Markets

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul are leading a multistate lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Eugene, accusing the Treasury Department and its Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of gutting the Corporate Transparency Act. The 2021 bipartisan law required businesses to disclose ownership information to help authorities track money laundering, shell companies, and fraud. A FinCEN rule issued in August 2026 exempted roughly 99.9% of businesses from reporting and the agency moved to delete existing ownership data. The suit, joined by nearly 20 states and Washington, D.C., claims the changes violate federal rulemaking law and seeks to restore the database.

Pawtucket Mayor Don Grebien criticized Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks after remarks Cocks made about the toymaker's planned move from Pawtucket to Boston. In a radio interview, Cocks said Boston would offer employees more dining options and a better work-life balance, contrasting it with limited choices near Hasbro's century-old Rhode Island headquarters. Grebien called the comments "insulting" to the city, state, and employees who built the company, accusing Hasbro of prioritizing profits over the community that supported it for generations. He urged Hasbro to meet publicly with Rhode Island leaders and commit to continued investment in the state as the company prepares its headquarters relocation.

Real estate brokers in the Asheville, North Carolina area say the housing market is settling into a more "balanced" state after the pandemic-era boom, with buyers and sellers adjusting to higher interest rates and longer selling times. Brokers report that sellers pricing homes realistically—rather than anchoring to COVID-era peaks—are seeing faster sales, while overpriced listings are increasingly seeing price cuts. In Buncombe County, about 9% of roughly 1,800 listed homes are cutting prices weekly, and homes there now take about 75 days to sell on average, rising to 121 days across the wider seven-county region. One $2.75 million listing sold only after dropping to $2 million.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 2599, the Truth in Disclosure Act, on September 30, requiring large companies operating in California before 1965 to search records back to 1849 for ties to slavery, including insurance policies on enslaved people and their use as loan collateral. The law applies to companies doing business in the state with over $100 million in annual global revenue that existed by the end of 1964, covering parent companies, subsidiaries, and predecessors. First filings are due as early as January 15, 2029, with records kept online indefinitely. The bill's author, Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, said disclosures could lead to future action, naming agriculture, banking, and insurance as likely sectors implicated. Newsom simultaneously vetoed a separate bill exempting reparations payments from state income tax.

Home sales in Onondaga County, New York are down 8.9% so far this year compared with 2025, with 2,579 homes sold countywide through Oct. 6 — 253 fewer transactions. Despite the slowdown, the average home sale price has risen about 6.2% to $343,200, driven by a historically low supply of listings and continued buyer competition.

Syracuse itself saw a sharper drop, with sales down 11.5% (67 fewer homes), while the average sale price in the city climbed nearly 9%, or about $17,000. Clay topped the county in weekly sales with 18 homes sold, though it remains 22 sales behind last year's pace; prices there rose 2.49%.

The trend mirrors a broader national pattern of rising home prices amid tight inventory, with Redfin reporting the U.S. median sale price up 2.5% year-over-year in August. Data comes from the Central New York Information Service, part of the Greater Syracuse Association of Realtors.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed Assembly Bill 2599, the Truth in Disclosure Act, making California the first state to require large companies to disclose whether they or their corporate predecessors profited from chattel slavery. Authored by Assemblymember Isaac Bryan and backed by the California Legislative Black Caucus, the law applies to companies with more than $100 million in annual worldwide gross receipts that existed, or had a predecessor that existed, on or before December 1964. Sworn disclosures, subject to perjury penalties, must be filed by January 15, 2029, and will be posted in a searchable public database maintained by the state's Civil Rights Department.

Supporters say the measure, likely to affect banks, insurers, and agricultural firms, will help researchers and advocates trace links between modern corporate wealth and the slave economy. Some insurers opposed the bill, citing an existing 2000 disclosure law. The measure follows California's 2023 reparations task force report, which recommended over 100 remedies and estimated hundreds of billions owed to Black residents, though broader reparations legislation has stalled.

A federal appeals court ruled Friday against prediction-market operator Kalshi in its legal fight with Ohio over state regulation of its sports-related contracts. Kalshi had argued its offerings should be treated as federally regulated financial "swaps," exempting them from state gambling laws and taxes; the appeals court rejected that argument, allowing Ohio to continue enforcing its gambling regulations against the company. Gov. Mike DeWine, discussing the ruling with reporters, dismissed Kalshi's framing of its products, saying "if it's a pig, it's a pig... these guys are pigs."

The same appeals court also issued a related ruling Friday on intoxicating hemp products, finding Ohio can require sellers to obtain licenses from state marijuana regulators, though restrictions based on business location likely violate the Constitution's dormant commerce clause. The Kalshi decision adds to a broader national pattern of states pushing back against prediction markets' sports-related contracts, testing the boundary between federally regulated derivatives and state-regulated gambling.

Paramount Skydance and California Attorney General Rob Bonta have made progress in settlement talks aimed at resolving an antitrust lawsuit that has threatened to derail Paramount's $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, according to people familiar with the matter. Bonta and 11 other Democratic state attorneys general sued to block the deal, and the two sides had been at an impasse before talks turned constructive in recent days.

Paramount CEO David Ellison is pushing to resolve the dispute before October 1, when the company would owe Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders an additional $7 million per day on top of the already agreed $81 billion payout. Ellison's team has also pressured Bonta by suggesting Paramount could relocate production out of Hollywood, alarming state and local officials focused on retaining film jobs. Both sides have reasons to settle: Ellison wants to avoid additional debt and close the deal before the midterm elections, while Bonta, riding a string of legal wins against the Trump administration and Meta, is wary of overextending his multistate coalition. Court-ordered settlement talks are already scheduled for mid-October.