Friday 24/10/25

So EU leaders stall €140bn Ukraine loan using frozen Russian assets (Financial Times, Laura Dubois, Barbara Moens, Alice Hancock, Paola Tamma and Andy Bounds) shows that Belgium put a spanner in the works for the EU push to back a €140bn loan to Kyiv using frozen Russian state assets. It chickened out of the vote, fearing legal and financial implications if Russia decided to push back against the plan. It sounds like the plan is still on the table but some technical issues need to be ironed out before any kind of agreement (if one is ever reached). Should it ever go ahead, EU has a plan to use frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine – how will it work? (The Guardian, Jennifer Rankin) does a decent job of breaking it down. The idea is that Ukraine gets a €140bn loan over a period of three years secured by using Russia’s Central Bank’s assets that were frozen when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. The majority of those assets is held at Euroclear, which is a securities repository in Brussels. The idea is not to appropriate Russia’s funds – it’s to provide a loan for Ukraine secured on them. When the war is over, Ukraine would in theory repay the loan to the EU with compensation received from Russia for the invasion. Once Russia pays the compensation, the EU would lift sanctions and Russia could once again access its assets. The main sticking points here are that a) it’s not a given that Russia will pay compensation and b) the war might continue indefinitely. Brussels, understandably, doesn’t want to be left carrying the can if Russia demands its money back when sanctions are lifted. Mind you, given that the idea is for the money to be spent on weapons, the loan actually won’t be enough to cover the shortfall resulting from the withdrawal of US support. That support is thought to be worth about €82bn per year while the loan, if it went ahead, would amount to about €45bn per year. Anyway, it’s all academic at the moment because it ain’t going to happen, at least for now…

Trump continues to be a busy lad in Trump says he is ending trade negotiations with Canada (Financial Times, James Politi and Ilya Gridneff) where he’s thrown his toys out of the pram because of the anti-tariff advertising campaign launched by the province of Ontario while Trump pardons founder of Binance, world’s largest crypto exchange (The Guardian, Nick Robinson-Early) heralds an astute move by the president who will now have a useful crypto bro in his back

pocket. Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to failing to stop money laundering in 2023. Who’s next? FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried?? As the president said, “The war on crypto is over” and this is a very big statement.

Meanwhile, Trump’s Russian oil sanctions hit India and China’s imports (Financial Times, David Sheppard, Andrew Schipani, Krishn Kaushik, Chris Kay, Cheng Leng and Edward White) shows that both Indian refineries and Chinese operators are cranking down their Russian oil purchases following Trump’s sanctions announcement and Can Trump stop India and China from buying Russian oil? (Financial Times, Rachel Millard, David Sheppard, Leslie Hook and Anastasia Stognei) concludes that yes, it can (particularly given that they include “secondary sanctions” on any financial institution dealing with the sanctioned entities Rosneft and Lukoil), and it would be painful for Russia because oil and gas revenues account for about 25% of Russia’s federal budget. Oil supply glut paves way for Donald Trump to tighten screws on Russia (Financial Times, Jamie Smyth, Myles McCormick and Amy Mackinnon) says that Trump’s ability to impose oil sanctions on Russia has been helped by recent weakness in the oil price powered by OPEC’s decision to increase production. Oil price jumps and FTSE 100 hits new high after Trump puts sanctions on Russian firms (The Guardian, Lauren Almeida and Jillian Ambrose) highlights the immediate effect of the sanctions – that oil prices rose by around 6% on the news and that oil majors including Shell and BP saw their share prices rise a bit. This also helped the FTSE reach a record high of 9,594.82 but markets in Russia weakened.

In commodities news, Australia’s ‘rock star’ rare earth miners profit from US-China tensions (Financial Times, Nic Fildes) highlights Australian companies – such as Graphinex, which mines graphene, and rare earth miners Arafura Rare Earths, Northern Minerals and RZ Resources – as being major beneficiaries of financing from America in a bid to diversify supply chains away from China. The Trump administration this week signed an agreement at the White House with Aussie PM Anthony Albanese for each country to invest around $1bn in the next few months to create a rare earth and critical mineral supply chain that doesn’t involve China.

Anthropic and Google Cloud strike blockbuster AI chips deal (Financial Times, Cristina Criddle and Rafe Rosner-Uddin) heralds yet another massive chip deal, this time with Anthropic securing access to 1m Google Cloud chips to train and run its AI models. This move makes its bond with Google, which has already invested over $3bn in the company, even tighter. Anthropic said that the deal was worth tens of billions of dollars but didn’t elaborate any further. Staying with chips, Intel Surges as First Earnings Report Since U.S. Investment Shows Momentum (Wall Street Journal, Robbie Whelan) shows that the company’s turnaround efforts seem to be taking effect as it reported sales growth in its main product line of PC processors and shrinking costs over Q3. * SO WHAT? * This is great news for the beleaguered company which, until yesterday, had reported six consecutive quarterly losses – its longest losing streak in 35 years! Intel’s share price has rocketed up by 85% this year – but that’s mainly been since August when Trump announced that the government would take a 10% stake in the company. It got another little boost in September when rival Nvidia invested $5bn in it. Intel is a specialist in CPUs rather than GPUs – and it’s the GPUs that are getting all the love at the moment because these are the ones that power AI training and have powered the likes of Nvidia to heady heights. This is why Intel has got left behind. However, it is thought that once more AI models get trained up, AI companies will need to buy a lot more CPUs – which should benefit Intel. 

Crusoe raises $1.4bn as investors pile in to AI data centres (Financial Times, Tabby Kinder) shows that the data centre start-up has managed to more than triple its valuation to over $10bn in one year after its latest funding round, where it attracted $1.4bn. Crusoe is building OpenAI’s first big data centre in the US. It was interesting to note that Crusoe’s CEO expressed concern about whether there was going to be enough power available for all the projects that are going on…

Then in Apple loses landmark £1.5bn lawsuit over App Store charges (Daily Telegraph, Alex Singleton) we see that Apple lost a major class action lawsuit in the UK yesterday which could

potentially lead to a £1.5bn compensation payout, equating to about £75 per customer. A London court ruled that Apple had abused its dominant position in the market by charging excessively high commissions on its App Store. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of around 20 million British iPhone and iPad users. * SO WHAT? * This is the first mass lawsuit to be brought against a Big Tech company under the banner of an American-style class action.

In European defence giants strike satellite alliance to challenge Musk’s SpaceX (Daily Telegraph, Matthew Field) we see that France’s Airbus and Thales, along with Italy’s Leonardo, confirmed yesterday that they would merge their struggling satellite divisions in an effort to take on Elon Musk’s Starlink. The deal has been nicknamed “Project Bromo”. * SO WHAT? * The companies have all been in talks for months with European regulators to iron out any concerns about potential competition problems. Europeans have been freaked out by Musk’s boast that his satellite network is so integral to Ukraine’s war effort that “Their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off” and so the onus is very much on finding a European champion. At the moment, French space business Eutelsat owns the only challenger to Starlink in the form of UK-based OneWeb – but this project has been and continues to be beset by funding issues. Although this sound like a positive move, scepticism abounds given how far ahead Starlink is…

Then in Criminals using AI are driving sharp rise in UK fraud cases (Financial Times, Claer Barrett) we see that criminals are using AI to increase their attacks on UK victims with investment fraud and romance scams reaching record levels in the first half of the year, according to data from UK Finance, the banking trade body. Criminals are using AI on a greater scale which means that they are able to scale and improve existing tactics. On the other side, banks are trying to use AI to fight AI – and their efforts are getting increasingly effective! I would have thought this is all good news for cybersecurity players!

Ford Profit More Than Doubles on Growth in Sales of Pickups, SUVs (Wall Street Journal, Christopher Otts) shows that the company outperformed market expectations thanks to Americans spending more on its pickups and SUVs over Q3. Ford is now set to benefit from tariff relief on imported parts and a “meaningful reduction” in federal emissions regulations that mean it’ll be able to sell more trucks and SUVs. On the downside, that fire at Ford’s aluminium supplier Novelis will cost it $2bn in earnings over the next quarter which has meant that it has had to cut its full-year forecasts.

Rivian Lays Off More Than 600 Workers Amid EV Pullback (Wall Street Journal, Becky Peterson) highlights the EV truck maker’s latest woes as it has just embarked on another round of layoffs in an effort to cut costs ahead of an expected drop in EV sales. The cuts amount to about 4.5% of the workforce. * SO WHAT? * Rivian and other EV makers are suffering from Trump’s de-emphasis of EVs as a whole. The end of the $7,500 tax credit in particular is expected to decimate sales.

Volvo and VW warn Nexperia battle risks triggering factory shutdowns (Financial Times, Kana Inagaki, Sebastien Ash, Ryan McMorrow and Sarah White) shows that Volvo and VW are voicing concerns about the repercussions of the tussle between China and the Netherlands over control of chipmaker Nexperia. The car manufacturers have warned that there could be temporary plant shutdowns in Europe as a result. Japanese auto makers have also been warned about potential disruption.

Porsche hits reverse on EV push as new CEO shifts back to petrol (Financial Times, Sebastien Ash and Kana Inagaki) is an interesting article that takes a look at Porsche’s decision to de-emphasise the electrification of its model line-up and ramp up investment into petrol engine models to turn its performance around. Porsche’s share prices has fallen by almost two-thirds from its May 2023 peak thanks to a string of profit warnings this year. Given that EVs only made up 12.7% of units sold last year, it certainly seems like a good idea to make that pivot! * SO WHAT? * I must say that I believe that while certain car marques can carry off the whole EV thing, other makers – particularly makers who are known for their sports cars – just can’t. You don’t go to a Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini or Aston Martin dealership to drive cars that hum quietly or have sizeable boot space. People want those cars because they want the thrill, the sound and the feeling of luxury. It’ll be interesting to see whether lawmakers allow the flexibility to have both petrol AND EV co-existing in automotive harmony!

Back home, UK car production down 36% after Jaguar Land Rover cyberattack (The Times, Jessica Newman) cites the latest disppointing production numbers from the SMMT while Lloyds profits plunge 36% as it feels impact of UK car finance scandal (The Guardian, Kalyeena Makortoff) highlights the impact of car finance-related costs on Lloyds Bank’s quarterly earnings. Lloyds is the UK’s biggest car lender via its Black Horse division and will be bracing itself for a big compensation bill…

In a quick scoot around some of today’s other interesting stories, Military Tech Companies, Long Snubbed in Europe, Are Having a Moment (Wall Street Journal, Daniel Michaels) highlights the turnaround in the way investment in defence companies is viewed now versus just a few years ago! Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has obviously changed everything (not to mention the demise of ESG investment) and now companies like Helsing and Nordic Air Defence are being welcomed – rather than shunned – by investors. Governments are spending more on defence and this is particularly true in Europe whether the US defence comfort blanket is being removed. Investment in defence will continue to grow over the coming years…

In consumer news, Dining out ‘under pressure’ as Britons cut back due to price rises, says YouGov (The Guardian, Sarah Marsh) cites a survey from YouGov which shows that 38% of people are going to restaurants and other eateries less frequently than they were a year ago and 63% of those say its because of higher prices. Retail and hospitality wage growth hit as UK employers offset tax rise (Financial Times, Delphine Strauss) cites the latest ONS stats which show that pay in these sectors rose more slowly than in other sectors but then UK consumer confidence is creeping higher, survey shows (The Times, Jack Barnett) cites the latest survey by GfK which reflects a rise in consumer confidence ahead of Black Friday. Meanwhile, the more affluent are moving money around in St James’s Place inflows surge ahead of fee changes (Financial Times, Emma Dunkley) an article which highlights that not only St James’s Place, but also Schroders and AJ Bell are seeing big inflows ahead of next month’s Budget.

In property-related news, London eases planning controls to kick-start struggling building sector (Financial Times, Jim Pickard, Gill Plimmer and Julie Steinberg) shows that Housing Secretary Steve Reed and London mayor Sadiq Khan made a joint statement yesterday outlining looser new planning rules to help housebuilding while Foxtons shares drop sharply after it warns of ‘subdued’ pre-budget sales (The Guardian, Julia Kollewe) warned that property sales would be weak for the rest of the year due to economic uncertainty and potential tax changes in next month’s Budget.

Unicorn AI start-up Synthesia rejects $3bn Adobe takeover (The Times, Katie Prescott) is an interesting article which shows that British AI video start-up Synthesia has fended off a $3bn takeover bid from Adobe. Synthesia makes hyper-realistic AI generated videos. Takeover talks began earlier this year but Synthesia chose to remain independent. Apparently Meta’s Zuck had a sniff earlier this year but that fell flat as well. Surely someone is going to take this over – and my money’s on an American tech company!

GSK’s new multiple myeloma blood cancer drug gets US approval (The Times, Alex Ralph) highlights the FDA’s approval of a potential blockbuster blood cancer drug developed by GSK. The company reckons that Blenrep could rake in at least £3bn in peak year sales. This will come as a welcome bit of good news for the company that’s been in the wars a bit recently!

Alan Partridge walks into a coffee shop. That’s the beginning of a joke right there! There are so many classic Alan Partridge moments that I can’t put in this section but this one has all that awkwardness fans have come to know and love…