U.S. inflation eased to 5% in March from a year earlier, its lowest level in nearly two years, but underlying price pressures remained elevated despite the Federal Reserve’s campaign to slow rapid price increases.

Private equity funds snapped up a record 786 makers of food and beverages worth $32 billion in 2021, using bundles of debt to pay for their purchases. The financiers projected that staple goods would keep making profits no matter how the economy fared. But that forecast changed, as processed-food prices shot 14% higher last year, almost four times the 20-year annual average, while fruits leapt 18% and vegetables soared 51%.

Among 435 publicly traded U.S. banks listed on major exchanges, 97% of them reported that their loans’ market value was less than their balance-sheet amount as of Dec. 31.

The equity risk premium—the gap between the S&P 500’s earnings yield and that of 10-year Treasurys—sits around 1.59 percentage points, a low not seen since October 2007. That is well below the average gap of around 3.5 points since 2008.

Ten of the country’s 25 largest metropolitan areas lost population during the one-year period. The gainers were all in the South or West, with the exception of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, which recorded a small gain after losing residents the year before.

The FDIC estimated the failure of SVB will cost a federal insurance fund it oversees about $20 billion, or roughly 10% of the bank’s assets before its failure.

Tiger Global marked down the value of its investments in private companies by about 33% across its venture-capital funds in 2022. The markdowns erased $23 billion in value from Tiger’s giant holdings of startups around the globe.

Apollo Global Management Inc. has agreed to acquire chemical company Univar Solutions Inc. for $8.1 billion including debt, in one of the biggest recent leveraged buyouts.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday officials were keeping their options open over how much to raise interest rates this month after investors interpreted his comments Tuesday to suggest a half-percentage-point increase was likely.

Some 74% of the 1,000 consumers surveyed said they had experienced a product or service problem in the past year, up from 66% in 2020 and only 32% in 1976. The percentage of consumers who have taken action to settle a score against a company through measures such as pestering or public shaming in person or online, has tripled to 9% from 3% in 2020.