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Prosecutors suspect the man, detained while leaving for Beijing in May, was siphoning secrets to a Chinese company

BRUSSELS—Belgium’s revelation that it had arrested a Chinese citizen on suspicion of stealing advanced microchip technology is fueling European anxiety about Beijing’s trade practices and quest for industrial secrets.

Belgian officials said Monday that in May they had arrested a man, who also holds Belgian citizenship, just before he was due to fly to Beijing. The arrest was part of an investigation into the possible transfer of intellectual property and trade secrets from a Belgian semiconductor company to a Chinese company, prosecutors said.

The detention marks the latest escalation in a long-running battle between China and its Western rivals over technological advances in critical industries such as semiconductors. European intelligence agencies have warned that Chinese entities target Western researchers and companies to gain access to technology its companies can exploit.

U.S. restrictions on selling advanced semiconductor technology to China have helped make that industry a prime target.

European policymakers are already considering new economic-security measures to address concerns about China, said Antonia Hmaidi, program head at the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies.

The Belgian case on its own is unlikely to change the current trajectory, she said, “but it might be enough to give people who are already pursuing this path the impression that this is the right path.”

Representatives from China’s Embassy to Belgium and its mission to the European Union didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on the arrest.

Belgian prosecutors said the 52-year-old man’s arrest was part of an investigation into espionage, participation in a criminal organization, misuse of company assets and the unlawful disclosure of company secrets. They didn’t identify him publicly.

The man held a senior research position at a Belgian semiconductor company called BelGaN before the company’s 2024 bankruptcy, prosecutors said.

BelGaN, based in Belgium, specialized in making gallium nitride semiconductors, which allow for higher voltages compared with silicon-based chips. The chips can be used in electric vehicles, but also have aerospace and military applications.

BelGaN bought the Belgian manufacturing site from ON Semiconductor, a U.S.-based multinational.

Chinese companies have tried for at least a decade to acquire European gallium nitride technology. In 2016, a Chinese chip-making company launched a takeover bid for Germany’s Aixtron, a specialist in the field selling semiconductors to the U.S. arms industry. The U.S. government blocked the acquisition on national-security grounds.

Belgian officials said there are indications that the arrested man was working at BelGaN while simultaneously acting as a director at a Chinese company that was established soon after he took up his BelGaN position.

“The investigation may point to the unlawful transfer abroad of specialized intellectual property and trade secrets,” prosecutors said in a statement Monday.

Prosecutors said they are still looking for a second suspect.

The Belgian case isn’t the first time Western authorities have raised concerns that China’s tech ambitions could harm Western companies.

Belgium’s state security service earlier this year described a ‘Copy to China’ strategy that it said involves investing in Belgian companies to get access to specific technologies and then establishing another company in China to make the same technology on a larger scale.

In a separate case, Dutch semiconductor machine builder ASML in 2022 accused a Chinese company of marketing products that could infringe on its intellectual-property rights. The Chinese company was associated with another firm that had previously stolen ASML trade secrets, ASML said at the time.

In a more recent case, the Dutch government last year gave itself temporary power to overturn decisions at Chinese-owned semiconductor company Nexperia over economic security concerns.

Beijing is trying to become self-sufficient in everything it needs to assure its economic and military security—including semiconductor technology—said Joris Teer, a policy analyst with the EU’s Institute for Security Studies. He said that has led Beijing to provide huge state support for the sector and to rely on cyber and other forms of espionage.

“If Europe does not radically alter its China, trade, and industrial policies, Beijing’s industrialization at the cost of everyone else will only accelerate,” Teer said.

The group of private-equity firms that bought EverBank had been in search of an exit

Florida-based EverBank Financial has reached a deal to pursue a reverse merger with a smaller bank in the Pacific Northwest, WaFd WAFD 0.89%increase; up pointing triangle, the companies said.

The deal would create a regional bank with some $75 billion in assets.

WaFd, which recently changed its name from Washington Federal Bank, has a market value of around $2.7 billion and around $28 billion in assets. EverBank has a valuation of around $3.9 billion, the companies said.

EverBank was bought by a group of private-equity firms in 2023. It has assets of around $47 billion.

WaFd would remain a publicly traded company in the deal, change its name to EverBank Financial and trade under the ticker “EVBK.”

The private-equity firms that bought EverBank from the pension fund TIAA had been exploring either selling or taking EverBank public, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. Those firms included Stone Point Capital, Warburg Pincus, Reverence Capital Partners, Sixth Street and Bayview Asset Management.

The group of investors and TIAA, which kept a stake in the 2023 sale, would collectively own around 59.2% of the combined company after the deal with WaFd.

The combined bank would be within the ranks of the top 50 in the U.S. by assets. Industry executives increasingly say scale matters more than ever.

That was one of the first things WaFd CEO Brent Beardall and EverBank CEO Greg Seibly talked about when they had dinner together to discuss a potential transaction.

“You’ve got to be bigger to be able to survive,” Seibly said in an interview. A lot of banks are “staring down the same thing.”

EverBank operates mostly as a digital bank, with a few dozen branches, primarily in Florida and California. Based in Seattle, WaFd has more than 200 branches across Washington, Oregon and other Western states.

“The strength on one side complements a gap on the other side,” Seibly said.

Donald Trump calls for US boycott of Canada’s Bombardier jets

President’s post on social media comes hours before Ottawa’s retaliatory tariffs against Washington take effect

Donald Trump has called for a boycott of Bombardier, the Canadian business jet manufacturer, as Ottawa prepares to impose C$27bn (US$20bn) in retaliatory tariffs on US goods in the intensifying trade war between the countries.

In a lengthy Truth Social post on Monday, Trump said there should be “NO MORE SELLING BOMBARDIER IN THE UNITED STATES! Their products aren’t good enough!”

He added that more than 50 per cent of the company’s revenue came from the US. “If they want our Market, they must build here, and stop treating America like a ‘piggy bank’.”

Trump also accused Ottawa of blocking “Gulfstream Aerospace from doing business in Canada — Completely unjust and unfair!”

The US president’s post came hours before new Canadian counter-tariffs on US goods came into effect at midnight on Tuesday.

Canada’s “dollar-for-dollar” move applies levies of up to 50 per cent on US$20bn worth of US-origin goods. They come after the White House last month imposed tariffs on an equal value of Canadian goods.

The Trump administration has threatened additional 50 per cent tariffs as the trade war between the neighbours shows no sign of easing.

Leaders from both countries have said no formal talks are planned this week to resolve the impasse, as each side blames the other for the collapse of trade deal negotiations.

In January, Trump took aim at Canada’s aerospace industry by threatening to “decertify” its jets in the US in a separate attack on his northern neighbour.

The White House did not immediately clarify whether Trump’s latest attack was a call for additional trade measures against Bombardier or for Americans to stop buying the company’s products.

A spokesperson for Canada’s transport minister Steven MacKinnon told the FT: “Gulfstream aircraft is and can be freely sold and operated in Canada.”

Bombardier employs more than 3,000 people at nine US facilities and sources goods from 2,800 American suppliers.

“Bombardier values its great partnership with American companies and its US employees,” the company said in a statement, adding: “Our plan is to continue to invest in our people, our customers and the communities in which we operate across the country.”

Prime Minister Mark Carney last week said Ottawa was ready to sit down for talks with Washington but cautioned a deal was unlikely considering Trump’s hostility.

“When the Americans stop doing memes, stop throwing shade, stop trying to be tough and start being serious about having those discussions, we can have those discussions,” he said.

Trump continued to taunt Canada on Monday with a Truth Social post showing all of North and Central America, including Canada and Greenland, covered with the American flag.

Speaking to the FT last week, US trade representative Jamieson Greer blamed Canada for turning down “a very good deal”, saying Ottawa had overplayed its hand and warning that Trump relished the trade fight.

“President Trump actually loves this kind of thing . . . it’s kind of what he enjoys doing,” Greer said.

Trump’s trade official also hinted that the president would respond to Canada’s tariffs with additional levies on the US side. “We’ve presented options to the president,” Greer said. “I think he might pull the trigger.”

An official for the Canadian government declined to comment.

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Canada says no thank you

The breakdown in talks came after 18 months of tension in which the US threatened annexation through “economic force”, as well as tariffs on the steel, aluminium, automotive and lumber sectors.

Following the end of trade talks over Washington’s new 50 per cent tariff, Canada on August 25 announced retaliatory levies of 15, 25 or 50 per cent on $20bn worth of US imports, such as cheese, honey, appliances, cosmetics, agricultural equipment, motorcycles and video game consoles.

In response, Trump threatened to double duties on Canadian cars to 50 per cent. He then signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario, which straddles the US and Canada, “Lake America”.

Robert Zoellick, the ex-head of the World Bank and a former US trade representative, said Trump’s threats against Canada were self-defeating.

“No American leader should dishonour the country’s past by treating our closest partners so shabbily,” he wrote in the FT.

European ‘wealth’ threatened by decline of region’s carmakers

Car parts chief says salvaging auto industry is crucial for steel, aluminium, glass and chemical sectors

Europe’s “wealth won’t last” unless it can salvage its auto industry and establish a beneficial relationship with Chinese carmakers opening factories in the region, said the head of one of the world’s top parts makers.

Francisco Riberas, chair and founder of Gestamp, told the FT the European car industry faced an existential crisis having been “asleep” while China stole a march in electric vehicles and the US threw up import barriers against Chinese cars.

“What Europe should really be worried about is losing the automotive industry,” said Riberas, speaking at the Madrid headquarters of Gestamp, whose 42,000 employees supply most of the world’s top carmakers from factories in 24 countries.

“The automotive industry is the anchor for many other industries — steel, aluminium, glass, the chemical industry and so on. So, losing the automotive industry could mean losing industry itself in Europe, and that would have far-reaching consequences.”

The European auto industry is in a fight for survival as competition from more technologically advanced and cost-efficient China rivals such as BYD and SAIC Motor undercuts sales and forces thousands of job losses.

“Europe has to return to its original model from many years ago — the model that gave us the standard of living we enjoy today, which is the result of technology applied to the industrial revolution,” Riberas said. “That’s the model. Otherwise, we are just 5 per cent of the world’s population. We are wealthy, but our wealth won’t last.”

Since 2017, when global auto output peaked, Europe’s production of vehicles — including those exported beyond the continent — has plunged by a dramatic 20-25 per cent, Riberas noted. The industry’s woes are particularly marked in Germany, the continent’s biggest car producer ahead of Spain.

As Chinese manufacturers erode the businesses of European rivals, the continent is locked in a debate over whether investments from those same companies — which are seeking to manufacture in Europe — represent salvation or a road to self-destruction.

Riberas said Chinese companies should be welcomed, albeit with caveats. “Ultimately, who makes the cars isn’t the most important thing. What’s important is that they’re made here and that they create jobs here. I think that’s something people sometimes forget.”

European automotive manufacturing accounts for about 7 per cent of the continent’s GDP and supports nearly 14mn jobs.

But Riberas said it was vital for Europe’s industrial future that Chinese makers turn to local suppliers for components rather than importing them from China and simply bolting them together on European soil.

For every job in a European car plant, there have traditionally been three jobs in European component manufacturing, he said.

Gestamp, which he founded in 1997, bills itself as a global leader in the production of metal components including car bodies, chassis and door hinges, some made via a hot stamping process that makes them ultra-resilient.

But he noted that Gestamp had “very few” contracts with Chinese carmakers in Europe.

“Among the cars being produced in Europe [by Chinese carmakers], most of the components are essentially being imported from China,” the Gestamp chair said. “What is still missing is the second phase, where they actually manufacture them here.

“If it turns out that all we’re doing is getting the cars assembled here while all the components come from China, we’ve destroyed the entire value chain.”

China’s Chery assembles vehicles in Barcelona while Xpeng builds vehicles at contract manufacturer Magna Steyr’s plant in Austria. Leapmotor is planning to start production in Spain later this year. BYD plans to start mass producing its vehicles in Hungary by the end of this year.

Riberas also complained about the lack of a “level playing field” on financing with Chinese competitors. While the European auto sector is “not considered attractive to the financial world”, he said Chinese companies have access to abundant funding that means “they are often investing with a zero cost of capital in effect”. He called that “an advantage that cannot be tolerated”.

In response to worries about Chinese investments not generating local benefits, the European Union is creating a landmark law called the Industrial Accelerator Act. It will give member states the power to veto any Chinese FDI exceeding €100mn in certain strategic sectors. The act, which is yet to become law, also includes a proposed 70 per cent local content threshold for car components if investments are to qualify for subsidies or public contracts.

Beijing has lashed out at the act, accusing the EU of “engaging in protectionism”. The IAA does not, however, contain any stringent requirements for Chinese manufacturers to share their world-beating battery or EV technology with European partners — an area where critics of Chinese investment fear Europe is being left in the dark.

Chinese carmakers from BYD to Chery have all pledged to increase the use of European-made car parts as they expand sales across the continent and face pressure to meet the IAA’s proposed “Made in Europe” requirements.

Western carmakers that have partnered with Chinese rivals to fill idle capacity at their European plants are also designing their joint ventures to encourage more use of European supply chains. They include a Stellantis tie-up with Dongfeng and a Ford partnership in Spain with Geely.

Still, the transition away from Chinese suppliers is expected to take time because they are significantly cheaper.

Gestamp has 13 factories in China, a number second only to its 22 in Spain, and supplies many Chinese producers, including Li Auto, Xiaomi Auto and Beijing Benz Automotive, a Mercedes-Benz joint venture.

Riberas was supportive of the IAA, which he described as “defensive” but necessary for Europe. “It’s not just about taking a protectionist approach. We also need to shield ourselves, to some extent, from situations that may not be fair, and buy ourselves some time,” he said.

“With each passing day, more companies are going under . . . And once that industrial base is lost, it won’t come back.”

Gestamp recorded revenues of €12.4bn in 2023 but has posted two years of declines since then due to the struggles of many of its customers. Its revenue for 2025 came in at €11.5bn.

Beyond defensive measures, Riberas said that Europe, including its policymakers, needed a plan for its car industry — the kind of plan that China has had “for many years” and has been implementing single mindedly.

“That plan requires everyone to pull together and work hard — something we sometimes seem to forget,” Riberas said.

“It also requires investing heavily in technology and making the most of the wave of digitalisation and artificial intelligence to improve our competitiveness. We must also recognise that some of what we have today will no longer be competitive.”

EU opens door to bigger corporate mergers

Top competition official says deals that help companies scale up and innovate will get a closer hearing as EU seeks to keep pace with US and China

The European Commission is signalling greater willingness to consider large corporate mergers that could boost investment, innovation or security of supply and help them compete with the US and China.

Anthony Whelan, who leads the bloc’s powerful competition directorate, said companies should make the case for the benefits of such corporate tie-ups.

“The opening to the importance of pro-competitive scale can enable the creation of champions, including European champions,” Whelan said.

The shift will allow “companies to scale up . . . to deliver better products, services, innovation, security of supply to their customers and ultimately to consumers,” he added.

His comments are among the clearest signals yet that the Commission is reassessing its approach to consolidation to help European companies scale up against American and Chinese rivals, after former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi warned that the region needed to step up its competitiveness.

In revised merger guidelines published earlier this year, the Commission took on board calls for more openness towards mergers and acquisitions as a way to deliver on the Draghi agenda.

Whelan, a former aide of Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, was appointed in April. His start comes at a time when Europe’s consumer-first principles in merger decisions and deep institutional scepticism towards governments attempting to engineer corporate “European champions” are being challenged.

The shift could revive mergers once seen as unlikely to clear EU scrutiny. Whelan said he did not know how many potential transactions were “being dusted off from a filing cabinet” because they might now fit the new policy direction, but said Brussels was “consciously making some explicit and hopefully clear signals . . . that we will seriously consider such arguments”.

Whelan stressed that the shift did not amount to preferential treatment for European companies. “We are colour blind when the cases come,” he said.

But the Commission will increasingly examine how markets are likely to evolve over a longer period, Whelan said, as it seeks to adapt merger control to the current economic environment.

“Would the merger have made them better able to access certain inputs” constrained by geopolitics or raw supply, Whelan said. “Would they be better able in pooling their resources to innovate . . . where the capital needs of such innovation are extremely high? . . . Would they be better able to invest in some sort of infrastructure or networks?”

AI is one sector where Brussels is keeping a close eye, as policymakers fear the huge cost of developing cutting-edge models and securing computing power could leave the industry dominated by a small number of US companies.

Whelan said the sector has some characteristics of an oligopoly and that the commission is determined to bring down barriers to entering the market.

“Our focus is very much on making sure that the competition to develop and commercialise those models is not distorted by practices in areas surrounding AI,” adding that “the whole ecosystem is one that we need to monitor”.

Brussels has been trying to find a delicate balance between enforcing its existing rule book while avoiding a clash with Washington, whose support it needs to defend Ukraine in its war with Russia. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused the EU of singling out US companies and threatened tariffs in response to enforcement actions.

Whelan described the disagreement with Washington over its digital rule book as “disappointing”, particularly because US and European regulators often share similar concerns.

But he rejected suggestions that geopolitical pressure was causing Brussels to hold back from opening cases against American companies. There is no “filing cabinet full of buried cases”, he said.

The Irish official said the predictability and neutrality of European enforcement have become even more valuable when political intervention in economies elsewhere was less predictable.

“The seriousness and neutrality with which we apply the rules and guidance in all these areas is a very precious asset,” he said, adding that it is important towards “companies in a world where arbitrariness is no longer just in obscure corners, that they can rely on that in the EU”.

Hedge fund Millennium seeks tax deal to boost Geneva presence

Swiss cantons locked in competition to woo high-net-worth individuals

Hedge fund Millennium Management is in discussions with Geneva authorities to strike a tax deal in the canton and expand its office there, amid fierce competition between the Swiss regions to lure high-net-worth individuals.

In Switzerland’s highly federalised system, cantons have considerable autonomy to set their own tax rates and routinely use them to compete for wealthy residents and companies.

Maximum personal income tax rates can hit about 45 per cent in Geneva, compared with 20 per cent in Zug, where Millennium also has an office.

New York-based Millennium is one of the world’s biggest hedge funds, with over $92bn in assets under management, and it employs about 6,900 people. Part of Millennium’s pitch to investment staff and portfolio managers is that they can have significant geographic flexibility.

A successful tax ruling would boost Geneva’s attractiveness for the hedge fund’s employees and aims to cater to traders and potential hires who prefer the French-speaking canton. Although Millennium already has offices in both cities, Zug is currently the larger of the two.

The hedge fund has a substantial presence in financial centres including London, New York and Singapore, and allows staff to work from more than 140 locations around the world.

It opened its Dubai office in 2020 in response to demand from traders, and its presence there has subsequently grown.

However, earlier this year, the FT reported Millennium was exploring ways to settle staff who did not want to return to Dubai in Jersey, with some employees seeking tax-favourable alternatives amid the war in the Middle East.

The rivalry between Swiss cantons was underscored last week by 102-year-old private bank Vontobel, which announced plans to move its headquarters and about 1,500 employees from Zurich to Zug, where it will develop a new campus.

Geneva, which has historically been one of Switzerland’s highest-tax cantons, has been trying to narrow the gap with its lower-tax rivals.

Negotiations with Geneva tax authorities can result in a tax ruling, which allows a binding agreement to be obtained for a company — such as a hedge fund — or individuals, potentially reducing the effective tax burden. 

Geneva voters in November 2024 approved a substantial cut in cantonal and municipal personal income taxes, which took effect in 2025. The reform reduced income tax bills by an average of 8.7 per cent, with reductions ranging from 5.3 per cent to 11.4 per cent depending on income. 

The Geneva government explicitly presented the reform as a way of improving the canton’s attractiveness relative to its Swiss competitors, although it remains comparatively expensive for the highest earners. 

Geneva has previously said relief could be granted to an existing business moving into Geneva from another canton, although there are constraints designed to prevent endless canton shopping and account must be taken of relief already enjoyed elsewhere.

The size of the concession has in other cases been judged partly on jobs created, payroll, investment and the additional personal-income-tax revenue generated by the employees.

Although people familiar with the discussions said housing difficulties in Zug were one of the reasons why Geneva was in demand with traders, its property market is even tighter than in Zug. The residential vacancy rate in Geneva was just 0.34 per cent last year, compared with 0.42 per cent for Zug, federal data show.

Millennium declined to comment. Geneva’s finance department declined to comment on the hedge fund but said people moving to the canton from elsewhere in Switzerland were subject to its ordinary tax rules and received no preferential treatment because of their relocation.

Wars and the growth of the shadow fleet are causing a ‘structural shift’ in global trade, according to 18 maritime authorities

The rules governing global shipping are breaking down, the world’s largest maritime nations have warned, disrupted by wars and a growing shadow fleet that operates beyond western oversight.

The shipping industry has for decades been protected by laws that ensure free navigation and the neutrality of commercial vessels, but the collapse of those principles is posing a severe risk to global trade, according to a group of 18 shipping superpowers.

“Without maritime trade, supply chains would fragment and the global economy as we know it would come to a sudden halt,” the group said in a statement published on Tuesday.

The battle to control the Strait of Hormuz, the Covid-19 pandemic and the shadow fleet created as a result of US, EU and UK sanctions are not “episodic shocks” but “signals of a structural shift in the operating environment of global trade”, said the Consultative Shipping Group, whose members represent more than a fifth of global trade by tonnage.

The statement is the first public intervention from the CSG since it was established more than 60 years ago. The group’s members include Greece, Singapore, Denmark, Japan, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands and South Korea.

“Shipping routes are increasingly instruments of leverage and risk,” the CSG warned, adding that recent events show how “fragile” the system of maritime trade can be.

Brian Wessel, director-general of the Danish Maritime Authority, which chairs the CSG, told the FT the seafaring nations made this rare statement because of deepening concerns about the fragmentation of the maritime sector and the undermining of standards set by the International Maritime Organization, the UN body that regulates the shipping industry.

“For decades, we have built global trade on the assumption that ships can move freely across borders. That assumption is now under pressure,” he said.

“The global level playing field [and] the global regulations that we’ve made for many, many years in the IMO have been taken for granted,” he added.

More than 80 per cent of world trade is transported by ships, which operate under rules set by the IMO. The body itself was formally created in 1948 but the concept of international governance of the oceans stretches back to the 17th century when the idea of mare liberum, or “free seas”, was first established.

Because of their role in global trade, vessels have become an increasingly prominent target and pawn in geopolitical machinations.

Russia, Ukraine, the US and Iran have all hit civilian shipping targets during conflicts this year, while the vulnerability of maritime chokepoints has been underscored by Iran’s efforts to try to establish a fee-paying regime in the strait.

Tehran on Monday said a deal with Oman to manage shipping through the waterway, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas previously flowed, was close to being agreed. It is not clear whether a toll will be charged.

Shipowners and maritime organisations have said that charging a fee would set a dangerous precedent that could cause other countries bordering critical chokepoints to follow suit.

At the same time, US, EU and UK sanctions on Russia and Iran have caused the rapid growth of a shadow fleet of oil tankers that now amounts to more than 1,500 vessels, according to TankerTrackers.com, almost a fifth of the global tanker fleet. Nearly all these lack traditional insurance policies.

This summer, the Caroline Bezengi, a shadow fleet ship carrying roughly 800,000 barrels of Russian oil, hit a limpet mine off the coast of Oman without any traditional protection and indemnity insurance, potentially leaving the Omani government on the hook for millions of dollars of costs related to the clean-up.