Good morning. A huge deal just received the greenlight from bank regulators.

In another world, Capital One’s $35 billion acquisition of Discover getting the go-ahead would be a bullish signal for mergers and acquisitions. But, given a lack of big deals so far this year, dealmakers have yet to make complete sense of the Trump administration’s stance on antitrust regulation.

• Market turmoil: President Trump’s tariff war and his threats to fire Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell are the main overhangs on the markets, chilling dealmaking into April. Still, dealmakers say uncertainty about approvals will persist even if the market calms down.
   
• Not ‘open season’: Andrew Ferguson, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, told an audience of executives and dealmakers in Washington, D.C., this month that he doesn’t believe corporate America should return to an “open season” for M&A. He said his job is to ensure that big companies—and big tech firms in particular—don’t “inflict injuries on ordinary Americans and on their families,” according to a recording of the conversation.
   
• Wall Street hopes: Many on Wall Street predicted that enforcement would lighten up and had blamed the Biden administration and former FTC chair Lina Khan for chilling volumes.

Coming up on May 7, the WSJ CCO Council will convene in London for its annual summit.

CCOs will hear from Sara Chouraqui, joint head of fraud and bribery at the Serious Fraud Office, about the new international anti-bribery taskforce, and from Chris Prevett, general counsel at the Competition and Markets Authority about the CMA’s new powers and its alignment with the U.K. government’s pro-growth agenda.

Senators demand Federal Reserve turn over records on failed fintech Synapse.

A group of Democratic senators is demanding that the Federal Reserve release records it has related to the failure of Synapse, a fintech firm that collapsed last year and left thousands of people without access to their savings.

Synapse was a Silicon Valley startup that wanted to revolutionize consumer finance, helping connect startups that marketed savings apps with banks that stored their customers’ funds. The middleman oversaw billions of dollars at its peak, and primarily kept funds at Evolve Bank, a Tennessee bank regulated by the Fed.

Four senators including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) and Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) say the Fed failed to properly oversee Evolve and should have caught the missing funds scandal.

CFTC pauses enforcement against crypto exchange KuCoin

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is pausing its enforcement action against cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin for running an illegal crypto derivatives exchange, as the Trump administration shifts its enforcement priorities away from the nascent crypto industry.

A federal judge in Manhattan on Tuesday granted a motion by the CFTC to pause its case against KuCoin for 60 days, as the agency waits for authorization from CFTC commissioners to sign a proposed consent order Kucoin supports, according to court records.

• The U.S. has sanctioned an Iranian national, his son and a network of companies associated with them, claiming they are responsible for shipping hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Iranian gas and crude oil to foreign markets.
   
• A federal jury in New York City on Tuesday rejected former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s claims that the New York Times defamed her in an editorial about gun violence.
   
• Three prosecutors who worked on the criminal case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams resigned Tuesday, saying they refused a Justice Department directive to admit wrongdoing in order to return to their jobs.
   
• Harvard University filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration, arguing it has violated the university’s constitutional rights by freezing billions of dollars in federal funding and imperiling its academic independence.
   
• World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab is under investigation by the organization he created after a new whistleblower letter alleged financial and ethical misconduct by the longtime leader and his wife.

Global economy set for slowdown as tariffs herald new era, IMF says.

The sharp rise in tariffs since the start of the year marks the onset of a new era that will see most economies grow more slowly than previously expected, with the U.S. suffering one of the largest hits to its prospects, the International Monetary Fund said Tuesday.

President Trump has announced a barrage of new duties on imports since taking office in January, in some cases provoking counter measures from the targeted countries. In its quarterly report on the outlook for the global economy, the IMF said U.S. tariffs now exceed the highs reached during the Great Depression, marking a departure from the long period of relatively low barriers to trade that began to unfold after World War II.

• Eurozone Consumers’ Mood Darkens Under Tariff Clouds

Trump says he has ‘no intention’ of firing Fed Chair Powell.

President Trump said he has “no intention” of firing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

“We think that it’s a perfect time to lower the rate, and we’d like to see our chairman be early or on time, as opposed to late,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday.

Trump’s comments came after he lashed out at Powell in recent days, writing on social media last week, “Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!”

• The official behind New York City’s deep-pocketed pension funds said he would try to force asset managers to push net zero goals and consider climate risks in their decision-making, in a bid to buck the widespread Trump-era retreat from climate initiatives.
   
• Many U.S. companies are making hard calls as they try to adjust to President Trump’s new trade war with China. Some are halting imports as they hope for a trade truce that will result in lower tariffs.
   
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pushed back on a U.S. proposal to recognize Russia’s control of Crimea as part of a cease-fire agreement, throwing into doubt President Trump’s efforts to bring a quick end to the war.
   
• Suspected militants opened fire in a popular tourist valley in the Indian-administered Kashmir on Tuesday, killing at least 25 people and injuring 15 more in one of the worst attacks on civilians in recent years, according to government officials.
   
• Drugmakers Roche and Regeneron said they will spend billions of dollars to expand U.S. manufacturing, the latest pharmaceutical companies to commit to American production as new and future tariffs loom over medicines made abroad.
   
• Tesla’s net income slid 71% in the first quarter, as the company struggled to overcome competitive pressure overseas and a reputational hit from Chief Executive Elon Musk’s polarizing role in the Trump administration.

AlixPartners has hired a former investigator for the Securities and Exchange Commission for its investigations, compliance and privacy practice. David Makol spent more than a decade as a specialist in the SEC’s market abuse unit. Before that, he worked for 13 years at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a major plan to reorganize the State Department to shrink what he called a bloated bureaucracy and bring it in line with President Trump’s “American First” priorities.
   
• Some of the biggest U.S. consulting firms have offered billions in additional cuts to their contracts after the Trump administration told firms that they needed to pony up deeper price concessions—or face consequences.
   
• The Trump administration is moving to strip artificial food dyes from the American diet.
   
• The top executive at CBS News program “60 Minutes” resigned Tuesday, saying he had lost editorial independence.

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