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Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up LEADERSHIP Advertisement Boston firm ezCater has a new CEO, but he's staying in New York New ezCater CEO Nihad Rahman will remain in New York, with frequent visits to Boston. Photo courtesy of ezCater The tryout apparently paid off for Nihad Rahman, who has served as interim chief executive at Boston-based online catering marketplace ezCater since his predecessor abruptly left about five months ago. The company announced this week that Rahman can strip the 'interim' off his title: The board appointed Rahman, who left JPMorgan Chase to join ezCater as its chief financial officer in 2022, as the new CEO. However, he won't be moving to Boston for the gig. Rahman took over after Ashwin Raj left the company in January. Now that Rahman is no longer CFO, the company promoted vice president Sean Stanton to take over that job. Rahman lives in New York, and will continue to work remotely, though a spokesperson said he visits ezCater's downtown Boston headquarters frequently. He'll lead a team of more than 850 employees; the spokesperson said ezCater is a 'remote-hybrid company' and has workers spread throughout the country. The company gives employers access to a marketplace of more than 100,000 restaurants nationwide for meals as well as catering for meetings and events. Its investors include a mix of venture capital and private equity firms such as Insight Partners, Iconiq, Lightspeed, GIC, SoftBank, Quadrille, and TPG. — JON CHESTO Advertisement AVIATION Southwest Airlines to tighten restrictions on portable batteries on flights A Southwest Airlines plane pulled into a gate at Pittsburgh International Airport on March 27. Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press Southwest Airlines will prohibit passengers from using portable batteries to charge devices while they are inside bags because of the fire risk, the airline said Wednesday. Southwest is the first of the four biggest US airlines to tell passengers that they are not permitted to use portable lithium batteries while they are in a bag. Air carriers in Asia have been tightening restrictions on the batteries in recent months. The new rule requires passengers to keep the batteries visible while in use and will take effect on Southwest flights Wednesday. The rule will help flight attendants act more quickly if a battery overheats or catches fire, Southwest said in a statement. The airline said that it was responding to 'multiple incident reports' involving batteries on flights across carriers. In March, crew members on a Southwest flight reported a battery fire after landing at Reno-Tahoe International Airport in Nevada, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, which was investigating the episode. The FAA has reported 22 incidents of lithium batteries catching fire, emitting smoke or overheating on aircraft this year. — NEW YORK TIMES Advertisement HOUSING Trump floats a public offering for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Freddie Mac headquarters in McLean, Va. Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg President Trump said that he's giving 'very serious consideration to bringing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public' after more than a decade of government control. 'Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are doing very well, throwing off a lot of CASH, and the time would seem to be right,' Trump wrote late Wednesday on his Truth Social platform. 'Stay tuned!' He added that he would consult with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent along with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Freddie and Fannie. Shares of Fannie soared 51 percent for their strongest performance since August 2009, while Freddie jumped 42 percent for its best day since September 2019. The companies, which play a crucial role in the market for mortgage-backed securities, have been under government conservatorship since the 2008 financial crisis. Fannie and Freddie have both returned to steady profitability, with earnings being retained. — BLOOMBERG NEWS CURRENCY End of the penny grows near Freshly made pennies in a bin at the US Mint in Denver. David Zalubowski/Associated Press The Treasury Department is winding down the production of pennies, after ordering a last batch of the blanks used to print the coins this month. The end of penny production, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, comes a few months after President Trump ordered the Treasury Department to stop producing them as a cost-saving measure, pointing out that pennies have long been more expensive to manufacture than they are worth. Pennies, which are made up of 97.5 percent zinc and 2.5 percent copper plating, cost about 3.69 cents to make, according to Treasury Department statistics, which show the price of production skyrocketed over the last decade. Ten years ago, it cost 1.3 cents to manufacture each penny. In the 2024 fiscal year alone, the cost of production rose by over 20 percent. The US Mint will keep manufacturing pennies until its supply of blanks runs out, a Treasury spokesperson said Thursday. The Mint has estimated that ceasing production of the penny will save the taxpayers an annual $56 million in reduced material costs. The Treasury forecasts that there will be additional savings once the facilities used to produce pennies are converted for other purposes. The penny had been falling out of favor for years, and as it became less popular, the Mint scaled down its production. Penny production has fallen fairly steadily in the past decade, from over 9.36 billion coins made in 2015 to just over 3.22 billion last year. There are still about 114 billion pennies in circulation, according to the Treasury. But eventually, once production ceases, there will not be enough of them in circulation to facilitate day-to-day transactions, meaning businesses that deal in cash may have to round prices to the nearest nickel. — NEW YORK TIMES Advertisement TECH Microsoft fires employee who interrupted CEO's speech to protest AI tech for Israeli military Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Wash. JOVELLE TAMAYO/NYT Microsoft has fired an employee who interrupted a speech by CEO Satya Nadella to protest the company's work supplying the Israeli military with technology used for the war in Gaza. Software engineer Joe Lopez could be heard shouting at Nadella in the opening minutes Monday of the tech giant's annual Build developer conference in Seattle before getting escorted out of the room. Lopez later sent a mass email to colleagues disputing the company's claims about how its Azure cloud computing platform is used in Gaza. Lopez's outburst was the first of several pro-Palestinian disruptions at the event that drew thousands of software developers to the Seattle Convention Center. At least three talks by executives were disrupted, the company even briefly cut the audio of one livestreamed event. Protesters also gathered outside the venue. Microsoft has previously fired employees who protested company events over its work in Israel, including at its 50th anniversary party in April. Microsoft acknowledged last week that it provided AI services to the Israeli military for the war in Gaza but said it had found no evidence to date that its Azure platform and AI technologies were used to target or harm people in Gaza. — ASSOCIATED PRESS Advertisement