Brent at $104, WTI at $97.55

Front month Brent (May 2026, K26) is at $104 a barrel, with the rest of the curve in backwardation (June 2026, J26, at 99.58).  Nymex WTI (April 2026, J26) is at 97.55 and is also in backwardation.

While 76K contracts traded on the most liquid WTI futures (second from front-month) no liquidity was seen on the corresponding options contracts.

Google Acquires Wiz for $32bn

Google has acquired Wiz, a cloud security company founded in 2020 that works across multiple cloud environments led by Assaf Rappaport (who previously founded Adallom, a cloud access security broker sold to Microsoft for around $320m). 

Wiz frames itself as "A new operating model for AI-era security".

Google was advised by Bank of America and Freshfields.  Wiz was advised by a slew of investment banks, including Barclays, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.

Bank of America has expanded its technology banking team, including hiring Jason Rowe of Goldman Sachs and others from JP Morgan and Centerview Partners (Gary Kirkham).

McKinsey's AI System Hacked by Startup Codewall

Red-team security startup Codewall has an AI agent which hacked McKinsey's internal AI platform (called Lilli, rolled out in July 2023)  gaining full read-write access to their chatbot in under two hours.  The technique used was SQL injection.

Agentic Commerce Gets Lift from Santander and MasterCard PoC

Santander and Mastercard have completed an agentic payment, billed as Europe's first agentic commerce transaction within a regulated banking environment. It was conducted using Mastercard Agent Pay.

Agentic commerce is an emerging ecommerce category.

The grand vision is to allow purchases to be conducted using Mastercard's payment rails within conversational interfaces.

Oil Prices up 12.5% from Previous Day on Iran Conflict

Brent crude is currently trading at $104.47 a barrel and WTI at $99.6 putting the Brent-TI spread almost $5 premium Brent over WTI in face of the Iran conflict.

Murban crude (trading on ICE Futures Abu Dhabi , or IFAD) is even higher at $113 a barrel. 

ICE's plans to launch IFAD were disclosed in November 2019 with ICE partnering with ADNOC (Abu Dhabi National Oil Company) and nine large energy traders, including BP, Shell, PetroChina and GS Caltex.

Axel Springer's Leap to buy Telegraph Media Group

European media firm Axel Springer is buying TMG (Telegraph Media Group), owner of Telegraph brands including the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, for £575m (beating a previous attempt by DMGT to acquire TMG for £500m). Matias Dopfner committed to "preserve the distinctive character and legacy" of his latest acquisition. Part of the strategy will be to expand the Telegraph's reach to the US. This is Axel's largest acquisition since 2021 when it acquired Politico for roughly $1bn.

Private Credit in Check as Blackstone Faces Withdrawals

Blackstone, the New York based investment behemoth, faced surging withdrawals in Q1 2026 from BCRED, its flagship $82bn fund. 

Clients pulled $3.7bn though new commitments came in at $2bn, leaving net withdrawals at $1.7bn (a 2% net reduction).

BCRED is the largest fund of its kind that doesn't trade on the market. This is the first quarter it has faced withdrawals. 

Wall Street was also jittery Friday from the collapse of UK mortgage lender Market Financial Solutions Ltd. (MFS)This builds on concerns arising since the collapse of First Brands. Jefferies stock has been hit this year due to exposure to both businesses.

Private credit is a $2tr industry which has grown rapidly over the past decade. Questions over valuation and transparency have hit recently, culminating in impact to BCRED.