The daily business briefing: July 25, 2023

1. Musk's Twitter rebranding starts with sign removal

Elon Musk pushed forward with his rebranding of Twitter as X on Monday, with workers getting to work changing the sign at the company's San Francisco headquarters. Musk, who bought the social media site last year, renamed the platform X.com on its website on Sunday and replaced its widely recognized bird logo with a stylized "X," tweeting, "And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds." Many Twitter users "appeared alienated" by the changes, The New York Times reported. "In one fell sweep, Elon Musk has essentially wiped out 15 years of brand value from Twitter and is now essentially starting from scratch," said Mike Proulx, a vice president and research director at Forrester.

The Guardian The New York Times

2. Dow extends winning streak to 11 days, best in 6 years

The Dow Jones Industrial Average extended its winning streak Monday to 11 days, its longest since February 2017. The Dow climbed 0.5%, while the S&P 500 gained 0.4% and 0.2%, respectively. U.S. stock futures were little changed early Tuesday as another busy week of corporate earnings reports continued and Federal Reserve policy makers headed into a two-day meeting expected to end with a quarter-percent interest rate hike as the central bank continues to try to cool the economy enough to bring inflation back to its 2% target without triggering a recession. "As long as there's no evidence of recession, and I think the market will probably continue to melt up," Neuberger Berman senior portfolio manager Steve Eisman said on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

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CNBC

3. FDIC warns banks about underreporting uninsured deposits

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Monday in a letter to banks that some of them had incorrectly reported the amount of their deposits that were uninsured as they faced increased scrutiny in the wake of the collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in March. Fifty-five banks have changed deposit data in regulatory filings, with some leaving out some uninsured deposits, such as those collateralized by pledged assets, the FDIC found. "This is incorrect because in and of itself, the existence of collateral has no bearing on the portion of a deposit that is covered by federal deposit insurance," the FDIC said in the letter, which it posted on its website.

Bloomberg

4. UBS to pay fines over Credit Suisse's Archegos mismanagement

UBS has agreed to pay $390 million in fines to U.S. and U.K. regulators over Credit Suisse's mismanagement in its dealings with one of its clients, investment firm Archegos Capital Management, which collapsed in 2021. UBS rescued rival Credit Suisse in June in a merger Swiss regulators forced on it after clients and investors lost confidence in Credit Suisse. Archegos was left owing billions of dollars to lenders after investing in a small number of stocks that plunged in value. Credit Suisse, which took $5 billion in damage from Archegos' unraveling, exhibited "unsafe and unsound counterparty credit risk management practices" in its dealings with Archegos, the Federal Reserve said.

The Wall Street Journal The New York Times

5. GM earnings rise on strong sales, higher prices

General Motors on Tuesday reported $2.54 billion in second-quarter net income, up 52% from a year ago, and raised its financial guidance for the full year, provided it can negotiate new union contracts without a strike. Customers paid $1,600 more per vehicle in the quarter than they did in the first three months of the year, bumping up the average sale price to $52,000, and U.S. sales were up 19 percent compared to a year ago. The Detroit automaker also said it was stepping up cost cuts to $3 billion, up from a previous guidance of $2 billion.

The Associated Press CNBC