Monday 10/08/26

Netanyahu rejects Trump’s Gaza disarmament plan (Financial Times, James Shotter) highlights the latest non-development in wars as the Israeli leader publicly rejected Trump’s plan for Gaza following damning criticism of the 15-point plan from far-right members of his coalition. Trump had announced the plan last month and called it a breakthrough. Ah well, back to the drawing board (or perhaps yet more threats from Trump)…

In Turkey’s cyber law shifts sweeping powers to presidency (Financial Times, John Paul Rathbone) we see that rights groups have expressed concern about the country’s new cyber security law, which came into force at the end of last month, because it gives the president huge powers over internet services, gaming platforms and social media accounts. Although about 90% of Turkey’s national media outlets are currently under government control anyway, the new measures tighten the state’s grip even more. The country is 163rd of 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders’ latest index of press freedom. Supporters of the rules tout the security/safeguarding aspect while critics oppose the censorship aspect and say that it “creates a command centre for Turkey’s digital obedience regime”. * SO WHAT? * President Erdogan knows a thing or two about staying in power and so I don’t find this surprising. The prosecution of journalists, online commentators and others will continue…

UK state subsidies soar as post-Brexit support boosts energy projects (Financial Times, Peter Foster) shows that UK taxpayer subsidies more than doubled over the last financial year thanks to post-Brexit “freedoms”. The analysis by law firm Pinsent Masons for the FT found that the majority of additional subsidies were funnelled into energy projects. * SO WHAT? * It seems that there are increasing instances of companies saying that the subsidies gave the recipients an unfair advantage, rather than just levelling up the playing field. There are calls for more oversight to make sure that competition isn’t distorted but I guess that there is a balance to be had here because you don’t want the subsidies to take ages to get to where they should go because they are held up by committee!

I’ve mentioned this before but El Niño threatens to disrupt the world’s most-traded commodities (Financial Times, Susannah Savage) it seems that the weather pattern is gathering momentum and, as a result, is increasingly likely to disrupt production of some of the world’s most traded agricultural commodities. El Niño occurs every two to seven years and involves extreme weather including heavy rains and droughts. * SO WHAT? * It has already caused coffee and cocoa prices to spike ahead of expected crop damage from Brazil to West Africa and south-east Asia. The most recent rally in Arabica coffee bean prices of about 30% since early June included the commodity’s biggest one-day rise in 47 years 😲! Cocoa futures are now over 40% higher than their June low  – but were up about 63% at one stage! The ECB factors in global food commodity price rises of 9% in strong El Niño events, but when you factor in all the geopolitical shenanigans as well, it could be more! Surely this will push global inflation in the upward direction, don’t you think? Just when you thought it was safe to go to the supermarket…

Back in the UK, More than 200 homes damaged by solar panel fires in a year (Daily Telegraph, Jonathan Leake) highlights a rather worrying phenomenon – that dodgy solar panels caused about 212 rooftop fires last year, according to QBE the commercial property insurer. Fires involving solar panels were up 37% in 2025 and were most often caused by faulty installations with poor quality fittings and dodgy connections. What is even more worrying here is that the rate of fires is rising at more than twice the rate of installations. * SO WHAT? * OK, so the actual number of incidents is very small – but it seems that when they do happen, the consequences are pretty bad. I suspect that the take-up of solar panels is going to increase substantially as energy prices continue to rise and substandard traders and decent ones alike will no doubt milk this market as much as possible.

ByteDance targets mega AI model nearing Anthropic’s Mythos (Financial Times, Zijing Wu and Eleanor Olcott) shows that TikTok’s owner is looking to up its AI game by training its own AI model that could potentially vie with Anthropic’s Mythos  as it’s being trained with up to 10tn parameters, triple the number used for Moonshot’s Kimi K3. Kimi K3 is the biggest Chinese model released so far. Although Anthropic doesn’t release official model sizes, it is thought that the most advanced Mythos 5 has about 8tn parameters while Fable 5 has about 5tn. * SO WHAT? * This is yet another sign of a Chinese company closing the gap with the Americans. In the last few weeks we’ve seen new models from Moonshot and Alibaba that have performed well against benchmarks and compared favourably with Anthropic’s best offerings. ByteDance has been a bit of a dark horse in AI so far – and it also has ambitions to develop custom AI chips.

In Moonshot shake-up seeks to win Beijing nod for stock market debut (Financial Times, Eleanor Olcott and Zijing Wu) we see that the Chinese AI start-up has engaged in an overhaul of its corporate structure and brought in a number of major state-backed investors to help ease Beijing’s approval for a Hong Kong listing! It’s not clear when the listing is going to happen but it’s unlikely to go ahead until next year given the hoops that it’s probably going to have to jump through. * SO WHAT? * Moonshot doesn’t HAVE to list right now as it has recently completed one of two consecutive financing rounds and has already attracted a lot of money! However, given how much these things take to develop it probably isn’t a bad idea to get ahead of this and make preparations for other financing options.

AI push is putting banks at mercy of tech firms, warns Moody’s (The Guardian, Kalyeena Makortoff) is an interesting article which says that rating agency Moody’s is of the opinion that as banks race each other to be at the forefront of AI adoption, they are effectively making themselves increasingly vulnerable to a narrow band of Silicon Valley firms – something that could come back to bite them down the line in the form of outages and price-gouging. In the short-term, integrating AI into day-to-day systems will no doubt help to reduce costs and enhance revenues but longer term there could be higher risks in data privacy, cybersecurity and fraud, among other things. * SO WHAT? * This is certainly worth highlighting but I suspect that the banks are going to be more focused on not getting left behind over everything else at the moment. 

Nscale eyes $25bn New York listing (The Times, Chris Dorrell) shows that the British data centre developer is looking at potentially floating in New York potentially as soon as next month! This is a British data centre developer that was founded just over two years ago and is potentially targeting a $25bn valuation at flotation. If it happened it would be another kick in the teeth for the LSE which has suffered from a distinct lack of listings over the last few years. * SO WHAT? * The developer has become one of the UK’s most valuable AI companies and has an impressive list of leading US tech firm contracts. The company’s founder describes Nscale as “the only full-stack sovereign AI infrastructure provider in the UK”. This would be absolutely gutting for the UK to lose this listing but you can understand why it wants to go stateside.

In car sales trends news, Asian carmakers cash in as high petrol prices lift US demand for hybrids (Financial Times, Christian Davies) cites research from RBC Capital markets which shows that Asian carmakers Toyota and Hyundai are making money from leaning into US demand for hybrid models as petrol prices stay higher for longer. Detroit’s Big Three makers are weak in this area, which must be painful considering that sales of hybrid models increased by almost 20% in July versus July last year at a time when US car sales overall dropped by 1.5%. Toyota, Hyundai and Honda have a whopping 86% market share of hybrids in the US. Meanwhile, Chinese EV sales surge to new high in Europe putting tariffs under scrutiny (The Guardian, Jasper Jolly) cites Schmidt Automotive Research as showing that China’s EV makers have been making major inroads in European markets to the extent that it’s highly likely that there will be more calls for quotas and higher tariffs to protect European manufacturers! Chinese EV makers – including the likes o BYD, Chery, SAIC and Xpeng now have a 14.2% market share across western European markets. * SO WHAT? * When you consider that the EU slaps import tariffs of up to 35.5% on

EVs made by Chinese manufacturers and they are STILL beating the European makers, you know how serious this is getting. More action needs to be taken otherwise the Europeans will just get crowded out…

Then in Tesla UK sales drop as drivers opt for Chinese rivals (Daily Telegraph, Tom Saunders) we see that while Tesla deliveries in the UK have fallen, sales of cheaper Chinese rivals’ offerings continue to climb. Although recent SMMT data highlighted the eighth consecutive month of market growth and the best July number since 2019, none of Tesla’s cars made the top 10 most popular models in July. * SO WHAT? * I think that Tesla sales have suffered because of the whole Musk-getting-political thing (although that seems to be fading out since he left the Trump administration) as well as the fact that all their models are pretty long in the tooth with nothing to look forward to in the future.

In a quick scoot around some of today’s other interesting stories, U.S. Consumer Brands Say Chicken, Soap and Snacks Are Selling Better Overseas (Wall Street Journal, Amira McKee, Heather Haddon and Natasha Khan) shows that big-name consumer goods brands including Kraft Heinz and Colgate-Palmolive are delivering pretty consistent growth at the moment – outside the US and particularly from emerging markets. This contrasts with more sluggish domestic sales. * SO WHAT? * It seems that this is a function of a very mature market in the US contrasting with arguably easier growth opportunities where they may currently have less presence. Domestic consumers appear to be getting more cost-conscious while the increased distribution opportunities overseas appear to be able to overcome any consumer thriftiness.

Investors return to European stocks as strong earnings lift Iran war gloom (Financial Times, Emily Herbert) cites Morgan Stanley’s European equity strategist as observing that investors are buying up European equities again, following a strong earnings season that has so far appeared to withstand higher oil prices. * SO WHAT? * This is particularly interesting because the strength has been across the board in pretty much every sector. Will this stock market feelgood translate to consumers as well, though?? I think that a lot is going to depend particularly on what happens in the Middle East given the effect the situation has on oil prices and commerce more generally.

Hiring for full-time jobs stabilises for first time since Liz Truss (The Times, Jack Barnett) cites the latest figures from the REC/KPMG survey which shows that the UK jobs market is showing signs of bottoming out following a drawn-out downturn since Liz Truss’s premiership in 2022. Over that time, employers have had to contend with tax raids, big increases to the minimum wage and a number of external economic shocks. It’s the first time that the number of permanent staff taken on has not fallen in almost four years! London businesses have been taking on permanent staff at the fastest rate in almost four years. * SO WHAT? * This is really good news and I suspect that momentum will gather pace if we see this next month as well! Burnham needs to get his economic plan sorted ASAP otherwise I can see that we could have a protracted period of limbo like we did when Reeves delayed her Budget right to the last minute last year.

Then in Harvey Nichols risks collapse without rescue deal (Daily Telegraph, Tom Haynes) we see that the luxury department store could shut down within a year if it doesn’t manage to attract a rescue deal. No new funding has been sorted as of now. At the moment, Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group is circling and Next had shown interest, although it has apparently since backed away. It’s not looking good…

I don’t know why you’d want this, but what this man appears to do with a concrete pipe looks very impressive 👏…