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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The head of a U.S. airline trade group urged an end to the 15-day government shutdown, citing concerns about rising pressure faced by air traffic controllers who are working without pay. "It's got to stop like now, because every day that goes by, the pressures get higher, the risks get higher," Chris Sununu, the CEO of Airlines for America, a major trade group representing carriers American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, said in an interview. "You're getting closer and closer to those air traffic controllers just feeling financial pressures." (Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Mark Porter)

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By Tom Hals DOVER, Delaware (Reuters) -Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package from Tesla should have been restored by a vote of the company’s shareholders last year, a Tesla attorney argued to the Delaware Supreme Court on Wednesday. One of the biggest corporate legal battles entered its final stage after a lower court judge rescinded the Tesla CEO's record compensation in January 2024. The company is also appealing a ruling by the lower court that rejected as legally invalid a vote by shareholders to restore the pay package.  “This was the most informed stockholder vote in Delaware history,” Jeffrey Wall, an attorney for Tesla, told the justices. “Reaffirming that would resolve this case.” The case's outcome could have substantial consequences for the state of Delaware, its widely used corporate law, and its Court of Chancery, a once-favored venue for business disputes that has recently been accused of hostility towards powerful entrepreneurs. The Court of Chancery ruling striking down Musk's pay has become a rallying cry for Delaware critics. Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick ruled that the Tesla board lacked independence from Musk when it approved the pay package in 2018 and that shareholders lacked key information when they voted overwhelmingly in favor of it. As a result, she applied a demanding legal standard and found the pay unfair to investors. Musk did not attend the arguments, which were held in a special court to accommodate the 65 people in attendance, mostly lawyers.  The defendants, current and former Tesla directors, denied wrongdoing and said McCormick misinterpreted the facts and the law.  COMPANIES SWITCH LEGAL HOMES Tesla argued in Dover, Delaware, that the five justices on Delaware's high court had three avenues to reverse the lower court ruling. They could find that Musk, who owned 21.9% of Tesla stock in 2018, did not control the board pay negotiations and that shareholders were fully informed when they voted to approve it that year. They could determine that rescinding the pay was an improper remedy because it did not undo the work that Musk had done or the gains that shareholders had received. Or they could determine last year's ratification vote demonstrated that shareholders wanted to accept the pay deal, despite the legal flaws. "Shareholders in 2024 knew exactly what they were voting for," Wall said. Greg Varallo, an attorney for Richard Tornetta, the small investor who brought the case in 2018, said if the court accepted ratification, it would allow a party to change the outcome after a court case had run its course. "Lawsuits would be interminable," he told the justices. Varallo tried to convince the justices the lower court ruling was a result of careful fact-finding and based on settled law. "There is nothing extraordinary about this trial opinion," he said. "What makes it truly extraordinary is that it addresses the largest pay package in human history, awarded to the richest man on earth, who is also one of the most powerful men on earth."  Prompted in part by the Musk pay ruling, large companies, including Tesla, Dropbox, and the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, switched their legal homes to Texas or Nevada, where courts are friendlier toward directors. Delaware lawmakers responded to the corporate departures, a trend known as "Dexit," by overhauling its corporate law.  If Musk loses the appeal, he will still reap tens of billions of dollars in stock from the electric vehicle company, which agreed in August to a replacement deal if his 2018 plan is not restored. Tesla has said the replacement plan will cost $25 billion or more in accounting charges.  The company said the replacement award was meant to retain and focus Musk, who said earlier this year he was forming a new U.S. political party, on transitioning Tesla to robotics and automated driving. Tesla is now incorporated in Texas, where it is far more difficult for a shareholder to challenge board decisions. TESLA PROPOSES NEW PAY PLAN Tesla's board last month proposed a $1 trillion compensation plan, highlighting confidence in Musk's ability to steer the company in a new direction, even as Tesla loses ground to Chinese rivals in key markets amid softening EV demand. The justices are also considering the $345 million legal fee that McCormick ordered Tesla pay to the attorneys hired by Tornetta, who held just nine Tesla shares when he sued. The court typically takes months to rule.  Tesla estimated in 2018 the stock options plan would be worth $56 billion if the company met operational and financial goals, which it did. Because the stock continued to appreciate, the options are currently worth closer to $120 billion, by far the largest executive compensation ever. Musk is the world's richest person with a fortune of around $480 billion, according to Forbes. (Reporting by Tom Hals in Dover, Delaware;Editing by Noeleen Walder and Rod Nickel)

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NEW YORK (Reuters) -A woman who says she was abused by the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein sued Bank of America on Wednesday, alleging the bank knowingly provided financial services that enabled his sex trafficking operation for years.  Bank of America declined to comment. The woman, referred to in court papers as Jane Doe, is seeking an unspecified amount of damages. She is represented by law firms Boies Schiller and Edwards Henderson, who previously secured settlements of $75 million and $290 million with Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan, respectively, over their alleged financial ties to Epstein.  Epstein died by suicide in 2019 in jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. The circumstances of his death, as well as his social relationships with wealthy and powerful individuals, fueled theories that others were involved in his crimes.  His case has become a political headache for President Donald Trump's administration. After pledging during the 2024 campaign to release files from the Justice Department's investigation into Epstein, the administration reversed course this year, prompting an outcry from Trump's conservative base and congressional Republicans.  (Reporting by Luc Cohen and Saeed Azhar in New York; Editing by Chris Reese, Rod Nickel)

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(Reuters) -US regulators are set to release a plan to encourage small banks to lend more by easing a set of capital requirements, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. The proposal would relax what is known as the community bank leverage ratio to 8% — the lowest amount allowed by law, from the current 9%, according to the report. Lenders can choose to comply with that standard rather than using risk-based measures tied to their portfolios. The measure, which has been under review at the White House, would be proposed by the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and subject to public input before it can be adopted, the report stated. The reprieve has long been sought by trade groups, it added. The Federal Reserve's Vice Chair for Supervision, Michelle Bowman, said in August the current approach on CBLR is "well-intentioned", but underachieves in providing relief to lenders, according to the report. Although there were more than 4,000 community banks as of the first quarter of 2025, only 1,662 lenders had opted into it, she had said. (Reporting by Anuj T in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)

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(Reuters) -U.S. economic activity was little changed and employment was largely stable in recent weeks even as more businesses reported headcount reductions, the Federal Reserve said on Wednesday, reinforcing concerns about labor market softening.  "In most Districts, more employers reported lowering headcount through layoffs and attrition, with contacts citing weaker demand, elevated economic uncertainty, and, in some cases, increased investment in artificial intelligence technologies," the Fed said in its latest "Beige Book" report, a compendium of survey results, interviews, and other qualitative data from the 12 regional Fed banks. "Nevertheless, labor supply in the hospitality, agriculture, construction, and manufacturing sectors was reportedly strained in several Districts due to recent changes to immigration policies."  Published two weeks ahead of each Fed interest-rate-setting meeting, the report is meant to help central bankers assess the nation's health with more timely, and often more colorful, insight than is available in the official statistics.  With the data vacuum left by the government shutdown, the Beige Book may get more weight than usual in Fed policymaker deliberations, following their decision last month to reduce the policy rate a quarter of a percentage point. Fed Chair Jerome Powell this week said he felt the outlook for inflation and the labor market has not changed much since that decision, though economic growth has been somewhat stronger than expected. Though financial markets are betting heavily on another interest-rate reduction at the Fed's October 28-29 meeting, central bankers appear closely divided and say they are tracking conversations with business and community leaders particularly closely.  "Anecdotes become data," St. Louis Federal Reserve President Alberto Musalem said last week. "Sometimes you have moments where you have been hearing a story for the past six or 12 months, but suddenly a new story emerges and you get these inflection points and, you often get those in the conversations before you get them in the data." The latest Beige Book summarizes information collected from the commercial and community contacts of each of the Fed's 12 regional banks through October 6. It landed on the day that the Bureau of Labor Statistics had been scheduled to release a key inflation report, now delayed by the government shutdown until October 24. "Tariff-induced input cost increases were reported across many Districts, but the extent of those higher costs passing through to final prices varied," the Fed said in the report, which featured the word 'tariff' 64 times, fewer than the previous report. In the Fed's August Beige Book, "tariff" arose 100 times.   Meanwhile there were fresh hints that companies were dealing with a smaller pool of available workers due to the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, as well as uncertainty about or outright softening in demand for their services and products.  "A few contacts in construction and manufacturing noted more difficulty finding workers for their entry-level positions,and they attributed that to reduced immigration," the San Francisco Fed said.   "A South Carolina home builder reported a decline in demand due to increased prices, which they said would result in imminent layoffs," the Richmond Fed reported. (Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

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NEW YORK (Reuters) -A woman who says she was abused by the late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein sued Bank of America on Wednesday, alleging the bank knowingly provided financial services that enabled his sex trafficking operation for years.  Bank of America declined to comment. The woman, referred to in court papers as Jane Doe, is seeking an unspecified amount of damages. She is represented by law firms Boies Schiller and Edwards Henderson, who previously secured settlements of $75 million and $290 million with Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan, respectively, over their alleged financial ties to Epstein.  (Reporting by Luc Cohen and Saeed Azhar in New York; Editing by Chris Reese)

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By Krystal Hu and Deepa Seetharaman (Reuters) -Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic is projecting to more than double and potentially nearly triple its annualized revenue run rate next year, fueled by the rapid adoption of its enterprise products, according to two people familiar with the matter. The company is on track to meet an internal goal of $9 billion in annual revenue run rate – a calculation of annual revenue extrapolated from the current sales pace – by the end of 2025, the people said. For 2026, Anthropic has set even more aggressive targets: a base case of more than doubling to $20 billion in annualized revenue and a best case of as much as $26 billion, the people said, requesting anonymity to discuss private figures. Anthropic told Reuters its annual revenue run rate is approaching $7 billion this month, but declined to comment on future projections. The company has said its annual revenue run rate was more than $5 billion in August. Anthropic debuted a new version of its cheapest AI model, Haiku, on Wednesday, as part of a broader effort to appeal to companies that are looking for capable AI systems that are dramatically cheaper than its more advanced models. The Haiku 4.5 model sells for about one-third the price of Sonnet 4, one of its medium-sized models. AI DEMAND SOARS The revenue projections underscore continued strong demand for generative AI tools among businesses and help explain investor enthusiasm, even as AI spending, especially in infrastructure buildout, comes under scrutiny. Some people worry the level of investment might be unsustainable. Fueling the expansion is the uptake of enterprise products, which are built for organizations. Anthropic has more than 300,000 business and enterprise customers, which account for about 80% of its revenue. The company sells access to its models via application programming interfaces, which are tools that help different software communicate. It offers products including the code‑generation tool Claude Code, which has reached an annualized revenue run rate of nearly $1 billion since its launch earlier this year, one of the people added. The revenue trajectory positions Anthropic as a rival to ChatGPT maker OpenAI. OpenAI said it crossed $13 billion in annualized revenue in August, and is on pace to achieve over $20 billion by end of the year, driven by the continued growth of ChatGPT, the generative AI assistant that has more than 800 million weekly active users. Anthropic's revenue milestones follow a period of brisk fundraising and valuation gains for the San Francisco-based startup. The company was recently valued at $183 billion after raising $13 billion in a Series F round led by ICONIQ, more than doubling its $61.5 billion valuation in March. Backed by technology companies including Alphabet's Google and Amazon.com, Anthropic develops the Claude family of large language models, which compete with OpenAI's GPT series. The company emphasizes AI safety and building models for enterprise use cases. Its models have helped power a boom in code‑generation startups such as Cursor. Anthropic has been expanding sales to governments and growing outside the U.S. In August, it said it would offer its Claude model to the U.S. government for $1. The company plans to open its first office in Bengaluru, India, in 2026 — its second-largest market after the U.S.— and intends to triple its international workforce and expand its applied AI team fivefold this year to meet rising demand. (Reporting by Krystal Hu and Deepa Seetharaman in San Francisco; editing by Kenneth Li and Rod Nickel)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday said he plans to present three or four candidates to be the next leader of the Federal Reserve to President Donald Trump for him to interview sometime after the Thanksgiving holiday in late November. Bessent said at a CNBC event held on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings in Washington that he has narrowed the list of candidates to succeed Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whose term expires in May, from 11 to five. It is a decision being closely watched around the world as it could offer Trump the potential to expand his influence over a central bank that has long guarded its independence to make decisions on monetary policy without interference by elected officials.  "We will have to push out the next round to after the Asia trip," Bessent said, referring to Trump's scheduled visit to the region for two regional summits starting later this month. "So I suspect that will go on in November and then likely sometime after Thanksgiving, in December, we'll present the  president with three or four candidates for him to interview." "At the end of the day, he'll take input like he always does from dozens, hundreds of people and then make a decision," Bessent said. Asked if one of the criteria to succeed Powell is a desire to lower interest rates, something Trump regularly demands, Bessent said: "One of the criteria is to have an open mind." Trump, a Republican, has routinely lashed out at Powell and the U.S. central bank more widely for not lowering interest rates at the speed and magnitude he desires. The Fed cut rates in September for the first time since Trump returned to office in January, lowering its benchmark short-term rate by a quarter percentage point to a range of 4.00% to 4.25% out of growing concerns about a softening job market, and more such reductions are expected at the two meetings remaining this year. Trump, though, has said rates should be as low as 1%, and at times has threatened to try to remove Powell for not abiding by his demands. In August he took the unprecedented step of attempting to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, over so-far unproven allegations of mortgage fraud. Cook, who denies the allegations, has sued to retain her position, and the case will be heard by the Supreme Court in January. PROCESS TO REPLACE POWELL COULD STRETCH INTO NEXT YEAR Bessent's remarks suggest the process for installing a replacement to Powell – including the required confirmation by the U.S. Senate – could stretch into next year. Powell was originally appointed to the Fed Board of Governors by former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and elevated to Fed chair by Trump in 2018, but Trump soon soured on him. Trump has appointed three of the other seven Fed Board members, including the recent addition of his Council of Economic Advisers director Stephen Miran to fill a seat unexpectedly vacated by the departure in August of Adriana Kugler from the board. Miran's seat expires at the end of January, and Cook remains in place while the case over her firing continues, which may complicate how Bessent proceeds with selecting a successor. CNBC and others have reported that two of the five remaining candidates are currently on the board – Trump's other two appointees, Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman and Governor Christopher Waller. Opting for one of them would allow Trump to consider reappointing Miran to a full 14-year term. But picking one of the other three reported finalists – National Economic Council Chair Kevin Hassett, former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh or investment firm BlackRock's chief investment officer for fixed income Rick Rieder – would likely require having a vacant seat, and Miran's is the only one set to expire in the near term. Powell, meanwhile, has not made clear whether he will remain on the Fed board after his term as chair expires in May. His board seat term extends to January 31, 2028, and he could choose to serve that out, although no former chair has remained since Marriner Eccles stayed on the board for three years after stepping down as chair in 1948. (Reporting by David Lawder; Writing by Dan Burns; Editing by Paul Simao and Andrea Ricci)

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By Krystal Hu and Deepa Seetharaman (Reuters) -Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic is projecting to more than double and potentially nearly triple its annualized revenue run rate next year, fueled by the rapid adoption of its enterprise products, according to two people familiar with the matter. The company is on track to meet an internal goal of $9 billion in annual revenue run rate – a calculation of annual revenue extrapolated from the current sales pace – by the end of 2025, the people said. For 2026, Anthropic has set even more aggressive targets: a base case of more than doubling to $20 billion in annualized revenue and a best case of as much as $26 billion, the people said, requesting anonymity to discuss private figures. Anthropic told Reuters its annual revenue run rate is approaching $7 billion this month, but declined to comment on future projections. The company has said its annual revenue run rate was more than $5 billion in August. Anthropic debuted a new version of its cheapest AI model, Haiku, on Wednesday, as part of a broader effort to appeal to companies that are looking for capable AI systems that are dramatically cheaper than its more advanced models. The Haiku 4.5 model sells for about one-third the price of Sonnet 4, one of its medium-sized models. AI DEMAND SOARS The revenue projections underscore continued strong demand for generative AI tools among businesses and help explain investor enthusiasm, even as AI spending, especially in infrastructure buildout, comes under scrutiny. Some people worry the level of investment might be unsustainable. Fueling the expansion is the uptake of enterprise products, which are built for organizations. Anthropic has more than 300,000 business and enterprise customers, which account for about 80% of its revenue. The company sells access to its models via application programming interfaces, which are tools that help different software communicate. It offers products including the code‑generation tool Claude Code, which has reached an annualized revenue run rate of nearly $1 billion since its launch earlier this year, one of the people added. The revenue trajectory positions Anthropic as a rival to ChatGPT maker OpenAI. OpenAI said it crossed $13 billion in annualized revenue in August, and is on pace to achieve over $20 billion by end of the year, driven by the continued growth of ChatGPT, the generative AI assistant that has more than 800 million weekly active users. Anthropic's revenue milestones follow a period of brisk fundraising and valuation gains for the San Francisco-based startup. The company was recently valued at $183 billion after raising $13 billion in a Series F round led by ICONIQ, more than doubling its $61.5 billion valuation in March. Backed by technology companies including Alphabet's Google and Amazon.com, Anthropic develops the Claude family of large language models, which compete with OpenAI's GPT series. The company emphasizes AI safety and building models for enterprise use cases. Its models have helped power a boom in code‑generation startups such as Cursor. Anthropic has been expanding sales to governments and growing outside the U.S. In August, it said it would offer its Claude model to the U.S. government for $1. The company plans to open its first office in Bengaluru, India, in 2026 — its second-largest market after the U.S.— and intends to triple its international workforce and expand its applied AI team fivefold this year to meet rising demand. (Reporting by Krystal Hu and Deepa Seetharaman in San Francisco; editing by Kenneth Li and Rod Nickel)

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By David Lawder WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. again purchased Argentine pesos in the open market on Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters, adding that the department was working with banks and investment funds to create a $20 billion facility to invest in the South American country's sovereign debt. Bessent said during a press conference that the facility would sit alongside a new $20 billion U.S. currency swap line for Argentina, providing a total of $40 billion in support for Latin America's third-largest economy. Bessent did not provide details of the peso operation, which follows an initial U.S. purchase on October 9. He also clarified that the U.S. would continue to support Argentina financially as long as President Javier Milei's government pursues "good policies," regardless of the outcome of a parliamentary election on October 26. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the U.S. would not "waste our time" with Argentina if Milei's party loses the elections. Bessent said the Trump administration's support for Argentina "is not election-specific," but a win for Milei's La Libertad Avanza party would ensure that the right-wing Argentine president has a sufficient majority to be able to veto policies aimed at ending his libertarian fiscal austerity agenda and free-market overhauls of the country's crisis-prone economy. "It is policy-specific. So as long as Argentina continues enacting good policy, they will have U.S. support," Bessent said. BESSENT SAYS 'WE COULD' BUY DEBT Asked if the peso operation would be accompanied by U.S. purchases of Argentine debt, Bessent said, "We could," without elaborating. Work on the private-sector debt investment facility has been underway for weeks, but Bessent did not provide a timeline for any debt purchases. "So it is a private-sector solution to Argentina's upcoming debt payments," Bessent said. "Many banks are interested in it, and many sovereign funds have expressed interest in being part of it." The Trump administration has disclosed few details about the $20 billion swap line that it has pledged to Argentina. Bessent confirmed it would be backed by International Monetary Fund Special Drawing Rights assets that are held in the Treasury's Exchange Stabilization Fund and would be converted to dollars. Asked whether the U.S. would assume a preferred creditor status ahead of the IMF or private-sector lenders, Bessent said: "No, that's what China does, we don't do that." (Reporting by David Lawder; editing by Paul Simao)

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