Monday 24/02/25

Zelenskyy offers to step down in exchange for peace and Ukraine’s Nato membership (Financial Times, Christopher Miller and Ben Hall) shows that Ukraine’s president has offered, for the first time, to step down if Ukraine was granted membership to NATO or if lasting peace for Ukraine was on the table. Russia launched its biggest drone strike yesterday, ahead of today’s third anniversary of the invasion. * SO WHAT? * As things stand, I would have thought that membership of NATO ain’t going to happen but Zelenskyy will try to push for a decent and lasting peace deal although it seems that he doesn’t really have a winning hand at this stage. Trump keeps banging on about a $500bn bill for US services rendered while Zelenskyy has seemingly upped his previous estimate of a $60bn bill to $100bn (presumably the truth is somewhere in between).

Meanwhile, Germany’s election winner pledges ‘independence from US’ (Financial Times, Anne-Sylvaine Chassany, Laura Pitel and Olaf Storbeck) shows that Friedrich Merz, leader of the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) is tapping into the zeitgeist and perhaps dipping into fantasy by promising to “achieve independence” from the US as he looks like getting the biggest share of the vote in yesterday’s election. The far-right AfD came second with its highest ever share. Merz said that Trump was “largely indifferent” to Europe’s fate and the region’s whole relationship needs a complete re-set. He added that he was unsure about the future of NATO. * SO WHAT? * At the moment, it’s unclear as to whether Merz can negotiate a majority that will be strong enough to push through much-needed reforms or whether he’ll be hamstrung at every turn like the last lot.

UK and India relaunch trade talks in bid to boost investment opportunities (Financial Times, Lucy Fisher and John Reed) shows that both sides are relaunching trade talks that fizzled out going into the end of last year. UK officials are targeting agreements in advanced manufacturing, clean energy and financial services as well as professional and business services. * SO WHAT? * PM Starmer is keen to do deals with India and the Indian side has also made positive noises but there are still a few sticking points including visas and social security payouts. India’s economy is about the same size as the UK’s currently but its prospects are huge and it is on track to become the world’s third biggest global economy by 2028, powered by its growing middle classes.

Trump paralyses the US wind power industry (Wall Street Journal, Jennifer Hiller) highlights one of the effects of Trump’s new administration – that the whole US wind power industry is now in limbo as players in the field like Ørsted, TotalEnergies and Shell have already cut back plans. This isn’t surprising considering that, in his election campaign, he targeted offshore wind projects which he pledged to “end on day one”. Since his election win, he confirmed his stance by saying “We aren’t going to do the wind thing”. Work is continuing on projects that have already been started but everything else is up in the air at the moment.

In the world of crypto, Hackers steal $1.5bn from crypto exchange in ‘biggest digital heist ever’ (The Guardian, Joanna Partridge) shows that Dubai-based crypto platform Bybit was hit by what is thought to be the biggest ever single hacker attack. * SO WHAT? * Bybit has over 60 million users globally and is the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume. There was a surge in withdrawals and Ethereum fell by 4% on the news but things seem to have largely recovered as the company reassured customers that they would be covered even if their money was not successfully retrieved. Bybit is now offering a reward of 10% of the amount recovered, so if you know how to do this, you could get very rich!

Elsewhere, Crypto companies boost sports spending after getting Trump bump (Financial Times, Nikou Asgari and Samuel Agini) shows that crypto companies have boosted their investment in sports investments and sponsorships to feed into the momentum the Trump’s new administration is giving them. For example, Tether bought a 5% stake in Juventus and exchange Gato.io now has a branding deal with F1 team Red Bull Racing. * SO WHAT? * Things certainly seem to be looking up for the industry after the lows of the FTX collapse back in late 2022 and the number of deals being done by crypto firms is definitely on the rise. All of this is about trying to get a wider audience involved.

Donald Trump considers tariffs to counter digital services taxes on Big Tech (Financial Times, Myles McCormick and Demetri Sevastopulo) shows that the US president is looking at retaliatory taxes on countries that implement digital services taxes against American companies. * SO WHAT? * These taxes are likely to hit many EU countries, the UK and Turkey the hardest. Trump describes these digital services taxes as being “one-sided, anti-competitive policies and practices of foreign governments” while others may describe them as making US giants pay their way in markets in which they operate. He’s also looking at tightening rules on Chinese investment in the US but also restricting companies “from pouring investments into China, and stop China buying up America”.

Meanwhile, Pollution from Big Tech’s data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn (Financial Times, Cristina Criddle and Stephanie Stacey) cites research from UC Riverside and Caltech which shows that the increasing use of data centres by Big Tech is resulting in air pollution that has increased public health costs by over $5.4bn in the last five years.

Conditions worsened by the sharp rise in power generation includes cancers and asthma, among others. Data centres cause pollution via high electricity usage, particularly from sources that use fossil fuels. * SO WHAT? * This is indeed sobering but I have to say that it must be fiendishly difficult to prove a direct link between people suffering from a condition and how much that is made worse by pollution that comes directly from specific sources. Unfortunately, until non-fossil fuel power generation sources really kick in, you would have thought that this is only going to get worse given the massive AI spending plans we are seeing on an almost daily basis. Commercially viable nuclear fusion technology can’t come quickly enough!

Then in Nvidia’s AI bubble faces test as sales surge forecast (The Times, Emma Powell) we see that the market has high hopes about Nvidia being able to outperform expectations. This will be the first results announcement since the DeepSeek shock, due out this Wednesday, so everyone is going to be even more focused than usual!

BMW pauses £600m upgrade to Oxford Mini plant as electric car demand falls (The Guardian, Aneesa Ahmed) highlights an unfortunate consequence of the ongoing lack of appetite for EVs. BMW is now reviewing plans to produce the electric Mini there “given the multiple uncertainties facing the automotive industry”. In a perhaps more worrying move, the company has informed the government that it’s going to decline the grant it previously agreed to build the upgraded facility. The plant will continue to make internal combustion engine Minis in the meantime.

Then in Aston Martin stalls its plans for electric cars (The Times, Robert Lea) we see that the ailing luxury car maker has become the latest maker to walk back its EV plans. It had previously looked to introduce an electric car to its line-up in 2027 but that looks like it’ll be pushed back to 2030. The company is due to unveil its annual results this Wednesday and its fifth CEO in five years is expected to announce a new strategy then as well.

In a quick scoot around some of today’s other interesting stories, Shein profits slump in fresh challenge to long-planned London IPO (Financial Times, Eleanor Olcott, Zijing Wu, Cheng Leng and Laura Onita) shows that Shein’s net profit tanked by almost 40% last year thanks to a tricky final quarter and increased competition from Temu. * SO WHAT? * Given the competitive pressures and uncertain trading environment with regard to tariffs and tightening regulations, it’s possible that Shein’s IPO could be booted into the second half. Mind you, if they were THAT pessimistic maybe the company would be better off floating sooner at a lower valuation because conditions could get worse. Some money is better than nothing and Shein could perhaps hedge its bets by restricting the free float or skewing it more to retail investors who are arguably less interested in the valuation.

Then in Lazy Gen Z lead revival of the travel agents (Daily Telegraph, Christopher Jasper) we see that Gen Zs are leading a revival in the humble high street travel agent. The CEO of TUI, the world’s biggest travel operator, has observed that there’s a growing trend among Gen Zs to seek out help on their holidays because they don’t want the hassle of trawling through all the online info and potentially end up with something they didn’t want. He added that demand for UK holiday bookings has recovered to reasonable levels after the company identified weakness earlier this month, resulting in a share price fall. Will we see more travel agents return to our high streets I wonder??

Some people just have too much time on their hands – but they make some pretty amazing content 😆! Take these people for example!