United States President Donald Trump was awarded the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize ahead of the draw for the FIFA World Cup 2026 set to take place in Washington DC.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino said the prize, which will be awarded annually, was given to Trump for his "exceptional and extraordinary actions to promote peace around the world." In his speech upon receiving the honor, Trump said his administration saved "millions of lives" and praised Infantino for his "incredible job" in organizing the World Cup.
Ahead of the ceremony, Trump stated that he believes he settled eight wars, but insisted he was not interested in winning prizes, but saving lives.
Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) is aiming for an initial public offering in the second half of 2026, The Information reported on Friday, citing two people familiar with the matter. The American aerospace company informed investors that it is considering a full listing, which would include its Starlink business.
Earlier reports emerged that the firm considers launching a sale of shares held by investors and employees that would value the business at $800 billion, quadruple its valuation in a sale last summer, in what would make it the most valuable private corporation.
The United States Supreme Court decided on Friday to hear a case regarding the legality of US President Donald Trump's executive order to end birthright citizenship.
The Trump administration previously asked the Supreme Court to review the case after the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the US president's executive order was "unconstitutional."
The order, which stated that children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily aren't American citizens, was signed back in January and was thentemporarily blockedby a US federal judge. However, the Supreme Court laterrestrictedthe federal judges' ability to issue nationwide injunctions.
Global billionaire wealth hit a record $15.8 trillion in 2025, up by 13 percent from 2024, UBS said in its 11th Billionaire Ambitions Report, published on Dec. 4. This is the second-largest annual increase, after 2021, “lifted by existing tech billionaires’ appreciating wealth and the number of new billionaires across a range of sectors,” the report reads.
UBS’s analysis includes cash, securities, corporate ownership interests, property, and other material assets.
“In a highly uncertain time for geopolitics and economics, entrepreneurs are innovating at scale across a range of sectors and markets,” UBS Global Wealth Management executive Benjamin Cavalli said. “They’re creating wealth as they do so.”
Inheritance was also a factor in the growth of the billionaires’ ranks.
In the 12 months through April, 91 people became billionaires through inheritance, receiving almost $298 billion, and the trend is likely to continue as the great wealth transfer intensifies.
The bank calculated that at least $5.9 trillion will be inherited by billionaire children over the next 15 years, “either directly or indirectly through spouses who inherit it first and then pass it on.”
A majority of respondents, 82 percent, said they hope that their children develop the skills and values necessary to succeed on their own without “relying solely on inherited wealth.”
The number of billionaires rose by 8.8 percent in 2025, to 2,919 from 2,682 a year earlier.
The United States has the most billionaires worldwide, with 924 individuals owning approximately $6.9 trillion. This is followed by mainland China, where 470 billionaires own about $1.8 trillion. India (188 billionaires), Germany (156), and the UK (91) rounded out the top five.
UBS said this could change, as billionaires have become more mobile amid geopolitical concerns, tax policy changes, and living standards.
Debating the Wealth Tax
For years, U.S. and European governments have debated the idea of a wealth tax, or an annual levy on net worth, to be imposed once assets minus debts exceed a threshold.
In 2024, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) introduced legislation—the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act—to implement a wealth tax on individuals with more than $50 million.
“All my bill is asking is that when you make it big, bigger than $50 million dollars, then on that next dollar, you pitch in 2 cents, so everyone else can have a chance,” Warren said in March 2024.
The bill stalled in both chambers. Overseas, politicians and voters have been reluctant to back similar schemes.
Nearly 80 percent of Swiss voters recently turned down a proposed 50 percent tax on inherited fortunes greater than 50 million Swiss francs ($62 million).
The French Parliament rejected a proposed 2 percent tax on wealth greater than 100 million euros ($116 million) in October. Although the UK has not adopted a formal wealth tax, it has announced plans to impose higher taxes on wealthier residents.
Economists have presented divergent opinions on the concept in general. Proponents say it can improve governments’ deteriorating fiscal health and address income inequality. Critics have said that it would disincentivize wealth creation.
In June 2024, a study by French economist Gabriel Zucman estimated that a Group of 20 motion to slap a minimum 2 percent tax on the ultra-wealthy could generate $250 billion in additional revenue.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, speaking at a 2020 virtual event, argued that the United States needs a wealth tax.
“Where we are today in the 21st century, a basic middle-class life is not accessible to very large portions of America,” Stiglitz said. “I think a wealth tax is a good idea because we have so much inequality in wealth ... [that] even a moderate rate like 3 percent on billionaires and 2 percent on those over $50 million ... [would raise] an enormous amount of revenue.”
Economist Ludwig von Mises wrote in “Human Action” that a wealth tax would be a detriment to capital accumulation and a hindrance to wealth creation, since it would disincentivize the building of wealth.
“Capital levies, inheritance and estate taxes, and income taxes are similarly self-defeating if carried to extremes,” Von Mises wrote. “The power to tax is, as Chief Justice [John] Marshall pertinently observed, the power to destroy.”
Years later, economist Milton Friedman also said a wealth levy would punish saving and investment because it would incentivize the affluent “to dissipate wealth.”
“Where do you get the factories?” Friedman said during a university lecture in the 1970s. “Where do you get the machines? Where do you get the capital investment? Where do you get the incentive to improve technology?”
According to Friedman, a wealth tax would be on top of all the other taxes wealthier households already pay.
The Tax Foundation concluded in 2024 that wealth taxes would produce unintended consequences, including job destruction, reduced capital and innovation, slower economic activity, and higher administrative costs. This would result in little revenue being generated, it said.
Bristol Myers Squibb has taken CAR-T therapy of blood cancers into new territory, after getting FDA approval for Breyanzi as a treatment for relapsed or refractory marginal zone lymphoma (MZL).
CD19-targeted therapy Breyanzi (lisocabtagene maraleucel) can now be used to treat adults with MZL – a rare and form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) – who have previously received at least two lines of systemic therapy. MZL accounts for approximately 7% of all B-cell NHL cases in the US.
It is the seventh FDA approval across five blood cancer types for Breyanzi – coming after it was previously cleared for indications in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL), large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL), follicular lymphoma (FL), and mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) – and will add to the growth momentum for the CAR-T, which is poised to break the $1 billion sales threshold this year.
The approval is based on an MZL cohort in the TRANSCEND FL study, an open-label, single-arm trial. Among 66 patients who received a single infusion of BMS's CAR-T, 95.5% of patients experienced a response to treatment, and 62.1% of patients had a complete response without signs of MZL on imaging scans. According to the FDA, the responses were durable over a median follow-up of 21.6 months.
MZL is classed as an indolent (slow-growing) form of NHL, with most patients getting a favourable outcome from initial treatment, but it can develop into a more aggressive disease.
"Patients living with marginal zone lymphoma […] generally see success with initial therapy, but a subset of patients ultimately experience multiple relapses over the course of many years, creating a pressing need for new treatment options with durable outcomes," said Lia Palomba, a TRANSCEND FL study investigator and lymphoma and cell therapy specialist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in the US.
She added that the new approval "is a significant advancement in redefining the treatment landscape and providing patients with an option that has demonstrated high rates of responses with an established safety profile."
Sales of Breyanzi doubled in the first nine months of 2025 to reach $966 million, of which $709 million came from the US market.
With the ASH congress due to start at the weekend, an important trial readout for Breyanzi could be a head-to-head comparison of the CAR-T with Lyell Immunopharma's experimental CD19/CD20-directed bispecific CAR-T – rondecabtagene autoleucel (ronde-cel) – as second-line therapy for aggressive (LBCL).
The phase 1/2 study is also seeing how Lyell's therapy compares with Gilead's CD9-targeted CAR-T Yescarta (axicabtagene ciloleucel).
Commissioner Marty Makary said that the FDA will soon start requiring only one pivotal trial, instead of two, for companies seeking approval for new drugs.
The FDA will begin asking for only one pivotal clinical trial instead of the two that has long been standard before considering new drugs for approval.
“You can achieve the same statistical power with one trial as you would with two,” FDA commissioner Marty Makary told STAT, which broke the news on Thursday.
The change is still in the works and will be finalized in the next three to six months. However, the idea is already making waves. The push to make the idea public apparently was part of the reason that Richard Pazdur, who had just taken the helm as head of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, suddenly decided to retire.
Calling it the “biggest jailbreak in biotech history,” biopharma consultant David Alderman was enthusiastic about the change.
“Makary just dropped a regulatory acceleration warhead in the middle of every portfolio model in the industry,” Alderman wrote in a post on LinkedIn, noting that in lowering the bar for data needed for approval, companies could save years of planning and billions in cost reductions.
The reaction from Wall Street was more mixed, with benefits clearly arrayed for drugmakers but confusion remaining at the regulatory level.
“While the FDA has increasingly shown flexibility in recent years, particularly for rare diseases and areas of significant unmet need, indications with large, heterogeneous populations and multiple existing therapies have historically required stronger evidence,” Truist analysts wrote in a note to investors Thursday.
Nevertheless, “while we are concerned about the long-term risks that a lower approval threshold may introduce,” a litany of companies with their eyes on FDA approvals could stand to benefit from the change, the analysts noted.
Truist pointed to Biogen as one example, saying that the company could seek approval on the basis of the positive Phase III trial data already in hand for dapirolizumab pegol in systemic lupus erythematosus.
Another example provided was Cytokinetics, which is testing ulcamten in a Phase II trial in patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction and could hypothetically get across the FDA finish line with just a single Phase III trial—particularly notable “in a space historically requiring multiple large studies,” the analysts wrote.
However, many questions remained. The analysts pointed out, for example, that the FDA already allows companies the flexibility to submit data from one late-stage trial under some circumstances. It’s also not clear under what conditions the agency would still ask for two trials.
Furthermore, companies planning global launches will likely run multiple trials anyway in order to satisfy the requirements for ex-U.S. nations, Truist said.
Paramount’s interest spurred a formal sale process — bringing Comcast and Netflix into the mix — which ultimately doubled the value of Warner Bros. Discovery shares and culminated, at least for the moment, in Paramount losing out in the bidding war it started.
On Friday, Netflix announced a deal to acquire HBO Max and the famed Warner Bros. film studio for $27.75 per share, or an equity value of $72 billion. WBD will move forward with a plan to separate out its pay-TV networks, such as CNN and TNT Sports, before the deal closes.
Instead of supercharging Paramount, just months after gaining control of the company through a merger with Skydance, Ellison effectively handed a prized jewel of the media and entertainment industry to its most dominant player, strengthening Netflix’s reach and stripping Paramount and Comcast’s NBCUniversal of an obvious merger target.
“It wasn’t for sale before, and they certainly hadn’t cleaned up the assets or separated the assets in the way they have right now,” said Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos in a conference call Friday morning after announcing the deal. “I think that kind of goes to the ‘why now.’”
Ellison jump-started a process that has made a lot of money for Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, WBD’s executive team and its shareholders.
Zaslav’s share
Zaslav currently owns more than 4.2 million shares of Warner Bros. Discovery, with another 6.2 million shares that would be delivered to him in the future via previously granted stock awards, according to Equilar. Zaslav also has a grant of almost 20.9 million options with an exercise price of $10.16, Equilar found.
Based on the Netflix-WBD transaction price of $27.75 per share, all of that adds up to more than $554 million for the WBD CEO.
Factoring in another 4 million shares that Zaslav is set to receive in January, according to a person close to the situation who declined to be named speaking about the executive’s holdings, the true total is closer to $660 million.
For shareholders, the sale process has brought a similar windfall. Warner Bros. Discovery stock closed at $12.54 on Sept. 10, the day before The Wall Street Journal reported Paramount was preparing a bid for the company.
On Friday morning, Warner Bros. Discovery shares were up almost 3% to more than $25 apiece. That’s more than double Warner Bros. Discovery’s unaffected sale process price and a return to 2022 levels when WarnerMedia and Discovery first merged.
That’s vindication for Zaslav, who has spent nearly four years coming under fire from Hollywood and investors for failing to deliver for shareholders. With Friday’s announcement, he’s effectively pulled victory from the jaws of defeat.
And still, Paramount is likely not done with its pursuit of buying all of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Paramount’s hostile play
Ellison has wasted no time at the helm of Paramount Skydance, transforming the company through deals and acquisitions.
Ellison’s hunt for Warner Bros. Discovery was his biggest endeavor since taking control of the company.
Paramount’s lawyers sent a letter to Warner Bros. Discovery this week, first reported by CNBC, claiming the sale process had been rigged in Netflix’s direction. Paramount has accused Warner Bros. Discovery of failing to properly consider its offer of $30, all-cash, and instead selling to Netflix as a predetermined outcome.
Netflix made an initial bid for WBD’s studio and streaming assets of $27 a share, according to a person familiar with the matter. That trumped Paramount’s offer at the time and turned the trajectory of the sales talks in Netflix’s direction, said the person, who asked not to be named because the discussions were private.
Paramount was the only bidder interested in acquiring all of WBD’s assets — the film studio, streaming service and TV networks. It has maintained that its offer is superior.
Paramount’s executives and advisors valued the Discovery Global networks portfolio at close to $2 a share, based on its predicted trading multiple and estimated leverage ratio, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the discussions were private.
Warner Bros. Discovery believes Discovery Global could have a value of $3 per share or more if it trades well in the public markets, according to other people with direct knowledge of the matter.
Paramount has also argued there are tax efficiencies for shareholders in acquiring the whole company rather than buying only a portion of it, and that Netflix’s bid comes with steeper regulatory risk. The Trump administration’s view of the proposed combination is one of “heavy skepticism,” CNBC reported Friday.
Paramount offered a break-up fee of $5 billion if the proposed deal didn’t get regulatory approval, according to the people familiar.
Netflix’s bid included a $5.8 billion break-up fee in case the deal doesn’t get regulatory approval, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Friday.
Paramount is now weighing its options about whether to go straight to shareholders with one more improved bid — perhaps even higher than the $30-per-share, all-cash offer it submitted to WBD this week.
If it does, Netflix would have a chance to match that bid. The end result would mean even more money for WBD shareholders — and more money for Zaslav.
