A group of international investors holding Venezuelan bonds chose Houlihan Lokey as its financial adviser, according to people familiar with the matter, a key step as they gear up for a massive debt restructuring. The Venezuela Creditor Committee tapped the US investment bank after a weeks-long selection process, the people said, adding that the parties have yet to sign a contract. It was first re...
A group of international investors holding Venezuelan bonds chose Houlihan Lokey as its financial adviser, according to people familiar with the matter, a key step as they gear up for a massive debt restructuring. The Venezuela Creditor Committee tapped the US investment bank after a weeks-long selection process, the people said, adding that the parties have yet to sign a contract. It was first reported by Reuters. Representatives for Houlihan Lokey and the committee didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment. The decision signals that creditors are preparing to launch negotiations with Venezuelan officials over about $60 billion worth of government and state oil company bonds that have been in default since late 2017. That figure climbs to an estimated $100 billion after including past-due interest. Investors have seen an opening in the aftermath of the US capture of strongman Nicolas Maduro. Acting President Delcy Rodriguez , who has been working closely with the Trump administration, has said she is open to foreign capital, particularly in the oil sector. The bondholder committee, a group that includes Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, Morgan Stanley Investment Management and Greylock Capital Management, said last month that it stands ready to open debt-restructuring talks, once it receives authorization. US sanctions, though, prohibit investors from engaging with Venezuelan officials, meaning the committee will need a license before the talks can begin. Other hurdles include potential legal challenges stemming from Washington’s lack of recognition of Rodriguez’s authority. Still, Maduro’s capture and the hint of a diplomatic rapprochement with the US have lifted the market for Venezuelan debt. Sovereign notes are trading close their highest levels since 2017, with securities due in 2027 exchanging hands at around 44 cents on the dollar. Current prices are “fair,” according to UBS Global Wealth Management, and in line with their estimated recovery...
Aswat began riding aged five at St James City Farm - an inner-city stables in Gloucester - before linking up with trainers Kim Bailey and Mat Nicholls. She was hooked by the sport after racing a pony at Cheltenham. Her win earlier this month came in just her fourth professional ride after taking out her jockey's license in autumn 2025. "All the racing community have been very supportive and nothin...
Aswat began riding aged five at St James City Farm - an inner-city stables in Gloucester - before linking up with trainers Kim Bailey and Mat Nicholls. She was hooked by the sport after racing a pony at Cheltenham. Her win earlier this month came in just her fourth professional ride after taking out her jockey's license in autumn 2025. "All the racing community have been very supportive and nothing has held me back," Aswat said. "Every time I would go to Cheltenham I wouldn't see people the same colour as me, so in that sense it was daunting." Bailey could see Aswat's "natural talent" straight away. "I take photographs of horses schooling the whole time for my owners and I've never had a photograph of her being out of place - that's quite a unique thing," Bailey told BBC Sport. "It's very, very hard for [conditional jockeys] to get going - 90% of the jockeys now are either sons of trainers or sons of owners who put a lot of money into the business. "I ring up an owner and say 'I've got this really good young black girl who wants to ride. Will you let them ride your horse?' Well, I mean, frankly, you're paying the same for her as you would do for [reigning champion jockey] Sean Bowen or anybody else. It's quite a difficult one. "She's got to be strong enough to take all that and I'm pretty confident she will be able to cope with the additional attention, including potential social media abuse. "She will always be a role model."
Global AI spending is surging as Alphabet raises billions in a massive bond deal. And new retail data shows US consumers are starting to pull back. Meanwhile, investors are navigating a flood of earnings, from Coca-Cola’s challenges to Ferrari’s red-hot demand. Plus, how AI could dramatically speed up drug trials — and what extreme winter weather means for the durability of America’s power grid. W...
Global AI spending is surging as Alphabet raises billions in a massive bond deal. And new retail data shows US consumers are starting to pull back. Meanwhile, investors are navigating a flood of earnings, from Coca-Cola’s challenges to Ferrari’s red-hot demand. Plus, how AI could dramatically speed up drug trials — and what extreme winter weather means for the durability of America’s power grid. We talk to Harry Sideris, the CEO of Duke Energy. (Source: Bloomberg)
Chinese scientists have helped create a new safety system for automated driving systems that can sometimes react to hazards more quickly than the human brain. The slower reaction time of machines compared with the human brain has been a long-standing safety concern. For example, an automated vehicle travelling at 80km/h (50mph) will take half a second to respond to a hazard in front of it, compare...
Chinese scientists have helped create a new safety system for automated driving systems that can sometimes react to hazards more quickly than the human brain. The slower reaction time of machines compared with the human brain has been a long-standing safety concern. For example, an automated vehicle travelling at 80km/h (50mph) will take half a second to respond to a hazard in front of it, compared with the 0.15 seconds the human brain needs to react – meaning the vehicle will have travelled another 13 metres (43 feet) before stopping. Advertisement Even advanced processors have been far slower than humans at analysing a high-definition image to discern what is moving and where it is going. This delay has created a fundamental safety concern about robots, drones and autonomous vehicles. Advertisement However, researchers from Britain, mainland China, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and the United States said they had now developed a faster reaction system.
Fox Corp., under its Tubi Media Group division, has acquired Supercast, a subscription tool for podcasters, bolstering efforts to get digital creators to work with the service. Terms of the deal weren’t announced. Supercast powers the backend subscriptions for networks and podcasters like Andrew Huberman and This American Life , according to its website. The company, which was founded in 2019, all...
Fox Corp., under its Tubi Media Group division, has acquired Supercast, a subscription tool for podcasters, bolstering efforts to get digital creators to work with the service. Terms of the deal weren’t announced. Supercast powers the backend subscriptions for networks and podcasters like Andrew Huberman and This American Life , according to its website. The company, which was founded in 2019, allows podcasters to better access the information of paying members, such as their names and email addresses, and helps make their shows easier for subscribers to consume across various apps. The set-up differs from platforms like Apple Podcasts, which only activates subscriptions on its service. Tubi made a splash in the podcast industry last year when it acquired Red Seat Ventures, an ad sales network that works with popular creators like former Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly. With Red Seat’s expertise, Tubi has since signed deals with additional podcasters for ad representation, including Ashley Flowers’ Crime Junkie , which formerly worked with Sirius XM Holdings Inc. “Red Seat’s ultimate goal is to become a one-stop shop for creators,” said Chris Balfe, founder and chief executive officer of Red Seat Ventures. “One of our goals is to ultimately create a place where they can do one deal and have options for how they can monetize and grow their business.” Supercast will continue to operate independently, according to Balfe and Supercast Co-Founder and CEO Jason Sew Hoy, and will keep signing clients separately from Red Seat Ventures. The subscription-tool offering isn’t changing for existing users. Though podcasters tend to generate the majority of their sales through ads, subscriptions have become an increasingly important way for them to make money directly from fans. Typically, hosts offer ad-free episodes or bonus content to entice them to subscribe. Sew Hoy said subscriptions can guarantee revenue for podcasters during times when the ad market falters.
Tippapatt/iStock via Getty Images Quarterly review The Emerging Markets Equity Advantage Fund underperformed the MSCI Emerging Markets Index ( NET ) for the quarter that ended December 31, 2025. At the sector level, stocks within the financials, consumer staples, and consumer discretionary sectors served as relative contributors while stocks within the real estate, industrials, and materials secto...
Tippapatt/iStock via Getty Images Quarterly review The Emerging Markets Equity Advantage Fund underperformed the MSCI Emerging Markets Index ( NET ) for the quarter that ended December 31, 2025. At the sector level, stocks within the financials, consumer staples, and consumer discretionary sectors served as relative contributors while stocks within the real estate, industrials, and materials sectors hindered relative performance. At the country level, stock selection in China/Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Peru aided relative performance while stocks within Korea, Brazil, and South Africa impeded relative returns. Market review Emerging market equities, as measured by the MSCI Emerging Markets Index (Net), advanced 4.73% in the fourth quarter as attractive relative valuations continued to result in outperformance versus developed markets. China/Hong Kong underperformed (-7.38%) the benchmark in the fourth quarter, as the Central Economic Work Conference stressed boosting domestic demand and high-quality growth while ensuring stability. The Politburo reaffirmed supportive fiscal and monetary policies with a focus on risk control and social stability. Taiwan equities advanced (10.40%); despite rising geopolitical risks from China's military drills around Taiwan at year-end, Taiwan market delivered strong performance, driven by positive sentiment regarding artificial intelligence ( AI ) infrastructure spending and monetization opportunities in the next one to two years. India's market slightly outperformed (4.78%) the benchmark as the Reserve Bank of India cut policy rates by 25 basis points (bps; 100 bps equal 1.00%) to 5.25% and indicated further room to cut on low inflation. The U.S.-India trade deal remained elusive even though the effect of tariffs on the Indian economy and system asset quality has remained muted. Outside of Asia, performance was mixed but overall strong, particularly in well-performing countries such as South Africa, Brazil, and Poland. Fund performance ...
Modern enterprises generate enormous amounts of security data, but legacy tools like Splunk still require companies to store all of it in one place before they can detect threats – a slow and costly process that’s increasingly breaking down in cloud environments where volumes are exploding and data lives everywhere. AI cybersecurity startup Vega Security wants to flip that approach by running secu...
Modern enterprises generate enormous amounts of security data, but legacy tools like Splunk still require companies to store all of it in one place before they can detect threats – a slow and costly process that’s increasingly breaking down in cloud environments where volumes are exploding and data lives everywhere. AI cybersecurity startup Vega Security wants to flip that approach by running security where the data already lives, implementing in cloud services, data lakes, and existing storage systems. And the two-year-old firm just raised a $120 million Series B round to scale that vision, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. Led by Accel with participation from Cyberstarts, Redpoint, and CRV, the new round nearly doubles Vega’s valuation to $700M and brings its total funding to $185 million, money the startup will use to further develop its AI-native security operations suite, beef out its go-to-market team, and expand globally. Shay Sandler, co-founder and CEO of Vega, told TechCrunch that the current operating model of the SIEM (security information and event management) — the dominant technology in this domain for the last two decades — is not only “crazy expensive,” but is also increasingly causing AI-native security operations to fail. In complex cloud environments, he says, the current model often increases exposure to threat actors. “Vega has defined a new operating model that enables organizations to leverage the full potential of their enterprise data to achieve incident response readiness, without all the complexity, the cost, the drama,” Shay Sandler, co-founder and CEO of Vega, told TechCrunch. “We want to simply enable them to reach AI-native detection response capability anywhere the data is, at scale.” Like so many cybersecurity founders, Sandler did his time in the Israeli military’s cybersecurity unit before being one of the founding employees behind Granulate, which Intel acquired for $650 million in 2022. After a year at Intel, Sandler decided t...
Smaller stocks and value equities are displaying leadership traits, indicating investors may want to allocate $1,000 (or more) to this Vanguard ETF. This year is still in its early innings, but some clear trends are already emerging, and investors may do well to heed those signals. Those include leadership by smaller stocks and value names. With the Russell 2000 index up 7.59% year to date, small-...
Smaller stocks and value equities are displaying leadership traits, indicating investors may want to allocate $1,000 (or more) to this Vanguard ETF. This year is still in its early innings, but some clear trends are already emerging, and investors may do well to heed those signals. Those include leadership by smaller stocks and value names. With the Russell 2000 index up 7.59% year to date, small-cap stocks are generating plenty of buzz as value equities perform well across a variety of market capitalization spectrums. Just look at the Russell 1000 Value index, which is higher by 6.77% since the start of the year. As is par for the course, mid-cap stocks are getting lost in the shuffle, but that doesn't diminish the allure of the Vanguard Mid-Cap Value ETF (VOE +0.06%) as perhaps the best of that issuer's exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to allocate $1,000 to right now. Sure, performance bolsters the case for this ETF. It's beating large-cap value gauges while trouncing the Vanguard Mid-Cap ETF (VO +0.25%), its blend counterpart. That scenario could extend into this year. This Vanguard ETF is just getting started While this Vanguard ETF merits closer examination today, that urgency doesn't diminish its relevance to investors considering it as a possible addition to a buy-and-hold strategy. Actually, that's where this fund can truly shine. Here's why. Overlooked as they are, mid-cap stocks have a history of outpacing their larger and smaller counterparts over extended periods, while often being less volatile than small-cap names. Said another way, this Vanguard ETF may offer investors long-term returns comparable to or exceeding those of similar small-cap funds while subjecting them to shallower drawdowns. Expand NYSEMKT : VOE Vanguard Index Funds - Vanguard Mid-Cap Value ETF Today's Change ( 0.06 %) $ 0.11 Current Price $ 191.28 Key Data Points Day's Range $ 191.07 - $ 191.69 52wk Range $ 139.38 - $ 191.69 Volume 52K Speaking of mitigating risk, this ETF has its own buf...