☕️ Fed just hinted at another hike

Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Finpresso.

In today's newsletter:

🏦 Fed minutes signal another rate hike coming

💊 Canada's Weston family buys Boots for $8.9B

📈 Samsung profit jumps 782% on AI memory

🏭 TSMC revenue jumps 50% on AI demand

💰 Broadcom in early talks to fund OpenAI chips

Plus: 🌍 9 macro stories, 🏢 10 corporate stories, and 📑 6 research & reports.

📊 Before The Bell

• Federal Reserve minutes released yesterday show most officials expect one more interest-rate increase before year-end to tame inflation that has stayed above target for more than five years.
• The September quarter-point hike was unanimous, and 16 of 18 policymakers see another move coming; still, soft recent data, core inflation at 3% in August versus the Fed's 2% goal, makes a hike at the Oct. 28 meeting look unlikely, pushing bets toward Dec. 9.
• Treasury yields have climbed to their highest since 2002, which officials tied to expectations of higher Fed rates, the AI build-out and solid growth, with staff also flagging uncertainty around the Treasury's long-dated debt buyback program.

• Canada's Weston family, through holding company Wittington Investments, has agreed to buy UK pharmacy and beauty chain Boots for $8.9bn (£6.74bn), returning the family to Britain's high street four years after selling Selfridges.
• The deal, backed by investment firm Fairfax, covers Boots' UK and Irish retail, opticians and the No7 beauty brand, a 1,800-store business employing 50,000 people, and ends the long ownership of Stefano Pessina and recent backer Sycamore Partners.
• The price undercuts the up-to-£10bn tag Walgreens floated when it put Boots up for sale in 2022, a process that stalled after bidders struggled to raise funds; the sale needs regulatory approval and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027.

• Samsung reported record third-quarter operating profit of 107.40 trillion won ($80.2 billion), the first time it has topped 100 trillion won, as AI-driven demand for its memory chips continues to surge.
• Operating profit jumped 782% from a year earlier and revenue rose nearly 127% to about 195 trillion won, but the result still fell short of expectations, a sign of how demanding the AI trade has become for memory makers.
• Analysts say tight memory supply and the rise of AI agents, which use far more memory than a single chatbot query, keep the sector's growth intact, while multiyear supply deals give Samsung clearer demand visibility ahead of its full earnings later this month.

• TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, posted record third-quarter revenue of $46.71 billion, up 50% from a year earlier, as demand for AI chips kept driving sales past Wall Street forecasts.
• The result beat the company's own July guidance of up to $45.8 billion, with September revenue alone jumping 54.6% year-on-year, reflecting strong orders from customers including Nvidia and Apple for chips used in AI applications.
• TSMC, Asia's most valuable listed company at about $2.1 trillion, reports full third-quarter earnings on Thursday next week, when investors get detail on AI demand and capital spending plans; its Taipei-listed shares are up almost 65% this year.

• Broadcom is in early talks to arrange roughly $30 billion in debt to help OpenAI buy the custom AI chip the two companies are jointly developing, people familiar with the matter said.
• The plan follows Broadcom's launch of a separate $60 billion debt package benefiting Anthropic, split between a larger senior-secured tranche and a junior tranche led by Blackstone, with no formal process yet begun on the OpenAI financing.
• The move reflects a wave of borrowing to fund AI data centers: Oracle is also in talks with lenders for chip purchases, and SpaceX has begun discussions to raise $40 billion for Nvidia chips, though that deal isn't expected to close until 2027.

🌍 Macro News

• Treasury 10-year auction yield reached its highest since 2000 despite solid demand. LINK
• Treasury fined Amidi $200,000 for failing to report a Chinese investment. LINK
• EU plans quotas to curb Chinese hybrid car imports. LINK
• Fifteen economies signed an overcapacity pledge aimed at China, which abstained. LINK
• Iraq devalued the dinar 14.5% after Hormuz oil disruption drained revenue. LINK
• France will release 10 million barrels from diesel reserves to ease costs. LINK
• Gold hit a two-month low as higher yields and the dollar hurt demand. LINK
• Investors withdrew $26.3 billion from emerging-market assets in September. LINK
• Tether and Kazakhstan will study a tenge stablecoin and tokenized real assets. LINK

🏢 Corporate News

• Amazon plans fewer than 1,000 white-collar job cuts across three countries. LINK
• DoD conditionally backs Wolfspeed with up to $1.5 billion in loans. LINK
• Manus raised $500 million-plus in its first round after Beijing blocked Meta's deal. LINK
• Webull shares fell 18% after a congressional panel called it a China-linked security risk. LINK
• Chevron transfers its Hess Midstream stake, shedding about $3.7 billion in debt. LINK
• Apollo joins Uniper bidding, potentially valuing the gas importer at €10 billion. LINK
• HSBC plans cuts to up to 70% of its UK financial advisers. LINK
• Ripple enters leveraged ETF financing, challenging banks' longstanding dominance in lending. LINK
• Standard Chartered plans Singapore custody for crypto, stablecoins and tokenized assets. LINK
• Samsung Wallet will enable US cross-border USDC transfers on Solana in October. LINK

📈 Stocks

📑 Research & Reports

• Aleph's 2026 SaaS benchmarks: collect the growth, retention and efficiency numbers SaaS finance teams are actually measured on this year. Download the free benchmarks
• IMF warns hedge fund leverage in Treasuries and AI stocks risks crisis. LINK
• Citi says the AI investment boom remains early-to-middle stage, rejecting bubble warnings. LINK
• Europol says quantum computers could expose crypto wallet keys, not blockchains. LINK
• Neobanks' fraud-prevention spending jumped 357%, while losses continued climbing. LINK
• Half of security leaders feel least prepared for attacks targeting AI systems. LINK
• US inflation expectations rose to 3.9%, the highest since May 2023. LINK

📅 Market Calendar

💬 How did you find today's edition?

We read every reply — just reply to this email and let us know how we can improve!