| | In today’s edition, a flurry of M&A activity in 2025 is not as great as it seems, and Treasury Secre͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ |
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 | Liz Hoffman |
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Hi, and welcome back to Semafor Business. In his farewell address last night, President Joe Biden warned of the rise of a new generation of American robber barons, an “oligarchy… of extreme wealth, power and influence.” Well, yes. Whether they got there by their own genius (Elon Musk’s Tesla) or by Washington’s decade of bubble-inflating policies (Chamath Palihapitiya, co-host of the influential All In Pod, has 12 SPACs) is a matter of debate. But the mega-rich are now the defining force in American business and politics. The robber barons are a fine comparison — and it’s worth noting that the pendulum did eventually swing against the trust class, though not before they had built bedrocks of American capitalism that turned into today’s JPMorgan Chase and ExxonMobil. But I’d make a different, more recent one. In the 1980s, a brash set of outsiders emerged with new money and zero respect for the traditional order. Corporate bluebloods reviled buyout artists like Carl Icahn and Ron Perelman, but envied them, too. Their money opened doors and rewrote old rules, and soon enough the establishment started playing by the new ones. “The CEOs of America, at first shocked and horrified by the barbarians at their gates, ultimately emulated them,” Bryan Burrough and John Helyar wrote in their classic chronicle of the age. They learned “what fabulous riches were there for the taking” and began to push for their own slice. That conversion is happening faster now. Nov. 5 was 10 weeks ago. This weekend, CEOs of some of America’s biggest companies will descend on Washington for private dinners at Georgetown restaurants and Donald Trump’s Virginia golf club. They are following Musk and his band of moneyed iconoclasts. In today’s newsletter, we talk to one CEO seizing the opportunity to make an impression on the incoming administration. A final note: I’m heading to Davos next week, where Semafor is throwing some can’t-miss events. We’re also reviving our buzzworthy pop-up newsletter to give you the big ideas, small talk, and inside scoop from the global village. Don’t miss out — subscribe to Semafor Davos here.  Steve Nesius/Reuters➚ BUY: Countdowns. After years of delay, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin launched its New Glenn rocket this morning. The billionaire, who has been chasing Elon Musk’s SpaceX, said there is room for “multiple winners” in commercial space travel. (On the presidential inauguration stage, too.) ➘ SELL: TikTok. ByteDance is preparing to shut down the app’s US operations on Sunday, when a federal ban is set to take effect, barring any last-minute interventions, Reuters reports. TikTok CEO Shou Chew is also expected to attend Donald Trump’s swearing-in. |
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 Elizabeth Frantz/File Photo/ReutersTreasury Secretary nominee Scott Bessent tried to balance concerns about tariffs with Donald Trump’s America First 2.0 policy in his confirmation hearing this morning. Wall Street sees Bessent as a moderating force on tariffs — wishful thinking perhaps — but towed Trump’s line at the hearing. “For too long, our nation has allowed unfair distortions in the international trading system,” he said. He said that renewing the 2017 Trump tax cuts set to expire this year is the “single most important economic issue.” But their fate partly relies on the Washington newbie’s ability to wrangle members of Congress, where Democrats will likely put up a big fight. |
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 Brendan McDermid/ReutersThe head of one of the biggest US defense contractors is making an appeal to Trump’s budgetary hatchet men, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Chris Kubasik, CEO of L3Harris, said the military needs to streamline and centralize its purchasing and reduce accounting standards for contractors. Kubasik’s letter to the new Department of Government Efficiency, the quasi-official group tasked with cutting federal spending, is a model for corporate executives seeking policy changes from the incoming administration. It blends praise for Trump with specific deregulatory requests and language designed to appeal: “Make America’s national defense ecosystem great again,” Kubasik writes. “It feels like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here for change,” Kubasik told Semafor in an interview. “With the openness and the transparency of the [incoming] administration and the desire for change and reform, it didn’t take long internally for us to say, ‘We have to get to the DOGE.’” L3Harris, which makes sensors and satellites, has also aligned itself with Silicon Valley defense-tech industrialists looking to upend the Pentagon establishment. That camp has Trump’s ear: Musk wants to jettison the F-35 fighter plane, and Ramaswamy has urged more spending on drones. Kubasik said in the interview that the Pentagon should be “more commercial” and “open up the aperture and allow more innovative companies to participate.” At one-sixth of the federal budget, the military is an obvious place for DOGE to seek savings, though Trump’s controversial nominee for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at his confirmation hearing that he supports spending at least 3% of GDP on defense, which implies no major cuts. Kubasik said he hasn’t met Hegseth, but “look[s] forward to meeting and working with him and his team.” |
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 Evelyn Hockstein/ReutersNo quiet quitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. In its final few days, the Biden administration is levying corporate fines and bringing new lawsuits that the Trump administration is unlikely to pursue with as much rigor. Regulators have brought home-stretch actions against: - Elon Musk for allegedly failing to disclose his purchase of Twitter shares in time.
- Robinhood, for failing to protect customer data, and wrestling boss Vince McMahon, for hiding sexual-harassment payouts to women.
- John Deere, for allegedly forcing farmers to use the company’s mechanics to fix their machines. (This one has shades of another FTC effort to let McDonald’s franchisees make their own repairs to beloved-but-often-nonfunctional ice cream machines.)
- KKR, for allegedly altering or omitting antitrust documents for several mergers in 2021 and 2022.
- Capital One, for allegedly cheating customers out of $2 billion in interest by steering them toward a lower-yielding account. (As Matt Levine notes, that is essentially the entire business model of banking.)
Some presidential transitions can have a lull on both sides but Biden’s team looks bent on ruling until the end, and Trump is readying 100 executive orders for his first day — from oil drilling to EV mandates to border policy, according to the AP. |
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If you talk to CEOs and dealmakers right now, you can hear the animal spirits stirring. Stocks are hitting record highs, and the expectation of lighter regulation under Donald Trump — who is talking about buying Greenland and absorbing Canada — has companies eying mergers that would have faced long odds under President Joe Biden’s regulatory ax. “People are projecting that things are going to be better from a regulatory perspective,” Paul Weiss’ global co-head of M&A Krishna Veeraraghavan tells Semafor. “I think they will be, if only because it’ll be hard for it to be worse.” But as with so much of the economy lately, the numbers and the vibes don’t quite match up. The $27 billion worth of deals that have been announced in the US so far this year is actually lower than the first two weeks of 2024, according to Dealogic data. And shareholders aren’t exactly cheering takeovers: Data from WTW shows that acquirers’ stock performance in the months after announcing a deal is getting worse. |
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 As the world grapples with economic uncertainty, technological leaps, and shifting geopolitical dynamics, global finance finds itself at a pivotal moment. Digital currencies, decentralized finance (DeFi), green finance, and AI-driven decisionmaking are transforming capital flows, risk management, and value creation. Semafor’s Business Editor Liz Hoffman will sit down with Douglas Sieg, CEO, Lord Abbett and Tal Cohen, President of Nasdaq, to explore how these trends are reshaping the industry and what strategies can best position stakeholders to address challenges and capitalize on new opportunities. Jan. 21, 2025 | Davos, Switzerland | Request Invitation |
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Apollo on Wednesday elevated two key executives, signaling that it was preparing for a post-Marc Rowan future even as it gave its chief executive a five-year extension. The promotions of Jim Zelter and John Zito reflect another reality: lending, not conventional buyouts, is where Apollo sees its future. Both executives come from the credit business and have built Apollo into one of the biggest nonbank lenders in the world. More than 80% of Apollo’s $733 billion in assets is invested in loans and bonds, rather than private-equity investments.  |
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  Bryan Snyder/ReutersJohn Thune and Donald Trump are texting buddies now, Semafor’s Burgess Everett and Shelby Talcott report. The new Senate majority leader and the president-elect have very different personalities, but these days, Republican leaders are well aware that a lack of close coordination will spell political disaster — so Thune and Trump are building a harmonious relationship. |
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