TheChek News Flow

Investors have bet new drugs can topple Merck’s Keytruda, but the evidence so far points to something smaller

Investors have poured billions into the hunt for the next Keytruda. The latest data carries a sobering message: there may be no single successor to Merck’s mega-blockbuster in cancer.

No company is riding that hope harder than Summit Therapeutics. A couple of years ago, the biotech backed by billionaire Bob Duggan published data suggesting its drug, ivonescimab, beat back a form of lung cancer longer than Keytruda did. The stock rocketed, turning a company with no approved product into one worth over $20 billion at its peak, more than Moderna is worth today. Investors began to believe something better than Keytruda had finally arrived.

Yet as more data arrives, Summit’s drug is looking less a Keytruda killer than a contender for a slice of its market. Even after a steep fall this week, Summit is still worth over $11 billion, a rich price for a biotech with no approved drug in the U.S.

Summit and a handful of rivals presented data on the new approach at the recent ASCO cancer conference in Chicago. These drugs build on what Keytruda does by adding a second punch. Like Keytruda, they release the immune system to attack a tumor. In addition, they choke off the blood supply the tumor needs to grow. The idea, in a nutshell, is to switch on the immune system and starve the cancer at the same time.

The results, published in The Lancet, looked broadly positive. Summit’s study showed that patients in China on ivonescimab plus chemotherapy lived a median of about four months longer than those on a rival immunotherapy. That is a win on overall survival, the measure that matters most to doctors and regulators.

But the trial that will make it count in the U.S. hasn’t been reported yet. Data from an international study due later this year will pit ivonescimab directly against Keytruda. Everything hinges on those results.

There are reasons to be skeptical.

Adam Schoenfeld, a thoracic oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering, says that if the results hold up outside of China, it could be a genuine breakthrough. This is because the patients being tested have a form of lung cancer closely tied to smoking that has few treatment options.

But he sees reasons for caution. The China trial skewed young. The median patient was 64 and no one over 75 was enrolled. In the U.S., lung cancer is typically diagnosed around age 70.

More troubling, the survival benefit faded among older patients. Women were also sharply underrepresented, and the comparison drug, tislelizumab, isn’t used against lung cancer in the U.S.

The real question is whether this one-two punch innovation represents a true breakthrough.

PD-1 drugs like Keytruda revolutionized cancer care by unleashing the immune system rather than poisoning tumors with chemotherapy. This brought years of remission to a lucky minority. Summit’s drug, a so-called bispecific antibody, aims to evolve that strategy by activating the immune system while simultaneously starving the tumor.

This dual-action promise has sparked a massive dealmaking frenzy, drawing in heavy hitters like Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Merck. At ASCO, promising early-stage data from Pfizer and the BMS-BioNTech partnership proved that this new drug class is the next major battleground in oncology.

But cutting off a tumor’s blood supply has always come with a catch. It is the same mechanism behind Avastin, a drug approved more than two decades ago, and it carries real risks like bleeding, clots and high blood pressure. Those tend to hit older patients hardest.

Pairing it with immunotherapy in a single drug appears to somehow sharpen the benefit while reducing the side effects, Schoenfeld said. But it may also be why that benefit faded in the older patients in Summit’s trial, the very group that makes up most lung-cancer cases in the U.S.

Sean McCutcheon, an analyst at Raymond James, says these drugs have real potential. But they are fighting for pieces of Keytruda’s market rather than the whole of it.

And soon they will face a cheaper rival: copycat versions of Keytruda itself could be on the market by 2028. Tellingly, the whole field is already pushing beyond lung cancer, into tumors like colorectal cancer where Keytruda has largely failed.

Summit’s stock has slid about 16% this week. The caution is warranted.

The era of the single dominant cancer drug may be ending. One medicine approved across dozens of cancers and selling about $32 billion a year is giving way to something more fragmented.

Oil tanker owners fear market crash after Iran war drove record profits

Shipowners ploughed windfall into new vessels and are braced for steep drop in rates if Strait of Hormuz reopens

The world’s biggest oil tanker owners have raised the spectre of a market crash only weeks after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz helped power the industry to a quarter of record profits.

Owners are braced for a steep drop in the rates they can charge to charter tankers in the event that the US and Iran reach a deal to reopen the contested waterway, through which a fifth of global oil supplies typically pass.

Iran’s stranglehold on the strait since the war started in February has delivered a windfall for the industry, with profits surging to $36bn in the first quarter, according to Clarksons, one of the world’s biggest shipping brokers. The previous quarterly record of $26bn was set in 2022.

The risk of a sharp downturn has been heightened after owners ploughed some of their profits into orders for new ships, stoking fears of another boom-and-bust cycle that has been a hallmark of the shipping industry for decades.

The number of the largest oil carriers ordered this year has already surpassed the total for any full year on record, according to maritime data company AXSMarine.

“There is a certainty that it crashes at one point,” said Alexander Saverys, chief executive of CMB Tech, one of the biggest listed shipping companies. “The market has ordered, in my book, way too many ships. Now that will come and bite us eventually.”

The daily rates tanker owners can command have already eased back from the peaks hit in the early weeks of the conflict, when the average cost of hiring a tanker hit $162,992. For the largest vessels, which can carry about 2mn barrels of oil a day, the daily rate soared to $386,685.

The effective closure of the strait has left more than 160 oil tankers stranded in the Gulf, limiting the supply of vessels and driving up shipping rates across the world.

A move by owners to route vessels around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid the Red Sea and potential attacks from Houthi rebels has also driven up rates.

Despite traffic through the strait remaining at a near-standstill, the daily average overall rates for tankers have dropped to between $55,000 and $95,000 for the larger vessels in recent weeks in anticipation of a reopening of the strait. The range is still above the average in recent years of $30,000 to $40,000.

“We need to be very careful,” said Harry Vafias, a major owner of gas and oil tankers, referring to the potential risks facing the industry. “There has been a lot of investment in second-hand and new building [of ships].”

Tanker orders this year are on track to match 2024, which was the third-busiest year since 2000, according to AXS.

The tanker industry would be one of the few industries to lose out if the volumes of shipping traffic through the strait returned to prewar levels. The closure of the vital waterway has sent energy prices surging, hurting multiple industries.

The oil tanker industry is dominated by Greek shipowners, with a working fleet valued at $66.4bn, $26bn more than China, according to shipping technology company Veson Nautical.

While the industry is accustomed to boom-and-bust cycles, a string of global shocks this decade, including the coronavirus pandemic and US President Donald Trump’s trade war, has injected more volatility into shipping rates.

But some executives cautioned that the risk of an industry downturn was overblown, saying that this year’s burst of orders for new ships followed a period of undersupply.

Maria Angelicoussis, chief executive of Angelicoussis Group, a privately owned shipping company, said: “When I look at the tanker market, for example, yes, there’s been an uptick in newbuilding orders in the recent past,” but it comes after a period in which there was a lack of vessels.

It was a view echoed by Capital Maritime Group, which is owned by Greek tycoon Evangelos Marinakis and has placed a large order for new ships.

Others argued that the war would lead to lasting changes in how oil was shipped around the world, supporting the fees tanker owners could charge. The changes include using routes that were less exposed to the threat of conflict.

Angeliki Frangou, chief executive of Navios Partners, a Greek shipping company, told the FT that “excessive newbuilding orders” would push shipping rates lower but the impact would be reduced “by national security considerations of securing reliable energy supply chains”.

Wealthy Russians enjoy many of the luxuries of their prewar lives

Moscow’s Vnukovo airport is home to a sleek white Bombardier Global 7500—a $75 million Western-built jet that caters to the world’s wealthy and business elites.

The jet is one of a number of luxury aircraft used by close allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin—despite Western sanctions aimed at punishing Moscow’s elite over the 2022 Ukraine invasion. Sergey Chemezov, the chief executive at Russia’s giant defense company Rostec, has used the Bombardier jet for trips to Dubai, Turkey and Southeast Asia.

Russia’s elite have been forced to adapt since the start of the war, but Western sanctions haven’t done much to crimp their globe-spanning lifestyles. They have traded places like London, the French Riviera and the Swiss Alps for new destinations such as the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Azerbaijan.

A Wall Street Journal review of documents from an aviation research firm, import data and flight-tracking records show a number of wealthy Russians close to Putin continue to avail themselves of top-tier business jets from Western aviation companies. A web of companies buys the jets from Western manufacturers or secondhand and registers them in new locations to make them available to sanctioned Russians, the documents show. Those Russians include Chemezov; Arkady Rotenberg, a longtime associate of Putin; and Igor Kesaev, an oligarch involved in arms manufacturing.

Chemezov has been a close Putin ally since the 1980s, when they worked together as KGB officers in what was then East Germany. After rising to power, Putin appointed him as the top executive at Rostec in 2007.

He once enjoyed regular travel to Europe, including estates in Spain controlled by members of his family, according to documents leaked from financial firms in 2021 known as the Pandora Papers.

Since the start of the war, he has had to swap the Mediterranean for Dubai, where he has a villa with a private beach on the man-made Palm Jumeirah archipelago, according to public documents that were earlier reported by Radio Free Europe.

Chemezov used the jet for about half a dozen trips to the U.A.E. between October 2025 and January of this year, according to the flight-tracking firm Flightradar24.

Rotenberg, who trained at the same judo club as Putin in St. Petersburg in their youth, has built his wealth since the Russian president came to power, running banks and construction firms that won lucrative contracts to build infrastructure for the government. He has been under international sanctions over his ties to Putin since Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

He has been using two Bombardier Globals that he got access to in late 2022, according to Ch-Aviation documents. His jets have frequently traveled to resorts in countries that don’t enforce sanctions, such as Azerbaijan and the U.A.E., according to Flightradar24.

Kesaev made his fortune in tobacco and alcohol distribution during the chaotic 1990s in Russia, and then later expanded into retail grocery chains and the arms industry. He is worth $4.8 billion, according to Forbes. He was sanctioned by the U.S. and the European Union after the Ukraine invasion for his role supporting Russia’s arms industry. He imported a raven-black Bombardier Global Express XRS jet in 2023, according to data from Ch-Aviation and Import Genius.

The companies of Chemezov and Rotenberg and a lawyer acting for Kesaev didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Before 2022, many Russian oligarchs relied on European operators—often in low-tax jurisdictions such as Switzerland, Luxembourg and San Marino—to manage their jets. After the invasion, they lost access to those agreements—and in some cases to the aircraft themselves.

Now Russian oligarchs typically get access to Western-made private jets through brokers and intermediary companies. European brokers and aircraft-management firms often acquire Bombardier and Gulfstream jets by purchasing them secondhand from other companies. The aircraft are then registered in jurisdictions that don’t have sanctions on Russia—including the U.A.E., Oman, Kazakhstan and South Africa—before eventually being flown to Russia.

“We have been noticing that some European companies appear to operate in a gray legal area by supplying aircraft to third parties that eventually sell them to Russia,” said Marija Verovic, vice president of marketing at Ch-Aviation.

The aircraft used by the Russians close to Putin were handled by a Vienna-based company called Avcon or its subsidiaries before transitioning to Russian ownership, according to Ch-Aviation documents.

The plane used by Chemezov, for example, was first registered in Bermuda and managed by Avcon before being re-registered in Russia by a company called Tarp Aviation, according to documents in the database. Several jets now managed by Tarp were previously operated by Avcon, the documents show.

“The Avcon Jet Group strictly adheres to EU and U.S. sanctions laws,” the company said in an email. Tarp didn’t respond to a request for comment.

A Vienna-based fiduciary and aviation holding company called SecuTrust owns stakes in both companies. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Companies based in North America and Europe are obliged under sanctions rules to ensure that no aircraft or aircraft parts are exported to Russia. They must conduct due diligence to determine whether clients subsequently resell such items to Russia, according to Felix Helmstädter, a German sanctions expert and lecturer in law at Humboldt University in Berlin.

In some cases, transfers of business jets violate both the general sanctions on exports to Russia and specific sanctions targeting the individuals who ultimately take ownership of the aircraft, he said.

A spokeswoman for Bombardier said that the company has a robust and comprehensive compliance program and takes all reasonable measures to help ensure aircraft aren’t sold or serviced in violation of applicable laws, sanctions or export controls.

Gulfstream didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Moscow has been able to increase imports of Western goods during President Trump’s second term because his administration hasn’t prioritized sanctions enforcement, focusing on narcotics trafficking and Iran instead, said John E. Smith, former director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, the top U.S. sanctions authority.

“Implementing sanctions is like a game of whack-a-mole: It takes significant enforcement efforts to track the evasion and find ways to combat it, and this administration has decided not to focus on increasing sanctions pressure against Russia,” said Smith, now a partner at Morrison Foerster, a law firm.

Most countries only impose levies once gains are realised

The Dutch government is preparing to soften a contentious tax that would hit wealthy investors and has placed the Netherlands at the centre of a global debate over levies targeting the rich.

Dutch investors are balking at plans that would subject them to an annual 36 per cent tax on their paper profits on liquid assets such as savings, equities, bonds and cryptocurrency, even if they are not sold.

The regime, due to come into force in January 2028, would make the Netherlands an outlier among most advanced economies in its taxation of unrealised gains.

The measure was pushed by a hard-right coalition in which Geert Wilders’ populist Party for Freedom was the biggest member.

Prime Minister Rob Jetten’s coalition, which came into power in February and whose Liberal D66 party was not in the previous government, is now preparing a series of concessions following sustained criticism from investors and business groups, who argue the measure risks undermining the country’s attractiveness as an investment destination.

“The government takes these concerns seriously. It is exploring ways to soften the consequences of the accrual-based tax and is working out possible options, which will be presented before the end of June,” a spokesperson for the Minister for Tax Affairs, Tax Administration and Customs told the FT in a statement.

While the concessions, if approved, are expected to soften the regime’s impact, they are unlikely to satisfy demands for the capital gains accrual tax under the “Box 3” system, which sets out how wealth from savings and investments is treated, to be scrapped immediately.

The Dutch dispute is the latest example of the political challenges governments face changing taxes that hit the wealthy. In California, proposals for a “billionaire’s tax” have opened a sharp political divide. Several European countries, including Norway and France, have adjusted their wealth tax regimes after pushback from investors.

The Dutch reforms, first put forward in May 2025, are intended to address historic unfairness in the previous system, under which investors were taxed on notional returns — an approach that courts ruled unlawful. But the proposed replacement, which treats liquid and illiquid assets differently, has sparked an outcry over its workability, fairness and complexity.

Taxing unrealised gains creates “severe liquidity issues and administrative burdens for retail investors”, said Daniël van Meijgaarden, head of international tax and legal at aaff, a Dutch accounting firm.

The government is considering the introduction of loss carry-back, allowing investors to offset losses against previously taxed paper gains. It is also examining a new definition for start-ups and scale-ups, a major point of contention in determining which assets would be exempt from the accrual tax.

Under the proposed legislation, start-ups, scale-ups and immovable property would be exempt from the accrual-based regime and instead be taxed when gains are realised.

Frans Heeren, managing partner at Dutch accountancy firm Vermetten, welcomed that the Dutch government was working on concessions but said concerns remained about the new system.

“People are happy that [adjustments] are being introduced,” he said. “But the main issue remains whether unrealised gains should be taxed at all.”

The concessions are expected to come as the Dutch upper house, the Senate, wrestles with the proposed legislation, which passed the lower house in February under the previous government.

The changes will also require a fresh vote in the lower house. Jetten’s minority government will need the votes of some opposition parties to get the changes approved.

Some senators are questioning whether the bill should proceed in its current form or whether the cabinet should be forced to accelerate a more fundamental shift towards taxing gains only when they are realised — the standard approach in most countries.

The government earlier this year signalled that it intends to move to a capital gains tax system “as quickly as possible” but has resisted pressure to abandon the 2028 introduction of the accrual tax, arguing it would leave a hole in the budget.

The uncertainty surrounding the legislation has already “demoralised investors”, said Harsh Patel, founder and chief executive of Water & Shark, an accountancy and legal firm. “It is not right to tax something that has not come into your pocket.”

The new Box 3 system applies to Dutch private taxpayers. It will not apply to institutional and many foreign investors, said the government.

The ever-present fear of ridicule among cycling’s weekend warriors tells us a thing or two about human nature

I learnt this week that Sotheby’s has entered the market for high-end road bicycles. So I called Paul Redmayne, senior vice-president for luxury private sales at the auction house, who told me that the first bike they’d sold, in 2023, was a Colnago C68, “wrapped in gold leaf with a diamond embedded in the top tube”. Last year, a machine ridden during the Tour de France by the eventual winner, Tadej Pogačar, sold at auction at Sotheby’s for $190,500.

This got me thinking not only about Thorstein Veblen’s account of conspicuous consumption and the rise of the leisure class, many denizens of which today have swapped the golf course for the group ride, but also about his contemporary Sigmund Freud’s theory of the narcissism of minor differences.

If you ever want a demonstration of both ideas, head on a Saturday morning to the 9W Market, a café on the west bank of the Hudson, 20 miles or so north of New York City. The bicycle racks will be full and the place will be crawling with middle-aged men in Lycra — or “mamils” — on their mid-ride coffee-and-cake break. Completing the 100km loop from Manhattan to the little town of Nyack and back, with a refuelling stop in the Palisades, is a rite of passage for any New York-based amateur road cyclist worth his or her salt.

Now, to the uninitiated, one “mamil” — defined by the dictionary as “a very keen road cyclist, typically one who rides an expensive bike and wears the type of clothing associated with professional cyclists” — looks very much like another. But to members of the species themselves (and I am one), our differences are as important as our similarities. 

These are expressed in the kinds of bikes we ride (carbon fibre frames, naturally, but with what kind of chainset or gear ratio?), the kit we wear (the choice between Rapha, say, and Pas Normal Studios is heavily freighted) and the way we wear it (heaven forbid that you should inadvertently place the arms of your special cycling glasses under your helmet straps).

As Freud put it in Civilization and Its Discontents, “it is precisely communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well, who are engaged in constant feuds and in ridiculing each other”. Actual feuding on the group ride might be rare, but the fear of ridicule is ever present. 

On my last visit to the 9W Market, as I clattered towards the coffee counter in my cleats (anyone cycling in flat shoes or trainers immediately identifies themselves as a hopeless neophyte), I agonised about the height of my socks (white, obviously). Were they long enough to avoid the disdain that comes the way of anyone wearing ankle socks or, perish the thought, “no-show” socks that expose the ankle? 

Last year, Pogačar’s Slovenian compatriot, Primož Roglič, caused consternation in the two-wheeled fraternity when he rode stage 12 of the Tour in no-show socks barely visible above his cycling shoes (again, white).

The uproar was partly a matter of aesthetics and partly an expression of professional cycling’s obsession with aerodynamics and the science of “marginal gains”. Wind-tunnel experiments have shown that wearing specially designed “aero” socks reduces drag.

You might object that such considerations are irrelevant to the fiftysomething recreational rider for whom a 100km ride at the end of a long working week might be at the outer limits of their endurance capacities. And you’d be right. 

But splashing out on a bike that once belonged to a member of the pro peloton is tempting if you can afford it. Redmayne tells me that Sotheby’s is also now offering clients a Tour de France “experience” in which you embed with one of the teams and receive a custom-made bike and kit. The cost? “Six figures.”

Apple has reached a turning point. When CEO Tim Cook delivers the keynote address at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, it will likely be his last major public act as chief executive. He would sure like to go out with a bang.

The company has an agenda to meet the moment. WWDC is shaping up to be Apple’s second attempt at announcing its plans for artificial intelligence. The company first rolled out Apple Intelligence at 2024’s WWDC.

Wall Street expected that 2024 rollout to drive a massive iPhone upgrade cycle. Instead, Apple’s AI products have disappointed consumers, and the launch of a highly anticipated AI-powered Siri chatbot has been delayed until the fall.

Now, it’s take two. Apple is expected to show off a revamped Siri during the keynote on Monday, along with some other AI updates. UBS analyst David Vogt expects Apple to present an AI-powered Siri that will be able to understand personal data and analyze on-screen content. He also expects Apple to launch an independent Siri app that functions similarly to other AI apps by acting as an “interface for text, voice, and attachments.”

After getting punished on its AI failures, Apple stock is rallying again. Investors are offering Apple a rare second chance to get AI right.

“I think this would be a great opportunity to just show that personalized Siri is the killer consumer agent,” John Belton, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds, tells me. “Maybe personalized Siri is something that can really bring a lot of this new technology to the billions of iPhone users around the world.”

This WWDC holds emotional weight for the company and its fans. Cook is stepping down from his role in September, and incoming CEO John Ternus is expected to lead the announcement of the next iPhone that month.

By any financial metric, Cook’s tenure has a been a wild success. Revenue is up 293%. Market value has increased $4.2 trillion. Cook, meanwhile, has turned Apple into a services business with a sticky ecosystem. He spearheaded the launch of wearable products like the Apple Watch and AirPods. Monday’s WWDC keynote gives Cook an opportunity to leave the company on an even more positive note.

“The most important message they’re gonna have to tell is, ‘We’re not behind in AI. We have a game plan. We have a strategy.’ And I think if that vision is shared by Tim Cook, then he’ll be leaving at a time when he has sort of set the company up for the next era. And from that standpoint, I think it’s a pretty logical time to be transitioning out,” Belton says.

Any progress in AI comes amid a difficult backdrop. Public sentiment around AI has quickly shifted, with worries about job loss and privacy overshadowing any productivity enhancements the technology might bring. Half of U.S. adults say the increased use of AI in daily life makes them feel more concerned than excited, according to a 2025 survey from Pew Research Center.

The negativity could actually be a boon for Apple, which has long marketed itself as a company that prioritizes user privacy and safety. Users already share huge amounts of data with Apple, from passwords and credit cards to Face IDs and their most personal health information.

Apple has another edge in the AI race. It isn’t spending hundreds of billions of dollars on capital expenditures. While Alphabet parent is suspending stock buybacks and turning to equity markets to raise more money, Apple continues to repurchase shares. If Apple gets AI right, its spending strategy will look brilliant.

For now, Apple seems to be following its successful old playbook. The company never created its own search engine, relying on Google to power search across its devices. Apple is religious about controlling customer experiences, but it knows where to ask for help.

When it comes to AI, Apple has announced previous plans to partner with ChatGPT maker OpenAI on Apple Intelligence. This year, the company said its next generation of Apple Foundation Models would be based on Google’s Gemini models and cloud technology.

“Apple has not been a visible participant in the compute buildout race, and frontier model-building is not where the company has historically differentiated vs. other Mag Seven peers or frontier labs. This has fed the perception that Apple is an AI laggard in a race that is already well underway,” BofA Securities analyst Wamsi Mohan recently wrote in a note to clients.

But, Mohan said, Apple doesn’t have to own the best frontier model if it owns the “trusted interface.”

Investors seem to understand that Apple is playing a wise long game when it comes to AI. Over the past 12 months, Apple shares have jumped 54%, doubling the S&P 500’s gain.

For Cook & Co., the rally has raised the stakes for Monday’s event. Apple nows trades at 33 times earnings estimates for the next 12 months, above its five-year average of 27.5 times forward earnings. That multiple leaves little room for Apple to disappoint at WWDC.

Even if the company nails the presentation, don’t expect Apple to get a near-term boost. Over the past decade, shares have declined slightly on the day of the WWDC keynote, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Three months later, they’re up an average of nearly 14%.

Investors can find a more favorable regulatory environment and cheaper investment options in clean-energy companies outside the U.S.

For years, clean energy has been where investor optimism went to die. Today’s power shortage is forcing a second look.

Popular clean-energy exchange-traded funds like iShares Global Clean Energy and Invesco WilderHill Clean Energy are up more than 30% this year. The funds are beating both the broader market and the oil major–heavy energy index represented by the State Street Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF—even after the Iran war-driven oil-price spike handed fossil fuels every advantage.

Like a cat with nine lives, the capital-intensive renewables sector has survived challenges over the past 20 years that included its initial speculative boom, politically fraught subsidy fights, the shale revolution (which made fossil fuels more competitive), Chinese overcapacity in solar and battery technologies, and retaliatory U.S. tariffs.

For its current run, clean energy can thank Big Tech, which has created demand for fast-to-build power for the first time in decades—solar, wind, and batteries often fit the bill. The Iran war also created demand for alternatives to fossil fuels.

“The strong performance of the clean energy sector is proof that if you electrify and use clean energy, you have more security than you do if you’re more dependent on natural gas and oil,” says Ben Bielawski, portfolio manager at Duff & Phelps Investment Management.

There are plenty of American names to stake bets on. But outside the U.S., investors can find a more favorable regulatory environment and cheaper investment options without the premium now attached to the U.S. artificial-intelligence power trade.

For example, investors searching for the European version of NextEra Energy —a large clean-energy producer with a regulated utility arm—need look no further than Iberdrola. The Spanish utility owns power grids in several major markets, including Spain, Britain, Brazil, and the U.S., and has spent decades building one of the world’s largest renewable power fleets.

It is spending most of its capital not on generating more power but on its poles-and-wires business, which earns steadier returns as electricity demand rises. Iberdrola’s U.S.-listed American depositary receipts are trading at a lower ratio of enterprise value-to-earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, or Ebitda, than shares of NextEra, meaning you can own the theme without paying the full AI premium attached to U.S. power stocks like NextEra. Bielawski of Duff & Phelps likes the stock.

For the European equivalent of Constellation Energy, a power producer that owns scarce clean nuclear and hydroelectric power, Bielawski points to Finnish utility Fortum. Nearly all of its power generation comes from renewable or nuclear sources, giving investors exposure to “always available” clean power without having to bet on a new technology. Fortum, which has a somewhat illiquid ADR under the symbol FOJCY, now boasts a dividend yield of nearly 4%, according to FactSet data.

That dividend should remain secure as long as Big Tech continues to target the region for new data centers. Meta Platforms built one of its largest data centers in the world in northern Sweden, and Alphabet’s Google has repeatedly expanded its facility in Hamina, Finland. They aren’t there for the scenery; clean hydropower is cheap in the Nordics, and cold air to cool the data centers is free.

Beyond the utilities, there are also foreign equivalents of U.S. superstar stocks making electrification physically possible.

Balfour Beatty, the United Kingdom construction contractor, is a rare operator sitting on $1.6 billion in net cash and is helping build energy infrastructure in Britain. That includes work tied to the country’s first new nuclear station in a generation, as well as a BP – and Equinor-backed project that aims to be among the world’s first commercial-scale natural-gas plants with carbon capture.

Spie, a French company, is like the European version of Quanta Services in that it designs and installs electrical infrastructure. Germany was the company’s fastest-growing market in 2025; the country no longer has access to cheap Russian gas after Russia severely restricted and then entirely halted deliveries following its invasion of Ukraine. Germany moved to end its dependence on Russian energy, a transition made permanent when the Nord Stream pipelines were damaged by sabotage in 2022.

Italian cable maker Prysmian is a rare clean-power company that can make high-voltage electrical cable at scale. It has spent years increasing its market share, and data center power has given the 150-year-old business a new lease on life. The company has grown its free cash flow to 1.19 billion euros ($1.4 billion) over the 12 months that ended March 31, up nearly 20% from the previous year despite relatively heavy spending on factories and equipment.

The most explosive growth has come from companies promising to power data centers in less than a year, such as fuel-cell company Bloom Energy. Bloom spent most of its 25 years as a promising—but unprofitable—solid oxide fuel-cell maker that never quite broke through. Then the AI data center boom found it. Data center developers can install Bloom’s fuel cells on site, giving them access to power far faster than waiting years for new grid connections or power plants.

The electricity generated this way is costly, but companies racing to develop AI are willing to pay higher prices. Bloom has struck deals with Big Tech companies and utilities, helping the stock surge more than 1,500% over the past 12 months and pushing the company’s market cap to about $85 billion.

Bloom’s market cap is now within range of Constellation’s, even though Bloom has only about 1.5 gigawatts deployed globally—or just over 4 gigawatts including Oracle’s announced order—while Constellation owns about 55 gigawatts of generating capacity, responsible for roughly 5% of U.S. electricity. A comparison is either an argument for Bloom’s potential or a warning about its price, depending on your disposition.

If you aren’t tempted to buy Bloom at that valuation, Bielawski says there is a parallel play in Ceres Power, a U.K.-listed company that few the U.S. have heard of. It doesn’t manufacture fuel cells like Bloom but instead licenses the intellectual property behind them. Rather than carrying the capital costs of building and deploying projects itself, it collects royalties from partners including Delta Electronics, one of Taiwan’s largest manufacturers, and Doosan, the Korean industrial giant.

Ceres’ technology uses steel rather than the ceramics most competitors rely on, which the company says can make it cheaper to produce, a meaningful edge in the price-sensitive Asian markets where the real volume opportunity lies. Ceres has a market cap of roughly $2 billion, a fraction of Bloom’s.

There is still plenty of hand-wringing about how much new nuclear development the world can realistically expect, given the sector’s history of cost overruns. Still, the political backdrop in Europe is shifting in nuclear’s favor.

Belgium has spent the past two decades trying to wind down its nuclear industry, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine accelerated a rethink of that strategy. At the end of April, Brussels entered exclusive negotiations with French utility Engie for Belgium to acquire its nuclear reactors, including its workforces and liabilities inside the country. The deal would effectively nationalize an industry Belgium had spent years trying to phase out.

The Nordic region is moving in the same direction. Sweden has set a target of 10 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity by 2045, and in April proposed taking a 60% ownership stake in the country’s first new reactor project since 1985. Norway, which has never had a nuclear plant, greenlit an impact assessment for a small modular reactor in March.

Meanwhile, Spain is having discussions about extending the life of its operating reactors.

The revival needs fuel. Russia is a major supplier of conventional enriched uranium, the fuel used by today’s reactors, as well as the only commercial supplier of high-assay low-enriched uranium, or Haleu, which many advanced reactor designs are expected to need. In the U.S. public market, Centrus Energy is the clearest public-market bet on building a domestic alternative.

Centrus owns the only American-controlled enrichment plant licensed to produce Haleu but says it won’t be producing it at commercial scale until at least the end of the decade.

The Department of Energy awarded nearly $1 billion to one of Centrus’ subsidiaries in January to build out U.S. Haleu enrichment capacity. “The U.S. is short of enrichment, and we need to build up that capability regardless of reactor type,” says Mark Corigliano, founder of Corigliano Investment Advisers, who likes the stock. Still, the scale of the buildout has hurt the stock in the near term. Shares have fallen 30% since the start of the year, as the costs to expand production contributed to two earnings misses.

Bielawski prefers to own the nuclear supply chain further upstream. Cameco, the Canadian uranium miner, is one of the world’s largest producers of raw uranium and benefits directly as Western utilities scramble to replace Russian supply. Rising uranium prices flow straight to the bottom line.

He also likes AtkinsRéalis, the Montreal-based engineering company that designs, builds, and extends the life of nuclear plants globally. Two years ago, nuclear accounted for 15% of its revenue. Last quarter, nuclear made up 25%, after the company signed a multibillion-dollar contract to extend the life of four reactors at Ontario’s Pickering station, a deal to build two new reactors in Romania, and a collaboration with Nvidia to design nuclear-powered AI facilities. Profits jumped 34% in the most recent quarter.

Clean-energy stocks are performing well, but they can still destroy capital if investors buy the wrong company at the wrong price. That is especially true after a rally.

But now that Big Tech has awoken to the fact that these companies can get them the power they want in a palatable time frame, the sector should fare better than it has historically. In Europe, it faces less concern over the politics of carbon emissions, and stocks haven’t yet soared to the same heights as their U.S. counterparts.

For once, the clean-energy trade looks better the further it gets from Washington.

European defense start-ups and established firms are increasingly pursuing IPOs and raising equity capital amid a rearmament surge.

EU states’ military spending increased 11% last year and nearly two-thirds since 2020, driven by geopolitical shifts.

Despite recent market dips, analysts view European defense as a long industrial cycle with strong order books and cheap valuations.

U.S. artificial-intelligence giants aren’t the only initial public offerings worth watching these days. European defense start-ups are also rushing to market.

Just in the past week, United Kingdom—based jet components maker Doncasters and Finnish communications specialist Savox announced IPO plans. They follow diversified armaments manufacturer Czechoslovak Group, or CSG, which in January raised 3.8 billion euros ($4.4 billion) for history’s biggest defense IPO anywhere. Coming attractions include German drone maker Helsing and Finnish satellite builder ICEYE.

Some established European defense mainstays are also raising equity capital. Leopard tank manufacturer KNDS Group, co-owned by the French and German governments, has penciled in a Frankfurt IPO this year. German conglomerate Thyssenkrupp spun off its naval division last October at a €5.2 billion valuation.

“Defense is no longer just a panic trade on scary news,” says Ruben Dalfovo, investment strategist at Saxo Bank in Denmark. “It is becoming a long industrial cycle.”

Europe’s defense offerings are dwarfed in scale by SpaceX, Anthropic, or OpenAI. They may prove no less important in fate-of-the-world terms, though.

The Old World is in the midst of a rearmament surge, catalyzed by the successive traumas of Russia invading Ukraine and the U.S. turning hostile under President Donald Trump. Military spending by European Union states jumped 11% last year, and by nearly two-thirds since 2020, the EU reports. U.S. expenditure fell in 2025, though this year should be different.

Eager to reduce dependence on Washington and less invested in expensive legacy systems, Continental defense ministries are more open to giving new tech a chance, argues Nicholas Nelson, general partner at London-based seed investor Archangel Ventures. “There’s a lot more money coming on-line that doesn’t have the baggage of an incumbent program,” he says.

The European arms establishment is also embracing the start-up sphere, not trying to freeze it out. Iconic German contractor Rheinmetall has one joint venture with ICEYE on space-based reconnaissance and another to build naval drones with U.K.-based Kraken Technology Group, one of Archangel’s companies.

“Rheinmetall is trying to build a whole network of tools linked by a single system,” says Michael Field, European equity strategist at Morningstar.

One more long-term advantage, Field adds, is Europe’s continued embrace of Ukraine while the U.S. all but abandons it. That gives Continental defense contractors a ringside seat to the astonishing innovation that has enabled Ukraine to survive. “We are able to share more about how they implement their systems and use it as a blueprint,” he says.

One thing not in new issues’ favor is current market sentiment around listed European defense stocks. After a blistering run last year, the Select Stoxx Europe Aerospace & Defense exchange-traded fund has counterintuitively fallen 15% since the Iran war started three months ago. CSG shares have lost half of their value since debuting four months ago.

Investors are taking a breather, not giving up on the sector, Field thinks. “It’s going to take Germany at least 10 years just to restock the weapons they have given to Ukraine,” he says. “Valuations are very cheap now relative to the order books and earnings growth.”

“Military spending is not just about one war,” Saxo’s Dalfovo echoes. “It is about Europe trying to rebuild strategic autonomy.”

Venture capitalist Nelson has his own take on the moment. “We’re in a hype cycle but not a bubble,” he says.

That’s about the best that investors in anything could hope for right now.