ComCom clears Bremworth sale; Wall St on track for best quarter in years

The Commerce Commission has cleared carpetmaker Bremworth to sell its assets to the parent of rival Godfrey Hirst in a long-running review, with the regulator ultimately deciding the merged entity’s ability to raise prices for wool carpets will be limited by more widely used synthetics.

Meanwhile, stocks in the US and Europe are closing out their best quarter in years on a high, with artificial intelligence-related stocks such as Advanced Micro Devices, Marvell Technology and Nvidia back in favour.

US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration hit a setback after the Supreme Court upheld the constitutional right of birthright citizenship.

And TikTok is reportedly close to settling a lawsuit that its platform is addictive to minors, while Meta Platforms lost a court bid to toss out a claim by 29 state attorneys general that it designed its products to hook children.

Strong June quarter

The S&P 500 was on track for its best quarter since June 2020 with the benchmark index up 15% in the three-month period as stocks across the US and Europe recovered from earlier fears about the conflict in the Middle East and investor appetite for AI companies waxed, waned and waxed again.

In the latest updates, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff have arrived in Qatar as part of negotiations for a lasting ceasefire between the US and Iran, while Anthropic released a new product, Claude Science, to support scientists automate chemistry and biology tasks.

Markets on both sides of the Atlantic were broadly stronger on the last trading day of the quarter, with chipmakers and semiconductor firms again driving gains, with the S&P 500 up 0.8% late in the session, the Nasdaq Composite gaining 1.5% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising 0.3%. The UK’s FTSE 100 edged up 0.1%, Germany’s DAX climbed 1.5% and France’s CAC 40 advanced 0.4%.

“Investors will now shift their focus to Thursday morning's US non-farm payrolls report, the most important economic release of the week, ahead of the US Independence Day holiday, with NYSE and Nasdaq markets closed on Friday in observance of the holiday,” Moomoo market strategy consultant Greg Boland said in a note. “After an exceptionally strong June quarter for US equities and a solid recovery in New Zealand shares, attention is turning to whether resilient economic data and renewed AI optimism can continue to support markets into the second half of 2026.”

Court ruling

Meanwhile, US President Trump’s crackdown on immigration was handed a setback by the Supreme Court, which rejected the White House’s executive order declaring future children born in the US wouldn’t be considered citizens if their parents were in the country illegally.

Separately, the Supreme Court that states can ban transgender women and girls from playing on female sports teams.

Social media giants were also in the courts, with a federal judge rejecting Meta’s bid to dismiss a lawsuit by 29 states accusing it of designing Facebook and Instagram to addict children.

And Bloomberg reported that TikTok was finalising a settlement to end a claim that its platform was addictive to minors to avoid a jury trial in Los Angeles. Other defendants in the claim included Meta and Snap, while Google’s YouTube settled earlier in June.

The Food and Drug Administration cleared Philip Morris International to market its Zyn nicotine pouches as less harmful than cigarettes.

More than 100 financial and technology firms, including Visa, Stripe and BlackRock, have agreed to launch a US-dollar backed stablecoin later this year called Open USD.

And the UK government is considering intervening in Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, with culture secretary Lisa Nandy saying she was “minded to intervene” on public interest grounds, including the need to maintain a plurality of views in the news media.

In New Zealand, the Commerce Commission cleared the long-awaited and much-disputed Bremworth sale of its assets to Mohawk Industries, the parent of rival carpetmaker Godfrey Hirst. The antitrust regulator said the dominant share of synthetic carpet in New Zealand would act as a restraint on the merged entity.

Australia’s stock market is poised to open the new quarter on a positive note, with futures pointing to a 0.1% gain for the S&P/ASX 200 index when trading opens across the Tasman. The kiwi dollar climbed to 56.81 US cents at 7am in Auckland from 56.48 cents yesterday.

The New Zealand dollar jumped to 92.36 yen from 91.61 yen yesterday, with traders on alert for any intervention with Japan’s currency at a 40-year low against the greenback.

No major local data is scheduled for today.

Reporting by Paul McBeth. Image from Ran Berkovich on Unsplash.