Over the last few years, the B factories have established the Cabbibo-Kobayashi-Maskawa mechanism of CP violation in the Standard Model through the study of the decays of B mesons. The focus of Belle and BaBar has now expanded to the search for signatures of new physics beyond the Standard Model, particularly through examination of flavor-changing neutral-current transitions, which proceed through diagrams involving virtual loops. These decays are suppressed in the Standard Model, increasing sensitivity to new-physics effects but decreasing branching fractions. Exploiting large and growing datasets, BaBar and Belle have made many measurements in loop decays where a b quark transitions to an s quark, observing hints of possible deviations from Standard Model expectations in CP-violating measurements.

Over the last few years, the B factories have established the Cabbibo-Kobayashi-Maskawa mechanism of CP violation in the Standard Model through the study of the decays of B mesons. The focus of Belle and BaBar has now expanded to the search for signatures of new physics beyond the Standard Model, particularly through examination of flavor-changing neutral-current transitions, which proceed through diagrams involving virtual loops. These decays are suppressed in the Standard Model, increasing sensitivity to new-physics effects but decreasing branching fractions. Exploiting large and growing datasets, BaBar and Belle have made many measurements in loop decays where a b quark transitions to an s quark, observing hints of possible deviations from Standard Model expectations in CP-violating measurements.

The primary goals of the BABAR experiment are the detection of CP violation (CPV) in the B meson system, the precise measurement of some of the elements of the CKM matrix and the measurement of the rates of rare B meson decays. At present, BABAR has achieved major successes: (1) the discovery, in neutral B decays, of direct and mixing-induced CP violation; (2) accurate measurements of the magnitudes of the CKM matrix elements.