>>> Skew Monitor : AB InBev, Airbus, BBVA, Iberdrola, ING, Schneider Electric

  • Biggest skew gainers:
    • Bayer skew up 8.4 points to 5, in the 95th percentile; stock rose 14.4% w/w; RSI: 74
    • Enel skew up 1.7 points to 7.9, in the 86th percentile; stock fell 1.7% w/w; RSI: 47
    • BBVA skew up 1.5 points to 9.2, in the 78th percentile; stock rose 1.1% w/w; RSI: 63
    • Airbus skew up 1.2 point to 6.8, in the 83rd percentile; stock rose 2.9% w/w; RSI: 44
    • AB InBev skew up 1 point to 4.9, in the 82nd percentile; stock fell 3.6% w/w; RSI: 40

  • Biggest skew decliners:
    • VW skew down 2.6 points to 1.3, in the 3rd percentile; stock rose 6.8% w/w; RSI: 77
    • Schneider Electric skew down 1.9 points to 2.9, in the 3rd percentile; stock rose 3.3% w/w; RSI: 55
    • Iberdrola skew down 1.6 points to 4.7, in the 54th percentile; stock was little changed w/w; RSI: 55
    • ING skew down 1.5 points to 7.2, in the 41st percentile; stock rose 2% w/w; RSI: 63
    • Infineon skew down 1.3 points to 1.9, in the 10th percentile; stock rose 6.2% w/w; RSI: 65

  • The average skew for Euro Stoxx 50 members is 5

  • The Euro Stoxx 50 skew declined 0.4 points to 10.1, in the 42nd percentile, as the index rose 1% w/w; RSI: 60

FT : Trump opens new fronts in federal regulation battle

Trump opens new fronts in federal regulation battle
Constitutional rulings are boosting attempts to curb regulators’ reach

Efforts to whittle away US regulations are set to accelerate in 2026 thanks in part to the Trump administration’s pro-business policies and to courts taking a more sceptical view of how far regulators’ discretionary powers extend.

From the Federal Reserve to the Environmental Protection Agency, US regulators are under pressure. Between President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January and October 22, some 13 federal regulations were rescinded, according to the Brookings Institution think-tank. These include rolling back a proposed menthol cigarette ban and minimum wage increases for federal contractors that had been scheduled for January by his predecessor Joe Biden.

The regulatory rollbacks are expected to increase sharply in the new year: another 17 regulations are in the process of being cut, the Brookings Institution said.

Aside from executive orders issued from the Oval Office scrapping directives from Democratic administrations, others introduced by federal watchdogs are being contested on the grounds that — based on constitutional challenge — they lack statutory authority.

“We can expect more litigation in 2026 as the administration finalises more regulatory rollbacks,” says Cary Coglianese, head of the University of Pennsylvania law school’s programme on regulations.

In 2024, the Supreme Court overturned a 40-year precedent giving federal agencies wide latitude to write regulations. The legal doctrine, known as Chevron deference, stems from a 1984 Supreme Court decision involving the oil company.

Based on that case, courts generally deferred to agencies when they were writing rules to implement ambiguous Congressional statutes. But last year the Supreme Court made it easier for opponents of particular regulations to challenge the way they interpreted the underlying law. This sparked a wave of legal challenges to federal regulations in the last months of the Biden administration.

The White House has broadened the attack on regulations introduced during Democratic administrations by arguing that they lack statutory authority from Congress and are invalid.

Such battles to reverse or scrap regulatory policies are not new. When Biden took office in 2021, his administration was able to rescind auto emissions rules at the EPA and immigration rules at the Department of Homeland Security simply by not defending them in court as the first Trump administration had. In other instances, Biden officials withdrew regulations proposed under Trump but never finalised.

Aside from established tit-for-tat tactics, Trump in his second term has a powerful additional tool after Chevron deference was overturned.

Few have more experience challenging regulations than Eugene Scalia, partner at Gibson Dunn. During the tail-end of Biden’s term, Scalia led lawsuits attacking climate disclosure rules, regulations for private funds and the Federal Trade Commission’s ban on non-compete agreements that make it hard for workers to change jobs.

Son of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, he has carried on his father’s conservatism by specialising in anti-regulation crusades and served as US secretary of labour for the final 16 months of Trump’s first term. His clients have included Walmart, Boeing, MetLife and a host of business groups including the US Chamber of Commerce, the Managed Funds Association and the Business Roundtable. 

“Courts today are more focused than ever on the necessity that agencies stay within the lanes set down by Congress — respecting statutory limits on agency authority, and processes required by the Administrative Procedure Act,” says Scalia. “And courts recognise the importance of sometimes asking whether Congress itself observed the bounds on its authority, or instead encroached on executive authority or ceded too much congressional responsibility to the agencies.”

Still, the regulatory combat is not one-sided. Liberal states have challenged the regulatory interventions. In June, California sued the Trump administration to preserve the state’s clean air regulations. In November, 22 states sued the Education Department to stop a new federal rule limiting loan forgiveness for public workers such as teachers. “In the next three years, we’ll see a lot more challenges to federal action by progressive organisations and [Democratic] ‘Blue States’ than we saw under President Biden,” Scalia predicts.

Democrats are also trying to restore Chevron deference with Congressional legislation introduced in November. “We are seeing the Trump administration dismantle systems created to ensure that federal regulation prioritises public safety,” Democratic congresswoman Pramila Jayapal said in November.

Though many businesses are pleased with Trump’s attack on regulations, other policies are far more controversial. Last month, the US Chamber of Commerce joined others pressing the Supreme Court to rule against Trump’s use of emergency tariff powers.

A decision in the case, expected in the months ahead, could throw one of the President’s signature policies into turmoil. “The administration has made no secret of the fact that there are areas — like immigration and tariffs — where it will pursue policies not embraced by all American businesses,” Scalia says.

Coglianese says the Trump administration is unlikely to succeed in all claims against regulatory agencies: “Although the administration may garner some wins, it can also expect losses, too — perhaps plenty of them.”

FT : Oil and gas drillers huddle for warmth in the North Sea

Oil and gas drillers huddle for warmth in the North Sea
Neo Next+ follows a whole spate of other similar tie-ups

Some company mergers are grand gestures of bullishness and derring-do. Others are a forlorn attempt to huddle together for warmth in an inhospitable environment. If the battle for US media giant Warner Bros Discovery is the former, then a deal struck on Monday in the North Sea looks decidedly like the latter.

Oil and gas drillers in the chilly expanse to Britain’s east have been buffeted by the country’s Energy Profit Levy — commonly known as the “windfall tax”, even though it still applies when no wind blows. One response has been to seek scale. TotalEnergies on Monday merged its activities into a joint venture with private equity group HitecVision and Spain’s Repsol, which will have more than $15bn of net assets, according to Citigroup analysts.

The creation of this venture, named Neo Next+, follows a whole spate of other North Sea tie-ups. Italy’s Eni and Ithaca joined forces in April 2024. Equinor and Shell did likewise in December last year. Repsol and HitecVision formed their alliance, currently called Neo Next without the plus sign, only a few months ago. 

It isn’t hard to see why all these companies have been rushing to team up. Forget deserts and deep seas: the UK is one of the hardest places in the world for energy companies to make money. Assets are mature, costs are high and the tax take has reached 78 per cent of profit.

Mergers help in two main ways: bigger companies can lower unit production costs, and a company’s tax credits from past losses can be offset against more production, so that the benefit flows through sooner. That has certainly been a key attraction in recent tie-ups: Ithaca and Equinor both had substantial tax credits on their balance sheets.

Neo Next+ will benefit from both lower costs and lower taxes. It will produce more than 250,000 barrels of oil a day next year. That makes it 80 per cent larger than its next competitor, Shell and Equinor’s combined business Adura, Citi reckons. And at the end of last year, before their merger, Neo Energy and Repsol together had almost $1bn tax credits, according to Stifel analysis.


For the UK government, meanwhile, such mergers have both costs and benefits. True, they create sturdier companies that can better withstand the stormy environment, and theoretically taxable profits. But that can be more than offset by the impact of those tax credits. The Office for Budget Responsibility partly blamed mergers for the £2.5bn reduction in its 2025-26 estimate of tax income from the North Sea.

The upshot is that mergers have squeezed the UK’s expected tax receipts from the North Sea at a time of already-declining oil prices and production. All of which does little to inspire love for the windfall tax, especially given the UK’s reliance on energy imports and the jobs the oil and gas sectors create. The levy looks to have been more successful at inspiring mergers than it has at bolstering the country’s finances.

FT : Boaz Weinstein’s $2bn flagship hedge fund sinks amid buoyant markets

Boaz Weinstein’s $2bn flagship hedge fund sinks amid buoyant markets
Loss of 6.5% this year for credit strategy extends period of lacklustre performance for Saba Capital

US hedge fund manager Boaz Weinstein’s main investment strategy has suffered losses this year, extending a run of lacklustre returns for two of his key funds as bets on credit markets fail to come good.

The $1.9bn flagship fund of Weinstein’s firm Saba Capital, which tries to make money through bets on dislocations in the credit market, was down about 6.5 per cent this year as of November 21, according to performance numbers seen by the Financial Times.

Weinstein is best known for spotting and trading against a JPMorgan credit derivatives trader known as “the London Whale” in 2012. The US bank suffered billions of dollars in losses as it tried to close out large positions in the market, while Weinstein’s firm made big gains.

Saba’s main fund was up 3.4 per cent last year and down 16.9 per cent in 2023, although in 2022 it surged 22 per cent as equities and bonds sold off violently, with Weinstein saying at the time that global stocks could be heading for a Japan-style bear market lasting decades.

However, since then stocks have largely enjoyed a strong run. This year, markets have rebounded from the turmoil triggered by US President Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs in April, while wobbles in credit markets have proved shortlived.

Saba’s $1bn carry-neutral tail hedge master fund, which aims to shield investors from market downturns, is down 12.7 per cent this year, according to numbers seen by the FT. It lost 2.7 per cent last year and 16.7 per cent in 2023.

Saba declined to comment.

The losses for the flagship fund contrast with Saba’s greater success in its high-profile activist campaigns against closed-end funds managed by companies including BlackRock and Eaton Vance in the US and Baillie Gifford and Janus Henderson in the UK. As these fund structures do not have a mechanism to make sure share prices match the value of the underlying assets, they often trade at a discount to net asset value.

Saba reached a settlement with BlackRock in January after waging an 18-month battle against the US asset management giant over the performance and alleged governance issues of a number of its closed-end funds.

This year, Weinstein’s focus has been on UK investment trusts, in an attempt to tighten discounts at companies that he says have not delivered value for shareholders. In some cases he has called for them to be wound down or turned into funds that allow easy redemptions.

The strategy has borne fruit, with several of his portfolios linked to closed-end fund investing and with total assets of more than $1bn under management positive this year and last. Saba’s $240mn closed-end opportunities 1 fund, for instance, has made mid-single digit gains this year after rising 20.2 per cent in 2024 and 17.7 per cent in 2023.

FT : Activist behind Engine No. 1 Exxon campaign builds stake in Siemens Energy

Activist behind Engine No. 1 Exxon campaign builds stake in Siemens Energy
Ananym Capital pushes for German group to spin off wind business 2 years after government rescue

The activist investor who masterminded Engine No. 1’s successful proxy fight against ExxonMobil has built a stake in Siemens Energy and is pushing the company to spin off its wind business.

Ananym Capital, which was co-founded last year by Charlie Penner and has accumulated about $300mn, has launched an activist campaign against the German energy giant, according to people familiar with the matter.

While the size of the stake could not be determined, one person said it was a “large position” for the fund.

In a letter to Siemens Energy’s board seen by the Financial Times, Ananym said the company’s gas turbine and grid power businesses, which have boomed on the back of growing demand for electricity driven by artificial intelligence data centres, were being held back by its ailing wind energy unit.

“Wind still has a very different and more challenging path ahead of it,” Ananym wrote in the letter, adding that the company’s “true value will likely remain obscured for as long as these businesses remain together”.

Penner has a record of successfully pushing for changes at large companies with small stakes. His biggest coup came in 2021 when he was the strategist behind Engine No. 1’s campaign against Exxon.

Despite owning just $40mn worth of Exxon stock — about 0.02 per cent of the company — the hedge fund was able to convince big investors to back its campaign and eventually won three seats on the board.

Before joining Engine No. 1, Penner spent 15 years at Jana Partners, one of the best-known activist hedge funds on Wall Street. There he took on corporate behemoths such as Apple and McDonald’s. Alex Silver, Ananym’s other co-founder, previously worked at P2 Capital Partners.

The hedge fund is pushing for Siemens Energy to launch a “strategic review” of the wind business Siemens Gamesa, which could involve spinning off the unit it took full ownership of less than three years ago.

Ananym argues the wind unit would benefit as a separate business partly because it would not have to compete for research and development investments with the two other units. One person familiar with the matter said the hedge fund believed the wind business could reach a €10bn valuation within two years.

Siemens Energy was spun off from the Siemens group in 2020, inheriting a majority stake in the publicly listed Siemens Gamesa. Persistent issues at the business weighed on Siemens Energy, however, and the company launched a tender offer to buy out Siemens Gamesa’s minority investors in 2022.

The problems meant Siemens Energy had to turn to the German government for a rescue package to shore up its order books.

Since then, the company has become a huge beneficiary of the data centre gold rush, which has led to a surge in demand for energy. But the state-led support, which was replaced earlier this year, kept Siemens Energy from paying a dividend to shareholders until this year.

Siemens Energy said in a statement that it valued “constructive input for creating sustainable value for shareholders, employees, customers, and partners”. It said it expected its wind unit to be profitable next year and that it continued “to diligently execute on our plans accordingly”.


Ananym said in the letter that Siemens Energy’s management team had made “great progress” on the wind unit, but that it believed the company was still trading at a discount to its sum-of-the-parts value and would be better off as a separate entity.

Wind attracted a different set of investors willing to bet on the long-term prospects of the industry and to endure volatility, Ananym wrote in the letter. 

Siemens Gamesa recorded an operating loss before special items of €1.4bn in the 12 months to the end of September.

>>> US After Hours Summary: MAMA +17.2% on earnings; ALEX +37.3% surging on take

After Hours Summary: MAMA +17.2% on earnings; ALEX +37.3% surging on take private deal; ARES +7% nicely higher on news it will join S&P 500; TOL -4% lower on earnings

After Hours Gainers:

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: MAMA +17.2%, KMI +0.8% (guidance)

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: ALEX +37.3% (to be taken private in $2.3 bln transaction), ARES +7% (to join S&P 500), SEZL +6.4% (to join S&P SmallCap 600), ASMB +6% (interim results from Phase 1b clinical studies of long-acting helicase-primase inhibitor candidates ABI-1179 and ABI-5366), VITL +5.6% (to join S&P SmallCap 600), WVE +4.7% (stock offering), PZG +4.3% (receives Draft Consolidated Permit Package for the Grassy Mountain Gold Project), GMRE +2.8% (CEO bought 10000 shares at $32.51 worth ~$325K), NVDA +2.5% (moving higher on report that Trump greenlights Nvidia H200 AI chip sales to China, according to CNBC), AUTL +1.9% (updated clinical data from the CARLYSLE trial), GPCR +1.8% (ADS offering), NE +1.8% (divestment of six jackups), HCKT +1.4% (results of Dutch Auction tender offer), ASR +1.3% (November passenger traffic), EXC +1% (recommended for 220-mile high voltage transmission line in PA and WV), AVAV +0.9% (awarded $874 mln IDIQ contract), GLDG +0.8% (renewd ATM equity program), INCY +0.6% (updated data at ASH 2025), NEE +0.5% (recommended for 220-mile high voltage transmission line in PA and WV), CWH +0.5% (names new CEO), PEP +0.4% (priorities and guidance after Elliott Investment Management engagement), GMAB +0.2% (new data from Phase 1b/2 EPCORE CLL-1), BMY +0.2% (advances lymphoma research)

After Hours Losers:

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: TOL -4%, PHR -1.1%, YEXT -0.6%, CMP -0.1%,=

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: ALM -13.4% (stock offering), GPK -6% (review of support functions and corporate expenses; provides GY25 guidance; also names new CEO), VERA -5.7% (stock offering), FULC -5.4% (stock offering), BORR -5.2% (to acquire 5 jackups; also stock offering), DYN -5% (stock offering), KYMR -3.5% (stock offering), AIR -1.4% (signs extension with Arkwin Industries), DRS -0.2% (expands collaboration with Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Defense), RIG -0.2% (execution of six-well contract in Australia), FTI -0.1% (awarded contract by Ithaca Energy)

WWD : Loulou Groupe to Launch Members’ Club 16 Charles Street in London Next Yea

Loulou Groupe to Launch Members’ Club 16 Charles Street in London Next Year
The 25,000-square-foot, Grade II-listed property was once the home of society hostess Margaret Greville.


NEW CLUB: French hospitality company Loulou Groupe, the operator of Loulou Paris, Le Flandrin and Le Grand Café, is opening its first U.K. branch next fall in the form of a private members’ club nestled within a Mayfair town house, called 16 Charles Street.

The 25,000-square-foot, Grade II listed property was once the home of society hostess Margaret Greville, and is now being reimagined to become a social and dining club for Loulou Groupe’s Les Amis members.

The club — informed by the spirited travels of Loulou de la Falaise, whose colorful life inspired the name of the group, and Greville — will have five floors of salons, bar spaces and restaurants spearheaded by chef Benoît Dargère. On the ground floor, there will be an open-to-the-public French brasserie, offering a first glimpse into the world above.

Claire Malafosse, cofounder and artistic director of the Loulou Groupe, said London has a special energy: the creativity, the global reach, the warmth and many of the group’s guests were already calling it their second home.

“When we walked into 16 Charles Street, everything aligned at once. We hadn’t planned to expand everywhere; that’s not who we are. But sometimes life presents the perfect building, the perfect moment, and you simply say, ‘Voilà, this is it.’ A beautiful stroke of luck, and the most natural next home for us, our pied-à-terre in London,” Malafosse added.

WSJ : Drugmakers Are Ditching Middlemen to Sell Directly to Patients

Drugmakers Are Ditching Middlemen to Sell Directly to Patients
Companies are rolling out direct-to-patient services, which are selling drugs for weight loss and other uses

  • Drugmakers are increasingly selling medicines directly to patients, bypassing traditional middlemen and offering discounted prices, often half the list price.
  • This direct-to-patient model is prominent in the weight-loss drug market, with Eli Lilly selling 30% of Zepbound prescriptions via its online service.
  • Novo Nordisk sees 10% of its U.S. Wegovy prescription volume from direct cash purchases, contributing to an expected $11.9 billion in global sales.

Drugmakers are moving to sell their medicines directly to patients, abandoning the middlemen they have long relied on.

The shift is a huge departure from how pharmaceutical companies including Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Pfizer have sold drugs for decades and threatens the multibillion-dollar business of firms that have traditionally filled prescriptions.

It is saving some patients hundreds of dollars off the cost of prescriptions because companies have been lowering the prices for drugs sold directly.

Meantime, drugmakers who have been rolling out the services in recent months see a big opportunity to boost sales, though they risk losing revenue if they don’t offset lower prices by selling to more patients.

“For the first time, pharma is actually looking end-to-end at the full patient journey,” said Pratap Khedkar, chief executive of pharmaceutical consulting firm ZS. “That is a very different mindset than has been the case for the last 50 years.”

Blister packs of Eliquis tablets from Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Drugmakers selling directly to patients threatens the traditional multibillion-dollar business of filling prescriptions. Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News
The trend is most pronounced in the booming weight-loss drug market. Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk are seeing big growth in sales of their popular drugs through direct-order services the companies have started since last year.

Bristol-Myers Squibb and AstraZeneca, in addition to Pfizer, have launched the services for treatments for diabetes, psoriasis and cardiovascular disease, including the widely used blood thinner Eliquis sold by Pfizer and Bristol-Myers.

The growth of the services, which are offered through websites, reflects just how comfortable consumers have become with getting healthcare digitally. Now, many patients talk with doctors and order drugs online.

“This is how people are experiencing healthcare,” said David Moore, executive vice president of Novo Nordisk’s U.S. operations.

Drugmakers generally offer direct-to-patient services through company-operated websites. Since patients will need a prescription, some sites help patients find a doctor for either an in-person or telehealth visit.

Patients buy their medicines through the sites at discounted prices—often half the list price—and often without using insurance. The services usually arrange for home delivery, or for patients to pick up prescriptions at a pharmacy.

Craig Voorman started ordering discounted vials of Lilly’s weight-loss drug Zepbound through LillyDirect last year so he could save hundreds of dollars a month.

Voorman, a 71-year-old retired pharmaceutical sales manager living in Fort Myers, Fla., gets his health insurance through a Medicare plan that doesn’t cover the drug, which meant he used to pay the full cost.

It was $1,050 at Costco when I started, and the vials were not available,” he said. “As soon as it was offered at $550 in the vial, I switched.” He used the savings, he said, to help his daughter-in-law pay for her prescription for the drug.

About 30% of the roughly 500,000 weekly prescriptions for Zepbound in the U.S. are now sold through Lilly’s online service at discounted cash prices—as low as $299 a month, versus a list price of $1,086.

The direct-to-patient service is helping fuel what is expected to be nearly $13 billion in total Zepbound sales for 2025.

Direct-to-patient is “creating an experience for consumers that you would expect outside of healthcare,” Jennifer Mazur, senior vice president of Lilly USA’s consumer-services division and general manager of LillyDirect.

For decades, the pharmaceutical industry has sold drugs to wholesalers and pharmacies, which then provide the drugs to patients and get reimbursed for the bulk of the cost by patients’ health-insurance plans.

Drugmakers also have been exploring working more directly with self-insured employers to provide coverage and access to certain drugs.

The services could get a boost in traffic in early 2026 if the Trump administration goes ahead with plans to launch TrumpRx, a drug-buying website that will connect patients with discounted prices.

The efforts cut out middlemen called pharmacy-benefit managers, or PBMs, who usually play a key role in getting prescriptions filled and reimbursed.

PBMs often negotiate how much health plans will pay for a prescription and recommend which drugs patients can get and how much their copay or other out-of-pocket charge will be.

The firms make money from client fees and a cut of rebates paid by drug manufacturers.

“For most patients, drugs will cost even less out of pocket and face fewer safety concerns when their medications are delivered through their prescription drug benefits at their pharmacies and with their doctors involved,” said a spokesman for Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, a PBM trade group.

Direct-to-patient likely won’t be a sales channel for complex and pricey biotech drugs, particularly those dosed in healthcare facilities, according to industry officials and analysts.

Nor might it drive much sales for drugs that have broad insurance coverage with affordable copays for patients.

The dynamics of the weight-loss drug market, however, make it well-suited for a direct-purchase model because insurance coverage of weight-loss drugs is low, leaving more people exposed to the full price of the drugs.

Also, social media is fueling consumer demand for the drugs to a much greater degree than most other drug categories.

About 10% of Novo Nordisk’s U.S. prescription volume for Wegovy, Executive Vice President Moore said, comes from direct cash purchases. Analysts expect Wegovy to generate $11.9 billion in global sales this year, up more than 40% from last year, according to FactSet.