(Reuters) -AT&T Inc’s WarnerMedia unit and Discovery Inc have completed their merger, the companies said on Friday.

The combined company, Warner Bros Discovery Inc, will start trading on the Nasdaq on Monday under the ticker symbol “WBD”.

In May last year, the companies set out to merge and become a standalone media business, with AT&T aiming to focus more on its wireless ambitions and Discovery looking to beef up its content library.

“With the close of this transaction, we expect to invest at record levels in our growth areas of 5G and fiber, where we have strong momentum,” AT&T Chief Executive Officer John Stankey said in a statement.

Warner Bros Discovery’s portfolio includes Discovery Channel, Warner Bros. Entertainment, CNN, HBO, Cartoon Network; streaming services Discovery+ and HBO Max; and franchises like “Batman” and “Harry Potter”.

A top priority for David Zaslav, the long-time Discovery veteran leading the combined entity, is to make streaming video as profitable as the old TV business, analysts said.

Discovery On Thursday announced the executive team to lead the new Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), leaning heavily on a trusted group of lieutenants, many of whom have worked with its chief executive since his days at NBC.

Nine high-level WarnerMedia executives, including Chief Executive Jason Kilar and Studios and Network chief Ann Sarnoff, announced their exits ahead of the formation of the combined company earlier this week.

(Reporting by Eva Mathews and Yuvraj Malik in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)

By Luc Cohen and Jody Godoy

NEW YORK(Reuters) -Former Goldman Sachs banker Roger Ng was convicted by a U.S. jury on Friday of corruption charges related to his role in helping loot hundreds of millions of dollars from Malaysia’s 1MDB development fund.

The charges stemmed from one of the biggest financial scandals in history. Prosecutors charged Ng, Goldman’s former top investment banker for Malaysia, for conspiring to violate an anti-corruption law and launder money.

They said he helped his former boss Tim Leissner embezzle money from the fund, launder the proceeds and bribe officials to win business for Goldman.

Ng, 49, had pleaded not guilty to the charges. His lawyers say Leissner, who pleaded guilty to similar charges in 2018 and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors’ investigation, falsely implicated Ng in the hopes of receiving a lenient sentence.

The fund was founded to pursue development projects in the Southeast Asian country.

The jury convicted Ng of two counts of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) through bribery and circumvention of Goldman’s internal accounting controls, as well as one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.

“Today’s verdict is a victory for not only the rule of law, but also for the people of Malaysia,” Breon Peace, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement. “The defendant and his cronies saw 1MDB not as an entity to do good for the people of Malaysia, but as a piggy bank to enrich themselves.”

Ng, wearing a black suit jacket and black tie, showed little emotion as the jury’s foreperson read out the verdict. Ng glanced back and forth between the jury and the desk he was seated at. His lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, hung his head after the guilty verdict to the first count was read.

U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie, who is overseeing the case, ordered that Ng be subject to a curfew pending sentencing, but said she did not consider him a flight risk.

Deliberations began on Tuesday after a nearly two-month trial in federal court in Brooklyn.

‘HARD TO WIN’

Agnifilo said Ng may appeal, depending on the outcome of his post-trial motions and his sentence. He stood by his decision to convince Ng to waive extradition to face trial, saying he had a better chance of a fair trial in the United States than in Malaysia.

“These big cases are tough and they’re hard to win,” Agnifilo told reporters.

Prosecutors have said Goldman helped 1MDB raise $6.5 billion through three bond sales, but that $4.5 billion was diverted to government officials, bankers and their associates through bribes and kickbacks between 2009 and 2015.

Ng is the first, and likely only, person to face trial in the United States over the scheme. Goldman in 2020 paid a nearly $3 billion fine and its Malaysian unit agreed to plead guilty.

Jurors heard nine days of testimony from Leissner, who said he sent Ng $35 million in kickbacks. Leissner said the men agreed to tell banks a “cover story” that the money was from a legitimate business venture between their wives.

Ng’s wife, Hwee Bin Lim, later testified for the defense that the business venture was, in fact, legitimate. She said she invested $6 million in the mid-2000s in a Chinese company owned by the family of Leissner’s then-wife, Judy Chan, and that the $35 million was her return on that investment.

Agnifilo said in his closing argument on Monday that Leissner could not be trusted. Alixandra Smith, a prosecutor, said in her summation that Leissner’s testimony was backed up by other evidence.

Jho Low, a Malaysian financier and suspected mastermind of the scheme, was indicted alongside Ng in 2018 but remains at large.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis and David Gregorio)

(This April 7 story corrects headline to say “U.S. Chamber of Commerce official” instead of “U.S. commerce official”)

By Ana Mano

SAO PAULO – The Biden administration is not doing enough to forge a long-term alliance with Brazil, Myron Brilliant, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s head of the international affairs division, told a press conference in Sao Paulo on Thursday.

“In my candid view, I don’t think the Biden administration is doing enough to focus on this region,” he said of the world’s ninth largest economy, adding part of the reason is the U.S. domestic agenda.

Brilliant said the lack of U.S. engagement across Latin America means “opportunities are not developed (nor is a) long-term strategic plan in the way that we would hope.”

The absence of the U.S. has paved the way for other partners to liaise and do business with Brazil.

“What we have seen in the last decade is a significant rise of Chinese investment and engagement in the region,” Brilliant said. “We are also seeing Russian engagement. We would say that the U.S. has to be present.”

The U.S. is Brazil’s second most important trade partner, behind China. The difference is that Brazil runs a trade surplus with the Asian country, and a deficit with the U.S.

Brazil and the U.S. compete as exporters of agriculture commodities like soy, meat and corn.

In the first quarter of the year, Brazil ran a $3.8 billion trade deficit with the U.S. and $4.7 billion surplus with China, according to Brazilian government data.

The U.S. accounted for about 11% of Brazil’s overall exports in the period while China was almost 28%, the data showed.

“Defining trade in terms of deficit and surplus is a mistake,” Brilliant said. “Important for us is to have a level playing field.”

(Reporting by Ana Mano; Editing by Leslie Adler, Bernard Orr)

By Herbert Lash, Bansari Mayur Kamdar and Praveen Paramasivam

NEW YORK -The Dow rose and the S&P 500 ended lower in choppy trade on Friday, as beaten-down bank shares gained and investors grappled with how best to deal with an economy that could skid as the Federal Reserve moves to aggressively tackle inflation.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note hit a three-year high of 2.73%, helping boost the S&P banking index, which rose 1.18%, after slumping to 13-month lows on Thursday. The index is down 10.8% year to date.

The big rate-sensitive lenders all rose, with JPMorgan Chase & Co gaining 1.8%, Bank of America Corp 0.7%, Citigroup Inc 1.7% and Goldman Sachs Group Inc 2.3%.

Since peaking at two-month highs in late March, the market has trended lower as the Fed signals it will aggressively hike rates, leading investors to reposition their portfolios. Economically sensitive value shares this year have outperformed tech-heavy growth stocks, which often depend on low rates.

“We’re going into a very long-term and meaningful period of value outperforming growth. It’s not merely a cyclical adjustment, but a secular story,” said David Bahnsen, chief investment officer at wealth manager the Bahnsen Group in Newport Beach, California.

“The value-growth story is a big one and it is a byproduct of two things, which is what you want. Growth is overvalued and value is undervalued,” he said.

The Russell 1000 Value index rose 0.51% while the Russell 1000 Growth index fell 1.09% on the day.

Investors are weighing the probability of a recession with two outcomes. On the one hand, the Fed could engineer a “soft landing” with slowing but positive growth, making banks “woefully oversold,” said UBS bank analyst Erika Najarian.

Or a sharp slowdown is imminent, which would cause a knee-jerk bank share sale as “owning banks in a recession is no fun,” she said.

Big U.S. banks, which kick off the first-quarter results season next week, are expected to report a large decline in earnings from a year earlier, when they benefited from exceptionally strong dealmaking and trading.

“There’s always going to be a price at some point where people are going to step in and think things are cheap and they might buy,” said Randy Frederick, managing director, trading and derivatives, at Schwab Center for Financial Research.

“Perhaps a 52-week low was enough to entice some people into the financial sector,” Frederick said, noting the 10-year Treasury yield was at its highest level since March 2019.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 137.55 points, or 0.4%, to 34,721.12, the S&P 500 lost 11.93 points, or 0.27%, to 4,488.28 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 186.30 points, or 1.34%, to 13,711.00.

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 10.37 billion shares.

For the week, the S&P fell 1.16%, the Dow lost 0.28% and the Nasdaq shed 3.86%, as the index was hit after Fed officials raised concerns about rapid rate hikes causing a slowdown.

Shares of Tesla Inc, Nvidia Corp and Alphabet Inc fell between 1.9% and 4.5% as megacap stocks extended this week’s decline as the surge in Treasury yields weighed.

The NYSE FANG+TM index, which includes Amazon.com Inc and Apple Inc, fell 1.76% and semiconductor stocks slid 2.42%, extending the week’s decline.

Robinhood Markets Inc fell 6.88% after a report said Goldman Sachs downgraded the online brokerage, while Kroger Co jumped 2.99% on a ratings upgrade.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.20-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.66-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

The S&P 500 posted 58 new 52-week highs and two new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 53 new highs and 184 new lows.

(Reporting by Herbert Lash in New YorkAdditional reporting by Bansari Mayur Kamdar and Praveen Paramasivam in BengaluruEditing by Shounak Dasgupta and Matthew Lewis)

By Caroline Valetkevitch

NEW YORK – The U.S. Treasury 10-year yield hit a three-year high above 2.7% on Friday while the U.S. dollar index posted its largest weekly percentage gain in a month, helped by the prospect of more aggressive Federal Reserve tightening.

On Wall Street, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq ended lower in choppy trade as investors assessed the economic outlook with the Fed moving to fight inflation.

This week’s release of minutes from the Fed’s March meeting showed “many” officials were prepared to raise rates in 50-basis-point increments in coming months.

The dollar index advanced to 100 for the first time in nearly two years. It rose as high as 100.19, its highest since May 2020. It was last little changed on the day at 99.822, and up 1.3% on the week.

As the dollar has gained in recent weeks, the euro has been pressured by a tightening election race in France, the euro zone’s second-biggest economy, between President Emmanuel Macron and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. Macron is still ahead in polls.

The euro dropped for the seventh straight session to a one-month low of $1.0837. It last changed hands at $1.0853, down 0.3% on the day.

“The dollar’s latest pop is the culmination of bullish factors ranging from geopolitical risk, election uncertainty in France, and the Fed’s increasingly hawkish outlook for interest rates,” said Joe Manimbo, senior market analyst at Western Union Business Solutions in Washington.

In Treasuries, the 10-year yield hit 2.73%, its highest since March 2019, and the yield on 10-year inflation-protected securities went within 15 basis points of turning positive for the first time in over two years.

The yield on 10-year Treasury notes was up 5.2 basis points to 2.706% while the 2-year note yield was up 5.8 basis points at 2.520%, leaving the 2/10 spread at 18.41 basis points.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 137.55 points, or 0.4%, to 34,721.12, the S&P 500 lost 11.93 points, or 0.27%, to 4,488.28 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 186.30 points, or 1.34%, to 13,711.00.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index rose 1.31% and MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe shed 0.04%. (Graphic: World stocks – https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/byprjbamope/Global%20markets.PNG)

French presidential election risk was also evident in bond markets as French borrowing costs rose while yields of other core European government bonds fell.

In the energy market, oil prices rose 2% on the day, but registered their second straight weekly decline.

Member nations of the International Energy Agency (IEA) will release 60 million barrels over the next six months, with the United States matching that amount as part of its 180 million barrel release announced in March.

Brent crude futures settled up $2.20, or 2.19%, at $102.78 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose $2.23 to $98.26.

(Additional reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss and Rodrigo Campos in New York; Samuel Indyk and Elizabeth Howcroft in London; Editing by Nick Macfie, John Stonestreet, Andrea Ricci and David Gregorio)

NEW YORK -Amazon.com Inc on Friday called for an election re-run after workers at a New York City warehouse voted to create the company’s first U.S. union, saying that the U.S. labor board and worker-organizers suppressed turnout.

The Amazon Labor Union (ALU) rejected the allegations made by the online retailer that is the second-largest U.S. private employer.

Amazon made its demand a week after the landmark victory for organized labor, which for years has sought to offer protections to workers at the company. Some 55% of employees who voted from Amazon’s JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island opted to join the ALU, which has argued for higher pay and job security. Turnout was about 58%.

Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement: “We want our employees to have their voices heard, and in this case, that didn’t happen – fewer than a third of the employees at the site voted for the union.”

Amazon also accused the ALU of intimidating workers and distributing marijuana to gain votes in its favor, according to a company filing on Friday.

Derrick Palmer, vice president of the ALU, said Amazon is trying to “demean our character and undermine our efforts.”

The U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) now must process Amazon’s objections before certifying the election result. The timing for this was not immediately clear.

In its filing, Amazon said the NLRB improperly helped the ALU gain standing to hold an election and created the impression that it supported the union. Amazon also accused the NLRB of hampering turnout through mismanagement in the polling area and by allowing camera crews on site that scared away voters.

An NLRB spokesperson declined to comment on these objections but the board has said previously that it is independent and that its enforcement actions against Amazon have been consistent with its congressional mandate.

The ALU pushed back against Amazon’s claims, saying the company did not contest low turnout in a prior union election in Alabama in which workers voted against organizing. The ALU said it was Amazon that had intimidated workers, and the union has filed dozens of unfair labor practice charges against the company.

(Reporting by Doyinsola Oladipo in New York and Jeffrey Dastin in Palo Alto, California; Editing by Leslie Adler and Will Dunham)