Business

By Shadia Nasralla

LONDON, May 28 (Reuters) – Ousted BP Chairman Albert Manifold met with activist shareholder Elliott Management during his tenure without telling fellow board members directly, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

BP dismissed Manifold this week after less than eight months as chairman, sending BP’s shares plunging and dealing a blow to the leadership’s attempt to prove that it had steadied the ship. BP cited governance and conduct issues when it ousted Manifold.

BP hired Manifold last year to oversee its efforts to rebuild investor confidence after years of strategy and leadership changes and high debt. He replaced Helge Lund, whose shareholder support sagged before his exit.

Manifold’s previously unreported meetings with Elliott come on top of complaints about bullying behaviour to both executive and lower-level staff which alarmed the board, according to sources.

A spokesperson for Manifold did not offer any formal comment on the meetings with Elliott.

Manifold’s interactions with Elliott were not technically a breach of any specific rule and not the main reason for his dismissal, but were an example of acting unilaterally and not in good faith towards other board members, one of the two sources with knowledge of the matter said.

The meetings with Elliott were not hidden from the company because Manifold had informed BP’s investor relations team that he met Elliott on several occasions and all shareholder interactions should have been reported to the board as part of routine investor relations updates, said one source with knowledge of the matter.

U.S. activist hedge fund Elliott disclosed last year that it had a stake of over 5% in BP and has given no public update since then on how much of the company it owns. 

Elliott wanted BP to cut costs, shift focus and spending from renewable projects to oil and gas and simplify BP’s organisational structure, sources have told Reuters over the past year. Manifold wanted to accelerate the revamp of BP, which implemented most of these changes in recent months.

Elliott did not reply to requests for comment on any meetings with Manifold. BP declined to comment and, when asked about the way information is supposed to flow about such meetings, referred back to earlier statements about Manifold’s conduct.

“FALSE NARRATIVE”

Manifold has said his dismissal came without warning, that he disputed the characterisation of his conduct and was ready to challenge any “false narrative”.

“Is it possible that in my determination to drive change on costs, performance, the balance sheet and shareholder communications, I pushed hard and challenged people directly? Yes, it is,” he said in a statement on Thursday.

“What I do not accept is that lies can be told about me, nor that anyone should be allowed to hide behind anonymity when commenting on my time at BP,” he added.

Manifold has hired law firm Mishcon de Reya to represent him in the aftermath of his dismissal, a source previously told Reuters on Wednesday.

A spokesperson for Manifold declined to comment on Thursday regarding what, if any, action he was planning to take against BP.

Manifold’s departure is the third abrupt or forced exit of a senior BP leader in three years after ex-CEOs Bernard Looney and Murray Auchincloss, raising questions about its ability to deliver a turnaround strategy investors had only just begun to back.

Manifold had acted aggressively with different colleagues across the company making his position untenable, four sources told Reuters on Tuesday. The company has appointed Ian Tyler as interim chairman.

(Reporting by Shadia Nasralla, additional reporting by Stephanie Kelly and Sarah McFarlane; Editing by Nina Chestney, Simon Webb and Sanjeev Miglani”)

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By Ann Saphir

May 28 (Reuters) – One of new Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh’s favorite inflation measures came in cool again on Thursday, offering evidence for his belief inflation is improving and against the view of a growing number of other policymakers that interest rate hikes may be needed to tamp down rising price pressures.

Year-over-year inflation by the Dallas Fed’s trimmed mean measure – the best-known of what Warsh referred to in his confirmation hearing as “trimmed averages” for inflation – was 2.3% in April, the Fed bank reported on Wednesday, down from 2.4% in March.

Trouble is, not even the trimmed mean measure’s publishers think it’s a good yardstick of the underlying inflation trend right now.

“You would want to be cautious on getting too much optimism from the level of the trimmed mean,” Dallas Fed economist Tyler Atkinson explained in an interview on Wednesday ahead of the latest data release.

In normal times, he said, the gauge works well to filter out the noise from outlying components, which in April included surging prices for gasoline, airfare and jewelry, and a drop in the prices for poultry, household linens and haircuts. It trims off the fastest-rising prices and fastest-falling prices, leaving a more representative middle set of price changes that typically serves as a good indicator of where inflation is heading.

Items with falling or very slow-rising prices typically outnumber items with steeply rising prices, so Dallas Fed researchers compensate by lopping off more high-inflation items than low-inflation ones.

But lately – because tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump over the last year have pushed up prices for a large chunk of goods – the usual “skew” is reversed. That means that trimming the top 31% and the bottom 24% of items in the index, as the gauge’s methodology calls for, ends up pushing the gauge downward, understating true price pressures, Atkinson explained.

This has happened twice before, in the aftermath of the financial crisis and during the post-pandemic inflation surge. Both times, the trimmed mean gave a false signal, suggesting inflation would be cooler than it turned out to be.

By contrast, the measure Fed policymakers have been using for some time to gauge underlying price pressures – the core personal consumption expenditures price index excluding volatile energy and food prices – rose 3.3% in the 12 months through April, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis said on Thursday.

That is the fastest since 2023 and is, as Fed Governor Lisa Cook said on Wednesday, “clearly moving in the wrong direction.”

At his confirmation hearing last month, though, Warsh told lawmakers he prefers to take his signal from “trimmed averages” and, as he told Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, he believes inflation “has improved somewhat in the last year.”

Analysts are skeptical.

“We think it is difficult to argue that the disinflation signaled by the trimmed mean is real,” wrote Standard Chartered Bank analysts Steve Englander and Dan Pan, noting not just the Dallas Fed measure’s statistical properties but also that it historically has not been as good at predicting future inflation as core PCE.

The Dallas Fed has no plans to change its methodology, Atkinson said. If tariff-induced price pressures recede as expected, the problem should cure itself in coming months. Until then, maybe look elsewhere for a guide on the future of inflation, he suggested.

“At the Dallas Fed, we really like the trimmed mean,” he said. “But any policymaker would say, you don’t just look at a single measure, look at lots and lots of them.”

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(Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Dan Burns and Andrea Ricci )

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The average long-term U.S. mortgage rate rose again this week, reaching its highest level in nine months, another setback for prospective homebuyers.

The benchmark 30-year fixed rate mortgage rate rose to 6.53% from 6.51% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. Despite the latest increase, the average rate remains below 6.89%, where it was a year ago.

When mortgage rates rise they can add hundreds of dollars a month in costs for borrowers, reducing their purchasing power.

Rates have been mostly trending higher since the war with Iran began, disrupting the passage of tankers ferrying crude oil from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide. That’s sent oil prices sharply higher — a key driver of inflation.

Mortgage rates are influenced by several factors, from the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy decisions to bond market investors’ expectations for the economy and inflation. They generally follow the trajectory of the 10-year Treasury yield, which lenders use as a guide to pricing home loans.

Expectations of higher oil prices have pushed up long-term bond yields, causing mortgage rates to head higher.

Bond yields have been easing this week amid hopes that the United States and Iran may reach a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and get oil flowing again. The yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury note was at 4.46% in midday trading Thursday on the bond market, down from 4.57% a week ago. It was just 3.97% in late February, before the war broke out.

Meanwhile, borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with homeowners refinancing their home loans, also rose this week. That average rate rose to 5.87% from 5.85% last week. A year ago, it was at 6.03%, Freddie Mac said.

As recently as late February, the average rate on a 30-year mortgage had slipped just under 6% for the first time since late 2022. It’s hasn’t fallen below that threshold since. It’s now at its highest level since August 28, when it was 6.56%.

While average long-term mortgage rates remain lower than they were at this time last year, their recent increase has put a damper on sales so far this spring homebuying season.

Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes were essentially flat last month after declining from a year earlier in the first three months of the year, extending a nationwide housing slump that dates back to 2022 when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows.

Demand for newly built homes has also been lackluster. New home sales fell 6.2% in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 622,000 units, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Thursday.

Through the first four months of this year, new home sales are down 6.5% from where they were at this time last year, even as many homebuilders continue to lower prices and offer incentives to woo home shoppers.

New data on mortgage applications points to ongoing weakness.

Mortgage applications, which include loans to buy a home or refinance an existing mortgage, fell 8.5% last week from a week earlier as mortgage rates marched higher, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. A pullback in demand for mortgage refinancing loans accounted for a big share of the overall decline.

One bright spot: Applications for loans to buy a home continued to run ahead of last year’s pace.

Home shoppers who are undeterred by rising mortgage rates are benefiting from buyer-friendly trends in many markets, including more properties on the market than a year ago and data showing home listing prices have started falling in many metro areas, especially in the South and Midwest.

“Buyers have more homes to choose from and asking prices continue to soften, but their dollars don’t stretch as far as they did a few months back,” said Jake Krimmel, senior economist at Realtor.com. “A resolution to the (U.S.-Iran) conflict, therefore, would do a world of good for mortgage rates, consumers, and housing market momentum.”

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By Ju-min Park and Qiaoyi Li

BEIJING, May 28 (Reuters) – China’s auto industry has likely moved past its “golden era,” NIO Chief Executive William Li said on Thursday, as a downturn in domestic car sales extended into May.

A rebound in the world’s largest auto market has yet to materialise, despite the sector’s continued export strength, Li told reporters in Beijing.

Li said NIO’s focus is on its home market.

“We’re focused primarily on China,” Li said when asked about overseas expansion. The company began exporting in 2021, starting with Norway, but overseas shipments have remained negligible.

Li said China remains the most efficient place to invest in pure electric vehicles, noting that deploying similar levels of capital abroad would take significantly longer with less certain returns. Plug-in hybrids and internal combustion engine vehicles, by contrast, are better suited to global markets, he added.

NIO, known for its battery-swapping technology, currently sells only pure EVs.

The company is among a group of Chinese EV makers betting that advanced driver-assistance systems, in-house software and broader model lineups can help them navigate intensifying domestic competition.

As part of that push, NIO plans to increase spending on computing resources for smart-driving development fivefold this year compared with 2025, according to Li.

Industry data showed China’s domestic car sales were expected to stagnate in 2026, while growth in electric and plug-in hybrid sales was forecast to slow after years of rapid expansion.

In April, China’s domestic car sales fell for a seventh straight month, though exports remained strong.

China’s automobile ownership hit 370 million vehicles, meaning it’s “no longer a growth market, but rather a saturated market,” Li said.

Against that backdrop, high-profile launches like NIO’s luxury flagship ES9 SUV this week are becoming more important as automakers seek to defend market share and improve margins.

(Reporting by Ju-min Park and Qiaoyi Li; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Thomas Derpinghaus)

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May 28 (Reuters) – Singapore Airlines said on Thursday that it would expand its joint network between New Zealand and Singapore with Air New Zealand to meet growing travel demand between the two countries alongside key markets across Asia and Europe. 

The expanded network comes as carriers outside of the Middle East reroute flights between Asia and Europe away from major travel hubs in the region, in response to the severe disruption in air travel caused by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

Here are some details:

• The Air New Zealand-SIA alliance will increase overall seat capacity between the two countries by 17% from late October 2026, adding 72,000 seats for the upcoming Northern Winter season.

• Air NZ will launch three weekly services between Singapore and Christchurch with its Boeing 787 aircraft.

• Combined with SIA’s existing Christchurch operations, which run up to 12 weekly services, the two airlines will operate 15 weekly services from November 2026 to February 2027.

• Air New Zealand will also add four weekly Auckland services and utilise both its Boeing 777 and 787 aircraft.

• SIA will adjust its Singapore-Auckland schedule from three daily flights to two, and will deploy the Airbus A380 and Boeing 777-300ER on the route.

• The expanded Air New Zealand-SIA Northern Winter schedule will take effect at the end of October this year, subject to regulatory approval.

(Reporting by Nikita Maria Jino in Bengaluru; Editing by Rashmi Aich)

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Kuwait said it faced a missile and drone attack Thursday as the shaky ceasefire in the Iran war was again challenged after the United States conducted strikes targeting Iran and Tehran said it responded with an attack of its own.

Kuwait’s military made the announcement, without providing further details on what had been targeted.

Kuwait repeatedly came under fire from Iran and Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq during the war. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

The announcement by Kuwait’s military comes as the Middle East remains on the edge over the ceasefire and ongoing negotiations between Tehran and Washington which as of yet have not reopened the Strait of Hormuz.

The strait is the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which about a fifth of all oil and natural gas traded once passed. Its closure has sparked a global energy shortage that experts warn only will intensify in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, the U.S. is trying to get Iran to give up its stockpile of highly enriched uranium while the Islamic Republic seeks the lifting of economic sanctions and the release of frozen assets to aid its shattered economy.

Earlier Thursday morning, U.S. officials said that U.S. Central Command forces shot down four Iranian one-way attack drones that posed a threat around the Strait of Hormuz, according to U.S. officials who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. The U.S. military also struck an Iranian ground control station in Bandar Abbas that was about to launch a fifth drone, the officials said.

Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard via the state-run IRNA news agency acknowledged the attack around Bandar Abbas International Airport, a dual-use airport on the strait, and said it launched its own retaliatory attack on the air base that launched the assault. It did not elaborate on the target and it wasn’t clear whether the attack on Kuwait was directly related.

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Associated Press writer Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.

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By Christine Chen

SYDNEY, May 28 (Reuters) – The Australian government said on Thursday it had launched legal action against 3M over contamination from firefighting foam supplied by the U.S. company that contained PFAS, or “forever chemicals”, seeking more than A$2 billion ($1.43 billion) in damages.

The claim against the Minnesota-based chemicals maker and its local unit is the largest ever brought by Australia, reflecting the past and future environmental, economic and cultural costs of the contamination, the government said.

“Make no mistake, this legal action against 3M is significant,” Attorney-General Michelle Rowland told reporters.

“The Commonwealth is seeking more than A$2 billion in damages to recover significant past and future expenses incurred in investigating and managing contamination resulting from the historical storage and use of this foam.”

The government, which used the firefighting foam at 28 defence bases across the country, alleged 3M gave assurances the substance was safe to dispose of, biodegradable and non-toxic.

But 3M withheld its own testing showing “significant adverse environmental effects” associated with its use, Rowland alleged.

3M said in a statement it would defend itself against the claims in court.

“3M has never manufactured PFAS in Australia and ceased sales of the products at issue in Australia around two decades ago,” the statement said.

“Despite this, the Department of Defence continued to use PFAS-containing firefighting foams for nearly two decades longer.”

PFAS are a group of manufactured chemicals that are widely used in products resistant to heat, stains, grease and water.

Known as “forever chemicals”, they do not naturally break down in the environment, raising concerns about their ​accumulation in ecosystems, drinking water and the human body.

Research has linked exposure to PFAS to health issues ​including liver damage, lower birth weight and testicular cancer.

Assistant Defence Minister Peter Khalil said the department has spent A$1.3 billion in dealing with the impacts of the contamination, including paying A$408 million in legal settlements to affected communities.

The department has also treated or removed more than 200,000 metric tons of contaminated soil and treated more than 13 billion litres of water.

“This is the most significant legal action undertaken by Commonwealth and Defence in living memory,” Khalil said.

“To put it plainly, we are taking on 3M on behalf of the Australian people and the Australians that are affected.”

3M has faced thousands of lawsuits over PFAS contamination. In 2023 it reached a $10.3 billion settlement with a host of U.S. public water systems to resolve water pollution claims.

($1 = 1.4029 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Christine Chen in Sydney; Editing by Jacqueline Wong, Stephen Coates and Jamie Freed)

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By Leika Kihara

TOKYO, May 28 (Reuters) – Federal Reserve Vice Chair Philip Jefferson said on Thursday it was appropriate to focus on returning inflation to the central bank’s 2% target given the U.S. labour market has been “very resilient” to the current energy shock.

“When I’m thinking about my policy decision meeting by meeting, I’m absolutely focused on price stability, but by mandate I also need to keep in mind what’s happening in the labour market,” Jefferson said during a question and answer session after a speech at a conference hosted by the BOJ and its think tank in Tokyo.

“The U.S. labour market has been very resilient to the current shock. Given that resiliency, it seems appropriate that the focus will be on returning inflation to 2%,” he said.

Jefferson’s comments were his first since last Friday’s swearing in of Kevin Warsh as the Fed’s new chair. 

Jefferson said it was difficult to say “moment by moment” what exactly the Fed’s rate policy could be given the uncertainty over the extent and duration of the war-induced energy shock.

“What all segments of society are noticing is increasing energy and gasoline prices in particular. We are sensitive to how that’s impacting the lives of everyday people,” he said.

But the challenge for the U.S. economy was that aside from the fallout from the energy shock, expanding AI investment was boosting growth, he said.

“The energy shock is a headwind for growth, but we are still having growth during this episode,” Jefferson said. “In terms of monetary policy communication, the emphasis has been on monitoring the second-round effect associated with supply shocks and a surge in investment demand.”

In his prepared remarks to the conference, he said the current setting of monetary policy is in the right place amid ongoing upside risks to the inflation outlook.

“I have not prejudged the next meeting and look forward to engaging with my colleagues about the policy necessary to best achieve our dual-mandate goals,” he said about the next Federal Open Market Committee meeting on June 16-17.

(Reporting by Leika Kihara; additional reporting by Michael Derby; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and John Mair)

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The most enduring memories that Clark and Dan Hunt share of their father, the sports tycoon Lamar Hunt, have less to do with all the World Cup games they saw together and more to do with the long, strange and often sinewy roads they took to get to them.

The van rides around Europe with a random cache of reporters, one of them a young CBS broadcaster named Verne Lundquist. Those side trips to find the best wienerschnitzel and ice cream. The fences they scaled to go swimming at Italian hotel pools long closed for the day. And the Mexican restaurant that proved to be the downfall of them all.

“My dad, he could eat anything,” Dan Hunt recalled, thinking back to that night during the 1986 World Cup. “I mean, he had a cast-iron stomach. He never got sick. And that about killed him. That was the food that took down the Hunt family.”

In wide-ranging interviews with The Associated Press, the Hunt brothers — Clark, the chairman of the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs and Dan, the president of Major League Soccer club FC Dallas — reflected on the robust soccer legacy left by their late father.

Without him, the U.S. may well have been watching the World Cup being played elsewhere next month rather than hosting it.

It was Lamar Hunt, after all, who helped professional soccer gain a foothold in the U.S. with his investment in the North American Soccer League. And when it folded in the 1980s, it was an undeterred Hunt who helped found MLS, whose very existence was one of the requirements of FIFA to allow his country to host the 1994 World Cup.

Lamar Hunt served as co-chairman of the organizing committee for matches in Dallas that year. Now, some 32 years later, Clark Hunt is serving in the same capacity for matches in Kansas City while Dan has taken on that role in Dallas.

Unlike the last World Cup played in the U.S., though, four group-stage matches and two knockout games will be played at Arrowhead Stadium, the home of the Chiefs, and a building Lamar Hunt long called his favorite place in the world.

“It’s going to be special,” Clark Hunt said, “and I think it goes back to thinking about my dad a lot. That’s what I’m going to do during those games, just think about how excited he would be to see the World Cup in Arrowhead Stadium.”

To say soccer was fledgling in the U.S. in the 1950s would be an understatement. There were no professional leagues to speak of, and after losing two of three games at the World Cup in 1950, the Americans would go four decades without qualifying at all.

It took a trip across the Atlantic Ocean for Lamar Hunt to fall in love with the sport.

His future wife, Norma Hunt, was attending University College Dublin as a Rotary scholar in the early 1960s, and the son of oil tycoon H.L. Hunt had gone to visit her. They found themselves at a Shamrock Rovers match, watching from a standing-room-only terrace on a cool night, and became engrossed in the throbbing, fevered pitch of European football.

“I think,” Clark Hunt said, “that may have been my dad’s first professional soccer game.”

The experience stayed with Lamar Hunt, even as he returned to the U.S. and poured himself into a different kind of football, helping to found the American Football League — which would soon merge with the NFL — and the Dallas Texans, now the Chiefs.

A few years later, Hunt returned to Europe to take in his first World Cup. It was 1966, and he watched as the host England beat West Germany in an historic final at Wembley Stadium for what remains its only championship.

That year, a group of entrepeneaurs that included Hunt and Jack Kent Cooke established the United Soccer Association, which would later merge with the National Professional Soccer League to create the North American Soccer League. For nearly two decades, the NASL would push U.S. soccer forward, luring such stars as Pele, Franz Beckenbauer and Carlos Alberto to North America, and laying the groundwork for future generations of American players.

“We know from his ventures into professional football that he was not afraid of a challenge,” Clark Hunt said, “and he was always an optimist, too, and many of his ventures probably had long odds. But he had tremendous perseverence and tremendous work ethic, and he had a vision and a belief for what he was doing.”

The NASL grew quickly throughout the 1970s — too quickly, as it turned out. Many new owners did not have the resources to withstand losses while their clubs were getting off the ground, and they began to fold, leading to several years of contraction.

After the 1984 season, with attendance waning and games no longer televised, the league collapsed.

“My dad was always great about not sharing his negative feelings, but I’m sure he had them,” Clark Hunt said. “I remember as a high school and college student being very upset about it, even though I didn’t have any real, you know, direct nexus to the team. But I just knew how disappointing it was for him, and sad that a sport I had come to love had really disappeared.”

Professional soccer didn’t disappear for long, though.

Lamar Hunt was nothing if not persistent, and he viewed every failure as a learning opportunity. So, when soccer’s governing body, FIFA, told organizers for the 1994 World Cup that one of its requirements to host the tournament was a top-tier domestic league, Hunt used what he had learned from the NASL in helping to establish Major League Soccer.

“You knew that if Lamar Hunt was part of it,” said Thom Meredith, his right-hand man for many years, “it meant something. You had Robert Kraft and all these other guys, but when it came down to it, you had Lamar Hunt in the room.”

Hunt not only helped bankroll the league but owned three of its first franchises; the family still owns FC Dallas, but divested itself of clubs in Columbus and Kansas City. Over the years, the league has grown to 30 clubs across the U.S. and Canada, attracted stars such as David Beckham and Lionel Messi, and laid the groundwork for robust youth soccer programs nationwide.

“My dad would be so pleased to see where MLS is today,” Clark Hunt said, “and he would be so excited about where it’s going.”

While domestic soccer was important to Hunt, it was the World Cup that captivated him, beginning with that 1966 classic all the way through the 2002 edition hosted by South Korea and Japan, which helped spur the growth of the game in Asia.

Most years, Hunt would pack his family in rental cars and crisscross host countries to catch every game they could.

Clark Hunt, who later starred on the college soccer team at SMU, attended his first World Cup in 1978. But rather than the games, his most vivid memory was of a plaza outside a stadium in Düsseldorf, where activities had been set up for kids. One involved kicking a ball through a hole cut into a piece of wood, and Lamar Hunt had just as much fun trying as his 9-year-old son.

Dan Hunt’s first World Cup experience came in Mexico in 1986. The lowlight was that meal that left the whole family feeling ill, but the highlight was undoubtedly the final, when Diego Maradona helped Argentina prevail over West Germany in Mexico City.

“We had seats at about the 40-yard line, you know? Great seats. And we were there with our tickets and people were stitting there, and they were unwilling to move. Security was unwilling to move them. So we had no seats,” Dan Hunt recalled. “So my dad, true to form, solved the problem by buying more tickets, and we were right behind the goal for the penalty-kick shootout.”

Both of the brothers were busy at the start of the 2002 tournament, so Lamar Hunt — who died four years later at the age of 74 — headed to Asia by himself. On one of his first days there, his briefcase containing all of his money, tickets and travel documents was stolen, leaving the billionaire entrepeneur to figure out how to use an ATM in a foreign country.

“He stuck is best card in and started to push buttons,” Dan Hunt said, “and he panicked and it shredded his card. So we’d send him cash. And then he was in South Korea, headed back to Japan, and they confiscated it all because he was over the legal limit.

“I just remember thinking, ‘My dad is totally going to get kidnapped.’”

When the U.S. was awarded the World Cup along with Mexico and Canada in June 2018, organizers in Kansas City and executives with the Chiefs quickly went to work. The city had missed out on hosting matches in 1994 after FIFA determined Arrowhead Stadium would be unable to fit the required pitch, and they weren’t going to let that happen twice.

Over the course of several years, and at a cost of nearly $20 million, seats were removed from the lower bowl of the NFL stadium and other modifications were made so that it could make its World Cup debut, now just days away. Its first game: Messi and defending champion Argentina against Algeria on June 16.

Kansas City will host six matches in all, includeding a quarterfinal, and the metropolitan area is serving as a home base not only for la Albiceleste and Algeria but also for perennial power England and the Netherlands, a longtime Hunt family favorite.

Meanwhile, five group-stage matches will be played at AT&T Stadium in Dallas, not far from where Lamar Hunt once lived. Four more will be played at the home of the Cowboys in the knockout rounds, including a semifinal match on July 14.

“I think this is one of the final pegs of fulfilling dad’s legacy,” Dan Hunt said. “He called Arrowhead Stadium his favorite place on earth, and it’s just so cool to have games there. And you know, Dallas was his hometown, and he loved it so much. So I think he would be just excited that we’re back here. I think he would be over the moon.”

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AP World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-world-cup

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By Rishika Sadam and Sai Ishwarbharath B

HYDERABAD/BENGALURU, May 27 (Reuters) – U.S. carrier American Airlines Group plans to double headcount at its India technology hub to about 800 by early next year, two people familiar with the matter said.

Rival Southwest Airlines last week announced plans to expand its Hyderabad global capability center (GCC) to about 1,000 employees over the next few years.

Global firms such as JPMorgan Chase, Walmart, McDonald’s, Nvidia and Eli Lilly have also expanded technology operations in India to tap its talent pool, as costs rise elsewhere and macro uncertainties persist.

Once mainly back-office units, these hubs now handle core functions including engineering, R&D, finance and operations.

American Airlines set up its Hyderabad hub in 2024 and employs about 400 staff focused on software engineering, AI and cybersecurity, the sources said.

The airline said it intends to continue hiring but did not share specific details on the headcount, saying only that the hub has “several hundred” employees and forms part of its global technology network alongside U.S. teams.

“Teams in Fort Worth, Phoenix and Hyderabad work closely with the business to digitize processes, deploy new tools that improve speed to market and business outcomes, and build a more resilient airline and better experience for team members and customers,” the company told Reuters.

The airline has increased its IT investment and U.S.-based technology headcount every year since 2021, it added.

India has emerged as the world’s largest GCC hub, with more than 2,100 centers employing about 2.36 million people and generating nearly $100 billion in revenue, according to a 2026 Nasscom-Zinnov report.

(Reporting by Rishika Sadam in Hyderabad and Sai Ishwarbharath B in Bengaluru; Editing by Dhanya Skariachan and Devika Syamnath)

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