The first Trump administration issued interpretive letters approving banks to offer crypto services, including holding reserves backing stablecoins.

Circle’s USDC stablecoin is widely used in crypto-institution finance, says David Easthope, head of fintech at Crisil Coalition Greenwich. In contrast, Tether’s USDT is favored by businesses preferring to transact in US dollars rather than volatile local currencies. Both USDC and USDT are tied to the dollar.

Ripple’s XRP has enabled cross-border payments for several years, but most still travel through a network of correspondent banks. Mike Johnson, EY Americas Financial Services Solutions leader for Digital Assets and Tax, says complex cross-border wire payments that currently take one to three days could be settled nearly instantly using stablecoins.

“Transactions costs could decrease from traditional $10-$50 wire fees to less than $0.01,” he says.

Johnson also notes that stablecoins could enable instant intercompany transfers and more agile liquidity management, adding, “Stablecoins could also offer faster, lower-cost options for cross-border payroll, contractor payouts, and remittances.”

However, according to Easthope, it remains unclear whether the advantages of a jointly issued bank stablecoin would draw companies away from those they may already be using or even from conventional technology integrated into their existing platforms.

“Banks would test and learn within the parameters of the GENIUS Act,” he adds, “and clients will vote with their stablecoins.”

Other recent IPOs in the crypto space signal growing momentum in the market. Crypto-focused firms such as Galaxy Digital alongside eToro, which operates a crypto-trading platform, have also gone public.

In June, the US Senate passed the GENIUS Act, a landmark federal bill that establishes a regulatory framework for dollar-backed stablecoins.

According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, crypto‑currency IPO volume peaked in 2021 with 11 offerings valued at $596 million. So far this year, five crypto IPOs have raised just over $2.1 billion.

“There’s a growing appetite among investors. IPOs provide a more regulated and traditional avenue for investment compared to direct crypto investments,” says Francois Chadwick, KPMG’s Private Enterprise Global and National Lead Partner of the Emerging Giants practice.

There have also been major crypto IPOs from non‑US firms. Singapore’s crypto solutions provider Antalpha Platform Holding launched a US‑based offering in April.

“The interest in crypto IPOs is not limited to the US, across the globe similar developments are taking place,” Chadwick says. “Countries like Switzerland and the United Kingdom are home to crypto-friendly regulations and have seen companies pursuing public listings. Japan and South Korea, both of which have robust crypto markets and supportive regulatory environments, see interest in blockchain and crypto IPOs.”

Chadwick noted that while it may seem counterintuitive for crypto companies to raise fiat capital via IPOs, there are several compelling reasons: “IPOs provide significant capital that crypto companies can use to expand operations, develop new technologies, and enter new markets.”

Going public also involves extensive regulatory scrutiny, allowing crypto companies to demonstrate their adherence to financial regulations, which can be reassuring to investors.

The fact that crisis-stricken Yes Bank is attracting highquality investors to replace SBI and other banks underscores its recovery following the 2020 crisis, giving a boost to the banking sector. SMBC is bullish about the Indian banking sector and is, therefore, aiming to invest for the long term.

After the transaction, SMBC will become the largest shareholder of Yes Bank and will appoint two members to its board. SBI will retain a 10.8% stake in Yes Bank, while other banks will collectively hold only a 2.9% stake. CA Basque Investments, affiliated with the Carlyle Group, and Verventa Holdings, an affiliate of Advent International, will retain 6.8% and 9.2%, respectively. The public will have a 50.26% stake in Yes Bank.

The entry of SMBC establishes a new precedent for future foreign acquisitions in India’s banking sector and enhances corporate governance standards. Furthermore, the deal will facilitate the exchange of goods and services between India and Japan.

Indian foreign investment norms cap voting rights for investors in banks at 26% and investments by financial institutions in Indian banks at 15%, a stumbling block for the entry of foreign investors. A higher cap on voting rights and an increase in investment threshold could encourage foreign investors.

“This partnership ensures that U.S. Steel will retain its iconic name and headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and that it will continue to be mined, melted, and made in America for generations to come,” Nippon and US Steel declared in a statement.

For the acquirer, the deal is expensive and ambitious. It paid an enormous premium for a US company on a long-term downward trajectory; earlier this year, USX stock was trading at $30 a share. But Nippon Steel also promised to invest $11 billion in refurbishing and upgrading U.S. Steel facilities by 2028, including building a new mini-mill—moves it said will create 100,000 new jobs—and import some of its own innovative technologies to its new US operations.

Should all go as the two companies are hoping it does, the deal could be a “game changer” for both, says Tiago Vespoli, senior research analyst at Wood Mackenzie. It simultaneously makes Nippon Steel a more robust competitor globally, he argues, while giving U.S. Steel a solid chance to regain its competitive strength, including against Cleveland Cliffs, the big rival that earlier offered to buy it.

“Nippon Steel is a large, extremely experienced, very well-capitalized operator globally,” notes Kyle Lundin, principal consultant, Metals & Mining at Wood Mackenzie, and it brings to the table its expertise in more energy-efficient methods of steelmaking, including direct reduced iron (DRI) and electric arc furnace (EAF) processes. U.S. Steel offers its Big River Steel facility in Osceola, Arkansas, which produces high-quality electrical steel, suggesting that the two companies complement each other in ways that could make them both more sophisticated producers.

Nippon Steel has very publicly been on a hunt for growth for several years, given that its home market is not growing, and the purchase of U.S. Steel establishes a major presence for it in one of the three largest steel markets in the world by demand—with freedom from worry over Washington’s tariff policy. It’s also a “truly transcontinental deal,” Lundin observes, since U.S. Steel owns one of the largest integrated steel facilities in Central Europe, in Košice, Slovakia. As a global producer, the deal doesn’t make Nippon Steel a lot bigger—it remains the world’s fourth largest—but the company emerges as a more formidable global competitor, especially against the industry giant, ArcelorMittal.

That said, the future for the two companies—and even some details of the deal itself—remain to be seen. “Between the actual structure of the deal, and then just some strategic considerations, there’s quite a lot that’s been filled in around the edges, but still a lot of unknowns as well,” Lundin notes.

Full details about the US government’s much-discussed golden share, which is contained in a national security agreement that President Trump signed days earlier, are still being drip-fed. Reportedly the government will have veto power (“consent rights”) over such matters as closing or idling factories and the transfer of jobs or production outside the US—but no actual financial stake in the company. And the June 18 announcement still referred to the new ownership, puzzlingly, as a “partnership,” despite the fact that the Japanese acquirer now owns all of U.S. Steel’s shares.

The union that represents a large majority of U.S. Steel employees, the United Steelworkers, is taking a wait-and-see stance after having fiercely opposed the deal, but its collective bargaining agreement with the company expires in September 2026. That gives the new management—which reportedly will not include current CEO David Burritt—little more than a year to demonstrate that it can keep its promises of new investment and new jobs.

Perhaps the biggest question mark has to do with the significance of the golden share, as opposed to the details. Depending on the attitude of the administration in power in Washington, the unusual arrangement could be “non-consequential,” Lundin observes, “or it could entirely change the trajectory of how U.S. Steel operates at specific decision points that are crucial to its growth or survival in the future.” Nippon Steel has, in effect, made a multi-billion-dollar bet that “their internal decision-making will be in alignment with whatever the US government thinks at some undetermined point down the line.”

Will the new owner’s strategic plans change? If so, how accommodating will a future administration decide to be? The next chapter in U.S. Steel’s 124-year saga has now begun.

According to the Trump administration, the reason for the decision was to save federal money, “one penny at a time.” In 2024, the US Mint reported that the pro- duction of every single penny cost the government 3.7 cents, almost four times its face value. All in all, to make

3.2 billion pennies last year, the federal government lost

$85.3 million. It estimates it can save $56 million a year just in production costs.

The penny will remain legal tender and will continue to be widely accepted across the country as long as people continue using cash. Last year, YouGov reported that cash remains “the most commonly used form of payment,” with 67% of Americans favoring it. But Capital One consumer statistics projects that about half of the US population will use no cash at all in 2025.

The one-cent coin is made of copper-plated zinc but was originally all copper. It has been in circulation since the US Mint was created in 1792. Lately, however, and despite the 114 billion currently in circulation, the Treasury says that pennies are “severely underutilized” and easily lost, thrown away, or abandoned in jars in people’s homes.

Officials expect that businesses will start rounding up to the nearest nickel—worth five cents—and gradually elimi- nate cents in cash transactions. But the transition may not be as uncomplicated as that.

“People using cash in stores are still entitled to their change,” notes Jay Zagorsky, senior lecturer in markets, pub- lic policy, and law at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. “The problem with the decision to stop minting the penny is that it impacts only the supply of pennies, not the demand. This issue needs to be solved with an official national policy. The US Congress needs to pass a law in this regard.” The US is not the first country to abolish its smallest- denomination coins. The EU and Canada have been winding down their pennies for over a decade, while New Zealand and Australia stopped production more than 30 years ago, in 1990 and 1992, respectively.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has called the bill “unacceptable” and vowed to negotiate with the US. “We don’t want there to be a tax,” she said at a press conference. “We’re going to keep working so there is no tax on the remittances our compatriots send to their families in Mexico.”

Over 80% of remittances from the US to other countries are used for consumption, especially daily groceries, health, housing, and education; and any tax would adversely affect the receiv- ing country’s economy. A report by the Inter-American Dialogue warned that the tax could lead to a 7% decrease in remittances, impact trade, increase migration, and reduce control over foreign currency transfers.

Latin America and the Caribbean received $160.9 billion in remittances in 2024, with Mexico alone accounting for $64.7 billion. In the Central American Northern Triangle of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, heavily represented among undocumented persons entering the US, remittances make up 20% to 27% of national GDP. The tax would cost the three countries almost $2 billion a year, based on 2024 figures.

Honduran Deputy Foreign Minister Antonio Garcia described the tax as “a bucket of cold water” for Honduran migrants.

Caribbean governments have pointed out that the bill threatens to lower international reserves of dollars. This has been a long-term problem in the region and has prompted some credit card issuers to lower limits to $100 for new applications.

The bill has until September 30 to pass and could face legal opposition over provisions that affect vulnerable communities and international treaties. Proponents suggest that the tax gives the US a slice of the estimated $905 billion remittance industry. A remittance tax would not be unprecedented, however. Oklahoma imposed the first state tax on international transfers—1% on every $500 sent—in 2009.

The US saw record loan issuance in January and February, at $69.9 billion and $57.7 billion, respectively, according to PitchBook LCD. Following the Trump Administration’s tariff announcements, volume fell to $35 billion and took an even steeper drop to $19.7 billion in April.

Speculative debt issuance in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe typically pales compared to the US market, but in April it plummeted as well, according to PitchBook, to $300 million from $2.5 billion in the U.K., and to $6.5 billion from $16.1 billion among other European borrowers.

In May and through the first half of June, however, volume across these regions staged a recovery, as demand from lenders increased, providing corporate borrowers with the opportunity to issue debt at more attractive rates.

Marina Lukatsky, global head of research, credit, and US private equity at PitchBook, said that pricing on new-issue loans in the US dropped from SOFR plus 375 bps in April to SOFR plus 365 bps in May, and while the current level is approximately 10 bps wider than in the first quarter, it’s tighter than most of 2024.

“As a result, borrowers approaching the market will find attractive spreads, especially high-quality companies from sectors isolated from tariff turbulence,” Lukatsky said.

Further underscoring the shift in market dynamics toward borrowers, she said, repricing existing debt re-emerged after the recent slump.

“LCD tracked $13 billion of these deals so far in June, more than March through May combined,” Lutatsky said.

The current window to approach the market, however, may not be fully open for all borrowers. Sean Griffin, CEO and executive director at the LSTA, pointed out that most companies seeking to refinance or reprice debt in US dollars have done so already, and loan maturities don’t pick up significantly until 2028. Consequently, lenders will look twice at borrowers approaching the market today.

“If a company has a pending maturity and it hasn’t done anything about it until now, lenders may suspect there’s an issue with the credit, indicating pricing on the wider-end,” Griffin said.

Lutatsky said the loan markets in the U.K. and other European countries saw similar drops and rebounds to the US in terms of loan issuance. They have also seen a jump in loans trading above par—increasing more than 40% by the end of May—that indicates repricing activity is resuming. She noted repricing deals for Ion Marks, Valeo Foods, and Eir Telecom that launched June 16.

“In terms of M&A activity to support volume levels, there does seem to be slightly more optimism in Europe, and there is some loan issuance supporting deals to be syndicated in the next few months,” Lutatsky said, pointing to Advent’s bid for French insurance broker Kereis, and Ardian’s investment in Diot-Siaci, a reinsurance brokerage and consulting group. “Year-over-year loan volume supporting M&A activity, she said, has more than doubled in 2025—$13.3 billion through June 13, compared to $6.1 billion in 2024 over the same time period.”

After 14 years of war, 90% of the Syrian population live beneath the poverty line. Since the Assad regime fell in December, removing the sanctions to kickstart the economy has been a top priority of transitional President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of the victorious rebellion; but Syria has been under severe US restrictions since 1979 and lifting them won’t be simple.

The principal strictures are the 2019 Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act and the 2003 Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act (SALSA). Only Congress can fully repeal them, and that will take months, at best. The executive branch can issue temporary waivers, as the Treasury Department did in May, but the real impact on Syrian corporates and finan- cial institutions remains limited.

“Only the full cancellation of US Caesar and SALSA laws, and not just their temporary suspension, could open the door for long-term investment,” argues Samir Aita, president of the Circle of Arab Economists, a Paris-based think tank.

For Syrian banks, which remain largely cut off from global financial networks, rejoining the Swift system for transfer and reporting correspondent banking relationships is first on the agenda. “The Syrian market is very promising; it is almost virgin,” says Ali Awdeh, head of research at the Union of Arab Banks, “but honestly, no banks from the Arab region or elsewhere will dare to enter this market until there is a full lifting of US sanctions.” In Europe, the process is less complicated. Last month, the European Council lifted sanctions on several Syrian companies operating in key sectors like oil production, agriculture, finance, construction, telecoms, and media. Depending on how the situation in Syria develops, other companies could be delisted in the coming months. Restrictions will remain, however, for industries that pose security concerns, such as weapon sales.

“This place is in my blood,” Filosa says in a LinkedIn post celebrating his new role. Now 51 and an alumnus of Politecnico Di Milano, he launched his career at Fiat as a quality control supervisor in Spain. A mentee of legendary Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne, he built an international career in Brazil, Argentina, and the US.

When Stellantis, the Italian, French, and American behemoth, was created in 2021, Filosa became South American COO. Two years later, he took the helm of the Jeep brand in Detroit. More recently, he added two crowns, COO of the Americas and worldwide chief quality officer at the parent company, which has a portfolio of 16 well-known brands that includes Peugeot, Citroen, Chrysler, Dodge, Alfa Romeo, and Maserati.

His appointment underscores the growing influence of the Italian shareholders within the company. When Stellantis was created, it had two heads: John Elkann, who became board chair, scion of the founding Italian Agnelli family; and Tavares as CEO, representing the French Peugeot family’s interest. With Filosa’s promotion, with the blessing of the French directors.

“We unanimously welcome Antonio’s appointment,” vice chair Robert Peugeot said.

The new chief faces a formidable list of challenges: tariff uncertainties, market-share losses, an electric vehicle transition, and economic instability. Auto sales declined through 2023 and 2024 as the company kept prices high. For the first quarter of this year, Stellantis suffered a 14% decrease in revenue.

Dealers in the US, who openly criticized the previous CEO’s strategy, nevertheless are celebrating the arrival of a new boss who likes to quote his mentor, Marchionne: “Mediocrity is not worth the trip.” Filosa adds on LinkedIn, “Let’s win this one together.”

Simo, 39, is already a veteran of Silicon Valley. A graduate of the French business school HEC Paris, she began her US career as an intern at eBay. She then spent a decade at Meta before taking the helm of Instacart in 2021, where she navigated the end of the Covid disruption for the online grocery app and prepared its 2023 IPO.

She anticipated staying several more years at Instacart; but when Altman called, she says, “The ability to lead such an important part of our collective future was a hard opportunity to pass up.” Introduced to Altman by fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg, she joined the board of OpenAI in March of last year and helped Altman complete a recent $40 billion fundraising led by Japan’s SoftBank.

Leaving her position at Instacart on good terms, she participated in the selection of her successor, Chris Rogers, who will officially become CEO after having served as the company’s chief business officer.

Along the way, Simo has acquired a reputation as a turn- around expert, adept at leading large teams. That skill set will not be out of place at OpenAI, which has grown exponentially—it attracts 5.1 billion monthly hits—but is bleed- ing cash. Simo must figure out how to turn the company profitable in the coming years and then help it go public.