Economy
The Obama administration is expected to issue long-awaited regulations today setting new standards for hydraulic fracturing in the oil and natural gas industries. The final rules reflect years of work by regulators seeking to balance environmental interests and economic imperatives, but may well fail to appease environmentalists who have argued for strong protections or oil industry leaders who insist well-tailored state rules are better than one-size-fits-all federal mandates.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras agreed to speed up his economic reform plans at last night's crisis talks in Brussels, while a joint statement by the EU creditors following the meeting spoke of a "spirit of mutual trust." Also at the summit: EU leaders decided to keep sanctions on Russia in place until the end of this year at the earliest, linking them to the "complete implementation" of a Ukraine ceasefire deal.

Following Athens' reform pledge and the Federal Reserve's cautious approach to raising interest rates, the euro climbed further as European stocks flat-lined and euro zone bond yields dipped. The euro was 0.3% higher against the dollar at $1.0686, well below Wednesday's high above $1.10, but still leaving the currency on track for its best weekly performance in 18 months.

Despite strong objections from the U.S., Australia has signaled its readiness to join the new China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, following Japan which said it would consider becoming a member. South Korea, Britain and major EU nations also announced this month they would join the AIIB, breaking ranks with the U.S., which has urged countries to think twice before joining due to lax governance and environmental safeguards.

Stocks
After several days of intense negotiations, Europe's two largest cement companies Holcim (OTCPK:HCMLY) and Lafarge (OTCPK:LFRGY) have salvaged their $44B merger by reconciling differences over financial terms and management. Under the new arrangement, Holcim will pay about 0.90 of one of its shares for each one of Lafarge (instead of a 1:1 ratio), while Lafarge CEO Bruno Lafont will become co-chairman of the combined group rather than its new head.

The FAA has granted Amazon approval to test a delivery drone outdoors, allowing test flights over private, rural land in Washington state. The company also received an exemption from certain flight restrictions, but must keep flights below 400 feet and the drone in sight. Amazon's (NASDAQ:AMZN) "Prime Air" program looks like it now has the opportunity to get off the ground, after being jeopardized in February under the FAA's commercial drone rules.

TSB has agreed to a £1.7B takeover by Spain's Banco Sabadell (OTCPK:BNDSY) in one of the biggest cross-border banking deals since the financial crisis. Sabadell said it planned to grow TSB (OTCPK:TSBBY) into a significant challenger to Britain's 'big 4' lenders. Lloyds (NYSE:LYG), which holds a 50% stake in TSB, has agreed to sell a 9.99% shareholding and has given an irrevocable undertaking to sell the remainder of its stake to the Spanish bank.

BNY Mellon has announced it will pay $714M to settle federal and state allegations of foreign exchange rate fraud. BNY Mellon (NYSE:BK) admitted that it had promised to give customers best interbank market price of the day on forex transactions, but instead gave them the worst. There's still no word of anybody being fired, but an earlier report suggested that it would be part of the deal.

Putting more pressure on management, Lufthansa (OTCQX:DLAKY) pilots grounded 700 flights with a third straight day of walkouts this morning, due to a row involving early retirement benefits and the airline's plans to expand low-cost offerings. Including today, pilots have initiated 14 strikes since last April, costing Lufthansa more than €200M ($214M) in lost operating profit.

GM CEO Mary Barra will be deposed in October by lawyers representing consumers suing the company over the defective ignition switches included on millions of recalled vehicles. The lawyers leading the class action personal injury and death lawsuits against the automaker say the depositions of GM (NYSE:GM) executives will begin May 6, including many of the 15 former lawyers and executives fired by Barra last year, and will continue for five months.

FedEx has disclosed the prices for two acquisitions it paid for last January and December - $1.4B for third-party logistics provider GENCO Distribution System and $42M for e-commerce platform Bongo International. "These acquisitions will allow us to enter new markets, as well as strengthen our current service offerings to existing customers," FedEx (NYSE:FDX) announced in its quarterly report with the SEC.

Nike +4.7% premarket after its quarterly profit jumped 16% on higher apparel and shoe demand, while its "futures orders" increased 11%. Net income rose to $791M from $682M a year earlier. During its earnings call, Nike (NYSE:NKE) said it expects fiscal 2016 revenue to fall to the high single-digit range, below its previous expectations of above the mid-teens, and sees full-year earnings coming in below its long-term targets.

KKR and CVC Capital are near a deal to buy 80% of Philips' (NYSE:PHG) lighting components unit at a €2.5B valuation, Bloomberg reports, saying an announcement could happen next week. Yesterday, Philips announced plans to do a multibillion-euro IPO for its lighting business (separate from its components business) next year, narrowing its focus following profit warnings and criticism of its cumbersome corporate structure.

Despite headwinds including macroeconomic trends, adverse weather and the West Coast port slowdown, Home Depot (NYSE:HD) is maintaining a strong outlook for the remainder of 2015, its CEO Craig Menear told CNBC's Closing Bell. "If you look at our performance last year...we set record performance, highest retail sales in our company history," said Menear. "The majority of our growth in our stock has been driven by performance and the fact that we have great product." Home Depot's stock surged 45% in the past 52 weeks.

Standard General's reduced buyout offer of $145.5M is RadioShack's (OTCPK:RSHCQ) only hope of surviving bankruptcy and staving off liquidation, the hedge fund's lawyers said yesterday. The bid is less than the earlier estimate of $200M because it only covers 1,723 outlets compared with the 2,000 Standard General sought originally. The offer also requires RadioShack’s proposed new owner to come up with $18.6M in cash, while the rest would be in the form of a "credit bid," or offer to cancel debt.

Tapping into a gray area of the net neutrality debate, HBO (NYSE:TWX), Showtime (NYSE:CBS) and Sony (NYSE:SNE) are in talks with broadband providers about having their Web TV services treated as "managed services," giving them a separate lane that would ensure their content gets special treatment. While net neutrality states that all traffic on the Internet should be treated equal, the FCC maintains that cable and phone companies can offer "managed services" - digital phone and video-on-demand, for example - that run on a dedicated slice of bandwidth in the cable pipe which is separate from the portion reserved for public Internet access.

HTC has announced that longtime Chief Executive Peter Chou will step down, to be replaced by chairwoman and co-founder Cher Wang, after struggling for three years to reverse declining market share. Once the world's top-selling smartphone maker by shipments at its peak in 2011, HTC (OTC:HTCXF) has been squeezed by Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Samsung (OTC:SSNLF) on the high-end and low-cost Chinese rivals like Xiaomi on the bottom.

Today's Markets:

In Asia, Japan +0.4% to 19560. Hong Kong -0.4% to 24375. China +1% to 3617. India -0.7% to 28261.
In Europe, at midday, London +0.1%. Paris +0.2%. Frankfurt +0.6%.
Futures at 6:20: Dow +0.4%. S&P +0.3%. Nasdaq +0.3%. Crude -0.4% to $45.34. Gold +0.2% to $1171.20.
Ten-year Treasury Yield +3 bps to 1.98%

Today's economic calendar:

10:00 Atlanta Fed's Business Inflation Expectations
10:20 Fed's Lockhart: U.S. Economy and Monetary Policy

Notable earnings before today's open: CMCM, DRI, KBH, TIF