Business

NASA’s Artemis II mission revived some of the optimism about space travel that greeted the Apollo flights in the 1960s and 1970s. The crew of three men and one woman in the spacecraft they named Integrity travelled 406,771 km (252,756 miles) from Earth, farther than the previous record for manned space travel set by the Apollo 13 mission in 1970. As they looped around the far side of the Moon they viewed regions on the lunar surface no human had ever seen before, as well as a rare in-space solar eclipse.

A new frontier

SpaceX provided more details of its forthcoming IPO at a meeting with bankers, according to reports, and suggested that a large portion of the shares it offers will be made available to retail investors rather than institutions. Elon Musk’s rocket company could seek to raise as much as $75bn upon its stockmarket debut in June, which would make it by far the biggest listing ever.

Oil prices remained volatile after the announcement of a ceasefire in the Iran conflict; Brent crude fell from about $110 a barrel to a little over $90, but then rose again. Saudi Aramco, meanwhile, increased the premium it charges to customers in Asia for its main oil grade to $19.50 a barrel, which comes on top of the Oman-Dubai benchmark price. It is a record jump in the premium for Asia, but less than markets had expected.

ExxonMobil warned that its first-quarter profit will take a hit from the Iran war, but mostly because of the accounting procedure it had used to hedge prices. This was a “timing effect”, the company explained, and would result in a profit once the transactions covered by the hedging were finalised. The surge in oil and gas prices would have a positive impact on its earnings, it said. Exxon estimated that its global oil and gas production would be 6% lower in the quarter than in the previous three months, in large part because of Iran’s attacks on its gas assets in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

American employers created 178,000 jobs in March, the most since December 2024. The rebound came after 133,000 jobs were shed in February. Health care and construction accounted for most of the new workers, but federal-government employment continued to decline by a further 18,000 positions. The number of federal jobs has dropped by 355,000, or 11.8%, since reaching a peak in October 2024.

Pershing Square Capital, an investment-management company run by Bill Ackman, announced a complex plan to take control of Universal Music by combining it with an investment vehicle in America. If successful the deal would see Universal’s share listing move from Amsterdam to New York, but Mr Ackman will need to secure the agreement of two-thirds of the music company’s stockholders, as well as the blessing of Vincent Bolloré, who is its largest shareholder.

Commerzbank revealed that it had held talks with UniCredit about a takeover recently, but that the negotiations were fruitless. Commerzbank has been fending off hostile overtures from its Italian rival for 18 months, ever since UniCredit started amassing a stake in the German lender, which now stands at 29%. Last month UniCredit made its €35bn ($41bn) takeover offer formal.

Campbell Wilson announced that he would step down as chief executive of Air India, 18 months before his scheduled departure. Mr Wilson was tasked with turning the airline around when it was bought by Tata Group from the government in 2022, but it has struggled with losses. It is also subject to more regulatory scrutiny after one of its planes crashed in Ahmedabad last June, killing 260 people. IndiGo, Air India’s main rival, recently appointed Willie Walsh, a former CEO of British Airways, as its new boss.

Foxconn reported a 30% increase in revenue for the first quarter, year on year. The contract manufacturer, which assembles many of the world’s devices, experienced strong growth for cloud and networking products because of “robust” demand for AI racks for data centres. The launch of the new iPhone helped contribute to “significant” growth in its consumer-electronics division.

Someone has to pay taxes

OpenAI published an “Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age”. Subtitled “Ideas to Keep People First”, the document outlined the firm’s vision around three broad topics, of distributing AI-driven prosperity more evenly, creating safeguards to reduce systemic risks, and ensuring widespread access to AI so that economic opportunity isn’t concentrated among the tech class. It also recognises that as “AI reshapes work and production”, governments may come to rely less on labour income and payroll taxes, and more on capital gains and corporate taxation.