Pfizer emerged victorious in its bid to acquire biotech company Metsera, after besting Novo Nordisk in a rivalry that had been compared to Game of Thrones.

What’s driving the drug drama?

The weight loss drug industry could be worth $150 billion by the early 2030s, according to Reuters. Broad demand has spurred biotech companies to increase supply, some more successfully than others:

• The leaders in the space are Eli Lilly, maker of Zepbound and Mounjaro, and Novo Nordisk, the company behind Ozempic and Wegovy.
• Pfizer developed two oral weight loss medications of its own, but abandoned them after trial patients experienced significant side effects, most recently, in April 2025.
• Metsera was founded in 2022 to develop “next-generation” obesity and metabolic disease treatments. It IPO’d on January 31 of this year. It’s a clinical-stage company with several new weight loss treatments in trials.

In September, Pfizer offered up to $7.3 billion for Metsera, and it seemed a straightforward acquisition would ensue.

But that was just the beginning. At the end of October, Novo Nordisk submitted an “unsolicited proposal” to acquire Metsera worth up to $9 billion. Mizhuo healthcare equity strategist Jared Holz told clients that Novo Nordisk seemed to want Metsera as much for itself as it did to keep the company’s drugs-in-development “out of the hands” of competitors.

Parting shots: After plenty of back-and-forth, threatened lawsuits, and soundbites, Pfizer submitted an updated $10 billion offer, which Metsera accepted on Friday while saying that striking a deal with Novo presented “unacceptably high legal and regulatory risks.” On Saturday, Novo said it believed its submission was “compliant with antitrust law,” but declared it would not submit a counteroffer.

Big picture: On Thursday, the Trump administration announced what the Washington Post called “complicated” plans to significantly lower the price of weight loss drugs starting next year. Expanding access to the medications would help the drugmakers behind them grow exponentially.—HVL

“Beginning of the end” of govt shutdown may be upon us as Senate advances deal. Today is the 41st day of the shutdown, but last night, in a rare Sunday session, senators returned to Capitol Hill to advance a funding agreement that could reopen the government through at least January. Enough Democratic senators agreed to vote for the deal to clear a 60-vote threshold. It’s rumored to include a guarantee of a vote on a bill related to Affordable Care Act credits by the end of the second week of December (but not an extension of the credits themselves), a reversal of all permanent layoffs of government employees that have transpired since the shutdown, and the funding of SNAP, among other provisions. The plan still needs to pass in the House and be signed into law by President Trump, which would likely take at least a few days.

Two Cleveland Guardians pitchers indicted in alleged pitch-rigging scheme. The Eastern District of New York, the same US Attorney’s office that charged NBA figures with similar crimes last month, accused Cleveland’s Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz with throwing specific pitches in an arrangement with a gambler so the person betting could win prop bets and provide the pitchers with kickbacks. Prosecutors said that the scheme began with Clase in May 2023 and Ortiz joined in June 2025, with gamblers winning at least $450,000 by wagering on the pitches. US Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said, “The defendants deprived the Cleveland Guardians and Major League Baseball of their honest services. They defrauded the online betting platforms where the bets were placed. And they betrayed America’s pastime.” Ortiz’s attorney denied the charges in a statement to ESPN. A message ESPN placed to Clase’s attorney was not returned.

Visa and Mastercard near settlement with merchants that might lower transaction fees. In an exclusive report, the Wall Street Journal stated that the two major credit card companies are close to settling a 20-year legal dispute with merchants that would enable them to reject certain cards and be charged lower interchange fees. Under the deal, merchants would not have to accept every type of credit card that Visa or Mastercard offers, meaning they could refuse rewards credit cards, which cost them more to process than other types because the rewards are funded in part by the higher interchange fees. Anonymous sources told the WSJ that Visa and Mastercard would lower interchange fees overall by an average of 0.1 percentage point over several years. The uptick of merchants charging customers for credit card processing fees goes back to this dispute.—HVL

On Friday, a Manhattan federal judge declared a mistrial in the case of two brothers accused of stealing $25 million worth of cryptocurrency in 12 seconds through a complicated scheme on the Ethereum blockchain, the latest example of prosecutors falling short in their attempt to bring order to the industry.

Literal crypto bros

MIT-educated James and Anton Peraire-Bueno honed their skills in math and computer science. In 2023, prosecutors alleged they “fraudulently gained access to pending private transactions and used that access to alter certain transactions and obtain their victims’ cryptocurrency.” At the core of the issue are “sandwich attacks” that don’t involve bread or mustard:

• It’s when bots are used to place buy and sell orders around a person’s order; the buy order drives up the price on the person, and the sell order cashes in.
• The brothers set a trap for the bots with bots of their own, according to testimony, which allowed them to drain $25 million from three users.

The brothers said their ploy was fair game in an unregulated market. Prosecutors unsuccessfully argued that their move was fraudulent.

In a note to the judge, the jurors reported that the incredibly complicated case had placed them under an “emotional burden” that caused half of them to break down in tears, a reasonable response to having to listen to people argue about crypto. After three days of deliberation, they were deadlocked.

Zoom out: It’s the latest crypto-based setback for prosecutors, who are attempting to apply the law to a decentralized finance world. In May, the wire fraud conviction of crypto trader Avraham “Avi” Eisenberg was overturned after he was convicted of swindling $110 million. Then, in August, a mistrial was declared in the $1 billion crypto laundering case involving Roman Storm, the creator of Tornado Cash, which anonymized transactions on the Ethereum blockchain.—DL

United Nations annual climate summit begins today: This year’s meeting, COP30, will assemble government leaders, business titans, and climate scientists with a focus on the pace at which the planet is heating. This year, however, the United States will not attend. A decade ago, nearly every country agreed to the Paris climate agreement, which called for global policies to reduce carbon emissions to keep global temperatures from increasing. Last week, the UN reported a little progress, but said that could be erased in the coming years as the US unravels its climate policies under President Trump.

Warren Buffett will release a farewell letter: The 95-year-old Oracle of Omaha is expected to release a valedictory statement today, his first public address since announcing in May that he would step down as the head of Berkshire Hathaway by year’s end. A Berkshire spokesperson said that Buffett’s letter to shareholders will cover “philanthropy, Berkshire and other matters that Berkshire shareholders and others may find to be of interest.” Could be a vision for Berkshire’s future, could be his review of Predator: Badlands. We won’t know until we read it.

Here’s what’s not happening this week: Economic data scheduled to arrive from the government won’t be released if the shutdown persists, which, at last check, is persisting. Impacted reports include the October consumer price index, producer price index, and the monthly US retail sales report. That means investors will have to look to secondary sources, like the small business optimism index from the National Federation of Independent Business, which comes out tomorrow, for information on consumer prices and retail sales. Also not happening this week: a sunset after 5pm.

Everything else…

• Today marks the 250th anniversary of the US Marines being organized under the Continental Congress.
• Tomorrow is Veterans Day. It’s a federal holiday, which means government offices will be closed (one way or the other).
• Can we tell you how to get to a new season of Sesame Street? Sure. It debuts on Netflix today, after HBO ended its deal.
• Unionized Starbucks employees will strike on Thursday, the chain’s annual Red Cup Day, if a labor contract is not finalized. The action would affect stores in 25 US cities.
• It’s a light week for earnings, but big names reporting include Paramount Skydance tomorrow, Cisco on Wednesday, and Disney on Thursday.
• Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, the third installment in the magic franchise, hits theaters on Friday.

On Saturday, Rockefeller Center got its 2025 Christmas tree. This year’s centerpiece is 75 feet tall, 45 feet in diameter, and weighs approximately 11 tons, according to its host. The tree hails from East Greenbush, NY, a suburb of Albany about 150 miles north of Manhattan.

Here are some fun facts about Rockefeller Center’s tree procurement process:

• The tree is donated every year by a family, but they don’t receive monetary compensation. They don’t even get a tax write-off, since the tree doesn’t go to a nonprofit but to Tishman Speyer, the global real estate company that owns Rockefeller Center.
• Rockefeller Center employs a head gardener who doubles as a tree scout: Erik Pauze. He visits potential trees and makes subsequent caretaking trips to a selected tree to keep it looking good before it’s cut down.
• Because of the need for a tall, symmetrical tree, a Norway spruce is almost always chosen. Those trees don’t grow very high in forests, hence the need for a family to donate one that was likely grown for ornamental purposes.

This year’s tree was donated by Judy Russ in memory of her late husband, Dan. Russ told the Associated Press that Dan’s great-grandparents planted the tree decades ago. Anyone can submit a photo of their tree for consideration.—HVL