McKinsey's new report on business aviation, published October 19, puts numbers on a shift many of us have felt for years. Business jet departures hit a record 3.9 million in 2025, and total flight hours were up 37% from 2019. In the US, leisure airfields accounted for 78% of the 417,000 added departures since 2019, with places like Witham Field, Naples and Scottsdale growing far faster than Teterboro. Meanwhile, deliveries reached only 842 jets in 2025, about 65% of the 2008 peak, and the fleet is growing mainly because owners are retiring fewer aircraft.
Napa-based importer, distributor and marketer Quintessential has signed agreements to add Chile's Montes and Argentina's Kaiken to its US portfolio, Shanken News Daily reported on October 21. Montes moves over on November 1, 2026, and Kaiken follows on January 1, 2027. Quintessential will handle Montes Alpha M, Montes Folly, Purple Angel and Taita, along with Kaiken Ultra, Boulder and the flagship Mai Malbec. The two join a South American book that already includes Pascual Toso and Bodegas Bianchi from Argentina and Seña, Viñedo Chadwick and Matetic Vineyards from Chile.
Legal AI company Legora announced a $550 million Series E on October 21 at an $8.8 billion valuation, according to TechCrunch. Atreides Management led the round, with Baron Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, General Catalyst and Menlo also in. In April the company was valued at $5.6 billion. Annual recurring revenue has moved from $100 million then to more than $200 million now, and the new money goes toward expanding across North America. Its main rival, Harvey, raised $550 million about a month earlier at $15.5 billion.
On October 16, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said her government intends to tackle the collapse in blue agave prices and build a plan to support the farmers who grow the plant. According to Mezcalistas, agave fell from 32 pesos a kilo in 2018 to as little as one peso by 2024, and farmer leader Remberto Galván Cabrera estimates that 42,000 families depend on the crop for income. Sheinbaum blamed over-planting during the pandemic-era tequila boom. Agriculture minister Columba López is in talks with producers, but no budget, direct support or timeline has been confirmed.
The Plaza Hotel in New York announced on October 14 that it will close in January 2027 for at least four years so its landmark-protected facade can be restored. The hotel opened in 1907 on Fifth Avenue at the southeast corner of Central Park and is part of Accor's Fairmont brand. According to Hotel Dive, the full scope of the work is still under review, and the event rooms and the Palm Court restaurant will close along with the guest rooms. The hotel said the project would disrupt operations too much to stay open.
STA Jets, the Santa Ana charter operator, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire International Jet Aviation Services, a Part 135 charter, aircraft management and sales company at Denver's Centennial Airport. International Jet was founded in California in 1979, moved to Denver a year later and flies a 12-aircraft charter fleet, from King Air turboprops up to a Gulfstream G550, out of a 37,000 square foot facility. STA Jets, which operates mostly Gulfstreams, already has bases in Van Nuys, San Jose, New York and Fort Lauderdale. Price and closing date were not disclosed.
Italian wine exports to the United States rose nearly 17% in value in the third quarter of 2026 compared with the same months of 2025, according to provisional EU trade data analysed by the trade group Unione Italiana Vini. Volume grew 6.6%. Red wines led with a 33% gain in value. UIV linked part of the jump to distributors rebuilding inventories, and noted that summer 2025 was an unusually weak base. Across non-EU markets, Italian shipments are still down 3% in value for January to September, at roughly 3.3 billion euros.
Chariot Claims, a legal tech company that matches consumers with mass arbitration and class action cases and pairs them with plaintiffs' law firms, has raised a $10 million Series A led by Silverton Partners, LawSites reports. The round brings its total funding to $15.7 million. Founded in 2023 as ClaimClam, the company says it now processes more than 200,000 pre-qualified consumer claims a month, most of them against Fortune 500 companies. It also says only 4% of harmed consumers ever file a claim, and that its claims recover an average of $460, compared with a $32 average it attributes to a CFPB analysis of class action settlements.
A federal judge in Seattle has thrown out a class action that used private lab tests to accuse Costco of falsely labeling Kirkland Signature tequila as "100% agave". Hagens Berman brought the case on behalf of 13 buyers under the federal RICO Act and state laws, including Washington's Consumer Protection Act. Costco argued that a U.S. court would intrude on Mexico's exclusive authority to define 100% agave tequila. The judge agreed in an opinion filed Friday, noting that Mexican authorities had already looked at similar claims and rejected them. Plaintiffs' lawyer Steve Berman called the ruling "dead wrong" and said they will appeal.
AXE Management Partners, the pan-Asian alternative investor founded by Gary Kwok, has sold a three-hotel, 518-room portfolio in central Osaka to Tokyo-listed real estate manager Creal for about JPY 21 billion, or roughly USD 132.8 million, according to KrASIA. AXE bought the hotels from CapitaLand Ascott Trust in 2024 for JPY 10.7 billion. Two of the three properties had been closed since 2020, after their original operator entered court-supervised restructuring. AXE refurbished them, brought in IHG's midscale Garner brand and reopened them in the first half of 2025.
NetJets said on October 12 that it will build three new exclusive-use facilities in the US, at Dallas Love Field, Washington Dulles and Rifle Garfield County Airport in Colorado, and move its West Palm Beach terminal into a larger space. The Dallas complex, developed with Signature Aviation, will cover nearly 114,000 square feet and is due to open in late 2028, after flight activity at Love Field rose more than 25% since 2022. At Dulles, one of its top five destinations, work starts in early 2027 on more than 14,000 square feet of NetJets-only space. Rifle gets a 6,000 square foot terminal by early 2027, and West Palm Beach grows from 10,000 to 15,000 square feet.
Pernod Ricard opened its 2027 fiscal year with first-quarter net sales of €2.234 billion, an organic decline of 0.9%. The weak spots were the United States, down 10%, and China, down 25%, and the company attributed both mainly to inventory adjustments. Asia and the rest of the world grew 9%, led by India at close to 20%, while Europe fell 6%. Pernod expects organic sales to be broadly stable this year and only low single digit growth through fiscal 2029.
Copenhagen legal tech company SmallClaims has raised a €2 million seed round led by the Finnish fund Vendep Capital. Its AI agents carry a small-claims case from first assessment through negotiation, court filing, judgment and enforcement, while a team of lawyers reviews the work and appears in court when a case goes to a hearing. The company says it handled more than 3,200 cases in 2025, has over 500 customers, and needs about 1.5 hours of manual work per case, compared with more than 15 hours the traditional way.
California farmers who built their businesses on wine grapes are planting agave, according to Bloomberg reporting summarized by Vinetur this week. Tequila sales at US retail were flat over the 52 weeks to September 9, per Circana data, while vodka, whiskey and other spirits fell at least 1.5%. In the Central Valley, grower Stuart Woolf has planted about 550 acres of agave over four years and plans to add 150 more. O'Neill Vintners & Distillers has spent about $300,000 on agave distilling equipment and expects to double or triple that over the next year.
Service Properties Trust, the REIT managed by The RMR Group, has received an unsolicited $2 billion cash offer from TKO LLC for all 93 of its hotels, roughly 12% of its 838 properties. The bid, dated October 7, is larger than SVC's entire market value, which sits below $1 billion after the shares fell more than 40% over the past year. TKO wants the hotels free of brand management and franchise agreements, and SVC has until Friday to respond.
Legora raised $550 million in March at a $5.55 billion valuation, roughly triple its value from a few months earlier. Investors clearly believe AI will reshape legal work.
ACC Aviation's 2026 charter report names taxation as the biggest cost driver this year, from France's levy on solo passengers to higher UK air passenger duty. Jet fuel got cheaper in 2025, but Europe's sustainable fuel mandate ate much of the saving, and airports such as Schiphol and Geneva are weighing caps on private flights.
IWSR data shows US tequila volumes have flattened, yet the ultra-premium tier grew 7% last year and is on track to reach about a fifth of US volume by 2030. Growth is also surging abroad, in India, Nigeria, Colombia and Japan.
New customs figures show the US imported about €2.43 billion of wine in the first half of 2026, a fall of roughly 25% in value and 17% in volume from a year earlier. The 15% tariff on European wine, in place since August 2025, is doing most of the damage, and France and Italy, which supply more than 70% of import value, have each lost around a quarter of their US sales.
