San Francisco Financial News

By Greg Bensinger

(Reuters) -Figma said on Friday it was carefully reviewing the EU competition watchdog's statement of objections related to Photoshop maker Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE)'s proposed $20 billion bid to buy out the cloud-based designer platform.

By Ann Saphir and Michael S. Derby

Stephens Inc. Executive Vice President Mary Kissel discusses how Biden can take advantage of China's troubled economy on 'Making Money.'

Biden and Xi Jinping had more in common with a counseling session for a couple contemplating divorce. The premise: Let’s try to keep things civil for the kids. All week, fear of a new Cold War has loomed over San Francisco, where Asia-Pacific leaders are gathered. After four hours of talks on Wednesday, the US and Chinese presidents offered a glimpse of just how hard it’s going to be to manage their relationship away from that course. The meeting at the Filoli Estate, 30 miles south of San Francisco, was months in the planning. But when the stakes are high, and the differences fundamental, even the most arduous diplomatic groundwork can sometimes only yield small victories. The US and China have agreed to collaborate on climate and artificial intelligence, and resume military-to-military contacts. More American students will be welcomed in China, Chinese pandas may return to American zoos, and Xi vowed to crack down on fentanyl shipments. Bigger and more divisive issues like trade, tariffs leftover from the Trump years and competition over technology were set aside for now. Also largely unanswered after Wednesday’s talks was the question of what comes next. There are plans for working groups that will see middle-ranking officials meet occasionally, but no future high-level interactions were announced aside from a planned China trip by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, although the two leaders pledged to speak directly if tensions flared. And 2024, which starts with a presidential election in Taiwan and ends with another one in the US, is shaping up to be a crucial year for the world’s most important relationship.

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has called upon the world leaders to join hands as a global community to construct a future where climate action is not a burden but an opportunity for innovation and growth. While speaking at the APEC Informal Leader's Dialogue in San Francisco on November 16, the minister also highlighted India's environmental leadership in meeting the renewable energy target of 175 gigawatts nine years ahead of the target.

By Joe Cash

Antony Blinken has said the US will continue to say things that China doesn't like, as he defended President Joe Biden's remarks wherein he called his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping a "dictator". Biden called Xi a «dictator», just hours after they met for the first time in more than a year and held candid and productive discussions to revive bilateral ties on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco on Wednesday. When pressed on whether Biden's comments were the position of the US government, Blinken responded that the president «speaks for all of us», CBS News reported.

By Zeba Siddiqui

China’s President Xi Jinping a “dictator". The video of Joe Biden calling Xi Jinping a “dictator" surfaced a day after Joe Biden met his Chinese counterpart Xi on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). Anthony Blinken, 61, visibly grimaced and was seen fiddling with his hands when Joe Biden said Xi “is a dictator in the sense that he is the guy who runs the country that is a communist country … based on a form of government different than ours" at a press conference.

Mining and clean-energy billionaire Andrew Forrest has pledged to plough $US35 million ($54 million) into a new battery manufacturing plant in the United States, as Fortescue Metals aims to cash in on the benefits of President Joe Biden’s $US369 billion ($550 billion) Inflation Reduction Act.

San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has introduced an open-source On-Chain Payments Protocol to its Coinbase Commerce product.

Hardeep Singh Nijjar murder case, Bloomberg reported. “You’ve heard me and the government talk about how important it is that that investigation happens, given that we had a Canadian killed on Canadian soil," Ng told reporters on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco, Bloomberg reported. “So we’ll let that happen." “My job as the trade minister is to make sure that that the supports and the tools that are there to support Canadian businesses and investors in India continue to be available to them," she said at the briefing late Wednesday.

OpenAI is taking significant steps to integrate its ChatGPT technology into educational settings. This move comes after initial concerns that the AI tool could be misused for cheating in academic work. OpenAI's chief operating officer Brad Lightcap revealed at the INSEAD Americas Conference in San Francisco that the company was forming a dedicated team to explore educational applications for ChatGPT.

Xi Jinping, fresh off his meeting with President Joe Biden, courted Indo-Pacific leaders in a flurry of meetings on Thursday at a time of intensifying competition with the United States. Xi held individual talks with the leaders of Mexico, Peru, and Fiji, and he planned a later session with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, all on the sidelines of a summit of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation economies.

Elon Musk to testify for its investigation into his $44 billion takeover of social media giant Twitter, now known as X. In a document filed in federal court in San Francisco on Thursday, the SEC defended its efforts to compel Musk's testimony, saying agency officials are acting within their authority. Also Read |Elon Musk denies report of Starlink IPO plans, calls it 'false' The SEC last month said it was investigating Musk's 2022 purchases of stock in Twitter -- which Musk subsequently renamed X -- and his statements and SEC filings relating to his takeover of the social media giant.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -General Motors' self-driving technology unit, Cruise, has canceled its program that allows employees to cash out shares in the firm in the fourth quarter, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said in an email to employees on Thursday.

By Daniel Trotta

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) — The U.S. central bank must steer between the risk of doing too little and taking the fight against inflation too far, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook said on Thursday, a task made particularly delicate because other global central banks have also tightened monetary policy quickly over the past couple of years.

BlackRock Inc.’s Larry Fink and Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone Inc. were among the top US executives seated at President Xi Jinping’s table at an exclusive dinner in San Francisco, where the Chinese leader pitched his nation as a positive force for world peace.

A fire in a coal company building in a northern Chinese city has killed 26 people and injured at least 38