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U.S. president has leverage with both leaders, but analysts say he isn’t using it

President Trump’s foreign policy is marked by a reluctance to use U.S. leverage with Israel and Russia.

Israel recently struck Hamas officials in Qatar, while Russia escalated attacks in the war against Ukraine.

WASHINGTON—One is a close U.S. ally. The other is an adversary. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin both have consistently disregarded President Trump’s wishes, often without major consequences.

His perceived passivity highlights a revealing paradox about Trump. Frequently claiming to have ended half a dozen wars, he portrays himself as an unmatched peacemaker. Yet in the two conflicts he has most often vowed to stop—Gaza and the Ukraine war—he has often been reluctant to exert U.S. leverage with Israel and Russia.

Israel on Tuesday carried out missile strikes on Hamas political officials in Qatar, who had gathered to discuss Trump’s proposals for ending the Gaza fighting and securing the release of the hostages held by the U.S.-designated terrorist group. And Putin, after meeting with Trump in Alaska last month, escalated drone and missile attacks on Ukraine. This past week, forces from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s European members shot down Russian drones infiltrating Poland.

Trump has done little publicly to respond to either event. He held a tense phone call with Netanyahu, followed by a second and friendlier conversation about the results of Israel’s operation. He recently said that the attack “hopefully” wouldn’t endanger the roughly 48 hostages Hamas still holds, despite fears from their families that the strike might disrupt the tenuous diplomacy. About 20 of the hostages are thought to still be alive, Trump said Friday on Fox News.

Trump posed a vague question Wednesday about the Russian drone incursion over Poland—the first time NATO ever shot down Russian aircraft venturing over its eastern flank—despite having a powerful intelligence apparatus at his beck and call. “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!” Trump posted on social media. The next day he suggested the incursion “could have been a mistake, but regardless I’m not happy about anything to do with the whole situation.”

When European NATO members said Friday they were sending planes and other military forces to bolster the alliance’s eastern-flank defenses against Russian drones, no U.S. assets were announced.

On Saturday, Trump added fresh conditions for imposing what he described as major sanctions on Russia—a move that some former officials said appeared to be calculated to put off White House decisions on stepped-up economic pressure.

Trump wrote in a social-media post that all nations in Europe, which has substantially reduced its import of Russian oil, would need to stop buying oil from Moscow. And he insisted that NATO nations put tariffs of 50% to 100% on China, which has provided support to Russia’s defense industry, until the conflict in Ukraine has ended.

“This is not TRUMP’S War,” Trump wrote. “It is Biden’s and Zelenskyy’s WAR.”

Trump administration officials insist the president has a firm grip on foreign policy, citing instances in which U.S. efforts helped pause or de-escalate fights abroad since taking office, including a brief conflict between India and Pakistan and border clashes between Cambodia and Thailand.

His rapport with Netanyahu and Putin provides him with a diplomatic opening, according to the president’s aides, and damaging those relationships would prove counterproductive to Trump’s peace efforts and longer-term strategies in Europe and the Middle East.

But some observers insist one-on-one relationships alone won’t end the wars, especially the one between Moscow and Kyiv.

“For Putin, the ambition to destroy Ukraine goes beyond any U.S. president,” said Alina Polyakova, president and chief executive of the Center for European Policy Analysis, a Washington think tank. “He sees it as his historical fate to restore Russia, and no amount of personal sway will change that.”

Trump’s influence with Israel was at its height in June after American B-2 bombers armed with 30,000 pound bunker-busting bombs struck Iran’s Fordow nuclear complex, which is buried inside a mountain, and two other sites, finishing a military operation that would have been challenging for Israeli forces to complete successfully. Those military gains in Iran have added to the diplomatic leverage that Trump still has, said Dennis Ross, who served as a top official on Mideast issues in past GOP and Democratic administrations.

Israel’s military is broadly equipped by the U.S. to the tune of $3 billion a year and other packages. Slowing some of the deliveries, or restricting the use of some weapons, according to some former U.S. officials, could send a strong signal that Netanyahu should try harder to find a way to end the fighting in Gaza. There is less concern about Israel’s security after its major adversaries—Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran—were severely weakened by Israel, said current and former U.S. officials.

Trump isn’t eager to risk a major confrontation with Netanyahu, officials said, adding that the Israeli leader has used flattery to remain in the president’s good graces.

Trump has mainly directed his ire toward Hamas, which launched the war in Gaza by killing 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and taking around 250 people hostage. Hamas has refused to agree to Israel’s terms for peace—which include the immediate release of all hostages and the group’s disarmament—and Trump has continued to support Israel’s military campaign against the group, with the exception of additional attacks in Qatar, which Trump said in a social-media post “will not happen again.”

Israel is preparing to launch a renewed offensive in the enclave’s capital, Gaza City, which Netanyahu has said is needed to take control of Hamas’s “last important stronghold” and complete the defeat of a group that has balked at Israeli’s negotiating demands. In 2024, Netanyahu said that “victory is within reach” ahead of Israel’s assault on Rafah.

“President Trump keeps saying he wants to end the war in Gaza, but he has done very little to bring about that result, and a lot that has contributed to its extension, such as loose talk of moving Palestinians out of Gaza, insufficient attention to the humanitarian crisis, and acquiescence to the Israeli operation in Gaza City that puts hostages at risk,” said Daniel Shapiro, a former Pentagon official during the Biden administration who is now at the Atlantic Council.

The economy of Russia is suffering under significant U.S.-led sanctions. Yet some observers have said the Trump administration hasn’t done enough to enforce the ones already on the books while resisting congressional plans to impose newer and tougher penalties on Russia’s energy sector. Trump targeted India, a U.S. ally, with increased tariffs for purchasing Moscow’s oil without imposing similar measures on China, Russia’s largest energy customer.

While Trump is selling weapons to European nations that plan to send them to Ukraine, he has held back on donating American arms to Kyiv. Nor has his Pentagon authorized the Ukrainians to use the Atacms missiles that they have left to fire into Russian territory, as President Joe Biden did during his final months in office.

Trump allies including Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who is leading a Senate effort to punish Russia’s economy with new sanctions, are openly calling for the president to change course.

White House officials said this past week that Trump has in recent days engaged in numerous talks with lawmakers about supporting the legislation, with the caveat that the president should have the authority to decide how and when to apply sanctions.

But on Saturday Trump signaled in his social-media post the new conditions for imposing “major Sanctions on Russia,” which some former officials saw more as a rationale for delay than a rousing call for collective action.

“They have flushed some of their leverage away,” said Eric Green, who served as a top expert on Russia on the National Security Council under Biden. “The bottom line is that they are willing to press weaker nations and allies rather than adversaries.”

The largest U.S. health insurer’s Medicare business faces investigations and policy threats

As UnitedHealth Group UNH -0.31%decrease; red down pointing triangle faces government investigations and changes in federal payments that have hurt its results, it is turning to an increasingly common Washington playbook: hiring Donald Trump’s allies and trying to plead its case directly with top officials in his administration.

After The Wall Street Journal first reported in May that UnitedHealth faced a criminal investigation into its key Medicare business, it secured a meeting with senior Justice Department officials, including the attorney general’s chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, where they discussed probes of the company, people familiar with the meeting said. Such meetings are unusual for a company facing an early-stage criminal investigation, former prosecutors said.

UnitedHealth Chief Executive Officer Stephen Hemsley recently met with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles to discuss Medicare and other issues, though the government investigations didn’t come up in their conversation, a White House official said.

And in the summer, Hemsley had dinner with the official overseeing Medicare, Chris Klomp, and discussed Medicare-plan billing policies and supplemental benefits offered under the private Medicare plans, among other topics, people familiar with the matter said.

UnitedHealth generated more than $100 billion in revenue in 2023 from Medicare Advantage plans, Medicare data show. In Medicare Advantage, private insurers oversee federal benefits for seniors and disabled people.

UnitedHealth, parent of the largest U.S. insurer, has lost about 40% of its market value since April, in part over changes to Medicare-billing rules from the Biden administration that began to hurt its results. In May, Hemsley, the company’s longtime chair and former chief executive, returned to the CEO job to help reverse the slide.

The company also was grappling with the aftermath of the public murder of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of its insurance unit, in December.

Since then, Hemsley has sketched out plans for a business recovery and has seen some nascent improvement in the stock price, though the Washington issues remain an overhang for the company.

UnitedHealth’s effort to address those issues underscores the changing landscape for Washington influence in the Trump era. In the first half of this year, UnitedHealth spent more money on lobbying than it ever has in a comparable time frame, the company’s disclosures show. It increased its spending on lobbyists and lawyers with deep ties to President Trump’s administration, including Brian Ballard, a top fundraiser for the president, and Jesse Panuccio, who was a senior Justice Department official in Trump’s first term.

Its $7.7 million in spending in the first half of 2025 about doubled its lobbying budget for the same period last year, while the spending of such rivals as Humana and Cigna Group rose slightly. Ballard’s firm, which began representing UnitedHealth in 2024, became its highest-paid outside lobbyist, disclosure records show.

In ongoing litigation with a major shareholder, UnitedHealth in July also swapped out a team of lawyers at WilmerHale, a law firm Trump has criticized, for the president’s personal lawyer, securities litigator Robert Giuffra, and colleagues from his firm, Sullivan & Cromwell.

Investors are specifically worried about how the Trump administration will treat billing practices for the Medicare business, which is central to UnitedHealth’s hopes of improved profits and growth. Mehmet Oz, chief of the agency that oversees Medicare, has promised a crackdown on some of the tactics used by insurers, including UnitedHealth, on top of the earlier changes.

UnitedHealth also has sought meetings with Trump himself, though it hasn’t secured one yet. The company is seeking in particular to resolve the government investigations, people familiar with the matter said.

“The Administration routinely meets with insurers to deliver on the President’s mandate of improving healthcare and lowering costs for everyday Americans,” Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said.

In a statement, UnitedHealth said: “Public policy shapes healthcare across America, and it’s our responsibility to engage with the administration and Congress at all levels to improve patient access and affordability,” it said, adding that is especially true now “as critical decisions are being made.” A spokesman also said its lobbying spending varies from year to year.

UnitedHealth executives told Wall Street analysts that they have “been engaged and collaborative with the administration giving management a sense of having a seat at the table,” according to an investor note to Morgan Stanley clients last week. UnitedHealth notched a Washington victory in August when the Justice Department allowed its long-delayed deal to acquire the home-health provider Amedisys to close after divestitures.

Lobbying spending often increases from year to year, but 2025 is setting a record, with many companies spending far more and hiring lobbyists close to Trump as they try more-aggressive strategies to get results, said Anna Massoglia, a researcher who tracks such spending.

“It’s a bit more nuanced now that you can curry favor with the president, the president’s family and their allies directly,” she said. “Companies and other organizations are trying to court the new administration and figure out a strategy to win them over.”

When the Journal reported in May that the Justice Department’s criminal-fraud unit was examining UnitedHealth’s Medicare business, the company initially said it hadn’t been notified of a probe and defended the integrity of its Medicare Advantage program.

UnitedHealth then arranged the meeting with senior Justice Department officials including Mizelle. Panuccio, the former senior Justice Department official whom UnitedHealth had hired, helped set it up, people familiar with the matter said. The discussion covered a number of topics including ongoing probes, the people said. UnitedHealth also faces civil and antitrust investigations.

In a July 24 securities filing, the company said it had proactively contacted the Justice Department and “begun complying with formal criminal and civil requests” from the agency. UnitedHealth said it had full confidence in its practices and was committed to working cooperatively through the process.

Former Justice Department officials said it was unusual for senior leaders in the department to discuss ongoing investigations with the companies or people under investigation. “You don’t want to give anyone a heads-up,” said Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney for eastern Michigan.

Panuccio, now a partner at the Boies Schiller Flexner law firm, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The criminal investigation into UnitedHealth is ongoing, people familiar with the matter said.

Mutual-fund giant Capital Group is known for a disciplined approach. One of its top portfolio managers can’t get enough bitcoin.

• Capital Group, known for disciplined investing, has made a significant bet on bitcoin, thanks to portfolio manager Mark Casey.
• Mark Casey and his firm have turned less than $1 billion into more than $6 billion with bitcoin investments. He views the cryptocurrency as a modern store of value replacing gold.
• Capital Group’s bitcoin investments include Strategy, Metaplanet and Mara Holdings.

Capital Group is a 94-year-old mutual-fund juggernaut known for its disciplined investing style. Mark Casey, a portfolio manager with 25 years of experience at the firm, quotes pioneering value-investor Benjamin Graham and says his “approach is very informed by Warren Buffett.”

That is why it is so surprising that Capital Group has placed a huge bet on bitcoin—one of the largest by a mainstream investment firm—and that Casey has emerged as one of most outspoken backers of the digital currency in the so-called TradFi world.

“I just love bitcoin, I just think it is so interesting,” Casey, 54, said on a podcast interview hosted by venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz last year, calling it “one of the coolest things that has ever been created by people.”

In the past four years, Casey and his firm have turned less than $1 billion into more than $6 billion with investments in Strategy and other so-called bitcoin treasury companies whose sole focuses are loading up on the cryptocurrency.

Behind the bullishness: A view that bitcoin is replacing gold as a modern-day means of storing value—and will prove more useful than gold. Over time, bitcoin’s price will rise, Casey and some others at Capital Group argue, catching up to or even exceeding the value of gold, which currently accounts for roughly 2% of global wealth according to some estimates. By contrast, Casey is dubious other cryptocurrencies will ever prove valuable, even as rivals pile into ether.

Some analysts and others at mainstream financial firms doubt bitcoin will ever rival gold, which has held value for thousands of years and has been soaring lately. Other mainstream investors have struggled to place a value on companies focused on bitcoin, raising questions about Capital Group’s enthusiasm.

“The investment in bitcoin-related stocks is surprising,” says Morningstar analyst Stephen Welch. “Typically, you are investing in a company with assets and cash flows, and in this case, you are investing in a relatively untested currency, expecting the value to increase.”

Casey says he and some colleagues evaluate Strategy and other companies buying up bitcoin the same way they scrutinize those that mine, refine and trade physical commodities like gold and oil.

“We view bitcoin as a commodity,” Casey says.

Capital Group is one of the oldest and largest “active” investment managers. The Los Angeles firm, whose American Funds have been a staple in brokerage accounts for nearly a century, manages $3 trillion. Each of its mutual funds has as many as 12 portfolio managers, like Casey, who independently manage parts of the funds.

The firm spurned some past investing frenzies, such as the dot-com craze in the late 1990s, even as some clients clamored for those stocks. But it was early to the bitcoin craze, in large part due to Casey’s fervor.

In 2013, Casey joined a group of investors in a meeting with Wences Casares, an early bitcoin advocate. Casey became a believer but as a mutual-fund manager didn’t have a way to invest in the digital currency until Michael Saylor turned his software company MicroStrategy, now known as Strategy, into a bitcoin whale.

In 2021, Capital Group spent over $500 million to buy a 12.3% stake in Strategy. That made the firm Strategy’s second-largest holder after Saylor, its founder. The mutual fund’s stake—which has shrunk to 7.89% after some sales but mostly because the company issued new shares—is now valued at $6.2 billion after a more than 2,248% surge of the stock over the past five years.

Strategy shares have run into headwinds, though, falling roughly 16% in the past month. Some investors question the need for a stockholding bitcoin when bitcoin exchange-traded funds and other vehicles offer other ways to bet on the digital currency.

This year, Casey and some colleagues also purchased 5% of Metaplanet 3350 -8.37%decrease; red down pointing triangle, a Japanese hotel operator that last year began buying up bitcoin and counts Eric Trump as an adviser. That stock is up nearly 70% so far in 2025, though its shares have fallen about 39% in the past month. Capital Group also owns shares of Mara Holdings MARA 3.82%increase; green up pointing triangle, a bitcoin mining company that is down 2.74% this year.

The bitcoin investments are small relative to the firm’s assets but offer a powerful endorsement. Casey appears at bitcoin conferences and attended a New Year’s Eve party at Saylor’s home in Miami celebrating bitcoin topping $100,000.

Casey is a graduate of Yale University, where he demonstrated a quirky sense of humor. In November, when daylight-saving time transitioned back to standard time, he would throw a one-hour party that started and ended at 2 a.m., which he called “The Party That Never Happened.” He received an M.B.A. at Harvard University, educating himself about investing by reading all of Buffett’s investor letters and joining Capital Group in 2000 in Silicon Valley.

Some established business figures, including BlackRock Chief Executive Larry Fink, have softened their stance on crypto. Others, though, including Buffett, remain wary. JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, who has called bitcoin a useless “pet rock,” remains personally skeptical of cryptocurrencies.

As for Casey, he hasn’t wavered in his own belief. Lately, he has told people he’s looking for new ways to invest in bitcoin.

In an interview, Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm suggests shareholders wouldn’t like a future without the company’s visionary leader

The thing Tesla TSLA 7.36%increase; green up pointing triangle is selling hardest these days is the idea that Elon Musk needs to be paid more.

And the woman handed that sales job—again—is Robyn Denholm, the chair of the electric carmaker.

She has already begun a campaign ahead of the Nov. 6 shareholder vote on what could be a $1 trillion pay package aimed at motivating Musk to lock in for the next decade. Normally a behind-the-scenes operator, she has been sitting for interviews and preparing to pitch major investors.

This is the second time in about 18 months that she’s essentially making the case Tesla needs to give Musk a giant payday to keep him happy—the implied threat being that he might bolt if investors don’t.

Denholm is trying to sell the new pay package as Tesla’s deliveries of vehicles are down for the year, a remarkable development for a growth-stock company. Its only all-new passenger vehicle in years, the Cybertruck, launched in 2023 and quickly flopped. And the company’s bet on robot cars is still in its infancy, having launched a limited robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, in June after roughly a decade of hype.

In a recent interview, Denholm conceded there’s investor fatigue around the matter of Musk’s controversial 2018 pay plan—the roughly $50 billion deal whose fate is tied up in a Delaware court. But she thinks the latest proposal is what investors want.

“I was getting a lot of questions from shareholders about what does the future look like, for Elon and the company,” she told me.

Denholm said she has tried to imagine a Tesla without Musk and suggests shareholders wouldn’t like it—especially at this crucial moment in pivoting from being a car company to one deploying artificial intelligence through robots.

“Our view is the opportunity ahead is far greater with Elon at the helm than without,” she said.

You wouldn’t expect her to say otherwise. After 11 years on the Tesla board, including nearly seven as chair, Denholm is a veteran of these sorts of proxy fights.

She was the tip of the spear in persuading Tesla investors in 2016 to approve the acquisition of a struggling solar-panel company where Musk was the chairman and largest individual shareholder. It was part of his vision at the time to make Tesla into a renewable energy company, but was seen by critics as a bailout for him.

Then last year, Denholm was again trying to persuade shareholders to reapprove that 2018 compensation plan after a Delaware judge rescinded it. That ruling was critical of Denholm for “lackadaisical” oversight of Musk.

She bristles at such criticisms, once telling a reporter that such claims were “crap,” only to receive a private rebuke from her 95-year-old mother, who I’m told, reads Denholm’s press closely.

“I know that I work for the shareholders,” Denholm said. She sees part of her role as making sure the board and Musk have a good relationship while also balancing her duty to protect shareholders’ interest.

On that metric, she’s delivering. During her tenure as chair, Tesla’s market value has soared to $1 trillion. She credits the 2018 pay package with helping motivate Musk.

Still, it is hard to imagine the board of another publicly traded company giving its CEO the free rein Tesla has given Musk, such as overseeing several other companies—even with his past successes.

“You can’t say ‘I want Elon but I don’t want this bit,’ or ‘Can you dial up this bit?’” Denholm said. “I lean into tough discussions…Sometimes he listens, sometimes he doesn’t, and that’s his prerogative.”

Denholm might technically be Musk’s boss, but like most people at the company, she clearly spends a lot of time trying to make him happy.

Last summer, it seemed like she had. Musk excitedly jumped up and down on stage at the June 2024 shareholder meeting, moments after they reauthorized his roughly $50 billion pay package following the judge’s original ruling.

Except that payday didn’t hold his attention long. Weeks later, he became consumed with President Trump’s re-election. Then he relocated to Washington early this year in a vain attempt to remake the government as some investors pleaded with him to spend more time on Tesla.

His mood about his day job at Tesla wasn’t helped when the Delaware judge in December again struck down the pay package.

In January, a special Tesla board committee, which included Denholm, began work on the compensation issue. They aimed to devise a way to cover the past plan and offer up a new one exciting enough to keep Musk engaged.

During negotiations, according to the company, Musk raised the possibility he “may pursue other interests and leave Tesla if he did not receive” assurances around achieving at least a 25% voting interest in the company and being paid his 2018 compensation plan in full. Musk also made clear, according to the company, that he was unwilling to accept restrictions on his involvement in other companies or his activities.

The special committee had its own wish list, including Musk’s assurance that his involvement with the political sphere would wind down in a timely manner. That would happen. Musk’s relationship with the Trump White House later blew up over spending legislation and other perceived slights.

“I’m not sure that he would say today that his stint in Washington was fabulous,” Denholm said. “I don’t think it was fabulous for the company, either.”

When talking about Musk’s extracurricular activities, Denholm can sound contradictory. On one hand, she says she isn’t concerned about the amount of time Musk spends on Tesla and sidesteps questions about whether she thinks his politics hurt the brand. “I’ve never, never been worried that he hasn’t devoted enough time to Tesla, even while he was in Washington,” she said.

Still, she said the board wants to get him “to devote as much of his time, energy and focus as we could get.” But the new pay plan doesn’t specify how much time the board wants.

Denholm doesn’t see it as a punching-the-time-card situation. “It’s not time that I measure,” she said, “it’s output.”

Shareholders could be forgiven for hoping that output involves selling the future and the products that will shape it, instead of Musk’s pay.

Skydance founder prepares bid just weeks after closing Paramount acquisition

The ink had barely dried on David Ellison’s $8bn deal to acquire Paramount before he set his eyes on another legendary Hollywood studio: Warner Bros.

Ellison, the 42-year-old founder of Skydance, is working on a bid backed by his father Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle and briefly the world’s richest man, to buy Warner Bros Discovery.

This comes just weeks after Ellison’s acquisition of Paramount from Shari Redstone closed on August 7 — a hard-won deal that followed battles with angry shareholders and a probe by the Federal Communications Commission. 

Paramount and Warner Bros, two companies founded in the silent film era that became giants during the cable TV boom, have lacked the scale to compete head-to-head with Netflix in the streaming era.

But Ellison has told colleagues that he can modernise both companies’ linear television, premium cable and film production by integrating them on a single technology stack. That would save money and improve the customer experience.  

A deal to buy Warner would add some of the biggest names in film and TV to Ellison’s budding empire, including the Warner Bros Motion Picture Group, HBO, DC Studios and CNN. It would also catapult Ellison to Hollywood’s highest echelon.

“If you own Paramount and Warner Bros, you’re definitely a mogul,” said Laurent Yoon, an analyst at Bernstein. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He’s putting his foot down and saying: ‘this is my turf’.” 

If Ellison’s plan is realised, it would be a rejection of the strategy pursued by Warner Bros chief David Zaslav and Comcast’s Brian Roberts, who want to spin off their cable TV units after years of secular decline due to cord-cutting. The Comcast cable spin-off, called Versant, is expected by the end of the year. Warner’s is slated for 2026. Warner Bros declined to comment. 

Ellison would pre-empt the Warner spin-off of the cable business and instead use it to feed content — which includes valuable sports rights on TNT and news from CNN — to Paramount’s streaming offerings. The approach would be similar to the strategy employed by Disney chief Bob Iger, who has said the traditional TV assets still generated cash and provided programming to Hulu, one of the company’s streaming services.

“The potential combination of Paramount+ and HBO Max would create an extremely formidable competitor in streaming,” said Jessica Reif Ehrlich, an analyst at Bank of America, in a research note. However, she said “integration and restructuring would likely take years to implement” if a deal were realised.

The Ellisons’ financing power is being augmented by Gerry Cardinale of RedBird Capital, who in addition to providing capital helped engineer Skydance’s purchase of Paramount. Cardinale is also playing a central role in forming a potential bid for Warner.

The move reveals an aggressive side to the younger Ellison, a movie fanatic who founded Skydance 15 years ago and co-produced blockbusters including Top Gun: Maverick and instalments of the Mission Impossible series. He also launched an animation business and hired John Lasseter, the founder of Pixar, to run it. 

It comes as Zaslav, who has overseen painful cost-cutting measures at Warner, has hailed the company’s comeback. Warner has had an exceptional year at the box office, with breakout hits including A Minecraft Movie, Sinners, Weapons, F1: The Movie and Superman.  

“Zaslav knows the company will be more valuable next year. He’s feeling extremely good,” said Yoon. “[Ellison] may want to do the deal preemptively.”

There has been talk in Hollywood about big consolidation in the industry since the streaming bubble burst in 2022, but studios have mostly focused on incremental moves such as cutting costs, creating “bundling” deals and adding advertising to streaming services.  

Now Ellison and Paramount could be close to firing the first shot. A Paramount move on Warner could put the studio in play, attracting other potential suitors such as Apple, Comcast, Amazon or even Netflix.  

Warner Bros has been associated with two of the worst deals of the 21st Century: AOL-Time Warner in 2000 and an acquisition by AT&T in 2018. The attraction in both cases was its world-class assets, which included the film studio that produced the Harry Potter films, along with HBO, DC studios and CNN. 

John Malone, a Warner shareholder and adviser to the board as chair emeritus, told the Financial Times in an interview last month that he saw consolidation between studios as inevitable.

“There has to be consolidation in the streaming world, particularly as it relates to the old media companies and their efforts [to get] some scale relative to the big tech guys who have decided to get in the business,” he said.

In a different political environment, a Paramount-Warner Bros merger proposal would raise significant antitrust issues. Combining CBS News and CNN under the same corporate roof would have tested the boundaries of media consolidation in previous administrations. 

However, the Trump administration may see greater leeway to a potential combination, said people close to the regulatory agencies. Lawyers said the Trump administration would probably focus less on structural overlap and more on whether Paramount committed itself to keeping CNN politically neutral.

That approach could ease approval risk if the Ellison group was seen as a stabilising owner rather than a partisan actor, said a former competition official.

Ellison recently appointed Kenneth Weinstein — who led a conservative think-tank and has advised President Donald Trump — as ombudsman of CBS News. And he has held talks with Bari Weiss, founder of the “anti-woke” media site The Free Press, about a potential deal that would give her a prominent role in the news operation. 

The prospect of a deal has film and TV executives buzzing, with one saying it has “released the animal spirits” after a downbeat period in the business. A studio boss, who declined to be named, said that a Paramount-Warner merger would pose the first big challenge to Netflix by bringing together a large streaming platform with a vast library of valuable exclusive content.

“They have had a free ride for too long,” he said of Netflix.

French companies’ borrowing costs fall below government’s as debt fears intensify

Lower yields for groups including L’Oréal, Airbus and Axa shake up typical order and signal Paris’s loss of ‘risk-free’ status

Borrowing costs for a number of French companies have fallen below those of their government, as investors’ worries over the country’s political crisis and growing debt pile upset the typical relationship between sovereign and corporate bonds.

Yields on the bonds of groups including L’Oréal, Airbus and Axa have sunk below those on French government debt of similar maturity in recent weeks, according to data compiled by Goldman Sachs, in a sign that investors may see them as a safer bet.

The moves have come as the resignation of François Bayrou this week as France’s prime minister, the second such resignation in less than a year, deepened investor concern over French bonds and pushed yields above those of Greece and close to Italy’s.

On Friday, Fitch Ratings downgraded France’s credit rating, citing the “increased fragmentation and polarisation of domestic politics”.

“Trading at par with French corporates signals that French government bonds are not a risk-free asset anymore,” said Karsten Junius, chief economist at Swiss private bank J Safra Sarasin. “They are trading more like an emerging market,” where corporate yields trading below the sovereign is more common, he added.

Sovereign borrowing costs typically act as a baseline for yields on corporate bonds. This pattern has occasionally inverted in the Eurozone — where German bonds serve as the true risk-free benchmark and other member states’ trade at an additional “spread” — particularly during the bloc’s debt crisis a decade and a half ago.

But the Goldman Sachs data shows that 10 French companies were recently trading at a negative spread to the French sovereign — which as one of the region’s biggest, wealthiest economies has usually enjoyed relatively low yields — the most in data going back to 2006. Across the euro area as a whole, more than 80 companies had bond yields below France’s, according to Goldman.

Fund managers pointed to a 2033 bond issued by luxury group LVMH, which in 2024 and early 2025 traded with a yield of about 0.2-0.6 percentage points above a comparable sovereign bond, but whose yield has been as much as 0.07 percentage points below this week, its widest gap since being issued two years ago.

Mike Riddell, a fund manager at Fidelity International, said the moves were “even more amazing if you consider that these corporate bonds are far, far less liquid than the sovereigns”, which he argued should equate to about 0.1-0.2 percentage points of spread.

The moves were less a reflection of default probabilities than the glut of government bonds hitting the market, Riddell argued, with governments “still issuing bonds like they’re going out of fashion, while corporates generally aren’t, at least not in public markets”.

The topsy-turvy market also reflects a dramatic rally in global credit that has taken US and European corporate spreads to their tightest against sovereign benchmarks in years. The rally in credit, accompanying a series of record highs in stock indices, reflects an exuberance in markets for riskier assets, which is fuelling fears of a bubble.

“You can rationalise tight corporate credit spreads as long as you want, but ultimately if and when we have another crisis or recession, then corporate credit spreads will widen aggressively,” said Riddell.

While France’s investment-grade corporates are performing well, further down the rating scale French businesses with large debt piles in sectors vulnerable to downturns in consumer spending, such as retail and telecoms, have seen their borrowing spreads widen.

The country’s riskier borrowers — such as retailer Casino as well as Colisee and Cerba, companies owned by private equity firm EQT — are increasingly becoming the targets of hedge funds and looking to scoop up high-yielding debt.

Robyn Denholm defends controversial package and says she has ‘tough conversations’ with billionaire about his political posts

Tesla chair Robyn Denholm has justified her decision to offer Elon Musk $1tn in stock, calling him a “unique” chief executive who must put in superhuman effort and achieve “impossible things” to receive the historic award.

Last week, Tesla’s board proposed a pay package that would grant Musk 12 per cent of the electric-vehicle maker’s shares if over the next decade he can octuple its valuation to $8.5tn, boost earnings 24-fold and sell millions more cars and robots. But achieving even half of the incremental targets could make him the world’s first trillionaire.

“In order to achieve the aspirational goals that we have put in place, he will have to put in time, energy and effort beyond what most humans can do,” Denholm said in an interview with the Financial Times in Palo Alto ahead of a critical shareholder vote on Musk’s pay in November.

“This is definitely not a lay up. It’s a very ambitious plan . . . he earns the right to have an unprecedented award.”

Denholm also defended the board’s hands-off approach to Musk’s divisive politics, emphasising his right to free speech and unique qualities she views as vital to Tesla.

“He’s a generational leader. We think that he actually has what it takes to deliver,” she said. “The board’s opportunity here is to motivate Elon to do impossible things.”

Denholm denied that Musk — the world’s richest man with a $419bn fortune — is motivated by money. She argued the package is structured to offer him incrementally greater control of the company only if he adds trillions in shareholder value, whilst forcing him to wait more than seven years to realise any financial benefit himself.

“He’s been very public about voting rights being important to him. I would say that money is not,” she said. “It’s important to note that he could get nothing . . . zero compensation unless you perform against the milestones.”

Musk has repeatedly threatened to leave if he does not acquire at least a 25 per cent of the stock, arguing he needs a blocking stake to fend off activists as Tesla develops artificial intelligence, self-driving cars and millions of humanoid robots.

Denholm said that she finds his threat credible, and dismissed reports earlier this year that the board sought to replace the CEO as “total rubbish”.

“From my perspective that is a real possibility,” she added. “He has other interests in which he could generate significant advancements in humankind.” Musk also runs $400bn rocket maker SpaceX and $200bn start-up xAI.

The board laid out multiple dire consequences if Musk were to depart: losing his “singular talent” and strategic vision, an exodus of critical staff and a drop in the share price. 

Despite this, Denholm denied that Musk represented an “unsustainable” key man risk, giving the board little leverage in contract talks to negotiate the best deal for shareholders.

Without Musk “there are activities in the company that would continue, but our view is the best way to optimise the future of Tesla is with Elon at the helm”.

Despite having one of the most high profile and lucrative roles in technology, Denholm had shunned publicity for most of her six-plus years chairing Tesla from her native Australia. But last year, the 62-year-old former accountant was forced to defend her integrity when a Delaware judge struck down Musk’s 2018 Tesla pay deal.

That too was thought to be unachievable, but paid out in full after Tesla’s value grew from $59bn to exceed $650bn, netting Musk $56bn in stock options.

Denholm has faced fierce personal criticism and found herself at the centre of a debate about the vast wealth and power being accumulated by Silicon Valley’s elite. She herself has made more than $530mn from exercising share options in her 11 years on the board.

In her ruling, the Delaware judge criticised Denholm’s “lackadaisical approach” to governance and characterised the board — which includes Musk’s brother Kimbal, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis, Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia and Rupert Murdoch’s son James — as “supine servants of an overweening master”.

Denholm rejected the allegations as “absolute BS” and “crap” in an FT interview last year. 

The company is appealing against the decision after the package was re-ratified by a shareholder vote in June last year.

With the case still pending, Tesla last month awarded Musk 96mn shares worth about $30bn in what it described as a “good faith” interim payment. Shareholders will vote on the new 423mn share package on November 6.

Denholm has also been cast in the uncomfortable role of overseeing Musk’s increasingly strident social media posts and navigating the fallout of his relationship, then rift, with President Donald Trump.

Many have blamed his divisive politics for alienating core liberal customers and causing a plunge in car sales in the US and Europe. Second-quarter profit fell by more than a fifth and Tesla now faces the loss of billions in emissions credit trading profit after Republicans neutered US schemes and ended EV tax incentives.

Denholm said that it was “tough to tell” if Musk was the root cause of the sales decline, and that temporarily shuttering four factories to reconfigure them to produce a new version of its bestselling Model Y was also to blame.

“There’s definitely obvious sentiment out there, particularly over the period of time when he was part of the administration . . . But who knows?”

When Musk took a role as head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency early this year, his cuts to the federal workforce provoked a backlash, with Teslas being vandalised, drivers harassed and dealerships picketed.

“Protests in a democracy are expected, but violent protests, particularly when they’re directed at employees and customers, to me, that’s not cool,” she said. 

Investors also criticised the amount of time he spent in Washington away from Tesla’s headquarters in Austin. Denholm said that the company asked him not to travel back and forth for security reasons and that he never disengaged.

“I don’t have to measure the number of hours that he’s working to see what he’s doing at the company,” she said. “Quite frankly, he works extraordinary hours.”

Still, Tesla’s proxy statement ahead of the pay vote said that the board had received “assurances that Musk’s involvement with the political sphere would wind down in a timely manner”.

Denholm declined to comment on whether this meant Musk could no longer start his planned new “America Party” to challenge Trump, donate to candidates in the US or abroad, or continue posting about political issues if he wants to get his shares.

“It’s exactly what it means . . . We spent a long time writing the proxy. The words were very carefully chosen and vetted and gone through 47 advisers. So they are the words that we chose.”

Has she ever asked him to rein in his politics or post less incendiary messages for the benefit of staff and the company’s brand?

“The board is very comfortable having tough conversations,” she said. “I have conversations with Elon regularly. I can text him any time of the day . . . And he will answer me pretty quickly.”

“I don’t call him up about every single tweet that he makes. Free speech is one of his and the US’s important principles . . . At the end of the day he’s an individual. He has opinions. He’s free to share those opinions.”

When asked her view about a post Musk made on September 10 after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk which stated: “The Left is the party of murder”, she replied: “I don’t think I’m going to comment on that. If there are things that I don’t subscribe to, I will tell him, but not every single tweet.”

Aena chair says airline is using it as a scapegoat to dodge customers’ wrath over cancellations

Spain’s airport operator has accused Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary of using it as a scapegoat to avoid incurring passengers’ wrath for the airline’s flight cancellations.

Airport operator Aena and Ryanair, Europe’s biggest airline, are locked in an escalating public row over what the carrier calls “excessive” fees, which it says have forced it to cut 2mn seats on flights to Spain and threaten another 1mn summer seat cuts next year.

In an interview with the Financial Times Maurici Lucena, chair and chief executive of Aena, hit out at O’Leary, accusing him of “lying continuously” and obscuring the true reason for the cuts.

“What really bothers me is that they’re not telling the truth,” Lucena said. “It has nothing to do with Aena’s fees. The reason they lie is that they don’t want to face the political and reputational cost of abandoning some regional airports, and in some cases even causing job losses when they shut down a base. That’s the real underlying issue.”

The Aena boss said Ryanair’s goal was to shift planes to routes outside Spain where it could make more money, including by charging higher ticket prices and securing taxpayer-funded support from governments.

“For [Ryanair], the business case includes everything: airport fees, the strength of demand, and public subsidies. Then, from that algorithm, they decide where to assign the planes,” said Lucena.

Lucena downplayed the significance of Aena’s proposed 6.5 per cent fee increase, which has sparked O’Leary’s outrage. The airport operator says it averages out at €0.68 per passenger, though it will vary by airport as some charge more than others in absolute terms.

Ryanair is the biggest airline in Spain by passenger numbers and the country is its second biggest market after Italy by revenue.

This week, O’Leary told the FT that regional costs were “too high”, and the airline was “better off flying at the same cost to places such as Palma [on the island of Mallorca] than flying to Jerez”.

Lucena suggested Ryanair was under pressure to move aircraft to maximise profitability because it is grappling with delays to the delivery of new Boeing planes, which have disrupted its ambitious expansion plans.

Ryanair was hit by the delays earlier this year, but now says it expects to receive most of the new planes this autumn and the remainder early in the new year — well ahead of bookings for next summer.

Ryanair says it will run no winter flights to some Spanish airports including Santiago de Compostela, where the airline accounted for 42 per cent of all passengers in the eight months to the end of August, according to Aena. At other airports where it plans to cut flights, including Vigo, Jerez and Tenerife, Ryanair has a smaller presence.

“When you cancel a route from an airport, especially if it’s a small airport, it doesn’t look good in the eyes of the public because people are used to being able to take that Ryanair flight,” Lucena said.

Due in part to rising traffic at bigger airports such as Málaga and Palma de Mallorca, Ryanair’s passenger numbers in Spain have grown this year, rising 5.1 per cent from a year ago to 47.2mn in the eight months to the end of August, Aena said.

Lucena, a former politician in Spain’s ruling Socialist party, said there was no chance of Aena closing any smaller airports, not least because it is required by law to keep them operating.

He added that other airlines were taking the slots abandoned by Ryanair, led by Vueling, Binter, EasyJet and Volotea. “The airlines will fill these gaps over the coming months, but it takes time.”

At the eleven airports affected by Ryanair’s cuts, planned seat numbers for the winter season across all airlines were down just 2.3 per cent from a year ago, Lucena said.

Ryanair has repeatedly clashed with European airport operators over fees — most recently in France, where it cancelled some flights — and the Aena boss lamented its “bullying” tactics. “I don’t understand why they treat us as vassals,” he said, noting that Aena’s €37bn market capitalisation was bigger than Ryanair’s €25bn.

“In Europe there is now a growing awareness that it is not necessarily a positive thing when Ryanair has a dominant share of an airport’s traffic and it starts exerting that political pressure.”

The Spanish airport most dependent on Ryanair is Vitoria in the Basque region, where the airline accounts for roughly 90 per cent of passengers and is planning small cuts.

Spain is “going to remain a key market for Ryanair”, Lucena predicted. “Who needs who more? I don’t know. But they need us a lot, absolutely. And they’ll keep on needing us if they want to serve their shareholders well in the coming years.”

A Ryanair spokesperson said: “If we are lying as Lucena claims, then why doesn’t he call our bluff and cut Aena’s high fees at Spain’s empty regional airports?”

They added: “Ryanair always goes where costs are lower and will happily go back to regional Spain when they stop charging Madrid/Barcelona prices. Until then it’s adiós Aena!”