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A lean-looking Elon Musk revealed Wednesday that he uses Mounjaro — after previously expressing support for similar weight-loss drugs as a means to curb America’s obesity epidemic.

The billionaire Tesla, SpaceX and X boss made the admission in a social media post, where he included an image of himself donning a Santa Claus suit and flowing white beard.

Musk dubbed himself “Ozempic Santa” in the X post, noting it’s “Like Cocaine Bear, but Santa and Ozempic!”

“Technically, Mounjaro, but that doesn’t have the same ring to it,” he clarified.

Mounjaro, like Ozempic, is a GLP-1 inhibitor – a class of drugs developed to help people with diabetes regulate their blood glucose and insulin levels.

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However, Americans have increasingly been using GLP-1 inhibitors to successfully shed pounds.

Musk, 53, noted that he prefers Mounjaro to Ozempic because taking “high doses” of the latter drug made him “fart & burp like Barney from the Simpson’s.”

“Mounjaro seems to have fewer side effects and be more effective,” the incoming head of President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Governmental Efficiency said.

Musk has long argued for widespread use of GLP-1 inhibitors to combat obesity – a position that clashes with Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s stance on the medication.

Kennedy, 70, has contended that getting Americans to eat healthier would be a more cost-effective way of handling the obesity crisis.

Musk’s support for GLP-1 inhibitors has earned him praise from the liberal hosts of “The View,” one of whom, Whoopi Goldberg, has also admitted taking Mounjaro.

“Elon’s right on this!” Goldberg declared during a discussion earlier this month on the division between the incoming DOGE chief and HHS secretary.

The 69-year-old comedian later showed off her own trim figure after revealing to the audience that she weighed close to 300 pounds two years ago before she started taking Mounjaro.

Musk, who has publicly proclaimed that he doesn’t like working out, previously admitted to using Wegovy, another GLP-1 inhibitor, in 2022.

Processing the increasing mountain of unwanted, used or damaged goods is hitting profits

Record US online spending on Black Friday provided a rare bright spot for retailers. There is more to come. Consumers are expected to spend $240.8bn on internet shopping this holiday season, an 8.4 per cent increase from the same period the previous year, according to Adobe Analytics.

But there is a downside to the ease with which Americans can fill up their digital carts these days: the deluge of merchandise returns. It has become a multibillion-dollar problem for the retail industry. Investors should take note.

Online purchases have long had higher return rates than sales at bricks-and-mortar stores. When you cannot try on or see a product in person before buying, you are more likely to change your mind about your purchase. 

Americans returned 17.3 per cent of their online purchases last year compared with just 10 per cent of purchases made in-store, according to the National Retail Federation. Returns accounted for $743bn — or 14.5 per cent — of the $5.13tn of retail sales reported in 2023. That is up from 8.8 per cent of total retail sales in 2012.

For retailers that have seen their margins eroded by the continuing arms race in free shipping, being on the hook to foot the bill for processing the mountain of unwanted, used or damaged goods only compounds their pain. A returned item may no longer be sellable by the time a customer returns it. This means the item ends up in the discount bin, hurting profits. All this makes returns unpredictable and hard to account for on a company’s balance sheet. 

This is especially true with clothing, where shoppers tend to order an item in different sizes and colours and return the ones they don’t like. There is even a word for it: “bracketing”. For some online apparel retailers, returns now average 40 per cent of sales.

To cut return costs, which can sometimes be more than the item itself, some retailers have reinstated fees or shrunk their refund windows. Others such as Target or Chewy are simply telling customers to keep or donate the items they want to return. Amazon has added a “frequently returned item” label to some of its listings. Retailers are also investing in technology and hiring third parties such as B-Stock to help speed up resales. 

They need all the help they can get. The economics of US online retailing — where customers expect free shipping and easy returns — are tough. The growth in internet shopping is here to stay. Retailers that can keep their return rate low will have an edge.

Even as Telegram faces legal scrutiny and grapples with billions in debt, it is set to be profitable for the first time as it tries cryptocurrencies, subscriptions and ads.

In recent months, Telegram, the lightly moderated social media app, has held discussions with investors who lent it more than $2 billion. The goal: to reassure them that the company remains a viable bet after its founder, Pavel Durov, was arrested in France in August on charges related to illicit activities on the platform.

In the conversations, Telegram told investors that it was tackling its legal troubles head-on by policing more user-generated content. The company also said it had paid down a “meaningful amount” of its debt, according to an investor in the talks who was not authorized to discuss confidential information.

Telegram has been under increasing scrutiny around the world this year for hosting illicit content from child predators, drug traffickers and other criminals. The company also faces pressure another way: to prove it can make money.

For years, skeptics have questioned if a platform known for hosting toxic material could turn a profit. Unlike social media companies such as Meta, Telegram took an unusual business path: It did not raise money from venture capitalists, sell advertising based on user data or hire aggressively to accelerate growth. Instead, it relied on Mr. Durov’s fame and fortune to sustain its business, took on debt and barreled into the cryptocurrency market.

Now Telegram is out to show it has found its financial footing so it can move past its legal and regulatory woes, stay independent and eventually hold an initial public offering. It has expanded its content moderation efforts, with more than 750 contractors who police content. It has introduced advertising, subscriptions and video services. And it has used cryptocurrency to pay down its debt and shore up its finances.

The result: Telegram is set to be profitable this year for the first time, according to a person with knowledge of the finances who declined to be identified discussing internal figures. Revenue is on track to surpass $1 billion, up from nearly $350 million last year, the person said. Telegram also has about $500 million in cash reserves, not including crypto assets.

Telegram has nearly 1 billion users, including 12 million subscribers who pay about $5 a month for added features. More than half of its revenue this year came from advertising, the person said, after attracting larger brands such as Samsung. It also plans to expand ads within public channels that attract more than one trillion views a month. Telegram was valued at more than $30 billion earlier this year.

Telegram has been helped by cryptocurrencies in particular, two people said. The company sold hundreds of millions of dollars of digital assets this year, including Toncoin, a virtual currency that was partly built inside Telegram and is now run by outside developers. It has floated new crypto-focused ideas like allowing users to mine cryptocurrencies and exchange them through third-party applications on Telegram.

“Telegram needs a sustainable business model to continue operating as a self-sufficient company,” said Raúl Castañón, a senior analyst for S&P Global Market Intelligence, who has tracked Telegram for the past decade. “They have already done what I consider the most challenging part, which is getting a really sizable user base.”

In a statement, the company said its “priority is the long-term health and sustainability of Telegram’s ecosystem by expanding our monetization efforts, investing in content moderation tools and — most importantly — remaining a neutral platform focused on protecting the privacy of our users.”

The Financial Times earlier reported Telegram’s digital asset sales and valuation.

Yet as Mr. Durov tries to transform Telegram into a mainstream business, he faces a balancing act: how to dial back the platform’s anything-goes approach so it appeals to advertisers and investors, while maintaining the allegiances of users who seek a digital free-speech space.

Mr. Durov’s legal fate also hangs over Telegram’s future. The 40-year-old, who has denied the charges in France, must remain there while under investigation and faces a possible jail sentence if convicted. He is Telegram’s sole owner and its driving force. The company does not have an independent board and has not publicly outlined a succession plan. If it is squeezed for cash or cannot develop a sustainable business model, that could force Mr. Durov to take on more debt or sell part of the company for the first time.

Telegram’s business dilemmas trace back more than a decade.

In 2014, Mr. Durov was pushed out of his previous start-up, the Russian social network VKontakte, when he declined to hand over user data to the Russian authorities. After selling his stake in VKontakte, he used the estimated $300 million in proceeds to bankroll Telegram, pledging to maintain sole ownership and not take money from outside investors.

The arrangement gave Telegram, now in Dubai, independence. Under no pressure to generate revenue, Mr. Durov focused on privacy over advertising and other moneymaking products.

By 2017, Telegram was approaching 200 million users and its costs were soaring for back-end servers, product development and other items. Mr. Durov began exploring new financing options that would also allow him to maintain sole ownership of the company.

“We wanted to be independent,” he said in an April interview with Tucker Carlson. “We knew that our mission and our goals were not necessarily consistent with the goals of the funds that could be investing into us.”

His solution was crypto. In 2018, Telegram raised more than $1.7 billion by pledging to create its own digital currency that would be given to about 170 wealthy investors. The funds were to be used partly to develop blockchain technology for making digital transactions.

Investors included the Silicon Valley venture capital firms Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital. Others were the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and Jan Marsalek, an executive at the payment processing firm Wirecard who was later accused of being a Russian spy and is wanted for fraud and other crimes, according to documents seen by The New York Times.

The crypto deal was a success — but in 2020, Telegram was forced to abandon it after the Securities and Exchange Commission said it violated federal securities laws and posed a risk to retail investors.

Telegram agreed to return the money, but had already spent nearly a third of the cash, according to an S.E.C. announcement and a person familiar with the investigation. Telegram offered its backers a partial refund or a promise to repay them with a 10 percent profit at a later date.

Several investors sued. Adding to their anger, Telegram was paying Mr. Durov an annual salary of roughly $12 million from 2018 to 2020, according to records seen by The Times. A private settlement was eventually reached. (Telegram said Mr. Durov’s salary is now 1 UAE dirham a year, worth about 25 cents.)

Around then, Telegram announced its first major efforts to generate revenue, including through advertising. Large brands were reluctant to advertise on a platform known for hosting terrorist propaganda and far-right extremists, though smaller advertisers joined.

Maria Vasileva, 30, who lives in Thailand, said she used Telegram ads to find new subscribers for channels she operates on the platform teaching data analytics. Ads are more successful in countries where Telegram has a large audience, like Russia and Ukraine, she said, but “in other countries, advertisers still need to be convinced about Telegram’s benefits.”

In 2021, Mr. Durov decided to take on debt. He promoted a bond offering by promising investors a 10 percent discount on an eventual public offering of the company.

In several rounds of bond offerings from 2021 to this year, Telegram raised about $2.4 billion from investors including sovereign wealth funds in the United Arab Emirates. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management firm, also owns some Telegram bonds, according to Bloomberg data.

The bondholder who recently spoke with the company said they were attracted by Telegram’s large user base and growth. Prices for Telegram’s bonds fell after Mr. Durov’s arrest, but have since mostly recovered, a sign the market thinks the company can pay back the money.

In March, Mr. Durov talked up a potential Telegram stock listing to The Financial Times, with the expectation it would happen by early 2026. But plans changed this summer when he was arrested in Paris.

Telegram declined to comment on I.P.O. plans and said it “remains fully owned by Mr. Durov, who has neither the desire nor the need to sell any equity.”

Some investors remain wary. Two U.S. hedge funds said they had reviewed the company’s finances, but opted against backing it, concerned it would not stabilize its business amid the regulatory and legal scrutiny.

Telegram said it would pay back investors on time. Its crypto holdings have recently been bolstered by the incoming Trump administration’s embrace of digital currencies.

Mr. Durov, who has stayed mostly quiet about the accusations against him, has been working out of a Paris hotel since August. He often promotes Telegram’s new business features to his more than 13 million followers on the platform, along with occasional life advice.

It was another down year for mergers and acquisitions, but Wall Street is optimistic that the lengthy lull is coming to an end.

By most measures, 2024 was a year of fits and starts for M.&A., especially compared with a year ago. And I.P.O.s were a flat-out dud.

For deal makers, there are plenty of reasons to hope that 2025 will be better, including a potentially more business-friendly White House and Congress, investor ebullience and a relatively strong American economy. But there are also factors that may keep corporate deal makers on edge.

The year was mixed for deal making. Heading into 2024, bankers and lawyers said that the overall mood in corporate boardrooms was cautious, given geopolitical uncertainties and questions about the vitality of the global economy.

Deal activity ultimately reflected that. While the dollar volume of deals announced in 2024 as of Friday rose 9 percent year-on-year, to $3 trillion, the number of transactions fell 18 percent, to 46,534, according to data from the London Stock Exchange Group. That’s the lowest level since 2015 and worse than 2020, which was afflicted by the coronavirus pandemic.

While a handful of large corporate buyers were willing to take a chance on M.&A., would-be acquirers more broadly were feeling cautious. The biggest takeover bids announced in 2024 included:

(A potential point of comfort is that the biggest transactions covered a broad area of industries, including retail, financial services and technology.)

Among advisers, the usual suspects — Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase — claimed the biggest share of M.&A. activity, collectively participating in nearly $2.3 trillion worth of transactions. A resurgence in investment banking helped push shares in all three to record levels this fall. And Evercore, an independent investment bank, beat out bigger rivals like Barclays and UBS with $266.5 billion worth of advisory assignments.

Despite a bull market for the S&P 500, 2024 was a year to forget for I.P.O.s. Some 1,167 companies went public in the year, raising $110.6 billion. That’s down about 9.5 percent by number and 1.6 percent by fund-raising volume.

While some issuers were willing to brave sometimes choppy markets — top-performing I.P.O.s included those of Lineage, a real estate investment trust, and Reddit, the social media company — investor caution prompted many would-be market debutantes to wait.

Things are already looking up for 2025. Interest rates have come down in the United States and other major markets, as central banks take stock of relatively favorable declines in inflation. That has lowered the cost of financing, an especially important consideration for private equity firms.

By far the most significant reason for hope, deal makers say, is Donald Trump’s election victory and the likely return of deregulation. The president-elect has managed to reassure corporate leaders and their advisers that he will probably go easier on M.&A. than the Biden administration, notably with his picks of Gail Slater to lead the Justice Department’s antitrust division and Andrew Ferguson to head the Federal Trade Commission.

And for I.P.O.s, there’s a backlog of prominent names that could list in 2025, including Shein, the fast-fashion giant, and Klarna, the payment processor. Private equity and venture capital firms have been closely watching for signs of an I.P.O. comeback as a way to finally cash out on long-held investments.

But there are also areas of concern. Corporate leaders have been anxious about whether Trump will follow through on his threats to impose wide-ranging tariffs, which could drastically raise prices and lead to global trade battles even with close allies.

And then there is the prospect of chaos in Washington, despite Republicans set to regain control of both the White House and Congress. The fierce warfare over federal government funding, and some Republicans’ willingness to buck Trump (and Elon Musk, his influential adviser) on key priorities like raising the debt ceiling are reintroducing the No. 1 thing that worries the C-suite: uncertainty.

President-elect Donald Trump is tapping the technology sector for key roles, and executives from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz are featuring heavily.

Big Tech and big government

The flow of Silicon Valley executives President-elect Donald Trump wants to join his administration is becoming a torrent after he announced more picks over the weekend.

It’s the latest evidence of tech heavyweights’ growing influence on Washington, and the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is at the center of it.

Trump tapped a pair of the V.C.’s executives to high-profile roles. He named Scott Kupor, a managing partner at the firm, to be director of the Office of Personnel Management — a role that could make him crucial to streamlining staffing across the federal government.

Trump also appointed Sriram Krishnan, until recently a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, to advise on artificial intelligence policy. Krishnan is a confidant of Elon Musk, and host of a widely followed tech podcast with his wife. Krishnan will work with David Sacks, the Silicon Valley investor who was an early backer of Trump, and who has been named the White House crypto and A.I. czar.

Other tech names picked by Trump:

The moves come as the tech sector builds bridges with Trump. Silicon Valley has had a reputation of favoring Democrats, but during the election it was home to many of the loudest pro-Trump voices. Since the election, a parade of tech C.E.O.s has traveled to Mar-a-Lago to try to win over the president-elect.

Big Silicon Valley Democrats liked the choices, too. Aaron Levie, the C.E.O. of the data storage company Box who supported Vice President Kamala Harris for president, called the latest picks “very strong.” Other Big Tech luminaries, including Musk and Demis Hassabis, Google’s A.I. chief, were effusive about Krishnan’s appointment.

Andreessen Horowitz has become a key player. Marc Andreessen, a co-founder of the firm, was a very public backer of Trump during the election, saying that the Biden administration was a brake on tech, especially on crypto and A.I. He told the “Honestly With Bari Weiss” podcast that he had spent about half of his time at Mar-a-Lago since Election Day helping the transition team.

What next for the Silicon Valley-Washington relationship? Palantir and Anduril, two big defense tech companies, are in talks to start a consortium to bid for more government work, The Financial Times reports, suggesting that deepening ties are on the cards.