Top Stories Friday, Dec. 30

Reuters

The Securities Commission of the Bahamas is holding FTX assets worth $3.5 billion.
The valuation of the assets is based on the pricing at the time of the transfer temporarily to deliver them to customers and creditors.

Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni eyed a meeting with representatives of Intel Corp INTC to discuss a possible multibillion-euro investment by the U.S. chipmaker in Italy.
Intel aimed to build a chip factory in the country as part of a broader plan to invest up to €80 billion ($85.15 billion) over the next decade in building capacity across Europe.
The yet-to-be-finalized deal will likely involve state subsidies.

Hershey Co HSY is facing a lawsuit after being accused of selling dark chocolate containing possibly harmful levels of lead and cadmium.
New York resident Christopher Lazazzaro filed the suit against Hershey following a recent Consumer Reports study.
The study was conducted on 28 dark chocolate bars using California's maximum allowable dose level (MADL) for lead and cadmium: 0.5 micrograms and 4.1 micrograms, respectively.

Baidu Inc BIDU won the first license to test driverless vehicles on roads in Beijing.
Baidu will add another 200 robotaxis to its network across China in 2023.
Baidu, which generates most of its revenue from its internet search engine, has been focused on self-driving technologies over the past five years as it looks to diversify.

Wall Street Journal

A restaurant-industry group reportedly sued some California state officials, alleging they plan to illegally implement a new law that would set minimum hourly wages for fast-food workers.
The California law would set a minimum wage for the state's estimated half-million fast-food workers at as high as $22 an hour. That minimum would then increase annually based on inflation.

Bloomberg

The chances of Toshiba Corp's TOSYY preferred bidder securing letters of commitment from banks are unlikely by year-end as disputes over lending terms persist after months of negotiations.
A consortium led by Japan Industrial Partners Inc explored bank financing totaling 1.4 trillion yen ($10.6 billion) to take Toshiba private. However, negotiations have stalled over covenants and collateral.
Japan's iconic brand, sullied by years of scandals and rising financing costs, had difficulty securing bank financing.

CNBC

Southwest's Holiday Chaos Will Affect Q4 Earnings

Southwest Airlines Co LUV holiday flight schedule chaos will reportedly affect its fourth-quarter earnings.
The carrier will take many weeks to dispose of the reimbursement requests of the affected passengers.
The low-cost carrier has been messing with its flight operations when the holidays kicked off, stating that the winter blizzard affected its schedules.
The gaffe drew the transportation department's ire, with U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg calling the chaos a "system failure."

Benzinga

Amid Tesla Inc's TSLA precipitous stock drop, reports of it triggering a margin call on the loan availed by Elon Musk to fund the Twitter acquisition began doing the rounds. The rumors, however, have been proven to be ill-founded.
It all started when Barron's report said on Thursday that Musk was margin called for his Twitter loan, and the news quickly spread around. In response to the story, Tesla bull and Future Fund's Gary Black tweeted that Musk had never taken a margin loan when he bought Twitter.

According to Counterpoint's India Market Outlook, cumulative 5G smartphone shipments will cross the 100-million mark in Q2 2023 and exceed 4G shipments by the end of 2023.
The study found that 5G has been a driving force and will continue to push smartphone demand in 2023.
India's smartphone shipments will likely witness a yearly decline in 2022 due to macroeconomic factors affecting consumer demand in the entry and budget segments.

A study in China shows that a remdesivir analog, dubbed VV116, is as effective as Pfizer Inc's PFE oral COVID-19 pill.
Gilead Sciences Inc's GILD Veklury (remdesivir) is approved as a treatment for severe COVID-19.
The Phase 3 results, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, exhibit that the treatment had fewer side effects than Paxlovid.
67.4% of people who took VV116 reported side effects, compared to 77.3% who took Paxlovid.
Photo: Rick Partington by Shutterstock an Wikimedia Commons

FTX Exchange's Assets Worth $3.5B Held By Bahamian Regulators, Italy PM To Meet Intel Over Chip Investment, New Oral COVID Antiviral Might Be Better Than Pfizer's Paxlovid: Today's Top Stories