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Goldman’s Succession Timeline Takes Shape: DealBook Briefing

Credit...Brian Snyder/Reuters

Good Friday. Here’s what we’re watching:

• CBS continues its insurrection against its controlling shareholder.

• The chief executive of Campbell Soup retired abruptly.

• Is Qualcomm’s purchase of NXP more likely now?

• Why to be skeptical of China’s reported trade concession.

• The issues behind a bailout of 666 Fifth Ave.

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David M. Solomon, Goldman’s president, is likely to be named chief executive officer by the end of this year, reports Kate Kelly of the NYT. He is already structuring his senior management team, Ms. Kelly reports, citing people familiar with the firm’s plans.

The details

• Mr. Blankfein’s exit will likely take place in conjunction with the firm’s annual dinner for retired partners in December. Mr. Solomon would step in shortly after that.

• Mr. Solomon is starting to sketch out the possibilities for a new management team. Top of that list is the role of Goldman president, which is often shared by two executives. The contenders include John Waldron, the firm’s co-head of investment banking; Eric S. Lane, who co-heads its investment management division; and Stephen M. Scherr, who runs the consumer banking division.

Freddie Mac on Thursday said average mortgage rates, now at 4.61 percent on a 30-year fixed-rate loan, had hit their highest level in seven years. With the economy growing and signs that inflation will climb in coming months, investors have been pushing up interest rates in the bond market. Banks, which make mortgages and then sell most of them into the bond market, set mortgage rates off of interest rates in that market. So, as the yield on the 10-year Treasury note has ramped higher this year, so has the mortgage rate.

That said, there are some ways to assess whether the current mortgage rate might be a bit high or low for the current conditions in the markets and the economy. One way to put the nominal mortgage rate in context is to adjust for inflation. Subtracting April’s inflation rate of 2.5 percent from the current mortgage rate gives a “real” mortgage rate of around 2.1 percent. That compares with the average real rate of 2.25 percent for the past seven years. The mortgage rate would need to rise 0.15 percentage point to reach that level.

Another exercise is to compare the current mortgage with the yield on the 10-year Treasury note. The difference between the two interest rates on Thursday was 1.5 percentage points, which is smaller than the seven-year average of 1.72 percentage points. Trading at that “spread” would push the current mortgage rate 0.22 percentage point higher to 4.83 percent.

Economists expect the yield on the 10-year Treasury note to keep rising, to 3.24 percent in December, according to estimates compiled by The Wall Street Journal.

Adding the average seven-year spread of 1.72 percentage points to that forecast gets the mortgage rate within spitting distance of 5 percent.

— Peter Eavis

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Shari RedstoneCredit...Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Even after a Delaware judge denied CBS’s move to restrain its controlling shareholder, the broadcaster’s board — excluding Ms. Redstone and her two allies — voted to approve a special dividend that would remove much of the Redstones’ voting power. (It won’t take effect unless a Delaware court approves, and Ms. Redstone argues that she has already changed CBS’s bylaws to neuter the move.)

Both sides claimed a victory of sorts, but only one thing was clear: They will all be spending a lot of time in court.

Critics’ corner: Barton Crockett of B. Riley FBR says that Ms. Redstone’s ultimate goal, reuniting CBS and Viacom, isn’t the best outcome for either company. Rich Greenfield of BTIG says CBS’s C.E.O., Les Moonves, should move on if he wants to act like an owner.

President Trump has pushed Megan Brennan, the postmaster general, to double the rate the United States Postal Service charges Amazon and other firms to ship packages, The Washington Post reported, citing three anonymous sources.

Ms. Brennan has resisted doing so, pointing out that the rate the Postal Service charges Amazon and others is bound by contracts, the Washington Post writes.

Context

The issue of what Amazon pays the Postal Service to ship packages returned to spotlight in April. In repeated jabs on Twitter, Mr. Trump accused Amazon of being a drain on the 242-year-old agency. He also issued an executive order creating a task force to “conduct a thorough evaluation” of the Postal Service’s operations and finances, including the “expansion and pricing of the package delivery market.”

Many have pushed back against Mr. Trump’s comments. They point out that Amazon, the largest single shipper of packages, has been a boon for the agency at a time when it has experienced a steady decline in the amount of mail it ships.

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Denise Morrison was the chief executive of Campbell Soup Company until retiring abruptly on Friday.Credit...Erik Tanner for The New York Times

Denise M. Morrison, the chief executive of Campbell Soup Co., retired abruptly on Friday after nearly seven years in the job. Keith R. McLoughlin, a member of the Campbell board since 2016, was named to succeed Ms. Morrison on an interim basis.

• Campbell has struggled on Ms. Morrison’s watch to reverse a slide in sales tied to shifting food trends. Campbell reported $393 million loss for the third quarter on Friday, compared with a $176 million profit in the same period a year earlier. The company also expects its earnings per share for the year to slump 5 to 6 percent after previously projecting a decline of 1 to 3 percent.

• With Ms. Morrison’s departure, there are now 23 women leading Fortune 500 companies, or 4.6 percent of the total. They include Mary Barra at General Motors, Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo and Marillyn Hewson at Lockheed Martin.

• Several women left chief executive positions at major companies last year: Sheri McCoy stepped down from Avon, Irene Rosenfeld retired from Oreo cookie maker Mondelez International, Marissa Mayer resigned from Yahoo and Meg Whitman retired from Hewlett-Packard.

• Campbell’s share price dropped more than 12 percent, to $34.50, after the company’s morning announcement that Ms. Morrison had resigned. It had bounced back a bit by midday. From the start of her tenure as chief executive in August 2011 through Thursday, Campbell’s share price was up 19 percent, although it had tumbled around 30 percent in the past year.

— Tiffany Hsu

NXP’s stock is up 5 percent in recent trading after The Wall Street Journal reported that completion Qualcomm’s acquisition of NXP was “looking more optimistic,” citing an unnamed Beijing official.

Context

• Chinese antitrust regulators had long delayed Qualcomm’s $44 billion deal for NXP as well as Bain Capital’s $18 billion purchase of Toshiba.

• In April, regulators in China said that there were hard to resolve issues with Qualcomm’s acquisition of NXP.

• Earlier this week President Trump said he was working with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to prevent the collapse of ZTE, which had essentially halted operations after being penalized by the United States Department of Commerce.

• China regulators then said they would restart their review of Qualcomm’s deal for NXP.

• On Thursday, China approved Bain Capital's acquisitions of Toshiba.

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Liu He, Beijing's top economic adviser.Credit...Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press

Chinese negotiators may have proposed radically shrinking Beijing’s trade gap with the U.S., and that would look like a win for President Trump. But the math is fuzzy, according to Mark Landler and Ana Swanson of the NYT:

Even if the Chinese stopped buying other foreign products, like Airbus airplanes from the European Union or soybeans from Brazil, and purchased solely American products, it would add up to only a small fraction of the $200 billion total they are promising to purchase.

The U.S. economy is running at near-full capacity, so more exports to China would mean fewer elsewhere. But this may all be moot, since Beijing denies making the offer.

The trade talks have other potential bumps. Congress wants more national security oversight of Chinese investment in the U.S. Mr. Trump himself cast doubt on the outcome of the negotiations, though maybe that was a tactical ploy.

Elsewhere in trade: Japan may retaliate against U.S. metal tariffs. American sanctions on Iran and Venezuela may aid OPEC and Russia. Easing penalties against Rusal hasn’t stopped suffering at the metals giant.

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666 Fifth Ave.Credit...Lucas Jackson/Reuters

The Midtown Manhattan skyscraper has long been an albatross for Kushner Companies. But the potential rescue deal — with Brookfield Property Partners, a firm that has Qatari state backing — raised questions about Jared Kushner’s continuing ties to his family business.

Representatives for Brookfield and Qatar said the emirate wasn’t involved, and Brookfield is an established real-estate name in its own right. But Mr. Kushner remains financially tied to Kushner Companies, which has sought to do business with Anbang of China and Qatar. And fears that foreign governments might influence him that way may have helped lose him his security clearance.

Until terms of the deal come to light, Tim O’Brien of Bloomberg Opinion says, it’s fair to ask whether this would be another collision of private business and public policy.

• Who gets put straight through to President Trump? The list reportedly includes Steve Schwarzman, Rupert Murdoch and Sean Hannity. (New York)

• The law enforcement official who leaked Michael Cohen’s financial records probably left an identifying digital trail. (Bloomberg)

• A defamation lawsuit against Mr. Trump by the former “Apprentice” contestant Summer Zervos can go ahead, a New York appeals court ruled. (WaPo)

• A branch of China Construction Bank offered clients the chance to dine with Mr. Trump for $150,000, prompting the president’s re-election campaign to complain to the Justice Department. (Bloomberg)

• Some ways private colleges may get around taxes on their endowments. (Bloomberg)

• The WSJ editorial board rebuked immigration hard-liners as hurting U.S. agriculture. (WSJ)

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Credit...Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

With its $2.2 billion deal to buy iZettle, PayPal has taken a big move in the global payments arms race. The Swedish iZettle — which had planned to go public — is Europe’s answer to Square, providing small businesses with credit-card readers and other services.

“Small businesses are the engine of the global economy and we are continuing to expand our platform to help them compete and win online, in-store and via mobile,” said PayPal’s C.E.O., Dan Schulman.

Chew on this: Another sale of a European start-up to an American company may trouble European policymakers who want a homegrown tech industry to rival Silicon Valley.

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Carl IcahnCredit...Brendan McDermid/Reuters

• Carl Icahn’s next campaign: fighting a take-private of AmTrust. (WSJ)

• Nissan wants better terms from a potential merger with its corporate cousin, Renault. (Bloomberg)

BJ’s Wholesale Club, Universal Music Group and Arion Bank, the successor to the failed Icelandic bank Kaupthing, all plan to go public. And shares in the tech training company Pluralsight rose 35 percent in their first day of trading.

• Vista Equity Partners and Thoma Bravo, two of the big names in tech private equity, are each looking to raise at least $10 billion apiece for new funds. (WSJ)

• TPG Growth is continuing its deal-making in Myanmar. (Bloomberg)

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Credit...Richard Drew/Associated Press

The latest scandal: Employees at its wholesale unit altered customers’ information — from Social Security numbers to dates of birth — without consent, according to the WSJ. They did so in 2017 and early this year in a rush to comply with anti-money-laundering rules.

Peter Eavis writes: A bank doesn’t have to harm customers to get into trouble with its regulators. These missteps suggest that Wells Fargo is still struggling to improve its compliance and its workplace culture.

Elsewhere in finance: Business Insider goes behind the scenes at the Goldman Sachs trading shake-up. The Vatican said that the response to the 2008 financial crisis has smacked of “a return to the heights of myopic egoism.”

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Google’s C.E.O., Sundar Pichai, demonstrating the company’s assistant software.Credit...Jeff Chiu/Associated Press

How realistic was that hairdresser-calling Google A.I. assistant? An internal Google video, “The Selfish Ledger,” dreams of all-encompassing data collection.

• Has Apple picked North Carolina instead of Northern Virginia for a new campus? (WRAL)

Fraud is still rampant in I.C.O.s. JPMorgan Chase is exploring potential uses of cryptocurrencies.

• Uber’s fight with Ola has been good for Indian customers — but bad for SoftBank, which owns stakes in both. (FT)

• Goldman Sachs analysts think Tesla needs to raise $10 billion by 2020. (Fortune)

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Suzanne Scott, second from left.Credit...Larry Busacca/Getty Images

Suzanne Scott, a longtime Fox News executive, became the network’s first woman C.E.O. and the only female head of a major broadcast or cable news operation. (NYT)

Andrew Levy, United Continental’s C.F.O., and Julie Stewart, chief of staff to its C.E.O., are leaving. (WSJ)

Jeff Holden, Uber’s chief product officer and flying-taxi supremo, is leaving. (Recode)

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Anthony Scaramucci, right, with Michael Avenatti.Credit...Jamie Mccarthy/Getty Images

“How about: Not Happening.”

Anthony Scaramucci, on what a prospective TV show starring the onetime White House official and Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for Stormy Daniels, should be called.

• Companies like Tesla and Apple want lithium and cobalt so much, they’re sometimes partnering with suppliers who aren’t producing yet. And China shouldn’t count on a stranglehold on lithium forever.

• The F.D.A. has called out drug makers it says are blocking generic competition. (WSJ)

• American shale drillers are still spending more than they make, even as oil prices rise. (WSJ)

• MTV has halted production of “Catfish: The TV Show” amid a sexual misconduct investigation into its host, Nev Schulman. (Daily Beast)

• Why some people admire Ajit Pai’s work at the F.C.C. while others revile it. (Wired)

• Should Uber just drop mandatory arbitration? (NYT)

• A history of Facebook’s Internet.org. (Wired)

We’d love your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to bizday@nytimes.com.

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