Good morning.
I'm Brian Curtis and I'm Doug Prisner. Here are the stories we're following today.
Well, a couple of tough angles on the Hamas Israel war. The release of hostages has gone a little closer, according to a Biden aid and Israel's military says a video that they have shows a tunnel under a hospital where there was recent fighting. Let's get to Ed Baxter in San Francisco with all the latest dead.
Yeah, Brian, You're right. Cutter's Prime minister says only minor obstacles to reaching a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas PM Sheik Muhammad Athone saying that good progress has been made in the past few days, and that US Deputy National Security Advisor John Feiner on ABC Echos has heard on Bloomberg by the way, says he can't directly comment because of the sensitivity on timing, but the hope is very good.
What I can say about the state of the talks, and the Prime Minister of Cutter has said something similar this morning, is that some of the gaps have now narrowed, some of the issues that were at odds have now been closed out, but we are not finished. There is not yet a deal in place.
Yeah. Finder says he believes a majority of the hostages are alive.
Though you believe that a significant number and most likely the majority and even the vast majority of hostages are alive. We are certainly operating under that assumption.
And the AID says. The EU says that it's getting aid into Gaza every day through Egypt. Now, EU commissioned President ursavandeleran.
Egypt is truly providing a life line for Gaza, and the European Union is making the full views of this lifeline to address the humanitarian needs in.
Gaza, she says, flights every day. Meanwhile, Israel is facing increased scrutiny over the military activity in and around Al Shifa Hospital, says it is now released a video showing evidence of why operations had to be carried out this way. It shows a tunnel under Al Shifa Hospital. ABC has heard here on Bloomberg, Israeli Ambassador the US, Michael hurst Zo says, stashes of weapons.
We found love of weapons, we found computers, we found a lot of things. We found tunnels. We're now searching these tunnels. They're all booby trapped, but we are in the process of searching these tunnels, and we show our findings to the world while we were there.
We're still there, and Herzak says the hospital continues to function. Roseland Carter and Jimmy Carter's first lady has passed away. Roseland Carter's been a tireless humanitarian both during the administration and after. She was also a mental health advocate of the first Order. She has been the under hospice care. She was ninety six years of age. Russia's hit Kiev with a second night of drone strikes. Ukraine says shot down fifteen to twenty shared drones launch from Krusk across
southern Russia. Ukraine has launched an effort to support truck drivers stuck for days and the Ukrainian Polish cross border points because of the strike by Polish truckers. A group of US lawmakers as black elon Musk and plan to ask him to retract his backing for an antisemitic post on x Congressman Jamie Raskin on CNN State of the Union says, absolutely outrageous.
I thought it was outrageous and dangerous, and you know, we'll be taking action with colleagues this week to write to him to ask him to renounce those comments and to clean up his app.
He says so called white replacement theory has led to shootings and incidents of hate crime. Musk has denounced the report, saying he is not ani Semitic, and hedge fund manager Bill Ackman is defending Musk, saying he is not is not an anti semi that's his word. Says Musk is not perfect, but the world is a vastly better place because of him.
Well, let's take a look at the top business stories of the hour. Open AI's biggest investors, including Microsoft, want to bring Sam Altman back as CEO after the board had fired him on Friday. We hear that Altman is open to the idea, but wants to see some changes, including the removal of existing board members. A deadline has been set for five pm San Francisco, time for the board to accede to the demands of Altman and his supporters.
Before Altman was fired, we're told he was actively working to raise funds from some of the world's largest investors for a new chip venture, an AI chip venture it's could named Tigris. To get the story from Bloomberg.
To Ed Ludlow, sam Altman was speaking with people like SoftBank who are desperate to invest in open Ai and Mubadala, which is the kind of private investment arm of the United Arab Emirates, and my understanding from sources, those two firms in particular really wanted to get a piece of open Ai. But what sam Altman said was, well, you know, now is not kind of the right time for you guys to invest or get in, But how about investing
in this other project that I'm working on. What we know about the project is that it hopes to make what are cooled tensor processing units or tpused.
That's Ed Ludlow. He says that data centered chips can manage high volume AI workloads. We're told Altman's chip venture has not yet been formed and the talks with investors while they were in the early stages.
We're hearing the investment firm Blackstone is now the lead bidder for a huge chunk of property loans from the failed Signature Bank. The story from Bloomberg's Denise Pellegrini.
Sources say Blackstone is the front runner to win a seventeen billion dollar portfolio of commercial property loans from this FDIC sale, regulators sees the failed bank. In March, they've been marketing about thirty three billion dollars in real estate loans sum backed by retail, industrial, office, and apartment buildings.
Others said to have been or be interested in bidding include Starward Capital and Brookfield Asset Management, and investors overall are also watching this sale closely as they try to get a handle on prices in a largely frozen commercial real life state market. Signature was a big lender to New York City landlords, including the owners of rent stabilized and rent controlled units, but we're hearing those apartments are
not part of this possible Blackstone deal. Denise Pelgrady Bloomberg Radio City.
Group could be getting ready for a new round of job cuts. Bloomberg's Leslie Latto reports.
The sweeping reorganization could start as soon as Monday. The first major wave and chief executive Officer Jane Fraser's overhaul to simplify the sprawling lender and shave down five layers of management. The company has said the cuts would begin by the end of the month and continue through the
end of the first quarter. They've not said exactly how many people would lose their jobs overall, even before the News Citygroup had racked up about six hundred and fifty million dollars in severance charges as part of cutting seven thousand positions in the first nine months of this year. Leslie Latto Bloomberg Radio.
This is going to be the first ants for markets in Asia to react to the FED speak from last Friday. San Francisco president Mary Daily said policymakers aren't certain inflation is on the path toward that two percent target. However, Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr offered a different take.
That we're likely at or near the peak of where we need to be in terms of having a sufficiently restrictive stance of monetary policy that we'll sustainably bring inflation down to two percent. And I think the recent economic readings reinforce my view that that is probably correct.
That is FED Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr. By the way, the market will be looking out for minutes from the fed's last meeting, the November meeting, and what those minutes say about the path of rates. Those minutes are due on Tuesday, right well.
A critical flaw in software from Citric Systems has been exploited by government backed hackers in criminal groups. That's according to a US cybersecurity official. Citric said that the flawed dubbed the Citrix bleed, was abused by hackers in secret for weeks before it was found, and a fix was
issued last month. We hear the US Treasury has also said that it's investigating whether Citrics vulnerabilities are responsible for the recent ransom hack against the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China ICBC.
Goud Well, a leading scholar in China, is now calling on Beijing to raise the government's deficit spending ratio all the way to five percent of GDP. Bloomberg's David and Glass says.
More from Hong Kong, Chinese scholar Jagan Leong says China needs to ramp up fiscal spending decisively to support the economy, and this is one.
Way to do it.
The scholar says raising the government's deficit ratio would compensate for insufficient demand and resolve the issue of oversupply. The call of five percent is sharply higher than the government's traditional target of three percent. The call might not be too serp prizing in that Jah is one of China's most prominent backers of modern monetary theory. Jazz Advice adds to a corrus of economists calling for more fiscal stimulus
to support the economy in Hong Kong. I'm David Ingless Bloomberg Radio.
And we are just getting ahead a red headline on the terminal here about the winner in Argentina. Okay, it goes to Milay. We're looking at the election results here as his opponent Masa has conceded. And now it's time to get to one of our top stories of the hour. We're hearing that a group of Open a I executives and investors have given the board a deadline of five pm Pacific time or eight pm Wall Street time to reinstate former CEO Sam Altman. Joining us now for some
clarity on this story is Rachel Metz, Bloomberg AI reporter. Rachel, thanks very much, I say clarity. I know there's a lot of questions unanswered. A couple right off the bat would be why was Sam Altman fired? And secondly, what were the conditions? Under what conditions would he be reinstated?
These are all good questions, and of some of the answer is is confusing or it's complicated. So on Friday, the board out died Altman, and they they said that that there were some reasons for doing so. In fact, they said that he was quote not consistently candidates communications with the board. Yet it wasn't really clear what that meant. And now it sounds like there's an ongoing effort and
things are changing quickly. But a group of Opening A executives and investors are trying to get Altman back into that role as CEO. And we're still kind of waiting and watching and trying to figure out which way this is going to go the next few hours.
Who are these board members, Rachel and what other interests might they have.
Well, so until Friday, the board consisted of Sam Altman, Greg Brockman. Greg Brockman uh was the president of open AI and he had been the board chairman and he actually he had been demoted from his board spot when
Altman was ousted and then he subsequently quit. So it was Altman, Brockman, Ilias Setskber the all three of them Open AI and then three outside board members Adam D'Angelo who is the CEO of Cora, Inc. Tash McCauley, who is a tech entrepreneur, and Helen Turner, who's the director of Strategy at Georgetown Center for Security in Emersion Technology.
When I first read the line that he was asking for board members to be UH to be released, I thought it must be some board members, but he wants all of them to be UH to lose their seats.
I mean, it sounds like that's one of the things that he wants to see is the removal of the assisting board members. As well as what our reporting has brought out, it's a statement absolving him of doing anything wrong. Open AI leadership has put out memos internally at the company saying that the board hasn't said that there was any quote, malfeasance or anything like that. So it's not totally clear what the board was initially even accusing him of doing when it got rid of him.
Now, Miramrotti, the Chief Strategy officer who became at least interim CEO, she also wants him back right as CEO.
That's what it sounds like. Yees, so they're sorry.
Well, I was just going to say.
If that's the case and he does come back as CEO, and there's a new board, all of whom he you know, supports in terms of members. Does that then create its own sort of conflict?
You mean if he comes comes back and she is no longer interim CEO.
Correct.
Yeah, I don't know if it does necessarily. I mean, I think it's sort of I mean, it probably depends on what they work out. But I mean, she was already one of the key leaders of the company. She's been CTO for a while now there, and she has been positioned increasingly as a leader, often even alongside him, such as at their development day recently, like earlier this month, they co hosted a question me answer session with reporters
aside from the keynote afterwards. So she's increasingly being brought out as leader, and I guess we'd have to wait and see what would happen there. But they definitely have a history of working and working all together.
Yeah, we covered a little bit of this earlier. But I'm curious if you can tell us a little bit more about Tigris this new AI chip, because it seems like maybe some movement on this by Altman without perhaps the board's knowledge, maybe that was somehow connected with the firing on Friday.
I mean that the board has not said that, but we do know that he has been working on some other business ventor is one of them being raising funds for a chip making startup. As we know, making chips is extremely difficult and extremely expensive and extremely time consuming, so it takes a lot of money to do that, and we'll just have to see what happens with it.
All right, Thanks so much, Rachel. Rachel Mets, Bloomberg AI reporter. This is Bloomberg Daybreak Asia, your morning brief on the story's making news from Hong Kong to Singapore and Wall Street.
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