BitGou: Friday Briefing: Stocks fall on Omicron fears and after central banks' hawkish tilt

Friday, December 17, 2021

by Linda Noakes

Hello

Here's what you need to know.

A U.S. judge tosses a deal shielding the Sacklers from opioid lawsuits, UK voters give scandal-hit PM Johnson a kicking, and why Boeing wants to build its next airplane in the 'metaverse'

Today's biggest stories

A man wearing a protective face mask walks past the Bank of England after the BoE became the first major central bank to raise rates since the pandemic, in London, December 16, 2021. REUTERS/Toby Melville

BUSINESS

Stocks fell as investors worried about surging Omicron cases and wrestled with this week's hawkish turn from major central banks in the fight against inflation.

Wall Street banks and investment firms are retrenching from their push to get staff back to the office, with Citigroup, Goldman Sachs Group, Carlyle Group, Blackstone and MetLife among the latest to adjust plans as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus spreads.

A federal judge overturned a roughly $4.5 billion settlement that legally shielded members of the Sackler family who stand accused of helping fuel the U.S. opioid epidemic, a decision that threatened to upend the bankruptcy reorganization of their company, OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma.

Fox News Network lost its attempt to dismiss a $1.6 billion lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, a voting machine company that says Fox defamed it by amplifying conspiracy theories about its technology.

In Boeing's factory of the future, immersive 3-D engineering designs will be twinned with robots that speak to each other, while mechanics around the world will be linked by $3,500 HoloLens headsets made by Microsoft. It is a snapshot of an ambitious new strategy to unify sprawling design, production and airline services operations under a single digital ecosystem - in as little as two years.

President Joe Biden meets with members of the White House COVID-19 Response Team in the Roosevelt Room in the White House, December 16, 2021. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

U.S.

U.S. President Joe Biden appeared to acknowledge that his Build Back Better spending bill may not pass Congress in the remaining weeks of this year, saying Democrats would seek to advance the legislation "over the days and weeks ahead."

The Biden administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to lift rulings by two lower courts that put the president's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers on hold, saying the shots were crucial before an expected winter spike in cases.

The U.S. government permanently eased some restrictions on a pill used to terminate early pregnancies, allowing the drug to be sent by mail rather than requiring it to be dispensed in person. The decision by the Food and Drug Administration comes as the right to obtain an abortion, established in the 1973 Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade, hangs in the balance.

Longtime Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone will invoke the constitutional protection against self-incrimination during an interview today with the committee investigating the attack on the Capitol. Stone's attorney, Grant Smith, said in an e-mail that his client will appear for a closed-door deposition before the House of Representatives committee but will not answer any questions.

Police obtained a search warrant for actor Alec Baldwin's cellphone in the investigation of October's fatal shooting of a cinematographer on the New Mexico set of his Western movie 'Rust', court documents showed.

WORLD

A fire swept through a psychiatry clinic in the Japanese city of Osaka, with 27 people feared dead and police reported to be investigating possible arson.

Boris Johnson's Conservatives lost control of a parliamentary seat they have dominated for nearly 200 years, ratcheting up the pressure on Johnson from his lawmakers, who are in mutinous mood after a series of crises and scandals.

Australian authorities rushed to track down hundreds who attended a Taylor Swift album party in Sydney last week that has become a super-spreading event as cases in the country hit a new pandemic high for the second straight day.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un marked the 10th anniversary of the death of his father and predecessor, attending a ceremony with top officials at a palace where his body lies in state while people across the country held commemorations. Since Kim came to power, North Korea has cracked down on people trying to get out of the country - leaving many defectors without hope of seeing their families and homeland again.

All sides in the deepening conflict in northern Ethiopia region are committing "severe human rights violations", the United Nations said, calling for them to pull back from their year-old war.