Argentina’s markets tumbled on Monday, with the peso currency at a historic low, after a heavy defeat for President Javier Milei’s party at the hands of the Peronist opposition at local elections stoked worries about the government’s ability to implement its economic reform agenda.
The peso was last down almost 5% against the dollar at 1,434 per greenback while the benchmark stock index fell 10.5%, and an index of Argentine stocks traded on U.S. exchanges lost more than 15%. Some of the country’s international bonds saw their biggest falls since they began trading in 2020 after a $65 billion restructuring deal.
The resounding victory for the Peronists signaled a tough battle for Milei in national midterm elections on October 26, where his party is aiming to secure enough seats to avoid overrides to presidential vetoes.
The government now faces the difficult choice whether to allow the peso to depreciate ahead of next month’s midterms or spend its foreign exchange reserves to intervene in the FX market, according to Pramol Dhawan, head of EM portfolio management at Pimco.
“Opting for intervention would likely prove counterproductive, as it risks derailing the IMF [International Monetary Fund] program and diminishing the countrys prospects for future market access to refinance external debt,” Dhawan said via email. “The more resources the government allocates to defending the currency, the fewer will be available to meet obligations to bondholdersthereby increasing the risk of default.”
He said early indications that the government may double down on the current strategy “would be a strategic misstep.”
The 13-point gap in the Buenos Aires Province (PBA) election in favor of the opposition Peronists was much wider than polls anticipated and what the market had priced in. The government setback at the polls adds to recent headwinds for a market that had until recently outperformed its Latin American peers.
“We had our reservations about the market being too complacent regarding the Buenos Aires election results. The foreign exchange market will undoubtedly be under the spotlight, as any instability there can have a ripple effect on Argentine assets,” said Shamaila Khan, head of fixed income for emerging markets and Asia Pacific at UBS, in response to emailed questions.
“However, it’s important to note that simply using reserves to prop up the currency isn’t likely to provide much reassurance to the market,” she added. “The midterm elections, in my opinion, carry more weight and their outcome will significantly influence how Argentine assets perform in the coming months.”
The bond market sell-off saw the country’s 2035 issue fall 6.25 cents, on track for its largest daily drop since its post-restructuring issuance in 2020.
Based on official counts, the Peronists won 47.3% of the vote across the province, while the candidate of Milei’s party took 33.7%, with 99.98% of the votes counted.
Argentinaone of the big reform stories across emerging markets since Milei became president in December 2023has seen its markets come under heavy pressure over the last month following a corruption scandal involving Milei’s sister and political gatekeeper Karina Milei.
The government defeat also comes after the International Monetary Fund approved a $20 billion program in April, of which some $15 billion has already been disbursed. The IMF has eagerly backed the reform program of Milei’s government to the point that its director, Kristalina Georgieva, had to clarify remarks earlier this year in which she invited Argentines to stay the course with the reforms.
The IMF did not respond to questions on whether this vote result would change its relationship with the Milei administration or alter the program.
Market sell-off
Argentina’s main equity index had dropped around 20% since the government corruption scandal broke, its international government bonds have sold off, and pressure on the recently unpegged peso forced authorities to start intervening in the FX market.
“The result was much worse than the market expectedMilei took quite a big beating, so now he has to come up with something,” said Viktor Szabo, portfolio manager at Aberdeen Investments.
Morgan Stanley had warned in the run-up to the vote that the international bonds could fall up to 10 points if a Milei drubbing dented his agenda for radical reform. On Monday, the outcome saw the bank pull its “like” stance on the bonds.
Barclays analyst Ivan Stambulsky pointed to comments from Economy Minister Luis Caputo on Sunday that the country’s FX regime wont change.
“Were likely to see strong pressure on the FX and declining reserves as the Ministry of Economy intervenes,” Stambulsky said. “If FX sales persist, markets will likely start wondering what will happen if the economic team is forced to let the currency depreciate before the October midterms.”
Some analysts, however, predicted other parts of the country were unlikely to vote as strongly against Milei as in the Buenos Aires Province, given it is a traditional Peronist stronghold.
They also expected the Milei government to stick to its program of fiscal discipline despite economic woes.
“The Province of Buenos Aires midterm election delivered a very negative result for the Milei administration, casting doubt on its ability to deliver a positive outcome in Octobers national vote and risking the reform agenda in the second half of the term,” said JPMorgan in a Sunday client note.
“The policy mix adopted in the coming days and weeks to address elevated political risk will be pivotal in shaping medium-term inflation expectationsand, ultimately, the success of the stabilization program.”
By Karin Strohecker and Rodrigo Campos; additional reporting by Marc Jones and Shashwat Chauhan, Reuters
Pope Leo XIV canonized the Catholic Churchs first millennial saint over the weekend, a teen computer whiz who died of leukemia in 2006 at age 15 and had used technology to spread his faith, earning him the nickname Gods influencer, according to The Associated Press.
Some 80,000 worshippers filled St. Peters Square in Rome on Sunday to see the canonization of Carlo Acutis, including many millennials and young children with their parents, The Washington Post reported. Pope Leo also canonized Pier Giorgio Frassati, a young Italian who died in 1925 at age 24.
Acutis’s ascent to sainthood is being called one of the fastest in modern history, and comes at a time when many younger generations, from Gen Z to millennials, struggle to connect with the church. For some, Acutis, who was tech-savvy and reportedly loved video games, may be seen as more relatable and a good role model for the next generation of Catholics.
The former pope, Francis, also championed Acutis. Carlo was well aware that the whole apparatus of communications, advertising, and social networking can be used to lull us, to make us addicted to consumerism and buying the latest thing on the market, obsessed with our free time, caught up in negativity, Francis said in 2019, as reported by The Washington Post. Yet he knew how to use the new communications technology to transmit the Gospel, to communicate values and beauty.
The teen, who was born in London and raised in Milan by a well-known Italian Catholic family, designed a website documenting reported Eucharistic miracles around the world, which has become a teaching tool for parishes worldwide and is seen as a positive way to use technology in support of religion.
For decades, scientists believed Prochlorococcus, the smallest and most abundant phytoplankton on Earth, would thrive in a warmer world. But new research suggests the microscopic bacterium, which forms the foundation of the marine food web and helps regulate the planets climate, will decline sharply as seas heat up.
A study published Monday in the journal Nature Microbiology found Prochlorococcus populations could shrink by as much as half in tropical oceans over the next 75 years if surface waters exceed about 82 degrees Fahrenheit (27.8 Celsius). Many tropical and subtropical sea surface temperatures are already trending above average and are projected to regularly surpass 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 Celsius) over that same period.
These are keystone species very important ones, said François Ribalet, a research associate professor at the University of Washingtons School of Oceanography and the studys lead author. And when a keystone species decreases in abundance, it always has consequences on ecology and biodiversity. The food web is going to change.
These tiny organisms hold a vital role in ocean life
Prochlorococcus inhabit up to 75% of Earths sunlit surface waters and produce about one-fifth of the planets oxygen through photosynthesis. More crucially, Ribalet said, they convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into food at the base of the marine ecosystem.
In the tropical ocean, nearly half of the food is produced by Prochlorococcus, he said. Hundreds of species rely on these guys.
Though other forms of phytoplankton may move in and help compensate for the loss of oxygen and food, Ribalet cautioned they are not perfect substitutes. Evolution has made this very specific interaction, he said. Obviously, this is going to have an impact on this very unique system that has been established.
The findings challenge decades of assumptions that Prochlorococcus would thrive as waters warmed. Those predictions, however, were based on limited data from lab cultures. For this study, Ribalet and his team tested water samples while traversing the Pacific over the course of a decade.
Over 100 research cruises the equivalent of six trips around the globe they counted some 800 billion individual cells taken from samples at every kilometer. In his lab at the University of Washington, Ribalet demonstrated the SeaFlow, a box filled with tubes, wires and a piercing blue laser. The custom-built device continuously pulls in seawater, which allowed the team to count the microbes in real time. We have counted more Prochlorococcus than there are stars in the Milky Way, Ribalet said.
Experts warn of big consequences
Paul Berube, a research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies Prochlorococcus but was not involved in the work, said the breadth of data is groundbreaking. And he said the results fit with what is known about the microbes streamlined genome, which makes it less adaptable to rapid environmental changes.
Theyre at the very base of the food web, and they feed everything else the fish eat the things that eat the phytoplankton and we eat the fish, he said. When changes are being made to the planet that influence these particular organisms that are essentially feeding us, thats going to have big consequences.
To test whether Prochlorococcus might evolve to withstand hotter conditions, Ribalets team modeled a hypothetical heat-tolerant strain but found that even those would not be enough to fully resist the warmest temperature if greenhouse emissions keep rising, Ribalet said.
He stressed that the studys projections are conservative and dont account for the impacts of plastic pollution or other ecological stressors. We actually tried to put forth the best-case scenario, Ribalet said. In reality, things may be worse.
Steven Biller, an associate professor at Wellesley College, said the projected declines are scary but plausible. He noted Prochlorococcus form part of the invisible forests of the ocean tiny organisms most people never think about, but are essential to human survival.
Half of all photosynthesis is happening in the oceans and Prochlorococcus is a really important part of that, Biller said. The magnitude of the potential impact is kind of striking.
Biller, Berube and Ribalet said that while other microbes may compensate somewhat, the broader risks to biodiversity and fisheries are real.
We know what drives global warming. There is no debate among the scientific community, Ribalet said. We need to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
He hopes the findings bring more attention to tropical oceans, which could serve as natural laboratories for warming adaptations and as early warning signals for ecological collapse.
For the first time, I want to be wrong. I would love to be wrong, he said. But these are data-driven results.
Annika Hammerschlag, Associated Press
The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of APs environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a civil jury’s finding that President Donald Trump must pay $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll for his repeated social media attacks against the longtime advice columnist after she accused him of sexual assault.
A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Trump’s appeal of the defamation award, finding that the jury’s damages awards are fair and reasonable.
Trump had argued the damages were unreasonably excessive and pushed for a new trial in light of the Supreme Courts expansion of presidential immunity.
But the appeals court roundly rejected those arguments, writing that Trumps extraordinary and unprecedented broadsides against Carroll justified the steep award.
Given the unique and egregious facts of this case, we conclude that the punitive damages award did not exceed the bounds of reasonableness, the three-judge panel concluded.
Attorneys for Trump didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, welcomed the decision.
Earlier today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed, in a comprehensive 70-page ruling, that E. Jean Carroll was telling the truth, and that President Donald Trump was not,” Kaplan wrote in a statement, noting that her client had received threats during the legal process and that they look forward to an end to the appellate process.
The ruling centered on the second and far more expensive of two defamation awards issued to Carroll over Trumps yearslong attacks on her character, which began after she accused Trump in her 2019 memoir of sexually assaulting her decades-earlier at a Manhattan department store.
In her memoir and again at a 2023 trial, Carroll described how a chance encounter with Trump at Bergdorf Goodmans Fifth Avenue in 1996 started with the two flirting as they shopped, then ended with a violent struggle inside a dressing room.
Carroll said Trump slammed her against a dressing room wall, pulled down her tights and forced himself on her.
At the initial trial, a jury found Trump liable for sexual assault, but concluded he hadnt committed rape as defined under New York law.
Trump repeatedly denied that the encounter took place and accused Carroll of making it up to help sell her book. He also said that Carroll was not my type.
The 2023 jury awarded Carroll $5 million to compensate her for both the alleged attack and statements Trump made denying that it had happened.
After that first verdict, the court held a second trial with a new jury for the purpose of deciding damages for additional statements Trump made attacking Carrolls character and truthfulness.
Trump skipped the first trial but attended the second, which took place as he was running for president in 2024. Speaking to reporters throughout the second trial, Trump portrayed the lawsuit as part of a broader effort to smear him and prevent him from regaining the White House.
His lawyers complained that the judge, in setting rules for the damages trial, had barred Trump and his defense team from claiming in front of the jury that he was innocent of the attack. The judge ruled that that issue had been settled by the first jury and didnt need to be revisited.
In its ruling Monday, the appeals court agreed, concluding that the trial judge did not err in any of the challenged rulings and that the jurys duly rendered damages awards were reasonable in light of the extraordinary and egregious facts of this case.
Jake Offenhartz, Associated Press
The Department of Government Efficiency made its reputation on staff cuts. Under Elon Musk, DOGE slashed the federal payroll in the name of cost-cutting. Now, the divisions new leader is urging the government to start hiring again.
Amy Gleason, acting head of DOGE, spoke last week at the Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association International Health IT Summit about the need to hire and empower great talent in government.
“There’s not enough tech talent here,” she said at the time. “We need more of it.”
That’s a pretty major reversal for DOGE. While the government hasnt provided an exact tally of layoffs earlier this year, The New York Times estimates 135,000 employees were fired or resigned, with another 150,000 at risk. Gleason isnt calling for all of them to return, but she did argue for hiring more technical staff to modernize outdated government systems within five years.
That plan faces immediate obstacles. The government remains under a hiring freeze, extended twice already, through at least October 15. (And it has already been extended twice, once in April and once again in July.)
It’s also something of an open question as to which of those public-facing systems will continue. The Trump administration canceled the IRS Direct File programending free online tax filing for eligible taxpayers after just one seasonand ordered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to halt nearly all operations, effectively shuttering the agency. (The CFPB relies on user-submitted complaints to detect wrongdoing.)
Gleason was named acting administrator of DOGE in February, and has kept a low profile during her tenure, never appearing alongside Trump on any public comments about DOGEs work since being named to the role. (The White House did not respond to Fast Company‘s request for comment.)
Since its creation early in Trumps presidency, DOGE has been mired in controversy. It claims to have saved $205 billion, but those figures are widely disputed. An independent tracker, The Musk Watch DOGE Tracker, estimates savings closer to $16.3 billion.
Musk initially promised DOGE would save $2 trillion. By March, he lowered the target to $1 trillion. Then at an April cabinet meeting, he scaled it back again, telling Trump and other officials that DOGE now expected to cut $150 billion during the 2026 fiscal yearwhich runs from October 2025 through September 2026, months after the agency is scheduled to be disbanded.
An expansion of government hiring would add even more volatility to those numbers, should government officials take Gleason’s suggestion. The hiring would be slow, even if the freeze ends, however. Under new rules set by Trump, government agencies will only be able to hire one person for every four workers who leave.
Endless notifications, a constant barrage of information, and never-ending to-do lists can make it feel like you’re digitally drowning. Why not use AI to claw some of your precious time back?
While you may have used ChatGPT for the basics like writing an email or proofreading documents, theres plenty of power to be harnessed from less obvious applications.
Here are five ways you can put AI to work for you.
The meeting note parser
You’ve just finished an hour-long meeting, and your notes look like a verbal train wreck: a mix of shorthand, half-finished sentences, and random keywords. There are action items in there somewhere, but finding them feels like a chore.
Paste your notes into ChatGPT with a prompt such as: “Here are my meeting notes. Please create a prioritized task list with deadlines and the person responsible for each item.”
ChatGPT can turn that mess into a clean, actionable list in seconds, giving you back precious time you’d have spent deciphering your own writing.
The simple concept explainer
You’ve come across a new industry term or a technical concept that’s critical to your job, but the online explanations are full of jargon you don’t understand. Or maybe you’re trying to explain something complex to a colleague who isn’t as familiar with the subject.
Ask ChatGPT to “explain [the concept] in plain English for someone with no background in [the field].”
AI is great at simplifying dense information. You can even ask it to “use a relatable analogy” to make the concept stick. It’s like having a personal tutor who’s always on call.
The interview prep guru
You have an important call with a potential client or a new partner, and you want to go in prepared. But digging through their company’s website, recent press releases, and social media feeds for relevant background info is a serious time sink.
Prompt ChatGPT with something like: “Help me prepare for a call with [Customer Name]. Summarize the top 3 news stories from the past six months and highlight anything relevant to their business goals.”
This gives you a quick, digestible cheat sheet, so you can sound informed and confident without spending hours on a deep dive.
The content repurposer
You’ve created a great piece of content: a long-form blog post, a podcast episode, or a detailed report. Now you need to turn it into a dozen different things for social media. The thought of writing 12 unique captions and a handful of tweets is exhausting.
Upload your content and ask ChatGPT to “repurpose this information into three short social media captions and five bullet points for a Twitter thread.”
It can instantly transform your work into multiple formats, saving you the mental load of starting over each time you switch platforms.
The brainstorming partner
Theres nothing quite like smashing head-first into a creative wall. You’ve got to come up with ideas for a new marketing campaign, a blog post title, or a product name, but the well has run dry. The blank page is staring at you, mocking your lack of creativity.
Use a prompt to get the ball rolling, such as: “I’m launching a new service for [target audience]. Give me 10 creative marketing campaign ideas that are both approachable and professional.”
ChatGPT can act as a tireless brainstorming partner, providing you with a starting point, new angles, and ideas you might never have considered on your own. It won’t do all the work, but it’ll give you a solid foundation to build upon.
China’s exports grew last month but at a slower pace than in recent months, the country’s customs agency said Monday.
Exports reached $321.8 billion in August, a 4.4% increase compared to the same month last year. That was down from a 7.2% jump in July. Meanwhile, imports totaled $219.5 billion, a 1.8% rise.
China’s large trade surplus has become a contentious issue with major trading partners including the U.S. and the European Union. Low-priced Chinese imports are a boon for consumers but can lead to job cuts in manufacturing.
In the first eight months of the year, China’s exported $785.3 billion more in goods than it imported from other countries, the monthly customs data showed.
President Donald Trump has imposed 30% in additional tariffs on imports from China since taking office early this year. He backed down from even higher tariffs after China retaliated with import taxes of its own. The two countries are in talks to try to reach a trade agreement.
The tariffs from both sides and the possibility they could be raised again are having an impact on two-way trade. Chinese exports to the U.S. plunged 33% in August to $47.3 billion, while its imports from the U.S. dropped 16% to $13.4 billion.
Exports to the EU rose 10.4% to $46.8 billion, while imports from the 27-member bloc edged down slightly to $22.8 billion.
Overall, China’s exports grew at the slowest pace since the January-February period, when they rose just 2.3%. The first two months of the year are reported together to smooth out distortions from the long Lunar New Year break.
China’s exports of rare earths rose on a monthly basis to $55 million in August, up from $41 million in July, but down 25.6% compared to the same month last year.
Rare earth magnets, which can withstand high heat, are vital to many products including washing machines, cars and fighter jets.
China dominates the global market for processing rare earths, and a clampdown on their export in April temporarily halted production at some factories in Europe and the U.S. and raised fears of shutdowns at others.
The issue became a focal point of a round of U.S.-China trade talks in London in June. China agreed to approve more export permits for rare earths in return for the U.S. lifting curbs on the sale of chip design software and jet engines to China.
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This story has been corrected to say China’s January-August trade surplus of $785.3 billion was in goods only, not in goods and services.
Ken Moritsugu, Associated Press
Armen Kirakosian remembers the frustrations of his first job as a call center agent nearly 10 years ago: the aggravated customers, the constant searching through menus for information and the notes he had to physically write for each call he handled.Thanks to artificial intelligence, the 29-year-old from Athens, Greece, is no longer writing notes or clicking on countless menus. He often has full customer profiles in front of him when a person calls in and may already know what problem the customer has before even saying “hello.” He can spend more time actually serving the customer.“A.I. has taken (the) robot out of us,” Kirakosian said.Roughly 3 million Americans work in call center jobs, and millions more work in call centers around the world, answering billions of inquiries a year about everything from broken iPhones to orders for shoes. Kirakosian works for TTEC, a company that provides third party customer service lines in 22 countries to companies in industries such as autos and banking that need extra capacity or have outsourced their call center operations.Answering these calls can be thankless work. Roughly half of all customer service agents leave the job after a year, according to McKinsey, with stress and monotonous work being among the reasons employees quit.Much of what these agents deal with is referred to in the industry as “break/fix,” which means something is broken or wrong or confusing and the customer expects the person on the phone to fix the problem. Now, it’s a question of who will be tasked with the fix: a human, a computer, or a human augmented by a computer.Already, AI agents have taken over more routine call center tasks. Some jobs have been lost and there have been dire forecasts about the future job market for these individuals, ranging from modest single-percentage point losses, to as many as half of all call center jobs going away in the next decade. The drop likely won’t match the more dire predictions, however, because it’s become evident that the industry will still need humans, perhaps with even higher levels of learning and training, as some customer service issues become increasingly harder to solve.Some finance companies have already experimented with going in heavily with AI for their customer service issues.Klarna, the Swedish buy now, pay later company, replaced 700 of their roughly 3,000 customer service agents with chatbots and AI in 2024. The results were mixed. While the company did save money, Klarna found there was still a need for higher skilled human agents in certain circumstances, such as complicated issues related to identity theft. Earlier this year, Klarna hired seven internal freelancers to handle these issues.Earlier this year, Klarna hired a handful of customer service employees back to the firm, acknowledging there were certain issues that AI couldn’t handle as well as a real person, like identity theft.“Our vision of an AI-first contact center, where AI agents handle the majority of conversations and fewer, better trained and better paid human agents support only the most complex tasks, is quickly becoming a reality,” said Gadi Shamia of Replicant, an AI-software company that trains chatbots to sound more human, in an interview with consultants at McKinsey.The call center customer’s experience, while improved, is still far from perfect.The initial customer service call has long been handled through interactive voice response systems, known in the industry as IVR. Customers interact with IVR when they’re told “press one for sales, press two for support, press five for billing.” These crude systems got an update in the 2010s, when customers could prompt the system by saying “sales” or “support” or simple phrases like “I’d like to pay a bill” instead of navigating through a labyrinthian set of menu options.But customers have little patience for these menus, leading them to “zero out,” which is call center slang for when a customer hits the zero button on their their keypad in hopes of reaching a human. It’s also not uncommon that after a customer “zeros out” they will be put on hold and transferred because they did not end up in the right place for their request.Aware of Americans’ collective impatience with IVR, Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Republican Jim Justice of West Virginia have introduced the “Keep Call Centers in America Act,” which would require clear ways to reach a human agent, and provide incentives to companies that keep call center jobs in the U.S.Companies are trying to roll out telephone systems that broadly understand customer service requests and predict where to send a customer without navigating a menu. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is coming out with its “ChatGPT Agent” service for users that’s able to understand phrases like “I need to find a hotel for a wedding next year, please give me options for clothing and gifts.”Bank of America says it has had increasing success in integrating such features into “Erica,” its chatbot that debuted in 2018. When Erica cannot handle a request, the agent transfers the customer directly to the right department. Erica is now also predictive and analytical, and knows for instance that a customer may repeatedly have a low balance and may need better help budgeting or may have multiple subscriptions to the same service.Bank of America said this month that Erica has been used 3 billion times since its creation and is increasingly taking on a higher case load of customer service requests. The chatbot’s moniker comes from the last five letters of the company’s name.James Bednar, vice president of product and innovation at TTEC, has spent much of his career trying to make customer service calls less painful for the caller as well as the company. He said these tools could eventually kill off IVR for good, ending the need for anyone to “zero out.”“We’re getting to the point where AI will get you to the right person for your problem without you having to route through those menus,” Bednar said.
Ken Sweet, AP Business Writer
StubHub Holdings, the secondary ticketing marketplace, just threw its hat back in the ring to list on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) after postponing its initial public offering (IPO) plans earlier this year. According to a September 8 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the company is now eyeing a valuation of around $9 billion.
In the filing, StubHub reported that it plans to offer just over 34 million shares of Class A stock for an estimated price of between $22 and $25 per share. If approved, the company will join the NYSE under the ticker symbol STUB.
No listing date was shared in the filing, but according to a source familiar with the company, it could come as early as next week.
StubHub has been eyeing a solid IPO date for months. The company paused its initial IPO plans in early July amid uncertainties around tariffs and a cooling IPO market, according to media reports.
However, in the wake of exciting recent listings from companies such as Figma, Bullish, and others, investor interest in IPOs is back upand StubHub is giving it another go.
Why investors want StubHub to go public
StubHub was created in 2000 after founder and CEO Eric Baker faced a very particular problem: He was unable to purchase tickets to a sold-out showing of The Lion King on Broadway.
The box office was a dead end, and he had no idea who to call for help, the SEC filing recalls in a section on the companys history. Should he canvas the streets around Times Square and hope to find someone with a tickets for sale sign? With no clear answers, he found himself at the mercy of an opaque market.
To solve this problem, Baker founded StubHub at a time when secondary ticketing existed only as a fragmented offline market. Today, StubHub believes that it operates the largest global secondary ticketing market for live events, selling over 40 million tickets to buyers in more than 200 countries in 2024.
After merging with the rival ticketing platform viagogo (also founded by Baker) in 2022, StubHub has been actively working with JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs to solidify its IPO listing plans.
In its SEC filing, StubHub said its revenue jumped from $1.37 billion to $1.77 billion between 2023 and 2024.
IPOs are back in the spotlight after a rough patch
StubHub was initially planning to list on the NYSE sometime in the early summer, but it reportedly put its IPO on hold in the midst of economic uncertainty brought on by President Trumps tariff regime.
At the time, a source familiar with the company cited stagnant market conditions and a lack of major consumer IPOs as two of the main reasons for the delay, according to CNBC. The fintech startup Klarna similarly paused its long-awaited IPO earlier this year.
Now, though, as the market has held relatively steady despite new tariffs, both Klarna and StubHub are reentering the IPO game.
Successful recent IPOs from companies including the design software startup Figma, the crypto exchange Bullish, and the stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group have put public listings back into the spotlight and stoked investors interest.
The 82nd Venice Film Festival may be over, but the conversations on the films that premiered, the things people said, the clothes they wore, and how it affects the Oscar race are still going.Here’s a rundown of the big moments and takeaways from this year’s edition.
What won big at the Venice Film Festival?
Jim Jarmusch’s quiet film “Father Mother Sister Brother” took the top prize, the Golden Lion. It was a surprise to many who expected that honor to go to “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” which ended up with the runner up award, or “No Other Choice.”Aside from Benny Safdie’s best director win for “The Smashing Machine,” Hollywood players were largely shut out of the awards in favor of a diverse, international selection. Chinese actor Xin Zhilei won best actress for Cai Shangjun’s “The Sun Rises on Us All,” Italian icon Toni Servillo won best actor for “La Grazia” and Swiss actor Luna Wedler took the up-and-comer prize, the Marcello Mastroianni Award, for “Silent Friend.”
Who might be an Oscars player?
The awards didn’t give many hints, but Venice has been known to launch several best actor campaigns including Joaquin Phoenix in “Joker,”Brendan Fraser in “The Whale” and Adrien Brody in “The Brutalist.” This year the most obvious heavyweight to follow is Dwayne Johnson for his turn as MMA fighter Mark Kerr in “The Smashing Machine.”Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons were also strange and fierce as kidnapped and kidnapper in Yorgos Lanthimos’s provocative “Bugonia.” Oscar Isaac portrayed Victor Frankenstein as a romantic madman and Jacob Elordi was nave and raw as the monster. Amanda Seyfried put a human, feminist, face to the religious sect the shakers in “The Testament of Ann Lee,” and Julia Roberts flexed her acting muscles as a Yale philosophy professor in the midst of a misconduct accusation against a colleague in “After the Hunt.”Filmmakers like Kathryn Bigelow and previous Golden Lion winners Guillermo del Toro and Yorgos Lanthimos will also likely be in the conversation for months to come.
Why was Seth Rogen everywhere?
There’s always some unexpected Hollywood person at the Venice Film Festival who doesn’t seem to be associated with any one film. Sometimes they’ve come in for amfAR, sometimes they’ve been invited by one of the festival’s sponsors. But text chains started blowing up when Seth Rogen started popping up everywhere: Red carpets, press conferences, parties. Don’t be surprised if there’s a Venice episode of “The Studio” in the works: This trip was research, and maybe even a little more.
Julia Roberts and Amanda Seyfried’s sisterhood of the traveling Versace?
In a cute, unexpected (possibly highly staged) moment during the festival, Amanda Seyfried commented on Julia Roberts’ Instagram asking to “please let me wear the same outfit.” Three days later, Seyfried was also rocking the Versace blazer, jeans, button up and belt, just with different shoes. It helps that they share a stylist, Elizabeth Stewart.
There was a record standing ovation
First, let’s just make clear that entertainment trade publications only started tracking Venice standing ovations recently. This year, audiences at the premiere of “The Voice of Hind Rajab” applauded for 22-minutes, surpassing the 18-minute record set last year by “The Room Next Door,” which went on to win the Golden Lion. Even with a limited data set, that’s a long time to clap after a movie.Other standing ovation times from the 82nd festival: “After the Hunt” ((tilde)5 minutes), “Bugonia” ((tilde)6 minutes), “No Other Choice” ((tilde)7 minutes), “Jay Kelly” ((tilde)9 minutes), “The Wizard of the Kremlin” ((tilde)10 minutes), “A House of Dynamite” ((tilde)11 minutes), “Frankenstein” ((tilde)14 minutes), “The Testament of Ann Lee” ((tilde)15 minutes), “The Smashing Machine” ((tilde)15 minutes).
Politics and war on the big screen
The festival might not take political stances, but politics, and filmmakers grappling with the state of the world, from the Israel-Hamas conflict to nuclear weapons, were clearly top of mind. Kathryn Bigelow set off a warning shot about nuclear weapons and the apparatus of decision making with her urgent, and distressingly realistic, thriller “A House of Dynamite.” Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania made an essential document of the human toll in Gaza with “The Voice of Hind Rajab.” And Olivier Assayas charted the rise of Vladimir Putin in “The Wizard of the Kremlin.”Gaza also dominated conversations off screen too, from a protest that drew an estimated 10,000 people, to awards speeches.
Best quotes from the 2025 Venice Film Festival
“The real monsters are the men in suits.” Jacob Elordi, who plays Frankenstein’s monster in a big budget Netflix film.“I’ve been very fortunate to have the career that I’ve had and make the films that I have, but there was just this voice inside of me, this little voice, like what if I can do more.” Dwayne Johnson on his transformative, serious turn as MMA fighter Mark Kerr in “The Smashing Machine.”“I consider pretty much all corporate money is dirty money.” Filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, when asked about Mubi’s relationship with Sequoia Capital.“How is annihilating the world a good defensive measure? I mean, what are you defending?” Filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow on the nuclear stockpiles.“Humanity is facing a reckoning very soon. People need to choose the right path, otherwise, I don’t know how much time we have.” Filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos on the relevance of “Bugonia.”“Everyone comes out with all these different feelings and emotions and points of views. And you realize what you believe in strongly and what your convictions are because we stir it all up for you. So, you’re welcome.” Julia Roberts on the debates stirred by “After the Hunt.”“It’s time at the end of your life to put the puzzle pieces together and make them fit.” Kim Novak, 92, on receiving the festival’s lifetime achievement award.
For more coverage of the Venice Film Festival, visit https://apnews.com/hub/venice-film-festival.
Lindsey Bahr, AP Film Writer
