World Business Today – See The Summary HERE

AT&T prepares for court battle over Time Warner merger bid, Yellen announces resignation plan, and Brexit-hit banks set to leave U.K. Here are some of the things people in markets are talking about today.

Court battleAT&T Inc.’s chief executive officer Randall Stephenson told antitrust officers that he would see them in court after the Justice Department sued to block its $85.4 billion bid for Time Warner Inc. While he said the telecoms behemoth is open to more negotiations to seal federal approval, selling CNN was not on the cards. He briefly addressed what he called “the elephant in the room” — President Donald Trump’s very public dislike of CNN — saying that they had witnessed an abrupt change in the application of antitrust law. While the Justice Department’s concerns about the deal are fairly mainstream, the hard-line resistance to the deal is unusual, say analysts.

Yellen outFederal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said that she will resign her position on the board of governors once her nominated successor  Jerome Powell takes over in February. Her exit leaves Trump with considerable power to re-shape the board of the U.S. central bank, which would leave four of the seven seats on the board vacant. National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn has previously said that Trump will select an appointee for Fed vice-chair before Yellen — who has presided over a largely broad-based recovery — leaves.

BrexodusBarring an unexpected breakthrough at the leaders’ summit with European Union officials next month, it may already be too late to stop banks going ahead with plans to relocate staff to the euro area. While British Prime Minister Theresa May won the backing of cabinet colleagues to offer more money to move talks forward, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier made clear yesterday that without a solution to the thorny question of the Irish border, money alone may not break the deadlock.

Markets riseOvernight, the MSCI Asia Pacific Index gained 0.9 percent while Japan’s Topix index closed 0.7 percent higher in a broad regional rally that saw China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd. overtake Facebook Inc.’s market value to become the world’s fifth-largest company. In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index was 0.3 percent higher at 5:50 a.m. Eastern Time as markets remain undisturbed by German political woes. S&P 500 futures were 0.2 percent higher, the 10-year Treasury yield was at 2.354 percent and gold was slightly higher.

Lira lowTurkey’s central bank will push lenders to use a more-expensive liquidity window as it tightens policy, but that wasn’t enough to stop the lira tumbling to a fresh record low. The latest round of market turmoil has been driven by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s latest intervention on monetary policy, while tensions with the United States continue to simmer.