Donald Trump.
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Wake up to the shifts shaping the future.
From boardroom shakeups and billion-dollar bets to the latest tech breakthroughs rewriting the rules, The Company Brief is your front-row seat to the stories moving markets and mindsets.
We cut through the noise so you can stay ahead of the curve, one bold business move at a time.
Stocks slide, dollar struggles as Trump's Greenland gambit rattles markets
Asian stocks fell on Tuesday, while the dollar remained under pressure and the U.S. Treasury yields climbed to their highest level in more than four months, as a resurgence of trade-war concerns hit risk sentiment and sparked selling in U.S. assets. U.S. President Donald Trump's push to take control of Greenland by threatening additional tariffs - a move that risks fuelling trade tensions with Europe - has led to uncertainty in the markets with investors scurrying for safe-haven assets, including the Swiss Franc and gold. The tensions have revived talk of the 'Sell America' trade that emerged in the aftermath of his sweeping "Liberation Day" levies last April, where investors sell U.S. stocks, dollar and Treasuries. That trade appeared to be gathering momentum in Asian hours on Tuesday. Nasdaq and S&P 500 futures slid 1% in early trade, while the dollar remained vulnerable and the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury note rose to 4.265%, its highest level since early September.MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was 0.44% lower, inching further away from the record highs it hit last week.
OpenAI CFO says annualised revenue crosses $20 billion in 2025
OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar said in a blog post on Sunday that the company's annualised revenue has surpassed $20 billion in 2025, up from $6 billion in 2024, with growth closely tracking an expansion in computing capacity. OpenAI's computing capacity rose to 1.9 gigawatts (GW) in 2025 from 0.6 GW in 2024, Friar said in the blog, adding that Microsoft-backed OpenAI's weekly and daily active users figures continue to produce all-time highs. Separately, Axios reported on Monday that OpenAI's policy chief Chris Lehane said that the company is "on track" to unveil its first device in the second half of 2026. Friar said OpenAI’s platform spans text, images, voice, code and APIs, and the next phase will focus on agents and workflow automation that run continuously, carry context over time, and take action across tools.
Interest rates are likely to stay unchanged as South Africa navigates economic uncertainty
Experts mostly expect interest rates to remain unchanged next week. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is expected to meet next week Thursday, for the first interest rate announcement of 2026. Neil Roets, the CEO of Debt Rescue, said that they believe that, while a further interest rate cut remains possible, the balance of factors suggests it is more likely that the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) will keep interest rates unchanged at the next MPC meeting. Benay Sager, the executive head of DebtBusters, said inflation numbers that come out during the course of this week will decide the interest rate decision. Sager added that for a cut to happen, inflation would have to be really low, and then we would expect the Reserve Bank to have considered some of the global uncertainty and decided that it’s not an important factor.