3. Shell's blowout year
Oil behemoth Shell on Thursday reported its biggest annual profit ever: $39.9 billion in 2022. That's more than double its earnings for 2021, and it's well ahead of its previous record of $28.4 billion in 2008. Sky-high energy prices, driven by supply concerns stemming from Russia's war in Ukraine, boosted the results. Shell is following similarly huge earnings reports from rivals ExxonMobil and Chevron. All told, Big Oil is expected to break annual profit records in total. That isn't sitting well with climate activists. "What we saw happening in 2022 is that the oil majors used the high oil prices and the energy crisis to convince investors that the energy crisis should eclipse the climate crisis — and that has caused a setback," Mark van Baal, founder of Dutch activist shareholder group Follow This, previously told CNBC.
4. Getting worse for Adani
One small U.S.-based short-seller has managed to create epic problems for India's Adani Group, a sprawling conglomerate whose businesses include energy generation, ports and food processing, among several others. Since Hindenburg Research, the short seller in question, published a report last week accusing of Adani of "brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme over the course of decades," the company has lost $100 billion. Adani, which is led by politically connected tycoon Gautam Adani, has called the accusations "nothing but a lie." Because of the chaos, however, Adani called off a $2.5 billion share offering, even though it had been fully subscribed.
5. Biden and McCarthy start talking
There's no deal over the debt ceiling yet, but President Joe Biden, a Democrat, and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, got the ball rolling Wednesday. Both sides expressed cautious optimism over the talks as they try to prevent the United States' first ever default on its debt, which could be catastrophic for the economy. "We have different perspectives. But we both laid out some of our vision of where we'd want to get to. And I believe, after laying them both out, I can see where we can find common ground," McCarthy told reporters. The Treasury Department, meanwhile, has taken steps to avoid default at least until early June.
— CNBC's Mike Calia wrote this newsletter. Alex Harring, Jonathan Vanian, Sam Meredith, Ruxandra Iordache, Christina Wilkie and Emma Kinery contributed.
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