Prediction market Kalshi reached $1bn in trading volume during Super Bowl

Online prediction market Kalshi hit a daily record on Super Bowl Sunday, surpassing $1bn in trading volume, the company announced on Tuesday.Kalshi’s CEO, Tarek Mansour, called it an “incredible weekend”, telling CNBC that “Kalshi was the biggest brand of the Super Bowl this year, without running a Super Bowl ad”.Kalshi trading volume during the game was up 2,700% year over year. More than $100m were bets on Bad Bunny’s opening song and $45m on which artists would perform with him on stage. In comparison, the platform saw $27m in total trading volume at last year’s Super Bowl

Honeymoon period for new BP boss won’t last long

The clearing of the decks continues apace at BP. The last chief executive, Murray Auchincloss, got the heave-ho in December. Last month brought news of hefty write-downs on the troublesome low-carbon energy assets in solar and biogas. Now comes an admission that the current debt-reduction measures aren’t enough to ease the strain on an over-extended balance sheet. Share buy-backs are being suspended

UK sleepwalking into joblessness epidemic, Tesco boss warns

The UK is “sleepwalking into a quiet epidemic” of joblessness with millions of people out of work and on benefits, the boss of the nation’s biggest supermarket chain has warned.Ashwin Prasad, who runs the UK arm of Tesco, said he believed far fewer people were in work than should be and that taxpayers were spending “an ever increasing proportion of our national income on out-of-work benefits”.The rate of unemployment sat at a four-year high of 5.1%, according to official data released last month.Prasad, who took the role of UK chief executive last year, said there had been a “clear, gradual change” over the last decade of people falling out of work

Barclays boss ‘shocked’ by Epstein revelations; BP annual profits slump 16% – as it happened

The chief executive of Barclays has said he is “deeply dismayed and shocked” at the “depravity and the corruption” revealed in the Epstein files, as the bank deals with the fallout of its ex-boss Jes Staley’s ties to the convicted child sex offender.In his first public comments on the matter since the US Department of Justice began publishing documents related to Jeffrey Epstein in December, CS Venkatakrishnan said his thoughts went out to the victims of Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting child sex trafficking charges. He said:I’m very, very deeply dismayed and shocked by the moral depravity and the corruption that you’re reading about in the latest set of instalments. You know, my heart really goes out to victims of this scandal and these crimes.However, the Barclays boss – speaking as the bank reported annual profits – stopped short of commenting directly on allegations against his predecessor, Staley

AstraZeneca CEO hails NHS drug price deal but keeps pause on £200m UK investment

The boss of Britain’s biggest pharmaceutical company has said the government’s recent drug pricing deal is a “very positive step” but is unlikely to unfreeze a paused £200m investment in Cambridge.AstraZeneca’s chief executive, Pascal Soriot, suggested that a UK-US deal on NHS pricing agreed in December would not be “sufficient” to restart the project to build a research site in the east of England, which was paused in September.Soriot, who has rebuilt the company’s drugs pipeline since 2012 and turned it into the UK’s most valuable listed business, also described the US as “the most attractive market in the world”.During Keir Starmer’s visit to Beijing two weeks ago, AstraZeneca announced $15bn (£11bn) of investments in China, its second-biggest market, and is also pouring $50bn into US factories and labs by 2030.The British drugmaker listed its shares in New York and they began trading on 2 February, but it kept its main stock listing in London

Barclays CEO ‘shocked’ by Epstein revelations as bank deals with Staley fallout

The chief executive of Barclays has said he is “deeply dismayed and shocked” at the “depravity and the corruption” revealed in the Epstein files, as the bank deals with the fallout of its ex-boss Jes Staley’s ties to the convicted child sex offender.In his first public comments on the matter since the US Department of Justice began publishing documents related to Jeffrey Epstein in December, CS Venkatakrishnan said his thoughts went out to the victims of Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting child sex trafficking charges.“I’m very, very deeply dismayed and shocked by the moral depravity and the corruption that you’re reading about in the latest set of instalments. You know, my heart really goes out to victims of this scandal and these crimes,” he said.However, the Barclays boss – speaking as the bank reported annual profits – stopped short of commenting directly on allegations against his predecessor, Staley