In a widely expected move, President Donald Trump nominated Federal Reserve Governor Michelle Bowman to be the Fed’s next vice chair for supervision. The person holding that post is responsible for much of the country’s banking legislation. Bowman has taken a deregulatory stance in speeches and is likely to advocate for relaxing rules on banks. The New York Times has called her “arguably the most conservative member of the Fed Board.”

If Bowman is confirmed by the Senate, she’ll succeed Michael Barr, whom President Joe Biden made the Fed’s vice chair in 2022. Barr’s term as vice chair wasn’t set to expire until 2026, but he resigned the position this February to forestall a legal battle with the Trump administration.

Bowman formerly was the Kansas state banking commissioner and a vice president at community bank Farmers & Drovers. Trump nominated her to the Fed’s board in 2018, where she holds a seat earmarked for community bankers. She has been publicly critical of Barr’s approach towards legislation, and voted against the Basel III Endgame rule he designed, which would have required large banks to hold more capital in reserve.

Bowman has also argued that the Fed should make its annual “stress tests” for banks more “transparent and predictable for lenders,” Reuters wrote.

Click here for more on Bowman’s appointment.—CV

As anyone who’s ever reached for a nonexistent potato chip at the bottom of the bag would know, you can’t snack forever.

In Q3, General Mills learned a similar lesson.

Sales fell 5% last quarter. In a statement, CEO Jeff Harmening explained that dip was “driven largely by greater-than-expected retailer inventory headwinds and a slowdown in snacking categories.”

“We’re focused on improving our sales growth in fiscal 2026 by stepping up our investment in innovation, brand communication, and value for consumers,” he continued.

For the quarter, the cereal giant behind Lucky Charms posted net sales of $4.8 billion, which was below analyst expectations.

The company lowered its full-year guidance, saying it “expects macroeconomic uncertainty to continue to impact consumers in the fourth quarter.” Now, General Mills anticipates organic net sales to be down 1.5% to 2% for the fiscal year, down from its prior forecast.

Click here to continue reading.—NP

When it comes to generative AI, size definitely matters. The large in large language model is almost an understatement at times.

But many businesses are finding that what they need from AI doesn’t necessarily take a trillion parameters of knowledge. Those are the companies IBM is targeting with its latest Granite family of models, which feature reasoning, vision focused specifically on document understanding, and—like previous IBM releases—open-source availability.

At the HumanX conference in Las Vegas this week, we caught up with David Cox, VP for AI models at IBM Research, about the lane the enterprise giant is seeking to carve out with small language models in a crowded AI race.

Super-smart, giant models that can grapple with an advanced math problem, then turn around and write a poem, are certainly valuable, Cox said. But businesses are more often concerned with narrower, more routine sets of tasks than that.

To keep reading IT Brew’s story on IBM’s pivot to small language models, click here.—PK