Buffett, 95, who remains Berkshire’s chairman, began giving away his fortune in 2006, and has since donated more than $47 billion of the conglomerate’s stock to the Gates Foundation

International News via Reuters:

Warren Buffett on Tuesday declined to commit to continuing his annual multibillion-dollar donations to the Gates Foundation, following the recent release of materials about late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s relationship with the nonprofit and its co-founder Bill Gates.

In his first televised interview since stepping down in January as Berkshire Hathaway’s chief executive, Buffett told CNBC he has not spoken with Gates since the U.S. Department of Justice released documents in February, showing that Gates and Epstein met repeatedly to discuss philanthropy following Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea to Florida prostitution charges.

Buffett, 95, who remains Berkshire’s chairman, began giving away his fortune in 2006, and has since donated more than $47 billion of the conglomerate’s stock to the Gates Foundation.

He has donated Berkshire stock to the foundation and four family charities annually around mid-year, with additional donations to the family charities in November. Last year’s Gates Foundation donation totaled more than $4.5 billion.

“I’ll wait and see what unfolds,” Buffett said, when asked if the Gates Foundation donations will continue. “I’m learning things I didn’t know.”

The foundation did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In February, it said Gates “took responsibility for his actions” when the Microsoft co-founder discussed Epstein in a town-hall meeting with employees.

In 2024, Buffett said his donations to the Gates Foundation would end when he dies, with 99.5% of his remaining wealth going to a charitable trust overseen by his children.

The New York Times said Buffett had by then grown concerned about the foundation’s bloat, and its reduced appetite for taking risks that could lead to more effective philanthropy.

BUFFETT NOT SORRY FOR GATES FOUNDATION DONATIONS

Documents released by the Justice Department included photos of Gates posing with Epstein, as well as with women whose faces are redacted.

Gates has said his relationship with Epstein was confined to philanthropy, and that it was a mistake to meet with him. He has also denied spending time with victims of the financier’s sexual abuse.

Earlier this month, Vanity Fair magazine said Epstein appeared to arrange a “large portion” of $8 million in Gates Foundation grants between 2013 and 2019 to a think tank focused on global peace and security, but also possibly associated with securing visas for young Eastern European women. 

The foundation told Vanity Fair that Epstein was not involved in its grantmaking processes.

Buffett told CNBC he was not sorry about having donated to the foundation, but wished that “certain things hadn’t happened.”

He also said he was astounded that Epstein conned so many people before being arrested in July 2019 on sex-trafficking charges. Epstein died the following month in a Manhattan jail.

“I don’t see how anybody could have pulled that off,” Buffett said. “This guy found people’s weaknesses … It is ruining one person after another.”

Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis

Authorities in Dubai said the fire on the Kuwait-flagged Al-Salmi had been brought under control following a drone attack, with no oil leak and no injuries to the crew

International News via Reuters:

Tehran attacked and set ablaze a fully loaded crude oil tanker off Dubai on Tuesday, despite a threat by President Donald Trump that the U.S. will obliterate Iran’s energy plants if it does not agree to a peace deal and open the Strait of Hormuz.

Authorities in Dubai said the fire on the Kuwait-flagged Al-Salmi had been brought under control following a drone attack, with no oil leak and no injuries to the crew. Kuwait Petroleum Corp, the ship’s owner, said the vessel’s hull was damaged.

 The attack was the latest on merchant vessels in the strait, a vital waterway, since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28.

LSEG Data showed the vessel was heading to Qingdao in China, and was carrying 1.2 million barrels of Saudi crude oil and 800,000 barrels of Kuwaiti crude, according to monitoring service TankerTrackers.com.

The Al-Salmi may not have been the intended target. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had targeted a container ship in the Gulf over its ties with Israel. But they appeared to be referring to the Singapore-flagged Haiphong Express, which was anchored next to the Al-Salmi, according to shipping data.

HIGHER OIL PRICES

The month-old conflict has spread across the region, killing thousands, disrupting energy supplies and threatening to send the global economy into a tailspin. [MKTS/GLOB]

Crude oil prices briefly spiked again after the attack on the tanker, which can carry around 2 million barrels of oil worth more than $200 million at current prices. 

With attacks showing no sign of easing, Pakistan is seeking to mediate in the war. Its foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, was due to discuss the conflict during a visit to China on Tuesday after hosting talks with Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

China, one of Iran’s closest allies and the biggest buyer of its oil, issued a new appeal to all sides on Tuesday to halt military operations.

It said three Chinese ships had recently been allowed to sail through the Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries about a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supplies.

Iran says it has received U.S. peace proposals via intermediaries, but its foreign ministry spokesperson said on Monday they were “unrealistic, illogical and excessive”.

After those comments, Trump said the U.S. was in talks with a “more reasonable regime”, referring to the Iranian leaders who have replaced those killed in the war, but issued a new warning over the Strait of Hormuz.

He said the U.S. would obliterate power plants, oil wells and Kharg Island, from where Iran exports much of its oil, if a deal was not reached soon and the strait was not opened.

The failure to secure a peace deal has prompted the European Union’s energy chief to warn member states to prepare for a “prolonged disruption” to energy markets.

Higher oil and fuel prices have also started to weigh on U.S. household finances and are a political headache for Trump and his Republican Party before November midterm elections.

The U.S. national average retail price of gasoline crossed $4 a gallon for the first time in over three years on Monday, data from price-tracking service GasBuddy showed. Tightening global supplies have pushed benchmark Brent crude up 56% this month, the largest rise on record, to above $113 per barrel.

NEW ATTACKS

The war has continued to spread, with Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen entering the war by firing at Israel, and Turkey reporting on Monday that a ballistic missile launched from Iran had entered Turkish airspace before being shot down.

The war has also revived conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah, while Iran, which has the highest casualty toll in the war, has fired at targets in Gulf Arab states, where the U.S. has military bases.

Iran’s military spokesman said targets in its latest attacks included “hideouts” of U.S. military personnel in five bases in the region and in Israel.

Blasts echoed through Dubai on Tuesday, and Saudi Arabia’s civil defence said falling debris caused limited damage after a drone was intercepted in Kharj province.

Explosions were heard in Tehran and residents in the eastern Pirouzi district reported power outages, Iran’s Tasnim news agency said.

A strike on a Shi’ite Muslim congregation hall in the northwestern Iranian city of Zanjan killed three people, a provincial official told Iranian media.

Israel’s military said four of its soldiers had been killed in southern Lebanon, where three United Nations peacekeepers from Indonesia have been killed in two separate incidents.

U.S. SOLDIERS ARRIVE IN THE REGION 

Thousands of soldiers from the U.S. Army’s elite 82nd Airborne Division have started arriving in the Middle East, two U.S. officials told Reuters on Monday, part of reinforcements that would expand Trump’s options to potentially include a ground assault in Iran.

The White House said Trump wanted a deal with Iran before an April 6 deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz.

The Wall Street Journal reported Trump had told aides he is willing to end the military campaign even if the strait remains largely closed and leave a complex operation to reopen it for a later date. [MKTS/GLOB]

Asked about the report, the White House referred to comments made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who told Al Jazeera the strait would be open “one way or another” after the U.S. military operation.

Reporting by reuters bureaux; Writing by Lincoln Feast and Timothy Heritage; Editing by Michael Perry and Sharon Singleton

If completed, the transaction would be structured as a so-called Reverse Morris Trust (RMT), which offers tax benefits

International News via Reuters:

Unilever is in advanced talks to merge its food business with spice maker McCormick, it said on Tuesday, in a potential deal that could create a $60 billion company.

If completed, the transaction would be structured as a so-called Reverse Morris Trust (RMT), which offers tax benefits. Unilever would spin off the food division and then merge it with the Cholula hot sauce owner, with Unilever and its shareholders expected to retain a 65% stake in the combined entity, Unilever said.

Analysts at Barclays valued Unilever’s food business at between 28 billion euros ($32.10 billion) and 31 billion euros, including debt. That, combined with McCormick’s $14.2 billion market capitalization and what Unilever said would be a $15.7 billion cash component could value the new combined company at over $60 billion.

The potential deal marks CEO Fernando Fernandez’ biggest gambit yet since taking the helm in March 2025 and comes after he completed the spin-off last year of Unilever’s multi-billion euro ice cream business, home to Ben & Jerry’s and Magnum.

“There is logic in a disposal of the foods business where volumes have been muted over the past years,” Harsharan Mann, a portfolio manager at Unilever shareholder Aviva Investors, said in comments sent to Reuters. The RMT model is “sensible” given tax issues that had plagued similar deals in recent years, he said.

“Global peers such as Procter & Gamble have successfully used this structure in prior years for disposals of non-core businesses in a tax-free structure.”

Shares in Unilever, which have fallen more than 6% so far this year, were up 0.9% in early trade on Tuesday. McCormick shares rose 3.9% in pre-market New York trade.

DEAL COULD COME AS EARLY AS TUESDAY

Unilever’s sprawling consumer brands’ empire ranges from Dove soaps to Hellmann’s mayonnaise, Knorr stock cubes, Cif cleaning products and Axe deodorant among others.

Though Unilever’s food unit is a high-margin business, sales growth has lagged the company’s personal goods and beauty businesses and weighed on its ambition to increase overall group sales by 4%-6% in the near term.

Unilever said in a statement that an agreement with McCormick could be close, though cautioned it was not a done deal. The proposed combination of its foods business would exclude certain assets, including its operations in India, it added.

“Work remains ongoing to agree and finalise a transaction and it is possible that an agreement could be concluded today, although there can be no certainty that a transaction will be agreed,” it said.

Unilever has been under investor pressure to shed food brands for years, increasingly so after it was revealed in 2022 that billionaire activist-shareholder Nelson Peltz had built a stake in the firm. Peltz has been linked to the departure of two CEOs, Alan Jope and Hein Schumacher, who investors felt were not streamlining Unilever’s portfolio fast enough.

The deal with McCormick comes on top of an ongoing cost-cutting programme Unilever has had in place since 2024, meant to save around 800 million euros in costs over the next three years.

“Evaluating the transaction will necessitate more details on synergies and how the company will deal with stranded costs, with news today that it has implemented a global hiring freeze amid the war impact, which may affect sentiment on current trading,” JPMorgan analysts wrote in a note.

Reuters reported exclusively late on Monday that Unilever had implemented a global hiring freeze “at all levels” that will last at least three months, citing ‌the effects of the widening conflict in the Middle East.

SHIFT FROM MARGARINE TO HEALTH AND BEAUTY

Unilever traces its roots in the food sector to 1860, when one of its Dutch founding families began building up a business in the butter trade. Unilever itself was created in 1929 when Margarine Unie and Lever Brothers joined in what was at the time one of the biggest industrial mergers ever in Europe.

The company’s food business accounted for just over a quarter of overall annual sales of 50.5 billion euros last year, and a big portion of its 96,000 employees around the world.

Unilever has spent most of the last century snapping up food and beverage brands from Marmite to Colman’s and Horlick’s – until the past decade when health-conscious shoppers started shying away from packaged food in favour of fresh groceries.

The rise of GLP-1 weight loss drugs in recent years has further eroded demand and investors’ faith in packaged food, especially due to stiff competition from cheaper private label brands that make similar products.

Over the past year, Unilever has divested several non-core food assets, including snack brand Graze and plant-based meat brand The Vegetarian Butcher.

“The direction of travel makes sense, for Unilever to focus on higher growth categories,” said Tineke Frikkee, a portfolio manager at W1M, a Unilever investor.

“But at this stage we need to see the details of any deal, including all advantages and disadvantages, to assess if sufficient value is being created for shareholders in the medium to long term.”

($1 = 0.8724 euros)

Reporting by Yadarisa Shabong, Prerna Bedi in Bengaluru and Richa Naidu in London; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Susan Fenton