent, ByteDance before being blacklisted. It’s the latest effort to buy TikTok time, as the app faces a Jan. 19 deadline set by a law; President-elect Donald Trump has opposed the potential ban as well.
A question of succession
JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock, the giant money manager, just reported earnings. (In short: Both handily beat analyst expectations.)
But the Wall Street giants are likely to face questioning on a particular issue on Wednesday: Which top lieutenants are in line to replace their larger-than-life C.E.O.s, Jamie Dimon and Larry Fink.
Who’s out:
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Daniel Pinto, who had long been Dimon’s right-hand man, said he would officially drop his responsibilities as JPMorgan’s C.O.O. in June and retire at the end of 2026. Jenn Piepszak, the co-C.E.O. of the company’s core commercial and investment bank, has become C.O.O.
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And Mark Wiedman, the head of BlackRock’s global client business and a top contender to succeed Fink, is planning to leave, according to news reports.
What Wall Street is gossiping about JPMorgan: Even in taking the C.O.O. role, JPMorgan said that Piepszak wasn’t interested in succeeding Dimon “at this time.” DealBook hears that while she genuinely appears not to want to pursue the top job, the phrasing covers her in case she changes her mind.
For now, that means the most likely candidates for the top spot are Marianne Lake, the company’s head of consumer and community banking; Troy Rohrbaugh, the other co-head of the commercial and investment bank; and Doug Petno, a co-head of global banking.
The buzz around BlackRock: Wiedman reportedly didn’t want to keep waiting to succeed Fink and is expected to seek a C.E.O. position elsewhere. (So sudden was his departure that he’s forfeiting about $8 million worth of stock options and, according to The Wall Street Journal, he doesn’t have another job lined up yet.)
Fink said on CNBC on Wednesday that Wiedman’s departure had been in the works for some time, with the executive having expressed a desire to leave about six months ago.
Other candidates to take over for Fink include Martin Small, BlackRock’s C.F.O.; Rob Goldstein, the firm’s C.O.O.; and Rachel Lord, the head of international.
But Dimon and Fink aren’t going anywhere just yet. Dimon, 68, said only last year that he might not be in the role in five years. And Fink, 72, said in July that he was working on succession planning: “When I do believe the next generation is ready, I’m out.”
The S.E.C. gets in a final shot at Musk
Another battle between Elon Musk and the S.E.C. erupted on Tuesday, with the agency suing the tech mogul over his 2022 purchase of Twitter.
It’s unclear what happens to the lawsuit once President-elect Donald Trump, who counts Musk as a close ally, takes office. But the agency’s reputation as an independent watchdog may be at stake.
A recap: The S.E.C. accused Musk of violating securities laws in his $44 billion acquisition of the social media company.
The agency said that Musk had failed to disclose his Twitter ownership stake for a pivotal 11-day stretch before revealing his intentions to purchase the company. That breach allowed him to buy up at least $150 million worth of Twitter shares at a lower price — to the detriment of existing shareholders, the agency argues.
The S.E.C. isn’t just seeking to fine Musk. It wants him to pay back the windfall. “That’s unusual,” Ann Lipton, a professor at Tulane Law School, told DealBook.
Alex Spiro, Musk’s lawyer, called the latest action a “sham” and accused the agency of waging a “multiyear campaign of harassment” against him.
The showdown sets up a tough question for the S.E.C. Will Paul Atkins, the president-elect’s widely respected pick to lead the agency, drop the case? Such a move could call the bedrock principle of S.E.C. independence into question.
Jay Clayton, who led the agency during Trump’s first term, earned the respect of the business community for running it in a largely drama-free manner. It was under Clayton that the S.E.C. sued Musk over his statements about taking Tesla private.
Musk, who is set to become Trump’s cost-cutting czar and is expected to have office space in the White House complex, has called for the “comprehensive overhaul” of agencies like the S.E.C. The billionaire said he would also like to see “punitive action against those individuals who have abused their regulatory power for personal and political gain.”
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In related news: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued Capital One, accusing it of cheating its depositors out of $2 billion in interest payments.
THE SPEED READ
Deals
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DAZN, the streaming network backed by the billionaire businessman Len Blavatnik, is closing in on funding from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund as the kingdom continues to expand its sports footprint. (NYT)
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The Justice Department sued KKR, accusing the investment giant of withholding information during government reviews for several of its deals. KKR filed a countersuit. (Bloomberg)
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OpenAI added Adebayo Ogunlesi, the billionaire co-founder of the infrastructure investment firm Global Infrastructure Partners, to its board. (FT)
Politics and policy
Best of the rest
We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.
When Infowars, the website founded by the right-wing conspiracist Alex Jones, came up for sale two years ago, an unlikely suitor stepped up. The Onion, a satirical news outlet, planned to convert the site into a parody of itself.
That sale was scuttled by a bankruptcy court. Now, The Onion has re-emerged with a new plan: licensing the website from Gregory Milligan, the court-appointed manager of the site.
On Monday, Mr. Milligan asked Maya Guerra Gamble, a judge in Texas’ Travis County District Court overseeing the disposition of Infowars, to approve that licensing agreement in a court filing. Under the terms, The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, would pay $81,000 a month to license Infowars.com and its associated intellectual property — such as its name — for an initial six months, with an option to renew for another six months.
The licensing deal has been agreed to by The Onion and the court-appointed administrator. But it is not effective until Judge Guerra Gamble approves it, and Mr. Jones could appeal any ruling. That means the fate of Infowars remains in limbo until the court rules, probably sometime in the next two weeks. Mr. Jones continues to operate Infowars.com and host its weekday program, “The Alex Jones Show.”
Mr. Jones had no immediate comment.
The battle over Infowars has been a long and fraught saga, and Mr. Jones — a notorious peddler of lies and invective — has used his bully pulpit for more than a year to crusade against The Onion’s efforts to take over the platform. The site is in limbo because of a series of defamation lawsuits against Mr. Jones filed by families of victims of the mass shooting in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, which Mr. Jones falsely claimed was a hoax.
People who believed his lies that the shooting was staged subjected the families to years of online abuse, harassment and death threats.
In 2018, the families of two Sandy Hook victims sued Mr. Jones for defamation in Texas, where Infowars is based, and relatives of eight other victims sued him in Connecticut. In 2022, a jury in Texas awarded the parents of one victim $50 million.
Mr. Jones declared bankruptcy later that year. A trial pitting him against the parents of a second victim was delayed indefinitely by that move. Later that year, a jury awarded the families and a former law enforcement official who sued Mr. Jones in Connecticut a total of $1.4 billion.
Mr. Jones appealed the Connecticut verdict, the largest defamation award in history, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In October, the justices declined to hear the case.
To help satisfy Mr. Jones’s debts to the Sandy Hook families and other creditors, Judge Christopher Lopez of U.S. Bankruptcy Court ordered in mid-2024 that a court-appointed trustee sell off equipment, intellectual property and other assets owned by Free Speech Systems, Infowars’ parent company.
In late 2024, a sealed-bid silent auction drew only two contenders: The Onion’s parent and a company associated with Mr. Jones. The trustee and the families chose The Onion’s bid, despite its potential to yield less cash than the rival company’s. Mr. Jones and his lawyers cried foul, and Judge Lopez intervened, saying that the process was opaque and that The Onion’s bid was not obviously superior. He rejected plans for a do-over of the auction, instead directing the families to seek a liquidation through Judge Guerra Gamble’s court in Texas, where the first defamation case was heard and won.
In August, Judge Guerra Gamble ruled that a court-appointed administrator would take over and sell Infowars’ assets, reopening the door to The Onion. “We’re working on it,” Ben Collins, the chief executive of Global Tetrahedron, wrote on social media on the same day as Judge Guerra Gamble’s ruling.
The Onion’s proposal, worth $486,000 in its initial six-month term, does little to satisfy the enormous damages awarded to the Sandy Hook families. The families have been fighting to collect since Mr. Jones filed for personal and business bankruptcy. Mr. Jones is expected to lose access to his studio and equipment as part of the deal, Mr. Collins said.
The Onion plans to turn Infowars into a comedy site with satirical echoes of the fringe conspiracy theories that Mr. Jones is known for. Tim Heidecker, one of the comedians behind “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, has been hired to serve as “creative director of Infowars.” He said he initially planned to parody Mr. Jones’s “whole modus operandi.”
Mr. Heidecker has been working on his impression of Mr. Jones. But eventually, when that joke gets old, Mr. Heidecker hopes to turn Infowars into a destination for independent and experimental comedy, he said.
“I just thought it would be just a beautiful joke if we could take this pretty toxic, negative, destructive force of Infowars and rebrand it as this beautiful place for our creativity,” Mr. Heidecker said in an interview. During a recent trip to Philadelphia, he traveled to the Liberty Bell to film a video in character as the new creative director of Infowars.
“The goal for the families we represent has always been to prevent Alex Jones from being able to cause harm at scale, the way he did against them,” said Chris Mattei, the lawyer who argued the Connecticut families’ case in court. The deal with The Onion promises “to significantly degrade his power to do that.”
The Onion also plans to sell merchandise and share the proceeds with the Sandy Hook families.
“We are excited to lie constantly for cold, hard cash, but this time in a cool way, and we’ll make sure some of it gets back to the families,” Mr. Collins said.
While broadcast programming is “out of my lane,” Mr. Mattei said, “satire and humor can be universal. If their programming can be of interest to Jones’s former audience, and help bring them out of the dark, that would be wonderful.”
In the meantime, the company has been filming satirical videos in antipation of the court’s ruling. One of them features a fictional anchor from the satirical Onion News Network, “Jim Haggerty,” who defects from the mainstream media to become a conspiracy monger. He will be played by the actor Brad Holbrook.
“For 35 years, I was part of the problem,” Mr. Haggerty intoned in a dramatic trailer released by The Onion. “But now, I’m free of my corporate shackles, and my only business is freedom.”
Apple, one of the world’s most valuable companies, is getting a new chief executive, marking a new chapter in the story of what has become arguably the most influential company in consumer technology.
The Cupertino, Calif., smartphone maker said Monday that John Ternus, senior vice president of hardware engineering, will become Apple’s chief executive on Sept. 1.
Tim Cook, who has served as chief executive for roughly 15 years, will become executive chairman of the company’s board of directors, the company said. He was long expected to step down soon.
Under Cook’s leadership, Apple’s market capitalization grew to $4 trillion from about $350 billion, according to the company. Its revenue ballooned from $108 billion in fiscal year 2011 to more than $416 billion in fiscal year 2025.
Apple also expanded its business under Cook’s tenure, including its presence in entertainment with Apple TV and Apple Music. People also use other services such as Apple Pay and iCloud to store their photos, videos and other content.
The leadership transition marks a new era for Apple, which turned 50 years old in April. The company has revolutionized technology, selling popular consumer electronics including iPhones and smartwatches.
But the company has lagged behind as its rivals such as OpenAI, Google, Meta and more move quickly to dominate the artificial intelligence race. It has also had to grapple with tariffs and criticism for manufacturing its products in other countries, such as China and India, during President Trump’s second term.
“These will be big shoes to fill and the timing of Cook exiting stage left as CEO could make sense but also creates questions. Apple is making a major transition on its AI strategy, and longtime CEO and legendary Cook leaving now is a surprise,” Dan Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, said in a statement.
In a statement, Cook expressed gratitude for his time leading Apple. The 65-year-old succeeded chief executive and co-founder Steve Jobs in 2011 after he passed away from pancreatic cancer.
“John Ternus has the mind of an engineer, the soul of an innovator, and the heart to lead with integrity and with honor,” Cook said in a statement. “He is a visionary whose contributions to Apple over 25 years are already too numerous to count, and he is without question the right person to lead Apple into the future.”
Ternus was widely expected to be next in line as chief executive.
In a statement, he said he’s worked at Apple for nearly his entire career, including under Jobs. He described Cook, who will work with him during the transition, as his mentor.
“I am humbled to step into this role, and I promise to lead with the values and vision that have come to define this special place for half a century,” Ternus said in a statement.
Ternus has served as Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering since 2021, working on new products such as the iPad and AirPods. Before that role, he was on Apple’s product design team in 2001 before becoming vice president of hardware engineering in 2013, according to the company.
“Ternus’s work on Mac has helped the category become more powerful and more popular globally than at any time in its 40-year history,” Apple said in its news release about the transition.
In the fiscal year ending in September, Apple reported revenue of $416 billion and a net income of $112 billion. Worldwide, there are more than 2.5 billion active Apple devices.
Apple’s stock was down less than 1% in early after-hours trading, changing hands at around $271 a share.
As Hollywood has fractured over the proposed merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, AMC Entertainment Holdings Chief Executive Adam Aron is throwing his support behind David Ellison.
The movie theater chief said he trusts that Ellison, Paramount’s CEO, will hold to his promise that the combined company will release 30 films a year — 15 each from Paramount and Warner Bros.
Many industry executives and other theater operators have questioned whether that goal is realistic, particularly given the cost cuts that are expected to commence after the deal closes. Exhibitors in particular fear that a decline in film releases will erase some of the progress made at the box office since the pandemic.
“Adam Aron and AMC are big fans of David Ellison,” Aron said during an interview Wednesday afternoon in Las Vegas, where he was attending the CinemaCon trade convention. “We respect his talent as a filmmaker and a movie executive, and we believe in the promises that he has made to increase the number of movies being made by Paramount and Warner Bros.”
Aron added that he trusts Ellison will respect calls to keep films in theaters for 45 days before they’re available for premium purchase at home and much later, on streaming services.
That strategy, known as windowing, became a more contentious issue after the pandemic when some studios began to reduce the amount of time films were in cinemas before audiences could view them at home.
“We’re enthusiastic that David will fulfill his promises,” Aron said. “And that in the end, this will prove to be a good thing for our company and our industry.”
He added that he hopes current Warner Bros. film chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy “continue to have the opportunity to do great work” at that studio. The pair led Warner Bros. to 30 Oscar nominations — more than any other studio this year — and 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
After a difficult last few years, Aron said he feels like the theatrical business has “finally turned a corner.”
So far this year, domestic box office revenue is up more than 20% compared with the same time period last year, bolstering hopes across the industry that 2026 will mark a rebound from the downturn of the pandemic.
Last year, AMC saw a 2.1% decrease in attendance compared to 2024. But this year’s strong lineup of films has given Aron confidence that the company‘s revenue and earnings will rise this year.
The company is also working to pay down the debt it took on during the pandemic. The company had as much as $6 billion in debt in 2020 and is now down to $4 billion, Aron said.
“The big news of 2026 for us, in light of the rising box office, in light of rising EBITDA [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization], and in paying down debt and extending maturities, I think we will have dramatically strengthened our balance sheet,” he said.
Aron also confirmed reports that Netflix Co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos met with a group of movie theater chiefs in Las Vegas, a discussion he described as “introductory in nature” rather than about dealmaking since it was in a large group forum.
Netflix and AMC previously had a complicated relationship over the streaming service’s long-standing resistance to traditional theatrical releases.
But the two companies have recently partnered on several projects, including a Halloween weekend showing of the animated hit “KPop Demon Hunters,” New Year’s Eve screenings of the “Stranger Things” series finale and the first two episodes of the Netflix show “One Piece.”
Aron said AMC thoroughly embraced all three projects, and that both companies were pleased with the results.
“Both AMC and Netflix have individually said publicly that we hope this is the beginning of collaboration, and that we each expected more good joint projects to come in the future,” he said. “What those will be, I don’t even know yet, but I’m optimistic that we’ll be doing more things together with Netflix in the months and years ahead.”
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