Author: News Room

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand is widely anticipated to maintain the OCR at 5.50% The language in the policy statement is expected to remain hawkish. The New Zealand Dollar has room to extend its bullish momentum against the US Dollar.  The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) will announce its monetary policy decision on Wednesday at 02:00 GMT and is widely expected to maintain the Official Cash Rate (OCR) at 5.50%. Ahead of the announcement, the New Zealand Dollar (NZD) trades around the 0.6100 threshold against the United States Dollar (USD), consolidating last week’s gains that drove NZD/USD to…

Howdy! Welcome to Lightspeed, the newest addition to the Blockworks newsletter suite. We are Solana news, analysis and culture, all the time. If that sounds like you, we’re psyched to have you on board. Let’s get into it! Which Solana startups are up next? Colosseum is a new Solana startup accelerator that runs project-building contests and chooses cohorts from among the winners. The accelerator then makes seed investments in each of the accelerator participants in exchange for equity and potential future tokens. The Solana Foundation, a non-profit developing Solana, is a limited partner in Colosseum’s venture fund and contracts with…

Paid days off from work aren’t a guarantee for many Americans, but even when they do get them, they’re leaving them on the table.A majority, 78%, of U.S. workers say they don’t take all their PTO days, and it’s highest among Gen Z workers and millennials, according to a new Harris Poll survey of 1,170 American workers.Younger professionals say they don’t ask for time off because they feel pressure to meet deadlines and be productive, and they get nervous requesting PTO because they don’t want to look like a slacker, says Libby Rodney, chief strategy officer at The Harris Poll.That’s…

An independent advocacy group of McDonald’s franchisees is weighing in on the company’s upcoming value meal promotion, cheering affordability for the consumer, but pushing for future contributions from the company to make the discounted offering sustainable for operators in the long run. “The fact remains that in order to provide the consumer with more affordable options, they must be affordable for the owner/operators. McDonald’s vast resources and financial investment are essential to any sustainable affordable strategy,” the board of the National Owners Association wrote in a letter to membership.The letter calls the McDonald’s business model a “penny profit business, with 10-15%…

Rudy Giuliani has agreed to never again publicly accuse two Georgia election workers of tampering with votes in the 2020 election, a false accusation that he has repeated frequently and that led to his bankruptcy. With the agreement, Giuliani is forfeiting a yearslong verbal and legal battle he’s waged with the election workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss. It also gives the women significant power to hold him accountable if Giuliani again publicly suggests they stole votes to hurt former President Donald Trump, which is not true. A draft of the agreement filed in court Tuesday says Giuliani would be “permanently enjoined from publishing, causing others to publish, and/or…

Trump Media’s just-released (May 20) 1st-quarter financial statements provide the data needed by Wall Street analysts. The reports are especially important right now because the media is currently cherry-picking a misleading number: Negative earnings of $327M. That number includes mostly market-priced stock issuance items related to loan repayments and employee compensation. However, there is a serious problem… Management’s big mistake Because revenues are low and operating income is negative, analysts need to understand Trump Media’s strategies and management’s expectations. A financial report, alone, is inadequate. That is why companies have a public earnings call at the time of the earnings…

In bankruptcy court proceedings last Friday, lawyers for banking-as-a-service provider Synapse Financial Technologies said the company’s remaining employees were working feverishly to restore access for thousands of fintech customers to money locked in frozen accounts and to wind down operations. “It’s been kind of a whirlwind effort by the debtor to try to wind down its own operations and minimize disruption to others,’’ Synapse bankruptcy lawyer Ron Bender of Levene, Neale, Bender, Yoo & Golubchik in Los Angeles told U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Martin R. Barash, of the Central District of California. But yesterday, a compliance officer at the startup…

Red Lobster superfans were desperate to get their hands on sentimental items from the iconic restaurant chain before dozens of locations were laid to rest.Some love the restaurant so much that they wanted to buy their favorite tables before they were gone, according to a liquidator who auctioned off everything inside the stores.Then, on Monday, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Among the reasons: its iconic endless-shrimp promotion cost the chain millions.With so many locations shuttering their doors, the equipment inside had to go somewhere, so Red Lobster hired TAGeX Brands, a liquidation company charged with auctioning off the…

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When Donald Trump first ran for the presidency, he pledged to run the United States like a business.”If we could run our country the way I’ve run my company, we would have a country that you would be so proud of,” he said during an October 2016 debate with his then-opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.After Trump was elected to the White House, he brought along key figures like financier and film producer Steve Mnuchin, who became his Treasury secretary; onetime Goldman Sachs president Gary Cohn, who became the director of the National Economic Council; and businessman Wilbur Ross,…