Chuck E. Cheese, the restaurant chain where kids eat pizza with their bare hands after swimming around in a plastic ball pit, is going public via a reverse merger with Leo Holdings (NYSE: LHC), a blank check acquisition company formed by private equity firm Lion Capital.
Why it matters: This would be the first restaurant company to enter the U.S. public markets in four years. Or, in this case, re-enter.
Endeavor continues to work toward an IPO later this year, but it no longer looks like the Hollywood talent agency that Ari Emanuel first built and later merged with William Morris.
The big picture: Endeavor, backed by such investors as Silver Lake and SoftBank, has arguably morphed into an events company. Not only through the purchases of Ultimate Fighting Championship and Professional Bull Riders, but also through a video streaming effort that's signed such event-centered clients as World Wrestling Entertainment.
The latest report from the CFTC shows net shorts on bitcoin Cboe futures rose to 1,343 contracts, from 1,244 the previous week, after the cryptocurrency's recent surge.
Driving the news: Bitcoin jumped 20% to its highest level since November last week, moving briefly above the $5,000 mark. A Reuters report credited the surge largely to "an order worth about $100 million spread across U.S.-based exchanges Coinbase and Kraken and Luxembourg’s Bitstamp."
The Dow gained nearly 500 points last week to close at 26,424. It's now just "1.5% shy of its all-time high of 26,828.39, set on Oct. 3, 2018," Barron's notes. The S&P 500 is just 1.3% from its record close, and the Nasdaq is just 2.1% away from a record high.
Why it matters: U.S. stocks have shaken off almost all of their December sell-off, yet banks continue to report that investors are selling, not buying, equities.
The March jobs report showed that nationwide, wage growth is settling in right above 3%, but it has been growing much faster for retail workers. Unlike most segments of the economy, retail workers' wages are now growing faster than they were during the boom years of the early 2000s.
The big picture: The outperformance is being driven by a combination of state-by-state legislation and a shrinking talent pool.
David Axelrod is making his popular podcast, "The Axe Files," exclusive to Luminary, which has raised $100 million and plans to launch a paid platform with ad-free podcasts, starting with 25 shows the week of April 23.
Details: Some of Axelrod's expected upcoming guests include Aaron Sorkin, Bryan Cranston, Jason Rezaian, Meghan McCain and Kal Penn.
Pinterest, the social bookmarking platform, on Monday set IPO terms with plans to begin trading late next week on the New York Stock Exchange.
The bottom line: The proposed price range of $15–$17 per share would give Pinterest an initial market cap of around $8.5 billion, were it to price in the middle, and a fully diluted valuation of around $11 billion. Both are lower than Pinterest's most recent valuation from private market investors of $12.3 billion.
Nancy Pelosi has more power than anybody to decide whether Trump gets Congress' approval to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement with his renegotiated United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. And the signs Republicans are seeing from the speaker are not filling them with hope.
Driving the news: Last week, Pelosi told Politico's Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer that Mexico needed to pass labor law reforms before the House could even consider Trump's replacement to NAFTA. And now, per a source who shared the invitation with me, Pelosi has invited AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka to her speaker's meeting on Wednesday to present on the USMCA.
The U.S. and China "smoothly concluded" the latest round of trade talks and would work through remaining issues "through various effective means," the Chinese state-run Xinhua news agency reported Saturday.
What they're saying: "The two sides discussed the agreement text on technology transfer, protection of intellectual property rights, non-tariff measures, services industry, agriculture, trade balance and enforcement mechanism, and achieved new progress," Xinhua said.
