Alphabet’s Google illegally dominated two markets for online advertising technology, a judge ruled Thursday, dealing another blow to the tech giant and paving the way for U.S. antitrust prosecutors to seek a breakup of its advertising products.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, found Google liable for “willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power” in markets for publisher ad servers and the market for ad exchanges, which sit between buyers and sellers. Websites use publisher ad servers to store and manage their ad inventories.

Antitrust enforcers failed to prove a separate claim that Google had a monopoly in advertiser ad networks, she wrote.

Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said Google will appeal the ruling.

“We won half of this case and we will appeal the other half,” she said in a statement, adding that the company disagrees with the decision about its publisher tools. “Publishers have many options and they choose Google because our ad tech tools are simple, affordable and effective.’

Google’s shares were down around 2.1% at midday.

The decision clears the way for another hearing to determine what Google must do to restore competition in those markets, such as sell off parts of its business at another trial that has yet to be scheduled.

The Justice Department has said Google should have to sell off at least its Google Ad Manager, which includes the company’s publisher ad server and ad exchange.

However, a Google representative said Thursday that Google was optimistic it would not have to divest part of the business as part of any remedy, given the court’s view that its acquisition of advertising tech companies like DoubleClick were not anticompetitive.

Google still faces the possibility that two U.S. courts will order it to sell assets or change its business practices. A judge in Washington will hold a trial next week on the Justice Department’s request to make Google sell its Chrome browser and take other measures to end its dominance in online search.

Google has previously explored selling off its ad exchange to appease European antitrust regulators, Reuters reported in September.

Brinkema oversaw a three-week trial last year on claims brought by the Justice Department and a coalition of states.

Google used classic monopoly-building tactics of eliminating competitors through acquisitions, locking customers in to using its products and controlling how transactions occurred in the online ad market, prosecutors said at trial.

Google argued the case focused on the past, when it was still working on making its tools able to connect to competitors’ products. Prosecutors also ignored competition from Amazon.com, Comcast and other technology companies as digital ad spending shifted to apps and streaming video, Google’s lawyer said.

The ruling was issued as a district court in Washington, D.C., held its fourth day of an antitrust trial between Meta and the Federal Trade Commission, in which the government similarly accused the company then known as Facebook of monopolizing the social networking market through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.

A Google representative said the partially favorable ruling in its case Thursday could point to success for Meta, as well, in defending its acquisitions from the government’s antitrust allegations.

Capital One Financial’s application to acquire Discover Financial Services in a $35.3 billion all-stock deal has officially been approved by the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the regulators announced on Friday.

“The Board evaluated the application under the statutory factors it is required to consider, including the financial and managerial resources of the companies, the convenience and needs of the communities to be served by the combined organization, and the competitive and financial stability impacts of the proposal,” the Fed said in a release.

Capital One first announced it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Discover in February 2024. It will also indirectly acquire Discover Bank through the transaction, which was approved by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Friday.

Under the agreement, Discover shareholders will receive 1.0192 Capital One shares for each Discover share or about a 26% premium from Discover’s closing price of $110.49 at the time, Capital One said in a release.

Capital One and Discover are among the largest credit card issuers in the U.S., and the merger will expand Capital One’s deposit base and its credit card offerings. 

As a condition of the merger, Capital One said it will comply with the Fed’s action against Discover, according to the release. The Fed fined Discover $100 million for overcharging certain interchange fees from 2007 through 2023, and the company is repaying those fees to affected customers.

The OCC said it approved Capital One’s application on the condition that it would take “corrective actions” to remediate harm and address the “root causes” of outstanding enforcement actions against Discover.

After the deal closes, Capital One shareholders will hold 60% of the combined company, while Discover shareholders own 40%, according to the February 2024 release.

In a joint statement, Capital One and Discover said they expect to close the deal on May 18.

Target CEO Brian Cornell will meet with the Rev. Al Sharpton this week in New York as the retailer faces calls for a boycott and a slowdown in foot traffic that began after it walked back key diversity, equity and inclusion programs, the civil rights leader told CNBC Wednesday.

The meeting, which Target asked for, comes after some civil rights groups urged consumers not to shop at Target in response to the retailer’s decision to cut back on DEI. While Sharpton has not yet called for a boycott of Target, he has supported efforts from others to stop shopping at the retailer’s stores.

“You can’t have an election come and all of a sudden, change your old positions,” said Sharpton. “If an election determines your commitment to fairness then fine, you have a right to withdraw from us, but then we have a right to withdraw from you.”

The civil rights leader said he would consider calling for a Target boycott if the company doesn’t confirm its commitment to the Black community and pledge to work with and invest in Black-owned businesses.

“I said, ‘If [Cornell] wants to have a candid meeting, we’ll meet,’” Sharpton said of the phone call Target made to his office. “I want to first hear what he has to say.”

A Target spokesman confirmed to CNBC that the company reached out to Sharpton for a meeting and that Cornell will talk to him in New York this week. The company declined further comment.

In January, Target said it would end its three-year DEI goals, no longer share company reports with external diversity-focused groups like the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equity Index and end specific efforts to get more products from Black- and minority-owned businesses on its shelves. 

Just days after the announcement, foot traffic at Target stores started to slow down. Since the week of Jan. 27, Target’s foot traffic has declined for 10 straight weeks compared to the year-ago period, according to Placer.ai, an analytics firm that uses anonymized data from mobile devices to estimate overall visits to locations. Target traffic had been up weekly year over year before the week of Jan. 27.

The metric, which tallies visits to brick-and-mortar locations, does not capture sales in stores or online, but can indicate which retailers are drawing steadier business. While Target has been struggling to grow its sales for months as shoppers watch their spending, the stretch of declining visits came as some civil rights groups and social media users criticized the DEI decision and urged shoppers to spend their money elsewhere.

Target declined to comment on the figures, saying it doesn’t discuss third-party data.

At the convention earlier this month for his civil rights organization, the National Action Network, Sharpton said the group would call for a boycott of PepsiCo if the company didn’t agree to meet with the organization within 21 days. In February, the food and beverage company behind brands like Doritos and Mountain Dew announced it would end its DEI workforce representation goals and transition its chief DEI officer role into another position, among other changes.

This week, leaders from Pepsi met with Sharpton and his team. He did not confirm whether Pepsi made any commitments, but did say it was encouraging that Pepsi’s CEO Ramon Laguarta attended. He added that the two will continue their discussions.

Sharpton’s meetings with companies including PepsiCo and Target — and his openness to boycotts — mark one of the first meaningful efforts to push back against the war conservative activists like Robby Starbuck have waged on DEI. Starbuck, a movie director-turned-activist, has urged companies to drop DEI policies in part by sharing what he considers unflattering information about their initiatives with his social media followers. He has successfully pressured a wide range of corporate giants to rethink their programs.

With its decision to roll back DEI efforts, the cheap chic retailer Target joined Walmart, McDonald’s, Tractor Supply and a slew of others that scrapped at least some DEI initiatives as they grew concerned that the programs could alienate some customers or land them in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump, who has vowed to end every DEI program across the federal government.

Target’s decision contrasted with Costco, which shook off pressure from conservative activists to maintain its DEI programs. Shareholders of the membership-based wholesale club soundly rejected a proposal in late January that requested a report on the risks of DEI initiatives.

NAN has called for so-called “buy-cotts” at Costco, and has brought people to stores in Tennessee, New York and New Jersey. It gave them gift cards to shop with at the warehouse club.

In the month of March, Target’s store traffic declined 6.5%, while the metric rose 7.5% year over year at Costco, Placer.ai data show.

Target’s challenges run deeper than DEI backlash, and resistance to its policy change only added to its issues. The discounter’s annual revenue has been roughly flat for four years in a row as it’s struggled to drive consistent sales gains.

Margins have been under pressure, as consumers buy more of groceries and necessities and less of more profitable categories like home goods and clothing. And the company has pinned its problems on a laundry list of problems in recent years, including having the wrong inventory; losing money from theft, damaged goods and other types of inventory losses; backlash to its collection for Pride Month and pricier costs from rushing shipments.

Competition has grown fiercer too, as big-box rival Walmart has remodeled stores, launched new private brands and attracted more high-income shoppers.

In February, Target gave weak guidance for the first quarter and said it expected sales to grow 1% for the full year. 

In his meeting with Cornell, Sharpton said he will ask for Target to follow through on pledges it made after police killed George Floyd in the company’s hometown of Minneapolis.

“You made commitments based on the George Floyd movement … what changed?” said Sharpton. “Are you trying to say … everything’s fine now, because the election changed? That’s insulting to us.”

In the wake of Floyd’s murder, Cornell said the event moved him.

“That could have been one of my Target team members,” Cornell said in 2021 at an event hosted by the Economic Club of Chicago, recounting his thoughts as he watched the video of Floyd taking his final breaths.

At the time, he said it motivated him to step up Target’s efforts to fight racial inequities.

“We have to be the role models that drive change and our voice is important,” he said at the event. “We’ve got to make sure that we represent our company principles, our values, our company purpose on the issues that are important to our teams.”

French luxury group Hermès will raise its U.S. prices from the start of May in order to offset the impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, the company’s finance chief said Thursday.

The company — which earlier this week overtook rival LVMH as the world’s biggest luxury firm by market capitalization — is best-known for its Birkin and Kelly handbags, along with colorful scarves retailing for hundreds of dollars. Other products include jewelry, watches, shoes, perfume and make-up.

“The price increase that we’re going to implement will be just for the U.S. since it’s aimed at offsetting the tariffs that only apply to the American market, so there won’t be price increases in the other regions,” Eric du Halgouët, Hermès’ executive vice president for finance, said during an analyst call that followed the firm’s first-quarter results release on Thursday.

Hermès said prices will rise from May 1 and aim to “fully offset” the impact of the universal 10% tariff imposed by the White House in early April, rather than the 20% duties the European Union may face unless it can negotiate a new deal during Trump’s 90-day reprieve.

U.S. consumers are expected to contend with higher prices on a host of items, ranging from electronics and clothes to cars and houses, as the impact of tariffs bites.

In its first-quarter results, Hermès reported 11% sales growth in the Americas, which accounted for nearly 17% of its sales revenue in the first three months of the year.

First-quarter revenue growth came in at 7% on a constant currency basis overall, just shy of consensus expectations of an 8% to 9% increase, Deutsche Bank analysts said in a note. It also represented a slowdown from 17.6% growth in the fourth quarter of 2024.

The Deutsche Bank analysts said that the results were nonetheless “robust,” with weakness driven by watches and perfume sales, while Citi described them as “a respectable outcome.”

Hermès shares dipped 1.3% in Thursday morning deals, taking its value to 244.5 billion euros ($278.2 billion) — just shy of LVMH’s 245.7 billion euros — according to a CNBC calculation of LSEG data.

LVMH, controlled by France’s billionaire Arnault family, unsuccesfully tried to acquire Hermès a decade ago. Despite drawing level in market cap, Hermès’ annual revenue is less than a fifth that of sprawling LVMH, which owns luxury brands Louis Vuitton and Dior, alcohol business Moët Hennessy, U.S. jeweler Tiffany and beauty chain Sephora.

LVMH on Tuesday reported an unexpected decline in first quarter sales, flagging a fall in its dominant fashion and leather goods division.

Analysts have predicted the luxury sector will be less impacted by tariffs than other retailers due to their ability to pass on increased import costs to a high-spending clientele. However, they would encounter major headwinds from a broad pullback in consumer spending as a result of weaker global economic growth or recessionary fears.