Business

The demand for chips to power artificial-intelligence services from the likes of Meta and Microsoft helped boost Nvidia’s revenues to $26bn in the latest quarter, a 262% increase, year on year. Net profit soared by 628% to $14.9bn. The company promises more to come. It will soon start to ship its new Blackwell chips, which cost more than $30,000 each.

Non-performance pay

Around a third of Boeing’s shareholders voted against the pay package awarded to Dave Calhoun, who is stepping down as chief executive at the end of the year amid a litany of safety concerns about the company’s aircraft. Mr Calhoun’s total remuneration has increased by 45%, provoking anger among some investors. Boeing’s share price is down by more than 25% since the start of this year.

A 73-year-old man died and dozens of passengers were injured on a Singapore Airlines flight that encountered extreme turbulence. Deaths from turbulence are very rare (the deceased man reportedly had a heart condition) and big aircraft are unlikely to be brought down by severe weather.

A court in St Petersburg froze assets belonging to Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank and UniCredit, three European lenders, in a lawsuit brought by a subsidiary of Gazprom, Russia’s state gas company. The assets totalled nearly €800m ($866m), more than half of which are owned by UniCredit. Europe’s banks have been slow to leave Russia, even though it is subject to heavy sanctions. The European Central Bank has urged them to speed up their departure because of the risks involved.

Shareholders in Shell overwhelmingly backed the company’s new climate strategy, which lowers its target for reducing carbon emissions by 2030 and abandons a goal for 2035, but still aims for net-zero emissions by 2050. Some 22% of investors voted against the policy, around the same proportion as similar green rebellions in 2022 and 2023. A resolution put forward by Follow This, an NGO which co-ordinates shareholder pressure on environmental issues, was also defeated.

America’s Justice Department readied its long-expected antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation. The department, in effect, wants to revoke the merger in 2010 between Live Nation and Ticketmaster, claiming it has created a monopoly in tickets for large entertainment events.

Britain’s annual inflation rate fell sharply in April, to 2.3% from 3.2% in March, and is now at its lowest level in three years. But the drop was less than analysts had forecast, which dampened expectations that the Bank of England might cut interest rates in June.

This isn’t just any strategy

Marks and Spencer reported a quarterly profit that exceeded forecasts and announced its first shareholder dividend since 2019. For years the British retailer struggled with falling sales and market scepticism about its prospects, but in 2022 it unveiled a turnaround strategy, closing failing stores and investing more in its popular food supermarkets.

Walmart’s share price continued to climb after it reported bumper quarterly earnings and raised its annual sales and profit forecast. The retailer’s market value rose above $500bn for the first time.

Janet Yellen, America’s treasury secretary, defended Joe Biden’s new tariffs on a range of Chinese imports, including duties of 100% on electric cars, as “strategic and targeted steps”. Speaking in Frankfurt, Ms Yellen called on the European Union to join America in curbing cheap Chinese exports in green-tech, which she said undermine Western innovation and jobs. She also denied that America’s huge subsidies for its green manufacturers amounted to protectionism. The EU has so far taken a softer approach to China, but it is expected soon to slap duties on Chinese EVs, the makers of which receive state handouts.

Klaus Schwab is to retire as head of the World Economic Forum, which he founded in 1971. His replacement as chairman of the WEF, which organises the annual Davos summit, is expected to be Borge Brende, the WEF’s president.

Ivan Boesky died, aged 87. As one of Wall Street’s leading investors in the 1980s Mr Boesky helped fuel a takeover boom, until it all came crashing down. He pleaded guilty to insider trading and was eventually sent to prison in 1987. The character Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s film “Wall Street” was inspired in part by him, giving audiences the immortal strapline that “greed is good.” Mr Boesky’s actual words, from a speech to business-school students, were reportedly “I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself”. By all accounts, he was loudly applauded.

Correction (May 28th): An earlier version stated the wrong year for which Shell is abandoning a climate goal. Sorry.