Business’ Primary Day worries
Business leaders have plenty of global issues to worry about. But on Tuesday, another matter is hitting closer to home: the Democratic primary for New York City’s mayor.
The latest poll suggested that Andrew Cuomo could ultimately lose to Zohran Mamdani, an assemblyman and democratic socialist. Executives are concerned that could have negative potential consequences for the city.
Why executives fear Mamdani: While Cuomo carries baggage like his resignation as governor over a sexual harassment scandal, Mamdani is proposing ambitious and expensive ideas, like a rent freeze, free city buses and the creation of city-owned grocery stores.
How he could fund them is causing agita: raising the corporate tax rate and income taxes for the city’s millionaires by 2 percent. He also wants New York to borrow $70 billion over the next decade, on top of billions in additional planned debt-raising.
Cuomo has drawn support from a who’s who of the city’s business elite, including:
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Mike Bloomberg, who has given $8.3 million to a super PAC tied to Cuomo
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Republican-leaning executives like the financiers Bill Ackman (who called Mamdani “a dangerous and catastrophic choice”) and Dan Loeb, as well as John Catsimatidis, the supermarket mogul
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Wall Street deal makers such as Blair Effron, Steve Rattner and Antonio Weiss
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Alex Karp, the Palantir co-founder and C.E.O.
“Terror is the feeling,” Kathryn Wylde, the chief executive of the Partnership for New York City, which represents top business leaders, told Andrew on CNBC on Tuesday.
Mamdani opponents say businesses and top taxpayers will flee New York if he wins:
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“We may consider closing our supermarkets and selling the business,” Catsimatidis, who owns the Gristedes chain, told The Free Press.
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“I will never move from New York, but there’s a lot of other people that will and are leaving New York,” Neil Blumenthal, the co-founder and co-C.E.O. of the eyewear brand Warby Parker, also told The Free Press.
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Writing about wealthy elites criticizing Mamdani, Loeb wrote on X, “Another possibility is that they love New York and don’t want it to turn into a hellscape like San Francisco, Chicago or Portland.”
Mamdani says he doesn’t oppose private industry. He told The Times, for instance, that he now believes the private market has “a very important role” in housing construction.
But Mamdani said on Monday: “It is essential that we turn out in record numbers in order to turn the page on Andrew Cuomo, his billionaire donors, and the politics of big money and small ideas.”
How things could play out: While the Emerson College poll released on Monday showed Cuomo getting the most first-place votes in the first round of voting, he’s projected to fall short of the 50 percent needed to win outright. Thanks to cross-endorsements from rivals like Brad Lander, the city’s comptroller, Mamdani is projected to eventually win, though by the poll’s margin of error. (It isn’t just polls showing Mamdani might win: Prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket show him up significantly over Cuomo.)
But that just means the general election in the fall could be competitive: Cuomo may also run as an independent, meaning he’s expected to be on the ballot then no matter what. Whoever wins the Democratic primary will also be up against the incumbent mayor, Eric Adams; Jim Walden, a corporate lawyer; and Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate. The Working Families Party, which has opposed Cuomo, could also field a candidate — perhaps Mamdani.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
Novo Nordisk cuts its partnership with Hims & Hers over copycat Wegovy. The Danish drugmaker claimed that Hims & Hers hadn’t done enough to stop marketing generic versions of its blockbuster weight-loss drug, ending a relationship announced two months ago. Shares in Hims & Hers plunged over 30 percent on Monday, while those in Novo Nordisk fell 5 percent; both companies’ stocks were up in premarket trading, however.
Compass sues Zillow over anticompetitive behavior. Compass, the real estate brokerage, accused the giant real estate site of unfair gatekeeping by blocking any houses put up for sale but not listed on its platform within 24 hours. (Compass has heavily promoted an exclusive private marketing channel.) The lawsuit escalates a growing conflict over who controls home listings in the U.S.
New York plans to build a big new nuclear power plant. Gov. Kathy Hochul told The Wall Street Journal that she had directed the state to add at least one gigawatt of new nuclear power, and either create the facility itself or work with private companies. The move reflects renewed interest in nuclear power to keep up with increased energy demands, and will test the Trump administration’s pledge to expedite permitting for such projects.
Is DeepSeek aiding China’s military and evading U.S. export controls? An unnamed State Department official told Reuters that the artificial intelligence phenom is already sharing user data with Beijing and is using shell companies in Southeast Asia to obtain high-end semiconductors not available to Chinese companies. The accusations underscore U.S. concerns about DeepSeek, whose software has been competitive with efforts from top American A.I. companies.
Markets keep an eye on the cease-fire
The state of a cease-fire between Israel and Iran appeared uncertain on Tuesday morning, just hours after President Trump announced a deal. Trump lashed out at both countries and accused both sides of launching attacks, using an expletive, even as he pledged to “see if I can stop it.”
That said, investors’ worries about an escalating clash in the Middle East still appear to be diminishing, as markets continue to point up.
The latest: It’s unclear whether either side had breached the cease-fire, though Israel’s military accused Tehran of firing missiles after the deal went into effect and vowed to retaliate. Iran’s military denied doing so, according to Iranian state news outlets.
The pact was announced hours after Tehran fired at a key U.S. base in Qatar in what appeared to be a carefully calibrated retaliation to U.S. attacks on Iranian nuclear sites.
In the markets: U.S. stock futures are up a bit on the news, as were global indexes. Brent crude, the international benchmark, was trading under $68, returning to its levels before the war between Israel and Iran began this month.
“The past 12 days look set to join the long list of geopolitical shocks that proved temporarily disruptive but had little lasting effect on markets,” Deutsche Bank analysts led by Jim Reid wrote in a research note on Tuesday.
What to watch for:
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Whether the hostilities resume. “The last minutes have shown that the situation remains very fragile,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said on Tuesday.
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Whether Tehran actually seeks to shut the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway through which roughly a fifth of global oil products move.
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Whether there will be any other fallout to the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, including cyberattacks, and whether the Trump administration responds.
“I don’t hear anyone at Harvard saying Harvard doesn’t need to work at diversity of perspective.”
— Larry Summers, the former Treasury secretary and former Harvard president, suggesting that a deal to end financial punishments by the Trump administration wouldn’t necessarily be a surrender. But Summers added that Harvard should not agree to anything that would let the government “micromanage” the university, and an alumni group is urging school leaders to hold firm.
Wall Street’s lesson from the F.T.C.’s ad deal agreement
The Federal Trade Commission on Monday announced a consent decree with Omnicom Group and Interpublic Group that paves the way for the ad giants to complete their long-awaited $13.5 billion deal. (Other global regulators must still approve.)
But the pact is raising questions about how the Trump administration will use antitrust laws to challenge what it sees as political bias, Lauren Hirsch writes.
What the consent decree says: Omnicom can’t base its spending on a media platform’s political or ideological view. It also can’t rely on third-party “exclusion lists” premised on political or ideological views to determine where it will direct advertising.
Still, clients can choose whether they want to advertise on a certain platform.
The F.T.C.’s argument: In a statement, Andrew Ferguson, the agency’s chairman, focused on the risk of coordinated effects — the possibility that a merger of major competitors increases the risk of collusion among those remaining.
This deal would see the ad industry go to four major companies from six. Ferguson argues that the consent decree reduces the risk of the remaining advertisers colluding to steer dollars away from certain media companies.
A question of free speech: While the Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment protects boycotts that are politically motivated, it has ruled against boycotts that have commercial aims.
Ferguson argued that the consent decree kept the First Amendment intact: “No one will be forced to have their brand or their ads appear in venues and among content they do not wish,” he wrote.
The agency has historically approached speech cautiously, given debates about how certain types of behavior increases or restricts the flow of speech, according to Bill Kovacic, a former F.T.C. commissioner.
“It’s a clear effort to deliver on the promise of the Trump-Vance program to use antitrust law to challenge censorship in technical antitrust terms,” Kovacic said.
He added: “This raises the question of whether any effort by the participants in an industry to set standards about what they regard as acceptable speech and what they regard as unacceptable — are those efforts endangered?”
Some critics argue the agency addressed the wrong problem. “This settlement greenlights the creation of the world’s largest advertising agency with no meaningful divestitures, no safeguards for the thousands of workers about to be laid off and no remedies to protect competition in the broader ad market,” said Matt Stoller, the research director at the American Economic Liberties Project.
Deal makers’ takeaway: Settlements to get regulators to clear a big deal are back on the table.
THE SPEED READ
Deals
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Starbucks denied a report that it was considering the full sale of its China business, which has struggled with growing competition and lower consumer spending. (Bloomberg)
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Northern Trust said it planned to stay independent; the bank had been approached by a larger rival, Bank of New York Mellon, about a potential merger. (Reuters)
Politics, policy and regulation
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Representatives from Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo have reportedly met with officials from states including Oklahoma and Texas to defend against accusations that they are boycotting industries like gun manufacturing and fossil fuels. (WSJ)
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“Murkowski suggests she could become an independent in the right circumstance” (Politico)
Best of the rest
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Leading artificial intelligence models resort to blackmail when their goals, or existence, are threatened, according to a study by Anthropic. (Fortune)
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“Bill Gates says he will not fill vaccine funding gap left by aid cuts” (FT)
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Andrew Ross Sorkin is a columnist and the founder of DealBook, the flagship business and policy newsletter at The Times and an annual conference.
Bernhard Warner is a senior editor for DealBook, a newsletter from The Times, covering business trends, the economy and the markets.
Sarah Kessler is the weekend edition editor of the DealBook newsletter and writes features on business.
Michael J. de la Merced has covered global business and finance news for The Times since 2006.
Danielle Kaye is a Times business reporter and a 2024 David Carr Fellow, a program for journalists early in their careers.
Lauren Hirsch is a Times reporter who covers deals and dealmakers in Wall Street and Washington.
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