Seventeen major institutions sign on to test around-the-clock liquidity and instant global value transfer.
Swift announced that its blockchain ledger is ready for initial use, enabling early adopter financial institutions to support cross-border payments around the clock using tokenized deposits.
The global cooperative, known for its vast messaging network used by banks to move money, called it a decisive step in scaling the benefits of digital value.
So far, 17 banks from six continents are preparing to pilot live transactions on the ledger. They include ANZ, BNP Paribas, BNY, Citi, DBS, First Abu Dhabi Bank, FirstRand Bank Limited, HSBC, Itaú Unibanco, Lloyds Bank, Mashreq, MUFG Bank, OCBC, Standard Chartered, UBS, UOB and Wells Fargo. The shared ledger gives these participating banks a more secure layer for bank-issued tokenized deposits on their own ledgers, Swift argues.
Swift said banks stand to gain an improved client experience and greater global liquidity efficiency—even overnight and on weekends—without compromising existing compliance, credit, risk, and control standards.
It is the first use case for the ledger, which Swift announced last year and said it designed and built with feedback from international financial institutions in nine months. Swift said the development sets the stage for further innovation and interoperability on infrastructure, which it said is trusted to move the equivalent of world GDP every two to three days between more than 200 markets.
“With our new ledger capability, we’re extending the trust and stability of established finance into the frontiers of digital money. It allows tokenised value to move across borders with the velocity and flexibility modern commerce expects, while maintaining the same high levels of resiliency, security, and compliance global finance requires,” Thierry Chilosi, chief business officer at Swift, said in a prepared statement. “The strong support from banks shows the practical value of this approach — one that will help scale benefits globally while creating a foundation for future innovation in areas like programmable money and agentic commerce.”
Following its initial go-live phase, Swift plans to expand the ledger’s functionality and availability. This builds on its existing infrastructure, where 75% of network payments already reach beneficiary banks within 10 minutes, or even seconds. The upgrades aim to help the industry meet Group of 20 international transaction targets.
Swift said it is also implementing a retail payments framework with its community aimed at ensuring upfront transparency on fees, full value delivery, and a faster, more consistent experience for consumers. Together with the ledger, Swift said, those upgrades lay the groundwork for value to move in any regulated form, anywhere, with high levels of security and resilience.
Anthony Noto covers corporate finance and private credit. Contact him at anoto@gfmag.com
Syria’s new central bank governor faces a daunting task: economic reconstruction.
Safwat Raslan, a former refugee who fled to Germany during his country’s 14-year civil war, is the new governor of the Central Bank of Syria. His first order of the day will be to standardize banking operations, expand Sharia-compliant banking products, and stabilize the Syrian pound to restore confidence in international markets.
The challenge is daunting.
The Assad regime, in power for more than 50 years before collapsing in 2024, left a hefty bill. The World Bank estimates direct physical damage to buildings and infrastructure from the Syrian conflict at $108 billion, with reconstruction costs of up to $345 billion.
Even though Western nations lifted most sanctions last year, Damascus is still in the early stages of reconnecting to the global financial system. Last year, the government executed its first international transfer via SWIFT since 2011. Still, Syrian banks remain relatively isolated, hampering efforts to attract outside capital.
Raslan’s appointment has generated both optimism and skepticism. Supporters see him as part of a new generation of internationally experienced professionals returning from the diaspora to help rebuild state institutions. A former branch manager at Byblos Bank Syria, he also worked for EY and Deutsche Bank in Germany. Returning home in 2025, he successfully led the newly created Syrian Development Fund. Critics, however, point to his limited monetary-policy résumé at a moment when credibility matters.
“The fact that there have been three central bank directors in two years underscores the difficulty Syria is having in stabilizing its currency,” says Joshua Landis, the Sandra Mackey chair and professor of Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. “The Syrian pound ranks as the world’s sixth-worst currency, and in the past year alone it has depreciated by 30% against the U.S. dollar, which is widely used as the currency of business.”
Real investments, Landis notes, have been scarce: “Oil is the one sector that seems to be getting some love. It provided roughly 40% of export earnings under Assad and will again be a major source of state income once it can be brought back up and running, but it needs massive investment.”
Having someone competent at the head of the central bank, Landis argues, will go a long way toward reassuring the business world: “Is Raslan that man? We will have to see.”
Luca Ventura is a contributing writer based in Italy.
For its upcoming Los Angeles venue, experiential art firm Meow Wolf will focus on the art of storytelling, with a specific eye toward spoofing our city’s moviemaking magic. To help bring that vision to life, Meow Wolf has entered into a creative partnership with Titmouse, one of L.A.’s most renowned independent animation houses.
The Hollywood-based studio behind popular series such as “Big Mouth” and “Star Trek: Lower Decks” will create animation that will be shown throughout the West L.A. venue, which is on target for a late 2026 opening at the Howard Hughes entertainment complex.
It’s a move that represents a shift for Santa Fe, N.M.-based Meow Wolf. Over the last decade-plus, the art collective has grown beyond its anything-goes, punk-meets-psychedelic roots into an organization with full-scale, maximalist installations in its hometown, Denver, Las Vegas, Houston and the Dallas suburbs. In the past, Meow Wolf kept most of its media in-house.
As part of its larger-than-life participatory art installations, Meow Wolf L.A. will feature a mix of live action and animation, the former filmed by Meow Wolf in its Santa Fe studio. Meow Wolf’s James Stephenson, a senior VP with the company and its creative director of emerging media, said the degree to which the L.A. exhibition will lean into various animation styles necessitated an outside partner. Titmouse’s work, in development by a number of directors with contrasting tones, will be shown on a variety of formats, ranging from cinema screens to full-room projections.
“I really believe in animation as an art form, and I know the Titmouse folks do too,” Stephenson says. “Animation is made by artists. It’s made by artists with their own hands. It’s something that is still very rooted in craft.”
Meow Wolf’s L.A. space is set in a former cinema complex, and will champion its location, taking guests on a journey through a converted movie house and beyond, into a sci-fi-inspired fantasyland with sentient spaceships and a 30-foot-tall mushroom tower. Meow Wolf creatives have spoken of the fantastical movie theater as one that will feature animated, self-aware candy before attendees enter the main exhibition space, making Titmouse’s work some of the first art guests will encounter. Titmouse co-founder Chris Prynoski has said the studio has lined up at least six directors for the exhibit.
An in-progress art installation destined for Meow Wolf L.A. at the art collective’s Santa Fe, N.M., headquarters. The L.A. exhibition will feature animation from Titmouse.
(Gabriela Campos / For The Times)
Titmouse, says Stephenson, is the right partner because “they’re known less for a house style, and more for a house vibe.” Over the years, Titmouse has been behind such diverse shows as “Scavengers Reign,” owning a Jean Giraud influence rooted in French and Spanish surrealism, the lively “Jentry Chau vs. the Underworld,” with an unique color palette that took inspiration from anime and Chinese mythology, the exaggerated comic book feel of Adult Swim’s “Metalocalypse,” and the approachable yet expressive tone of “Star Trek: Lower Decks.”
“Meow Wolf’s vibe is similar to Titmouse’s vibe,” Stephenson says. “It’s artist-first, artist-driven, independent and kinda edgy. They are always trying to find the edge of what’s possible. They try to see how far they can go, and it’s done for fun and in the spirit of taking risks.”
Prynoski says working with Meow Wolf will give Titmouse a sense of artistic freedom it doesn’t always have when delivering content for more traditional Hollywood partners. He says the multi-director approach is a callback to the early days of Warner Bros. Animation, when individual creators put their own stamp on Looney Tunes material.
“I use Bugs Bunny as an example,” Prynoski says. “You’ve got a Friz Freleng Bugs Bunny short. You’ve got a Chuck Jones Bugs Bunny short. You’ve got a Tex Avery Bugs Bunny short. They’re all different versions of Bugs Bunny, and people who are really paying attention can tell which director directed each one. Even though to the layman, these are all Bugs Bunny, but if you lined them up, they are drawing in different styles, sensibilities and techniques.”
Prynoski says that was a centerpiece of his pitch to Meow Wolf, noting that characters will reappear in multiple installations, each handled by a different artist. Meow Wolf L.A., in fact, will be the firm’s most character-driven exhibition, as guests will follow the storylines of three main protagonists throughout the space.
In announcing the partnership, Meow Wolf and Titmouse released an image from an animated work directed by Luca Vitale. It features a key character having a moment with a hummingbird and it’s done in an elegant, slightly anime-influenced style. It’s an image full of movement, reflecting a character in transition with inviting pastels and bold dashes.
“I like that image because I think it captures some of the sense of wonder that we want people to feel,” Stephenson says. “The character is having an encounter with the elusive nature of creativity and reality in a way that makes them have a different perspective of what’s possible.”
Other contributing animation directors to Meow Wolf L.A. include Space Dawg, Felix Colgrave, Alexander Vanderplank and Philémon Martin, and Jun Ioneda.
Titmouse’s partnership with Meow Wolf will extend beyond the L.A. exhibition. The two will be working on the development of Meow Wolf New York, which is slated to open some time after Los Angeles, and are collaborating on a planned animated series, which Prynoski is spearheading.
Meow Wolf exhibits are the result of sometimes hundreds of disparate artists coming together in a shared space. Distilling that into a signature, singular style for a series could be a challenge. Stephenson pinpoints some guiding principles.
“You really need to feel the hand of the artist,” he says. “You need to feel a DIY aesthetic. You need to feel the materiality. Those are very specific to what we are.”
Teka77/iStock Editorial via Getty Images
Prime Minister Carney said Monday that Canada selected Germany’s ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (TYEKF) (TKAMY) to build as many as 12 submarines, as the country boosts defense spending to meet NATO targets.
The planned purchase will be groundbreaking for Canada’s naval
“I’ve talked about rain on this show more than I have in my entire life,” Kittrell says.
It was a constant consideration, both on set and in the writers room. Weather became a way to distinguish Elle from those around her in Seattle. The locals never carry umbrellas; Elle shows up with a pink one.
“We had a writer from Seattle who always said the city gets a bad rap because of the rain,” Kittrell says. “But the rain is what makes it beautiful — it makes Seattle green.”
Elle entering the halls of Rainier West High School with her pink umbrella.
(Kimberley French / Prime Video)
That philosophy stayed with the writers, later showing up in a line Miles (Jacob Moskovitz), Elle’s crush, says to her, and ultimately leading them to Garbage’s “Only Happy When It Rains” as the show’s theme. “We were like, of course,” says Kittrell. “This is what we’ve been talking about the entire time.”
The song was originally meant to end the pilot. “Then we decided we should just be hearing it in every single episode,” says Neustadter. (The pilot instead uses Radiohead’s “Creep,” which also bookends the series.) The main title sequence, an animated “saga sell” from the studio Shine, tells the story of Elle’s move from Bel-Air to Seattle.
“We’re constantly reminding the audience of the contrast between Elle’s essence and the world she’s now in,” Neustadter adds. “There’s an optimism to ‘Only Happy When It Rains’ that feels very Elle Woods. And the irony of it is so delightful.”
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SpaceX shares closed at $154.63 on Monday, down around 16% on the day. That leaves them within touching distance of the $150 at which the shares first changed hands when public trading opened, the level set once underwriters finished building the order book, though still some way above the $135 price at which the IPO itself was struck.
The slide has erased more than $600 billion (€524.2bn) in market value over three trading days, dragging the company down from a peak that had lifted it past Amazon and, fleetingly, Microsoft, in terms of market capitalisation.
Its valuation now sits just above $2 trillion (€1.74tn), below Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), making it the seventh most valuable company in the world.
The retreat unwinds a remarkable opening run.
After the open at around $150 on 12 June, shares climbed to almost $226 by 16 June, a gain of roughly two-thirds before the company had published a single set of results as a public firm.
Currently, SpaceX is trading over 30% lower than the intraday high of around $226 and only 3% higher than the opening price.
That rally always rested on a thin pool of freely traded shares and lofty expectations for its AI ambitions, leaving it exposed to a sharp reversal once sentiment turned.
The latest leg down on Monday coincided with SpaceX’s first move into the corporate debt market.
The company announced an inaugural offering of senior unsecured notes, with people familiar with the plans reportedly putting the target at around $20 billion (€17.4bn).
The proceeds are earmarked chiefly to repay a bridge loan taken on during its merger with Elon Musk’s AI venture xAI earlier this year, with the remainder going to general corporate purposes.
The debut bond sale follows the investment-grade credit ratings awarded last Friday by all three major agencies, Moody’s at Baa1, Fitch at BBB+ and S&P Global at BBB, which open the door to cheaper borrowing and a wider pool of institutional lenders.
In documents tied to the offering, SpaceX also disclosed a cash position of roughly $100.8 billion (€88bn) as of 19 June, much of it raised in the IPO, alongside $29.1 billion (€25.4bn) of long-term debt.
That mix of vast cash reserves and fresh borrowing so soon after a record flotation has unsettled some investors, who see the rapid fundraising as a sign of heavy spending ahead as SpaceX scales its AI and data centre plans.
Opting for debt rather than new shares does, however, spare existing shareholders further dilution, preserving their economic stake while the company funds its expansion.
WASHINGTON — President Trump has tapped Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to be the acting director of national intelligence — putting a real estate scion and fierce Trump loyalist in a key national security post as the U.S. remains at war with Iran.
Trump made the surprise announcement Tuesday on social media that Pulte would be replacing Tulsi Gabbard, the former Hawaii congresswoman who served as the director of national intelligence.
The Republican president cited Pulte’s work at the FHFA and his role as chair of the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying that the 38 year-old “has deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America, the safety and soundness of the Markets, and over 10 Trillion Dollars at Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, a substantial increase from where it was just 12 months ago.”
Pulte’s sudden elevation to a role coordinating sensitive national security matters is a sign of how Trump is putting a priority on loyalty over a traditional resume full of previous military and intelligence assignments. It’s unclear what national security expertise Pulte has, but he has been a frequent guest on Air Force One as Trump has traveled to Mar-a-Lago, his home and club in Palm Beach, Florida.
As the grandson of the founder of PulteGroup, one of the country’s largest homebuilders, Pulte has cut a combative streak on social media and used his post at the FHFA to attack perceived opponents of the Trump administration.
His time overseeing mortgage finance has been linked with criminal referrals for mortgage fraud by public officials Trump sought to punish, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat; Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.; and Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve, who was nominated by a Democratic president, Joe Biden.
Pulte has famously gone after then-Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for not cutting the central bank’s benchmark interest rates as aggressively as the president wanted. He has also been linked to ideas such as the 50-year mortgage and efforts to lower mortgage rates through the purchase of home loan debt that have not paid off as promised.
Trump said Pulte will keep his other positions even as he fills in for Gabbard, who resigned last month after revealing her husband’s cancer diagnosis.
If formally nominated, Pulte would need to be confirmed by the Senate to hold the position full time.
Boak writes for the Associated Press.
Meta Platforms (META) is reportedly working on a financing package for a data center in El Paso, Texas, that could total roughly $13B, underscoring Big Tech’s growing reliance on debt to bankroll the infrastructure behind the AI boom.
Morgan Stanley (