Author: SmartWealthNews.com
source
19 December, 2025 6 min read Share Copy Link Copied In manufacturing and distribution companies, the CFO faces mounting pressures. These range from a spike in economic uncertainty, to ongoing supply chain disruptions, and a slew of new regulations in areas such as packaging, AI practice, and emissions reporting. More than ever, companies need finance to adopt a more strategic role to help them navigate volatility and change. This article delves into the challenges finance chiefs face in these sectors, and how they can develop their roles to overcome these obstacles. Here’s what we discuss: Boosting decision support Finance leaders…
Railway, a San Francisco-based cloud platform that has quietly amassed two million developers without spending a dollar on marketing, announced Thursday that it raised $100 million in a Series B funding round, as surging demand for artificial intelligence applications exposes the limitations of legacy cloud infrastructure.TQ Ventures led the round, with participation from FPV Ventures, Redpoint, and Unusual Ventures. The investment values Railway as one of the most significant infrastructure startups to emerge during the AI boom, capitalizing on developer frustration with the complexity and cost of traditional platforms like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud."As AI models get better…
Corn futures ended the Wednesday session with contracts a penny to 2 cents higher across the front months. The CmdtyView national average Cash Corn price was up 2 cents at $3.96 1/4. Some spillover support was from the rally in soybeans. USDA reported a private export sale of 130,480 MT of corn to unknown destinations this morning. Weekly data will be out on Thursday, with traders looking for between 0.8-2.1 MMT in corn sold for the week ending on 1/29. Don’t Miss a Day: From crude oil to coffee, sign up free for Barchart’s best-in-class commodity analysis. EIA data from this…
Silver futures fell as much as 13% late Wednesday as volatility in the precious metals complex continued. Source link
Santander has introduced a mortgage product allowing first-time buyers to borrow up to 98% of a property’s value, marking the first time in years that a major high street bank has exceeded the traditional 95% lending threshold. However, the product comes with multiple restrictions that may limit its accessibility. The five-year fixed-rate mortgage requires a minimum deposit of £10,000 and caps borrowing at £500,000. The product is restricted to first-time buyers only, with both applicants required to meet this criterion for joint applications. Eligibility restrictions The mortgage excludes several property types and buyer categories. Flats and new-build properties are not…
Your people are probably using AI, whether your business has officially adopted it or not. From drafting invoice reminders and summarising meeting notes in seconds, to getting help with prospecting templates or ideas, AI has crept into everyday work. That’s the context for the AI Skills Boost, a UK government initiative designed to help millions of workers build practical, foundational AI skills by 2030. It’s delivered in partnership with major technology providers, including Sage. It’s live right now. So, let’s take a look at what it could mean for you and your team: What is the AI Skills Boost? The…
Klarna aims to address the lack of interoperability between conversational AI agents and backend payment systems by backing Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard designed to unify how AI agents discover products and execute transactions.The partnership, which also sees Klarna supporting Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), places the Swedish fintech firm among the early payment providers to back a standardised framework for automated shopping.The interoperability problem with AI agent paymentsCurrent implementations of AI commerce often function as walled gardens. An AI agent on one platform typically requires a custom integration to communicate with a merchant’s inventory system, and…
Key PointsThe iShares Silver Trust ETF plunged last week following President Trump’s selection of Kevin Warsh as the next Fed chairman.Silver has moved beyond only being bullion and is in high demand in AI data centers and solar panels.Last week’s sell-off of this silver ETF could present a buying opportunity for aggressive investors.10 stocks we like better than iShares Silver Trust ›What goes up can come down. We saw that axiom play out in a big way last week. Shares of the iShares Silver Trust (NYSE: SLV) exchange-traded fund (ETF) had skyrocketed 277% higher over the previous 12 months as…
President Donald Trump said he’ll announce his nominee to chair the Federal Reserve on Friday morning — and prediction markets have turned sharply toward a former Fed governor for the post. Source link